Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (53-56)
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Literature & Fiction; Action & Adventure; Science Fiction & Fantasy; Science Fiction; Colonization; Galactic Empire; Military; Space Fleet; Space Marine; Space Opera; Two Hours or More (65-100 Pages); Teen & Young Adult
Description: Anthology containing: Star Force: Backdoor Star Force: Bloodlust Star Force: Internecine Star Force: Liberation
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

1

March 3, 2549

Devox System (Lizard territory)

Yavvi

Kara clung to the hull of the lizard cruiser, nestled up against one of the many lumps on the hull and doing her best to blend in. Her shadow mode wasn’t active, but her Vorch’nas armor had adjusted its color to match the yellow/tan ship as she pressed her body up against it in the void of space doing her best imitation of Spider Man…though to be truthful the wall crawler had nothing on the Zen’zat. With her armor providing and recycling her oxygen supply, the Archon patiently rode the enemy cruiser as it rejoined up with the rest of the lizard fleet, with her already having spent over 8 hours bouncing from ship to ship.

Her quiet, dangerous little game was about to pay off for this cruiser was pulling up into escort position along with dozens of others around the assault pillar that was her target. The 93 kilometer long siege weapon was orbiting one of the lizards’ strongholds 73 lightyears from the ADZ border, with Kara having snuck into the system via warship before being deposited into the upper atmosphere via a quick drone drop off. From there she’d made her way across the planet and hopped a ride up into the lizards’ orbital facilities.

Now that the cruiser was pulling up nearby the assault pillar she shifted her armor into shadow mode…nulling out almost all of the bounce back radiation that eyes and sensors saw with and becoming a black spot on the hull. She jumped off it, clearing the cruiser and flying across the gap to the assault pillar. Both ships had their shields down, for as far as they knew there was no enemy presence within the system.

This fleet was being assembled for another strike on the ADZ, presumably one of the Sentinel strongholds. To date they’d destroyed 7 of the defensive emplacements, but not enough to get at any particular world. Unlike the Skarrons they preferred to knock on the door rather than run troops down to the surface, which was probably due to their history with Star Force and their penchant for orbital bombardment. The lizards needed to secure orbit before any planetary assault, and in order to do that they had to take down the Sentinels.

The assault pillars were the key to doing that without egregious losses, and more and more were beginning to show up in systems near the ADZ. Star Force and the Hycre were pulling regular reconnaissance missions to hopefully give themselves a heads up for any future assaults, but there were so many systems and places to hide a fleet that it was nearly impossible to find something that someone wanted to keep hidden. Fortunately the lizards didn’t appear to be playing coy, and had this assault pillar sitting in orbit around one of their larger and known worlds.

Where it was going Kara didn’t know, or rather where the lizards planned to take it. She knew where it was going, if the Archon had her way, as she sailed across the gap and landed on the giant ship’s hull with her yellow/tan armor reappearing and blending in. She held steady for nearly a minute, checking the area to make sure she’d gone unseen, then she began crawling across the surface of the ship using grip points on her fingers to pull her along as she drifted weightless.

Already having a schematic on file in her armor, she navigated her way to one of the anti-air batteries and nestled up against it. Using her Dre’mo’don condensed into a fine beam she began cutting through the weapon very carefully, tearing out pieces without disconnecting them completely so they wouldn’t float off and be spotted. She opened a hole in the casing and crawled inside halfway, continuing to cut and reposition various components like a mole digging through dirt until she got to a fiber bundle.

Kara grabbed it and extruded tiny mechanical tendrils from her armor that physically hacked in, allowing her to cut the battery off from remote control and keep it from throwing up any mechanical failure flags. With that software blind spot established she began cutting more freely, pulling her body all the way in and moving through the hole in the thick hull armor that the weapon was concealed within.

There was no gunnery chair or control station attached to it, for it was merely a remotely controlled turret. The gunnery station was nearby, set in a small cluster of others, so all Kara had to deal with was machinery as she slowly moved her way through the innards of the ship’s skin, eventually coming to an atmospheric inner liner. Since she’d cut her way through the outer one already she had to reconfigure her shields to cover the panel she was now cutting into. When the hole in it formed and she removed the small plate, the atmosphere didn’t begin to rush out as it otherwise would have, giving her enough time to slide through into the small maintenance crawlway on the other side, turn around, and reseal the panel in place.

It took some extra melting to get the material to fill the tiny gap her cutting had created, but once she got a good seal she released the shield cover and began crawling through the ship. Kara avoided the hallways and stuck to the maintenance areas, most of which were not head height. The lizards crawled as well as they walked, so all of the access shafts in these areas were about a meter high, forcing her to do the same. Given the size of the ship it took her hours to reach the area she wanted, but eventually she came to the navigational control nexus with the enemy fleet and crew completely unaware that she was there.

Still in the maintenance areas, she found the control line that came from the bridge to the nexus and hacked in again. She cut off all control signals from the helm, which wasn’t hard considering how primitive their computer systems were. Kara also felt the same way about Star Force’s own tech, for she’d gotten so used to using the dragon tech that she wore as a permanent part of her body that everything else seemed downright pathetic in comparison. The upgrades the dragon had made to her mind had also considerably changed her…not in mood or character, but by giving her a great deal of knowledge that the other Archons lacked.

No matter how much she shared with the others they would never understand. She not only knew about computer systems, she was permanently linked to them via her Vorch’nas, and over the years had gotten used to interfacing in that way…making this type of hack extremely easy.

With the bridge cut off she took control of the ship’s engines, running a quick diagnostic and ensuring that they were fully functional before powering them up. She issued movement orders to the escort fleet around her, indicating that the big ship was going to reposition and that they needed to get out of the way. It was exactly the type of thing the bridge would send, except they were completely in the dark up until the giant needle began to twist to starboard and lightly accelerate…with the cruisers matching its movements.

Kara figured they were beginning to panic, or would shortly, when they realized they’d lost control. Then again they could all be napping, giving that the ship hadn’t moved from its current orbit in the past 19 days according to the navigational logs. Regardless, Kara didn’t care how they reacted. They didn’t know where she was and they weren’t going to find her any time soon…not that it would make much of a difference if they did.

Very slowly the giant assault pillar transitioned over to a jumppoint with hails being sent by a number of lizard superiors inquiring as to what was going on. Kara didn’t have access to those from her current position, for the line she was tapped into only held the navigational operations and it was an isolated system…deliberately so, making it impossible for an outside source to access their computer systems and interfere with things like maintaining orbit.

But she wasn’t on the outside, she was inside their giant chess piece and moving it out away from the planet…and dragging the escort fleet with it. Whether they knew or not what was happening they maintained their position, possibly on the orders of others to stay with the ship until they figured out what was going on.

102 cruisers jumped with it, as Kara gave them the appropriate navigational linkup to execute a fleet jump. Several preceded it, with most following a few seconds back as they headed for another planet in the system. It was uninhabited, with the assault pillar leaving the bulk of the lizard fleet behind and transitioning to the gas giant and its six moons while leaving the lizard bridge crew at wit’s end.

Kara moved the assault pillar into orbit of the largest moon and sent out a beacon pulse from her armor powerful enough to get through the mass of material around her, then she input some final holding commands into the navigational nexus and abandoned her position. Finally she worked her way out of the maintenance areas and into the walkways, stretching a bit as she stood up, then took off down one with a three step run before leaning forward and transitioning into a superman/flash pose and flew down the hallway, knocking over the first lizard she encountered with a hefty shoulder hit.

Given how large the ship was, running would take too long and she didn’t want to use the internal transit system…for that could be shut down and she just didn’t like the idea of waiting for them to come at her. She wanted to be on the offensive, so she flew through the corridors with her feet only inches off the ground and made her way to where she knew there was a link into the main computer system nearly 3 kilometers away.

She rendered the two lizards in that room unconscious with a single thought, knocking them out via Ikrid as she walked over and punched her armored hand into one of the consoles and hacked into the system, giving her access to the majority of the ship’s primary functions not on deliberate isolation. With them she was able to access the ship’s sensors, comms, and weapons control. She shut off the later, taking down the sensor link to all the gun turrets on the behemoth…leaving them able to shoot but blind as to what they were shooting at.

The camera feeds from the batteries themselves she also took out with a simple virus added to the system, but she still maintained her uncorrupted view of the mounting space battle outside as the Hycre fleet that had been lying in wait on the far side of the moon came around and began trashing the escort cruisers.

Kara took the assault pillar’s shields down as well, with a handful of the Hycre’s beautiful warships hitting the armor plating around the gravity drive and beginning to cut their way through as the rest of the fleet quickly cleaned up the easy ambush, which many of the naval specialists referred to as a ‘gank,’ which was a gaming term meaning the ‘blindsiding of the enemy from concealment.’

That concealment now gone, the lizard fleet around Yavvi was immediately alerted by the escort cruisers and began to move out to the jumppoint. That only gave the Hycre a short window of opportunity, but in those free minutes they killed 95 of the escort cruisers with the other 7 successfully running away, trying to draw pursuit off and buy time for the assault pillar but the Hycre didn’t take the bait. With its escorts now gone they turned on the giant ship and began targeting specific areas and hammering on the thick armor protecting the vital systems.

The weapons were another matter, with those being located in openings on the hull…and without the shields they were completely exposed. Many of the Hycre ships went for the main weapon, firing up the ‘barrel’ and slagging the interior while the rest ignored the defensive weapons, knowing they could easily be replaced after a quick stint in a shipyard. They needed to severely wound the gravity drives so it would stay put in orbit. Kara could have taken the ship and let it fall into the moon, or even the gas giant or star. She didn’t feel comfortable with slaughtering the crew like that, but there was also another reason for leaving it be.

The Hycre had been operating in this system for a while now, mostly reconnaissance missions and a few isolated hits, but with only one inhabited planet for them to guard the lizard fleet was massed in orbit around it, making any small scale action virtually impossible. If the assault pillar was stranded here, in orbit around a 2nd location, the lizards would have to split their forces or leave it unguarded. If they left it unguarded the Hycre would finish it off, nipping at it until it was just a floating carcass. If the lizards defended it or tried to bring in enough tugs to move it to a shipyard then that would offer up options for smaller scale engagements…and if they brought over their massive fleet from the planet then the Hycre could strike there when they weren’t guarding their orbital infrastructure.

Either way it changed the playing field while taking one of their key pieces out of the picture for a while and putting an end to whatever near future mission they had planned…which spared an ADZ system from getting hit and bought them more time to build Sentinels and defensive fleets.

That was why Kara had elected to stay on the lizard front rather than transitioning over to fight the Skarrons. While she could do a lot in direct battle, she was the only one who had the Vorch’nas and could go on these insane clandestine missions that would prevent attacks on the ADZ, potentially saving many lives but more importantly hardware that would be destroyed even if all the people were preserved. Given the attrition that Star Force was facing fighting on two fronts, keeping the lizards off their backs and letting their defenses swell was oh so critical.

That, and she just liked messing with the enemy’s big ships.

With her sabotage efforts done, Kara flew through the assault pillar’s interior not even aware of the pounding it was taking. Nothing could be heard or felt where she was at, for the ship was just that freaking huge. That said, she still had her own sensors and was able to pick up the Hycre signals between their ships and tap into their own version of a battlemap…though they didn’t know that she could.

Picking a spot on the hull that wasn’t under attack, she headed for one of the many small hangar bays and knocked aside the lizards in her way with either brute force or telekinesis as she coasted up to the doors. She opened them with a casual button press and walked through, launching herself over to the control station and barging her way inside. She waved a hand at the occupants theatrically and the six standard variety lizards dropped unconscious along with one librarian. Putting them into a deep sleep via ‘the Force’ she walked over and activated the bay doors.

When they began to part she walked back out into the bay, knocking down a pair of armed guards heading her way with an invisible Lachka punch that felt like a crate hitting their scaly faces. One was rendered unconscious by the hit, with the other squirming around stunned but trying to get back on its feet and to its weapon as quickly as possible.

Kara ignored them and flew off across the deck, zigzagging through the various ships and darting out through the atmospheric shield and the crack in the doors. Once into open space she activated her beacon and let the Hycre know where she was. Using the gravity drives in her armor she flew a curved course up and around the massive ship, heading for one Hycre cruiser in particular as it pounded on the assault pillar.

It opened a portion of its shields and let her in to one of its airlocks. She ducked inside and let the exterior doors reseal, then the inside of the small cubicle filled with the hot, thick, sulfur-laced atmosphere that the Hycre lived in. Her armor didn’t mind and she walked inside, heading through the ship and passing several of the floating gas-bags until she got to the chamber where they wanted her.

It was several stories tall, with Hycre floating through it at various altitudes. She flew up a level and sat on a support pylon jutting out from the wall to connect to a workstation. Keeping out of their way she sat and waited, watching their sensor feeds in her HUD as they pounded the assault pillar and eventually broke through its armor, getting at the sensitive interior.

When the lizard fleet began to arrive the Hycre took the opportunity to kill a few of their cruisers, then as the numbers swelled and they’d done sufficient damage to the assault pillar they began to withdraw using their superior binary drives to pull away from the lizards at range, but still able to fire cleansing beams back at them.

They stuck around the edges for some 20 minutes sniping the lizards before they came out after them in packs of 30+ ships to one…but it wasn’t until the lizards began to backdoor the Hycre and try to pinch them off with other sneaky attempted ganks did the Hycre eventually withdraw. Some of the ships stayed in the system, bouncing off to other gravity wells and putting themselves outside of lizard sensor range waiting for an opportunity to jump back in and kill a ship or two.

Kara’s cruiser took her back to the two stars at system center, allowing her to transition over to the Star Force warship waiting there. Her task done, it jumped out of the system and she headed over to the sanctum for a quick run to flush out the stagnation she’d been accumulating from sitting and waiting for so long…then she got some much needed sleep. When she woke she headed back to the sanctum for some real workouts as the warship took her to the next location on her hit list.

And that list was growing with each year that passed.

2

April 21, 2549

Reesi System (Beta Region)

Metropolis

Ikki watched the countdown inside his Valerie cockpit anxiously, wanting to get out into clean air but still tucked up inside the carrier that was just now entering the atmosphere. The big ship served as his Axius squadron’s mobile base of operations and had just entered the system via jumpship, detached, and was now making its way down to the planet under naval escort. According to the battlemap telemetry the Skarron navy was doing their best to get at the carrier and other vessels but the Star Force drones were holding them at bay, giving them their window of opportunity to get down to the planet.

Metropolis was a Human/Kiritak world on the border of the ADZ and one of the more recent Skarron invasion points. The fighting had stalled in orbit just like everywhere else as the Sentinels kept the enemy pinned to higher orbits aside from staged runs down to the surface to escort troops, with the heavy fighting occurring planetside. Metropolis was badly in need of reinforcement, having already lost one of its three large continents to the enemy, but with so many engagement zones across the ADZ reinforcements were hard to come by.

Ikki and his squadron were relatively new, having only been in three previous campaigns against the lizards, but some of the pilots with him had considerable experience. Their ‘Cap’ was a veteran from the very beginning of Axius by the name of Chitticki, an Irondel, but one with good skills and could keep up with the rest of the squadron that was made up solely of Urik’kadel. All of their fighters were standard Valerie, no specialty variants, given that this was going to be a mixed operational campaign and they needed flexibility. Other squadrons would have the different models, but Ikki’s was straight up regulars with the idea being that they would go wherever needed.

Orders had already come through concerning the drop…for they were going into combat immediately. The Skarrons had established aerial superiority wherever they had walker clusters or one of the bigger models, but they were extending that range out by employing massive numbers of their own crappy fighters. The Skarrons flew them themselves, not their Aronsic, meaning the craft were big, heavy, and didn’t maneuver well compared to the Valeries…but they were tanks when it came to survivability and required a lot of hits to take down.

Combine that tankiness with numbers and you had an aerial force that could literally run over any other small squadrons, even if they didn’t kill them. That meant keeping them back from targets was difficult enough, and with the enemy not seeming to care about losses you had a juggernaut that could wash over any nearby section of the planet and support/cover for infantry advances.

On the up side the enemy fighters weren’t too good at poaching mechs, but they were trying to none the less with swarm tactics…which was probably why the mech kill stats for fighters was nearly the equal of the Star Force aerial total. On average the veteran pilots had a running 77/1 kill ratio, but given how many fighters the Skarrons had, and were continuing to receive from reinforcement runs, Star Force couldn’t establish aerial superiority except for in locations where they had mech or city backup.

Axius might not have a lot of ground troops to bring into the fold, yet, for they were still growing and growing rapidly, but they did have a huge aerial division. The Urik’kadel were largely responsible for that, choosing to ally with Axius for nearly all military applications rather than try to contribute on their own. Ikki had grown up in an Axius colony, but several of the pilots in his squadron had not. They’d transferred over specifically to join the military, as had many others. In response Axius had devoted more resources to fighter creation so they’d have enough Valeries to accommodate them all.

They all lived in Axius colonies now, but those who were not native to them planned on returning home when their time here was done. That said, they were all Axius in blood now, even the newer additions, given the length of training they’d all endured together. Axius didn’t field rookies, and Ikki had had to prove himself time and again before being given his first combat slot.

And when he had gotten it there was more training to be done in order to get himself accustomed to flying with the members of his squadron. They’d gone through hundreds of simulator runs onboard the carrier prior to each assault and in the down times in between, working on learning each other’s tendencies and practicing combined maneuvers of so many varieties it’d been a challenge for Ikki to learn it all…but he had, as had the others, and because of it and their natural piloting skill they were about to go to school on the Skarrons with it.

Ikki waited impatiently until the countdown finally ended, with his fighter being given the go to launch. He lifted up off the small deck that his fighter sat on and moved out into the large hangar bay that had the rest of his squadron parked into the back wall in niches. The Urik’kadel followed three other Valeries out the opening bay doors and shot through the atmospheric containment field, immediately getting hit with turbulence as the carrier continued to descend through the atmosphere.

As soon as he was outside his battlemap lit up with target contacts being highlighted by either the Cap or a controller in the carrier. Regardless he shot out after them, seeing several hundred enemy fighters coming in to harass the carrier and troop transports that were coming down and now splitting up to head to different locations on the surface. His targets were about 50 klicks out, but that was nothing for his pointy-nose Valerie and he shot out across the sky of the new world, linking up with his 10 man squadron as he did so.

Cap flew center, with three trios spread around him, making what was called a ‘tri-force’ formation. Ikki didn’t understand the metaphor there, but he’d learned the grouping early on and found it was the most reliable for head on engagements, for each piece would split up and chase down Skarron fighters in the simulations. Since they required more pounding having 3 Valeries working together could take them down pretty quick, leaving Cap to fly around on his own as a diversion or to add a few kills of his own with enough persistence.

He did well with that, and when the break came Ikki went with his pair flying starboard wing and following Fanvi’s lead. A targeting mark appeared around one particular enemy fighter and the trio went after it, with Ikki flying wide. He turned sharp left and came at it from the flank as Fanvi shot it head on and dove low, getting a two hit run in. The third fighter in their group, Mava, spun around and came in on its tail, pounding it relentlessly with a scattergun until it suddenly fell out of the sky…their first kill of the day.

There would be many more to follow, for the carrier held some 60 squadrons and there were multiple carriers coming down to the planet. It was feeding time, and the largely Urik’kadel comprised squadrons went to work on the slow Skarron hordes with a ravenous appetite for kills.

Two Axius armadillos landed outside one of the captured Star Force cities on the Skarron-held continent that was currently undergoing a counterassault. Infantry was coming up out of the ocean and heading into the city while aquatic mechs held off and were doing a good job of chewing up the few Skarron walkers challenging them. In addition one aquatics battleship had risen up out of the water and was adding its firepower to the insertion, ensuring that the infantry made it inside the buildings where they began taking it to the invaders in close quarters fighting.

The armadillos landed several kilometers away on the north side, far enough away from the Skarron walkers not to come under fire, given that the largest in play was a Type-3 that didn’t have any missiles and a few lachar blasts weren’t a cause for concern. The two large ships set down on the marshy ground and opened up their doors, spewing out a contingent of Axius mechs that immediately began running towards the city as they fanned out into a loose line that buckled outward into an arch. Inside that arch followed infantry…huge infantry.

Reen scurried out with their long necks reaching up nearly two stories high as their six pointy legs poked holes into the soft ground as they walked/ran their way forward covered in heavy armor that made them look like mechs themselves. The big race actually had turrets on their armor in lieu of the handheld weapons they didn’t have…given that they didn’t have hands. Each of them also had a tiny mauler on their head, able to point it wherever they looked and fire in addition to the plasma cannons placed at the high knee joints on their inverted ‘V’ shaped legs that rose halfway up their neck length.

They were far larger than the Skarrons, but still able to move around in tight confines given their ability to crunch down into a smaller form. That said, it was going to take several minutes for them to get to the city walls before they could get inside, with the mechs providing them an escort to make sure they did prior to going after the walkers.

Then, almost as an afterthought, a few more ‘infantry’ came out of the transports last of all. There were 7 in total, each of which was an Ikrotor that stood taller than the mechs. The Ent-like race also had body armor covering their already stone-like bodies, but where the Reen were mildly slow the Axius-trained Ikrotor were not. They ran ahead, quickly catching up to the Reen and then the mech line. When they passed it a few of the mechs accelerated to keep pace with them, for they were not heading for the city…they were heading directly for the enemy walkers and coming up on their rear flank as they battled the shoreline aquatics forces.

The Ikrotor were bipedal and enormous. Untrained individuals moved about slowly and ponderously, like the Ents they resembled, but with time and Star Force-specialized training, a little side project of Wilson’s, they’d gotten their stride length and cadence up, allowing them to actually run with strides that ate up nearly 20 meters with each step…and that was with armor weighing them down, for theirs didn’t have a powered function as of yet.

In stark comparison the tiny Irondel in the mechs beside them kept pace despite their being smaller than a cat. Through the use of technology and Star Force’s unique approach to warfare, both incompatible races now fought side by side within Axius, with both ambushing the Skarron mechs with a fervor born of going into battle knowing you were going to win and win big.

The mechs that went with the Ikrotor started pounding on the Skarron’s shields from range with plasma and maulers, eating into and weakening them as the giants ran directly up to the enemy machines while charging plasma nubs on their fists. Like the Elarioni and lizard aquatic weapons, the plasma was held concentrated in a small container until physical contact was made, then released suddenly with no dissipation loss suffered from firing over range.

The first Ikrotor to get to a Type-5 walker punched the golf ball square in the center, with the plasma blasting through what was left of the shield and the physical impact to follow tipping it backwards. The walker’s thick bipedal legs made choppy steps trying to catch its balance but the Ikrotor didn’t relent, swinging its other plasma charged fist into the armor and melting a bit of it off while knocking it further back.

The Skarron walker tipped over and immediately pulled its legs in to begin the righting process, but that wasn’t to occur. The Ikrotor came up on it and, even while it was showering out tiny white plasma blasts like a bright sprinkler, punched it repeatedly on top, keeping it pinned to the ground while melting through the armor with each semi-charged hit. That eventually weakened the protective shell enough that the physical blows cracked it open.

The Ikrotor reached in and peeled the shell open, then pounded plasma inside until the walker stopped returning fire. The giant infantry stood up and stepped aside, its shields having gone down and it taken a few slight scorch marks to its armor but that didn’t matter. It looked around at the others and focused on the nearest Type-3 as two more of its brothers headed towards it, running off to join them a few hundred meters back and meeting up with a Weapon-class aquatic mech coming in from the other side as the Skarron walkers suddenly found themselves severely out gunned and began to scurry around in a panic.

The Axius mechs moved through the chaotic mess and pounded down shields while letting the Ikrotor inflict the armor and physical damage. In the case of the Type-3 its back legs were wrapped up by the mechanical tentacles on the aquatic mech which held it close as it pounded one side of its double-hulled body with pointblank mauler shots. At the same time the three Ikrotor came at the other section and tore off one of its front legs with repeated plasma punches to the spindly support.

The walker shot out a tether launcher from underneath, which attached to the leg of one of the Ikrotor and tripped it up, pulling it in underneath it where it launched a waterfall of plasma down onto its armored figure before one of the others got to the cable and cut it.

Its leg now free, the Ikrotor stood back up and, instead of running away, stayed underneath and punched up into its belly taking out a few plasma cannons as the other two likewise pounded on various segments. Unable to move with the aquatic ‘tick’ on its backside the Skarron walker poured as much plasma damage as it could into its opponents before it eventually went down, with the Ikrotor tearing through its armor shell and pouring plasma inside to make the kill with the aquatic mech letting them finish it off as it retreated back to shore.

Meanwhile the Reen finally got to the city, with their mechs breaking off into two groups. One went to fight the walkers outside while the other led the Reen inside and began patrolling the main streets and sniping infantry where they could. A host of navigational beacons and target icons popped up on the Axius battlemap and the Reen broke up and headed out on individual assignments to aid the Star Force infantry already in the city…and to hunt the Skarron elites who looked like tin cans compared to the armored Reen.

No Axius small-scale infantry had been deployed to the city, but their large scale supplemented the mainline units there and broke through any strongholds/barricades that the Skarrons had laid down with ease, supplemented by the mechs that had come in with them. Though larger, the Reen could wiggle their way into everywhere the Skarrons could go, leaving only the Hobbits for the regular infantry to hunt down inside the buildings.

The slaughter of the walkers on the exterior was mirrored on the inside, with the latter taking much longer to execute given the sheer size of the city and ample opportunities for the enemy to hide out. Not long after the beatdown began the Skarrons responded strongly, throwing their aerial superiority down on the city with waves of hundreds of fighters sniping the Reen, Ikrotor, and mechs…with all taking cover inside the city walls and hiding behind buildings as the mechs returned anti-air fire, downing many of the Skarron’s bulky fighters that then crashed into the city, wrecking building exteriors but not damaging the beefy superstructures.

The city defense shield was down and would stay down until repairs could be made, but for the moment it was Star Force territory again…with distant enemy walkers and troop transports mobilizing to come in and take it back in the days to come. Shield or no shield they were going to push Star Force back off the continent, but for the moment all they had to strike back with was fighters, which they spammed heavily.

Eventually the Axius fighter squadrons made their way over to the city and began chewing into those swarms, culminating with an hour-long feeding frenzy that eventually saw the Skarrons retreat with the armor on the Ikrotor having been chewed up considerably. The Reen had managed to avoid most of the incoming fire while the mechs were middle ground, being enough of a threat to the fighters to make them keep a little distance, but also taking some damage when their shields went down.

The Ikrotor armor wasn’t exactly easy to replace, but none of them had been injured and the city was theirs. With cleanup of the smaller units still to be finished, the Axius troops stayed on location to assist then headed back over to their armadillos for repair patch work on their armor and provisions. A few hours after that the ships took off, repositioning elsewhere on the planet while allowing others to hold the city. When the hammer came back down on them the giant infantry and their mechs would return, but until then there were other engagement zones to gank…and they planned to milk their size advantage as much as they could until the Skarrons learned to adapt to it.

3

May 26, 2549

Jennit System (Dvapp territory)

Urrit

Paul sat in the command nexus onboard the Excalibur, having found that standing was too much of a distraction, as he directed a large scale orbital assault. The raised platform that he sat crosslegged on was a new addition to the nexus and brought him up to a level head height to where he normally stood, but his eyes were closed and not looking at the numerous holographic displays encircling him. His hands were forward and resting on the Ikrid interface sphere, linking him to the ship’s computer system as he issued orders, some to crew and others to automated devices, at a rate that no one in Star Force could match.

And he had to…for the Skarrons were learning. They knew they had to attack the planet periodically to draw Paul’s forces out from the Sentinels and had done so this time with an insertion of several warships into the atmosphere to bombard ground troops, which was something that Paul wasn’t going to allow. Likewise, when Paul had attempted the same thing the Skarrons had come down into atmosphere to stop him. Neither side was going to allow the naval game to be played in atmosphere, though that hadn’t stopped Paul from getting in a few quick strikes here and there.

The Skarrons knew Paul would react when they went to ground and he had to send his fleet out from the Sentinels’ protective radius to get after them. The point had been to draw them out so the Skarrons could eat up a few of his ships, for they knew that if he was allowed to pool them in safety as more Star Force reinforcements gradually trickled in then their technological edge would tip the scales of the stalemate to their advantage. Thus they had to keep an attrition rate on the naval forces while their ground ops continued.

But the reverse was also true, for if Paul allowed the Skarron reinforcements to build their fleet to insane numbers then they could conceivably take down a Sentinel with far less casualties than he was counting on. The whole idea of the Sentinel defense grid was to make the enemy pay a heavy price to remove them from orbit, but the more weapons they had in play to throw against one the quicker it would go down, thus preserving more of their ships.

So Paul had to eat away at the Skarron fleet, and the Skarron fleet had to eat away at Paul’s and the Dvapp’s. His ally’s wasn’t linked into the Star Force battlemap the same way the drone fleet was, but with dozens of movement and targeting orders going out of his mind per second some were going to the Dvapp fleet none the less, with both races working out a shorthand that Paul could use to quickly communicate with them.

At the moment the fighting was in a gap between Sentinels and just above the atmosphere. Paul had driven their in-atmosphere warships back up…or crashing down in some cases, with the fight turning into a moving slugging match. Both sides were making constant adjustments, with Paul needing to get his drones in close to make use of the talon and mauler cannons. Given that Skarron armor was designed to be plasma resistant, more than a third of the drones in Paul’s fleet were a special variety built with no plasma weapons whatsoever. They had a mix of Ta’lin’yi, maulers, rail guns, and missiles, making them very hard hitters in close range.

The Skarrons knew this by now and were constantly moving ships back to outside the talon and mauler range so they could hit them with their plasma. That kept the whole mess of battling ships constantly moving…with new groups coming in from both sides to try and blindside the others. Right now Paul had a group of 52 Dvapp ships coming in to counter the range differential with their Sammies. When they started to engage the Skarron ships from the rear the enemy had a choice. Move in closer to plasma range or run.

They chose run, knowing that if they went head to head with the Dvapp they’d have to hold position and Paul’s short-range sluggers would come after them. To counter the run the Skarrons were bringing more ships down into low orbit to hit the Dvapp from the top side, forcing Paul to choose from reinforcing them or chasing the fleeing lower group.

That sort of back and forth chess match had been going on for more than two hours with both sides losing ships…but the Skarrons were losing far more. That didn’t necessarily mean a win, for Paul had to average nearly a 14 to 1 kill ratio just to hold even with the reinforcement rate the Skarrons were getting. He was near to that at the moment, but he needed more and was tweaking formations and targeting assignments all across the fleet trying to maximize their advantage. His fleet pilots, Captains, and Admirals were good but he was better…and he didn’t hesitate to make improvements to what they were doing on the fly.

He didn’t have time to explain anything, for the orders he was giving happened in the blink of an eye. The trailblazer had become so accustomed to the mental interface that his speed with it was phenomenal. He was in command and commanded. There was no time for discussion or suggestions, with the Star Force fleet recognizing this and following his orders immediately.

The Dvapp had been slower to coming to that realization and had questioned orders many times in the past or offered suggestions, but now they knew not to waste his time. He wasn’t in command of their fleet, but if they weren’t going to take his suggestions they’d learned not to argue about it. Paul needed to focus on making quick adjustments, so they’d just send back a declination signal if they were unable or unwilling to do something he wanted.

That didn’t happen much anymore, for Paul’s strategies were proving to maximize their survival and enemy damage rate. Still, there was only so much he could do with their current interface, and getting a more advanced one built was on the top of his to-do list, with the techs currently working hard on it and Paul dropping in to make tweaks when and where he could.

They were designing it to his wishes, but so much of his time was spent in the command nexus that he couldn’t go very far away from it, nor for very long. The Skarrons kept pressing their attacks, usually 3-4 times per day, and even the slightest delay of him getting linked in with the fleet could cost them a handful of ships. He knew he had to utilize every single one as much as he could and didn’t want to waste any opportunity in what was essentially a game to stall the enemy advance long enough to build and bring in more Sentinels.

It was a game that he wasn’t sure he was going to win, for the enemy was hitting his fleet the hardest out of all the systems under attack. He preferred that, but conceded that they might get the best of him just through sheer numbers. Naturally Paul didn’t want to accept that, and was putting everything he had into the defensive effort.

Unfortunately that left him little time to train or even sleep. That just killed him, but true to form he adjusted his workouts for the short gaps he had and even had ordered additional command nexuses built around the ship for him to use on a moment’s notice, including two inside the sanctum, one of which he was currently sitting in.

He’d been in the middle of a 10k run and only at the 3.4 mark when the call had come in. He’d sprinted off the track and through the hallways to get to the nexus, leaving him dripping sweat as he sat in a meditative pose, his mind nearly disconnected from his body as he continued the fight in orbit.

Paul was also in orbit, with the Excalibur sitting tucked up next to a Sentinel…but then it also began to move under his orders, and move fast. With it came two of the nearby Warship-class jumpships, both empty and remote controlling from range where they normally sat. All three ships winked out of view as they made a microjump away from the planet, then made a heavy turn to starboard during the jump that required an insane thrust expenditure from their gravity drives. Without even coming to a stop they made a high speed U-turn and accelerated back towards the planet, braking easily against its gravity well and coming in behind the Skarron fleet in mid orbit that was not involved in the battle.

Still controlling the battle in lower orbit, Paul let some of his attention drift out to the three big ships and gave firing orders…as well as navigational ones telling the helmsmen to dive right into the Skarron lines towards several of their juggernauts.

The two jumpships got there first, given they were the smaller, and began launching mauler bloons onto the targets while opening up with the rest of their weaponry at the surrounding ships as they dove into the swarm. The big donut that was the command ship came in behind them and the Skarrons seemed to get caught off guard for a moment, not knowing whether to run or fight. They eventually settled on fighting, with the hope of taking the big chess piece out, but their slight hesitation cost them as the mass of weaponry across the Excalibur opened up and shredded the smaller Skarron ships nearby.

Paul took control of shield control and adjusted the forward shields into repulsor mode, creating an invisible second shield out in front of the primary one that only blocked dense matter. It let the plasma fire through, but any sizeable objects got caught up in what ‘looked’ and felt like a giant airbag that would depress then push back on them. The Excalibur didn’t slow when it hit the enemy fleet, with Paul intent on ramming right through it and not letting ships in the way be a problem.

The two jumpships fell in behind it, firing as they went, with the command ship plowing the way, literally, as it pushed aside ship debris and even a few intact ones that failed to move aside in time. The shields didn’t hold up forever and the physical impacts eventually reached the primary shield. That held up even less, with several impacts hitting the hull…but that hull was so thick with armor and the ship so big that they were inconsequential given the slow collision speeds.

Eventually the command ship came all the way through, leaving a swath of destruction behind it that the jumpships added to, then the three ships accelerated again, making the tiniest of jumps down to low orbit, and coming in at the back of the Skarron’s upper fleet in that engagement that Paul was still directing.

Seeing what was happening, the Skarron fleets higher up broke their position and came rushing down after them. Paul knew he only had a few minutes before they arrived and intended to make the most of them. With bloon launchers hurling mauler energy at ranges the cannons never could, the command ship blew through the Skarron cruisers’ shields with single hits, savaging their hulls and leaving them easy pickings to the drones.

Paul had all three big ships hitting the smaller ones with single shots, essentially ripping off their defenses and opening them up to the Ta’lin’yi to do their thing…and in those few minutes so many enemy ships went down that the remainder began to flee even as their overwhelming number of reinforcements were starting to come down to them.

Which was when Paul sent his fleet scattering in groups to the nearest Sentinels, making sure to give the Dvapp a window for retreat as well, given that they wouldn’t respond as fast. He kept himself and his command ship there as the last ship, then made a slow lateral jump to get out from under the hammer coming down and back within Sentinel range.

A few of the Skarron ships not yet to the engagement zone diverted and tried to intercept the command ship, given that its shields were down, but they didn’t make it in time and got hit by cleansing beams at range from the Sentinel that sliced right through their hulls, bisecting them with the touch of beam drift the gunners liked to use. Three went down within a second, then 29 more were damaged before the Skarrons were able to reposition enough to make the long-range shots miss as they fled.

The cleansing beams didn’t have a finite range limit, with the beam cohesion dropping over distance, but it was primarily the accuracy involved, meaning the bigger the ship that came near, the greater the range the Sentinel would have…which was why the Skarron juggernauts were keeping well clear to make sure the Sentinels didn’t get in any lucky shots at extreme range.

Paul stayed linked in and hyper active until he was sure that the Skarrons were done with this engagement. He saw their ships pulling back up to mid orbit while a few limped away, damaged but not killed. The few ships that were sitting in place Paul sent drones out after to finish them off. He wasn’t in a position to take prisoners and would prefer killing them quickly rather than letting them die slowly, for there was no rescue coming anywhere near Sentinel range.

A quicker death was the only concession he could, or would, make to the enemy. There were over a billion Dvapp on the planet’s surface that, if he failed, would be eradicated by the Skarrons…not to mention the Star Force troops down there. Mercy was a luxury of the dominant, and right now he was doing everything he could to just hold their lines without the Skarrons spamming them out of existence.

When he eventually released his mental and physical link with the control sphere he noticed a presence behind him.

“How long have you been there?” he asked without turning around, for he could both sense her mind and see her with his Pefbar had he wanted to.

“A while,” Riona answered. “Take a break, I’ll watch things for a few hours.”

Paul blew out a long breath, realizing as he spun around on his pedestal that he’d gotten a bit stiff. “Thanks.”

“Gotta keep our number one asset battle worthy,” she said, exchanging spots with him. “And you look like you need a good workout session and powernap.”

“You read my mind,” he said sarcastically, referencing a running joke between the two of them. Other than Jason she’d become his closest friend, with an unexpected bond forming that both were a bit surprised at.

With her lowering the pedestal and taking a standing position in the nexus he left her there, knowing that she knew that he couldn’t relax without knowing that she or one of the other trailblazers was watching over the planet…and at the moment there were no other trailblazers here.

Riona’s naval scores weren’t the equal of Paul’s, but they’d been rising steadily the more time the two of them spent together, though they rarely worked on those skills. Most of their combined sessions were straight up physical training or bioshield related, but both of them suspecting that Riona was getting some bleedover knowledge from the extensive battlemeld training they were doing, with Paul feeling a bit the same way.

Linking with Jason had had the same effect, with Paul’s own mind adjusting a bit to the presence of the other as they got repetitively in sync with one another. The same thing was happening with Riona and Paul could notice a few new tendencies creeping up in his speech that mirrored hers. It was minor stuff, with Riona seeming to get the benefit in her naval scores, but Paul guessed that had more to do with emotional control and mental focus rather than any particular strategy or tactical awareness that he had.

Being in a nexus required a certain mindset that couldn’t be taught, and if she was picking up on his mojo and mimicking it then it’d essentially speed up her learning curve. That was one of the benefits of the battlemeld, but it could also be a disadvantage if there was a negative habit or mindset…but they were Archons…and Archons were troubleshooters and problem solvers. Any personal problems they may have had in the past had long ago been solved.

Back in the day when Paul was growing up people had said, almost as if it was unquestionable, that nobody was perfect. That sort of nonsense was long behind him now, for the word ‘perfect’ had to have a definition and a measurement. Assess where you were relative to perfect and work towards it.

If perfect meant not having any flaws, then he and the Archons were there…at least the older ones were. Not all the adepts, he guessed, but then again you didn’t have to be perfect to kick ass. One of the others, he couldn’t remember which after so many years, had floated the metaphor that having a personal problem was like running with a backpack with a rock in it. Three problems three rocks, etc. The problems didn’t stop you from running, they just slowed you down, and if you were a badass you could beat a ‘perfect’ person, meaning one without any rocks, by being so much better than them that your strength outweighed the drag your problems had on you.

So ‘perfect’ didn’t mean you always won, it just meant you weren’t being held back by anything. Paul had been ‘perfect’ for quite a long time now, but that didn’t make life easy. With everything that he’d learned and all the strength he’d gained it seemed like it was never enough, and the current situation was proving that. He was holding onto their defenses by what felt like a thread and wasn’t sure how much longer he could manage it. He knew he had to take it one moment at a time and play it out, but the writing on the wall wasn’t good and it wasn’t the fault of any inadequacy on his part.

Sometimes you were simply outmatched, perfect or not.

But there was a part inside Paul that wasn’t going to accept a no-win scenario, if just out of spite. Riona taking the helm for a bit allowed him to relax enough to head back over to the track and get in a full 10k before hitting the shower and catching an hour nap. After that he relieved her, made a few adjustments to their orbital positions, then tentatively headed off for some sword work while wearing an earpiece to keep him in constant communication with the bridge crew or allow him to access a holographic battlemap with the touch of a button.

That was how he lived nowadays, always worried about being caught off guard and knowing the consequences that would result if he was. But as he reminded himself on occasion, Archons liked challenges and this was just another one…and one worthy of a warrior of his caliber.

With that in mind and a little bit of Vegeta’s ego channeled to emphasize the point, Paul kept himself invested in the moment and fighting the Skarrons, knowing that every minute he bought for them meant more Sentinels being built and deployed along the border, which was going to be their long term key to holding the line.

4

May 29, 2549

Rotunna System (Beta Region)

Heimdall

Randy jumped up from the ground on the barren forest floor using his jump pack to get him extra height, then kicked off a tree trunk to bounce him higher and back towards a tree branch some 20 meters up. He landed on the half meter thick limb and nearly slid off the far side but caught himself with his right arm and hung on, then pulled himself up on top and into a crouching position. He stayed there, alone, and waited for more than 20 minutes before he began to pick up activity nearby, not with his battlemap sensors, which were next to useless in the forest, but with his Ikrid that he had extended out in detection mode as far as his padawan range would allow.

The branch he sat on was barren, for it was underneath the canopy and leading up to higher foliage, though more or less flat where he now sat hunched. The moon he was on orbited a gas giant that sat 2nd in line around the system’s two central stars that bathed it in an excessive amount of sunlight. The trees here ate it all up, but a considerable amount still got through their thick leaves and left the forest floor visible and covered with small plants. In between those and the extremely tall treetops was a dead zone, for the trees didn’t seem to want to grow leaves in the lesser light.

That left a lot of branches for Randy to move across, as he had been doing for weeks out hunting in the forest. Originally the moon had been a startup colony with some 50 million inhabitants located in two cities and a scattering of outposts but recently they had all been evacuated, leaving the planetoid as the playground in the war between Star Force and the Skarrons.

Randy had all 9 habitable planetoids in the system colonized to some level, but this moon had been the weakest link and only possessed a single Sentinel as opposed to the 46 he had around Ida. The Skarrons had attempted to land troops there and failed three times, with his fleet intercepting their transports and kicking the crap out of their warships, preventing them from setting up a blockade in mid orbit as they had done in other systems.

That left the Skarron fleets roaming the system and attempting to intercept ships moving about. Randy had been out hunting them as well and making a lot of kills while the local population of 12 billion Humans and 153 billion Kiritak worked to produce more drones at an astounding rate. Rotunna was a system that didn’t need naval reinforcement, for they simply made their own, and the Skarrons hadn’t yet fielded enough ships to challenge them in any meaningful way. They’d preferred looking for opportunities for ambushes and sneak attacks up until a few months ago when they’d finally made their move.

They hadn’t been stupid enough to assault the major planets, but they had hit Heimdall’s single Sentinel with an enormous fleet…half of which the defense station wasted before they took it out. The Skarrons had had to close to short range to kill it with their plasma weapons, meaning the Sentinel’s own short range defensive weaponry also came into play, though the enemy had tried to hover in the sweet spot that would allow their plasma to hit but the Sentinel’s maulers to remain ineffective.

But there really was no safe place anywhere around a Sentinel and the Skarrons had paid a heavy price to take it down. Afterwards they spammed the moon’s orbit with ships as Randy’s fleet came out to engage them in a massive conventional brawl…all of which was a diversion to get their ground troops down to the moon. It had been well planned and some 2,385 transports jumped in and headed down into the atmosphere simultaneously, preventing Randy’s fleet from stopping them.

They didn’t hit the cities or outposts at first, merely coming down over top the moon-spanning forest and burning out some landing zones where they could deposit their ground troops…minus their walkers. The forest was too tall and too thick for them to operate with, so the transports merely hung in the air over top the LZs until enough of the trees had been cut down and disposed of to allow the ships to land.

From there they’d burned back more forest to create room for their walkers to deploy and hold ground as they began building prefabricated structures and setting up their own outposts on the surface. It wasn’t long before they had shield domes covering them and a foothold on the moon that they began expanding upon.

Trick of it all was, Star Force’s mechs couldn’t operate in the forest either, making this ground war purely infantry save for the open areas surrounding both Star Force and now Skarron infrastructure. The Hobbits and Skarrons had moved out on foot almost immediately and filled the surrounding areas with troops that eventually hit one of the outposts. They’d suffered heavy losses to take it, but the forest came right up near the edge and didn’t have much room for mechs to operate, instead relying on a number of defense turrets. With a combination of plasma and their annoying shoulder-launched missiles they’d taken them down and secured the outpost, but not before the Kiritak there were evacuated.

That was the one small gain the Skarrons had made, but with every day that passed they were cutting out roads through the forest for their walkers to travel on. It was hard work, for many of the trunks were 10+ meters in thickness, but the army of workers they’d brought with them were diligently making progress. Randy had bombarded several of their LZs from orbit, but every time he did more Skarron ships would appear from wherever they were hiding within the system and force him to stop.

One tactic the Skarrons had picked up was not showing their full hand, leaving Randy guessing how many ships they had insystem rather than showing him up front with a standard blockade. They kept a large number in orbit around the moon for quick response, as did Randy, but every naval engagement they’d made had resulted in more forces being brought in on either side, creating a stalemate all of its own over the moon while Randy still had ships out hunting the enemy elsewhere in the system…especially incoming transports that the Skarrons were using to reinforce their surface campaign.

Randy’s fleet had a 1 in 3 kill ratio going on those, with the Skarrons hesitant to bring them in randomly. Each attempt led to another costly naval engagement, usually for the Skarrons because Randy’s fleet pretty much owned them so long as they didn’t get careless. That price was something they seemed to be willing to pay in order to secure the moon. There was no way they were going to take the other habitable planets in the system, but whether it was out of pride or some long spanning strategy the Skarrons wanted this moon and Randy wasn’t going to accommodate them.

Right now there was a column of Skarron infantry heading out from one of their LZs, as there were many, Randy had discovered, moving from place to place and setting up a network of outposts underneath the forest canopy. Some were camps, others were being dug into the ground, and all being accomplished by hand and underneath the forest canopy keeping them away from sensors and air support. The Skarrons seemed intent on making this an infantry campaign up until they could get their walkers to the primary targets and Star Force had responded in kind, taking the fight to them underneath the trees with Randy choosing to become his own one man Venator squad.

That meant he was roaming freely while other units held to prescribed locations, defensive assignments, or attack runs. It also meant he got to play ambusher, and while his dark brown armor clashed with the deep grays of the tree trunks he’d found that the Skarrons didn’t pay much attention to the trees above them, thinking that their enemy was going to hit them from the ground only. That had allowed him to move through the treetops over them many times with impunity, but this time he was waiting for them to come to him.

They weren’t coming directly under, with the leading Hobbit skirmishers passing about 50 meters to the south. After them came a pair of Skarrons with their Hobbit units surrounding them. Behind them came the ranks of closely packed troops aligned simply for crossing territory rather than fighting…and there were thousands of them stretched out in a line that was 4 or 5 wide for the Hobbits and single file for the Skarrons, most of whom were not elites.

Easy pickings for a trailblazer so long as he had enough ammo…and Randy had packed plenty of extra plasma clips.

Rather than jump them at the midsection he waited for the end of the line to come up, then he stood, stretched out his legs a bit, and casually looked around.

“Time to play Master Chief,” he said to the air before taking a few steps forward on the branch and jumping with the assistance of his jump pack across to another one. He stuck that landing better then hopped again, coming over top the line of footprints in the ground where the enemy troops had just passed.

Randy stepped off the branch and fell to the ground, landing lightly with some anti-grav assistance and pulling his plasma rifle off his back as he sprinted forward. It took him some 14 seconds to catch up with the back of the line but he didn’t shoot immediately, instead he ran up to them and actually knocked two aside to get in their midst before he emitted a large Fornax field and dropped some 20+ Hobbits to the ground.

He peppered them with shots making easy kills as the sound of his plasma fire turned the attention of those ahead to him. After a moment of shock white plasma orbs began to fly his direction and hit his shields, but he stayed long enough to kill most of the ones on the ground before sprinting sideways and getting behind a tree trunk.

From there he did a Jedi jump straight up and got back into the branches, repositioning to another tree and jumping down inside the growing group of those turning around to engage him. Another Fornax field took them down and he killed some dozen more before taking off behind cover, this time running from tree to tree and drawing some of them out after him…which he circled back around to kill in ones and twos.

Though he couldn’t see it, the Skarron column suddenly became severed. The leading portion didn’t know what was going on and couldn’t hear the weaponsfire, for they were too far ahead. Those that did turned back, leaving those in the middle at a loss as to what was going on and what to do. Soon that was resolved by their Skarron commanders via comm and the line began to shrink in length and fan out into a wide formation to look for and pin down their attacker.

Which worked perfectly to Randy’s advantage. Get them isolated and he had easy kills, keep them bunched up and he could Fornax them into submission, but with enough of them they’d rack up plasma hits to his armor’s shields and force him back. That was their only effective option, for they couldn’t run, they were too far away from the nearest help for that, and they couldn’t call in air support for the trees would block their fire and most of their sensors.

That meant this battle was Randy’s to lose, and he was too experienced to let recklessness get the better of him. Keeping the engagements spaced out and allowing his shields to recharge at least a bit each time between strikes, he worked through hundreds of Hobbits while avoiding the Skarrons, knowing they’d take more than a few shots to take down…but deprive them of their escorts and they were vulnerable in the trees, for they already didn’t move very fast, allowing Randy to dart here and there almost with impunity.

The Skarrons might be stupid, but they weren’t stupid and after it became clear that they weren’t able to kill the single Archon they pulled their scattered forces back together and formed a clump of troops in a circle, putting as many plasma weapons together as they could to increase their chances of making a killing hit in the few seconds that their enemy would appear.

Randy recognized this and acted appropriately, going Jedi and pulling weapons out of the Hobbits’ hands when he was behind trees but able to see with his Pefbar. He’d throw them out into the forest, almost daring them to come out after them. When they didn’t he remained patient, picking a few more Hobbit weapons off while the Skarrons literally wore theirs on their gangly four arms and weren’t so available for picking.

Eventually the Skarrons saw the writing on the wall, knowing that if they let this continue their escorts would be defenseless, so they guessed Randy’s approximate location and charged en mass.

The trailblazer smiled inside his helmet and jumped up into the higher branches, staying behind a tree trunk so they couldn’t see where he’d gone. He let them pass underneath him then he dropped down into the back section of their charging horde and emitted another Fornax blast, with this one catching a Skarron as well. It went down, but struggled to get back up on its feet while the Hobbits seemed to have no resistance to the intensity of his Fornax.

Randy shot several of them then decided to chance going after the Skarron. He ran up to it, still emitting the field which felt like he was mentally holding his breath as he maintained the effort, and jumped up onto the quadruped’s flat back and fired his rifle down into the sweet spot just back of the ‘head’ though in truth the creature had none. Its face was part of its body, but the spot he was firing into led directly into its vital organs and after some 14 shots it died and dropped fully to the ground.

Randy took several plasma hits to his shields from ranged shots, but not enough to penetrate so he jumped off and shot a few more Hobbits before retreating to the rear and ironically the spot where the enemy had been turtled up, now clearing their lines and releasing his Fornax emission, feeling his mind start to recharge so he could do it again.

He caught a few more Hobbits off on their own then went back at the others, making sure to give himself escape routes so the enemy couldn’t pin him down and hammer him with shots, for as small as the Hobbit blasts were they still posed a risk and he wasn’t going to be arrogant and think he could just run in there with impunity. He had to earn these kills like all others, and the best way to do that was by being smart and quick on his feet.

Eventually the Skarron infantry had had enough and they began to flee back the way they’d come, though it was more than 8 kilometers to their closest forest outpost and none ended up making it back. When they turned and ran Randy knew he had them, pursuing and taking them down with ease as there was little unit cohesion left in them, nor were they interested in firing at him…merely wanting to get away from the single enemy that they just couldn’t manage to kill.

Randy couldn’t be sure he got them all, and in truth he probably didn’t if some of them had ran off in a different direction, but he was sure that none had made it clear of those that had retraced their path. He stuck around a while and roamed the area, now having to use Hobbit weapons given the fact that he’d run dry on plasma rounds for his rifle, despite the excessive amount he’d brought with.

He found and killed some 13 more stragglers then, finding no more nearby on his Ikrid radar, took to the trees again and climbed up high, moving into the dark green leaves that were, in most cases, larger than his body and looking like thick, giant surf boards. They were so firm in fact that he could stand on them and got to actually ‘walk’ on top of the canopy, looking up into the blue sky and seeing the twin suns overhead as they poured radiation down onto the moon.

The gas giant was also visible overhead and much larger, giving the view an epic sense but he hadn’t come up here for the scenery, rather to get better range on his armor’s transmitter. He called for a pickup, and within 20 minutes a small mantis flew out to his location and spun about over the treetops, opening its rear hatch and allowing him to walk inside the armed personnel transport. There were still Skarron fighters in the area that could have harassed a dropship, but given the wide spacing of their patrols he’d decided to risk calling for the tough little craft and was able to evac without incident rather than take the long hike back over land.

But he wasn’t heading back to base, rather he reloaded with ammunition onboard the mantis and had it take him over to another engagement zone and drop him off on the treetops there before it had to fight off a rogue fighter. Randy watched for a moment as he stood on a giant leaf, then saw the anti-air lachars on the mantis take the Skarron fighter’s shields down and scare it off, allowing his ride to get away and head back to base.

Checking his battlemap and getting some troop locations nearby, Randy ran across the thick canopy until he found a spot where his boots fell through and he disappeared from the bright sunlight. Moving through various layers of leaves he eventually broke through into the empty middle zone of the forest and used his jump pack to cushion his landing, coming down on the shin-high grasses that covered a lot of the forest floor and seeing his battlemap update as the sharing signals got better reception.

He picked the closest units currently engage in battle and ran off, intending to add to his 4 digit kill count on the day.

5

May 31, 2549

Twensa System (Protovic territory)

Naden

Kip stood in the cockpit of the Voltron Mk. 3 as its center piece flew across the landscape with the other four segments following in formation and surrounded by a squadron of starscreams as he headed for an engagement zone that had literally just broken out minutes ago. The Skarrons had managed to slip a few transports through the Protovic orbital defense fleet and landed a Type-1 and a handful of Type-4s in a very bad spot on the map.

Bad because Star Force had no units nearby, leaving only the limited Protovic defenders incapable of defending themselves against a walker of that size. It was locking down the local airspace and keeping the Protovic Valeries out of the area while the Skarrons’ own fighters pounded the local populations. All that was in play were the cleansing beam defense turrets in some of the cities, but the Type-1 was put down out of range but still popping missiles at anything of size that came into the area.

That also included the Valeries, which Kip found disturbing that the walker would waste its missiles on them at extreme range. To the trailblazer that meant the Skarrons were buying time for some other play, possibly bringing in more troops to the area once the Type-1 locked it down. He couldn’t be sure, but his spidey senses were tingling and he knew he needed to knock that walker out as soon as he could.

One voltron wasn’t going to do much under normal circumstances, but this was Mk. 3 and in addition to the flight capability of the individual segments it was also a tad bigger and much better armed. He didn’t have a physical shield with him, due to the fact that he couldn’t carry it out to the engagement zone while the mech was in separate pieces, but the speed increase in the Mk. 3 had made it much more maneuverable, now like a stiff neo, so he figured he could at least do some damage to the Type-1 and eliminate its escorts with some fancy maneuvering. His plasma-resistant shield setting would protect him for a short period of time, enough to get in and out he hoped, but at the moment all he wanted to do was slow down whatever plans the Skarrons had and maybe get a poke at their grounded transports…if not scare them off.

Flying low to the ground to try and avoid missile fire as long as they could, Kip’s mech segments and the starscreams eventually saw launch warnings on their battlemap. When they did they went to ground immediately, with Kip throwing all power to the shields on each of the five pieces while the starscreams landed and transformed into mech mode and readied their anti-air weapons.

A few seconds later they lit up the incoming missiles with high frequency lachar bursts and plasma shards, reducing the number of hits greatly but not stopping them all. Their shields took the brunt of the attack then suddenly it was over, with the dust cloud drifting away in the stiff winds.

Kip saw two starscreams with light armor damage and suppressed a curse. The Protovic were supposed to have gotten the Type-1’s attention but they were nowhere to be seen. Checking his battlemap log he queried for those units and quickly found the problem…they were all dead.

Not understanding what had just happened he issued hold orders to the starscreams and replayed the last known location time log, essentially rewinding the battlemap data until he saw something entirely new from the Skarrons. The transports that were sitting nearby the Type-1 had deployed infantry, Kip knew, but along with that infantry had come some type of assault sleds. A quick look indicated that they were small, about the length of 5 or 6 Skarrons lined up in a row, and barely 4 meters high. They looked like small trucks carrying supplies for the ground troops, but Kip nor anyone else had ever seen them before, for there was no mention of them in the Skarron intel log.

What they were, Kip quickly realized, was something he should have expected from their anti-air obsessed enemy. They were fire and forget missile launchers for the infantry…and the large Valerie force the Protovic were sending to distract the Type-1’s missile fire had flown over the Skarron infantry, intending to harass them later if Kip’s group ended up drawing the attention instead, forcing the Skarrons to make a choice, but when they had the little sleds popped like fireworks, sending up a one shot shower of missiles that had caught the Valeries off guard.

Nearly all of the aircraft had went down, with the few survivors retreating low to the ground and trying to play tank to avoid attention.

“Damn it,” Kip said, triggering the voltron’s assembly procedure and activating his comm. “Looks like we’re going over ground from here guys. Our distraction got roasted by infantry missile launchers. If you see any vehicles with them knock them out quick. They’re pretty much an anti-air mine for any fighters crossing overhead.”

“What the hell?” one of the starscream pilots asked.

“I know, I’ve never heard of it before either, but it fits with their MO.”

“That Type-1 is going to light us up over ground.”

“I’ll help with the voltron’s anti-air. At minimum we can get it to waste some of its ammo on us.”

“And when the transports nearby reload it?”

“I’m open to any better ideas,” Kip floated.

Another mechwarrior broke in. “I’m onboard with trading plasma for missiles. Costlier for them.”

“And our armor,” another added.

“These guys are up to something,” Kip reminded them. “We need to interfere however we can.”

“Alright, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“You and me both, buddy,” Kip agreed as his five mech segments finished linking together as they floated above the ground. He flipped it upright when the legs fully formed and set it down, then transferred the energy going to the anti-grav into the other systems. The mech was so heavy and the anti-grav units so small that it took nearly all the power generation it had to move the individual pieces around, then when it transformed into the bipedal mech the internal components reconfigured into jump jets that operated off a capacitor that was even now beginning to fill.

All the other systems came online, drawing power from the five generators and taking away its full flight capability. Sensors, weapons, shields, and muscle fibers all began drawing from the active energy supply as Kip stood the mech on the ground and began walking it forward, choosing the anti-missile shield variety and getting its matrix forming, knowing that it would be many kilometers before they’d come within range of the plasma hurricane the Type-1 was capable of producing.

The starscreams did the same, shifting from standard shields to the variant and giving them a chance of pulling this off. With the one big mech and its ten flankers they began running across the ground, diverting to the right slightly to work their way around a small Protovic city enroute to the walker that was clearly visible on the horizon behind it.

Another round of missiles popped up from the Type-1 and Kip readied the anti-air units on the Voltron’s shoulders as he chose a deployment configuration and sent it out to the starscreams…with them heading forward and spreading out to give the Skarrons wider spaced targets so they couldn’t get double hits on missile strikes. He assumed they’d be shooting at the voltron, and this way the starscreams could knock down a few more missiles as they flew overhead.

“Looks like you could use a hand,” a very familiar voice broke through the comm as the missiles were halfway to him.

“Cora?” he asked, confused and a bit distracted.

“Who else?”

“I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“Noticed. Got a couple Easter eggs here if you want them.”

“Seriously?” he asked, surprised, as the missiles continued to accelerate and his anti-air systems began tracking them.

“Got two Mk. 3s ready for hot drop if you’ll let me come down and play.”

“You see the bastard shooting at me?”

“Yep.”

“Go say hi.”

“With pleasure,” Cora said as she saw the missiles beginning to hit Kip’s group of mechs. She cut the comm and sent a message to the transport in orbit to go ahead and detach, with Kip’s coordinates already preprogramed into the navigational program.

The big transport released two spherical pods of considerable size from berths on the underside, with them coming out of racks in a specialized bay. The specialized dropships accelerated towards the planet, coming down into the upper atmosphere within minutes and heading on an angled trajectory to get to Kip’s location. Cora watched her fellow trailblazer fend off round after round of missiles as she fell towards the planet, hoping they didn’t get too much through their shields but also hoping that he kept the Type-1 distracted.

The two pods passed into missile range of the Type-1 but didn’t get any response fire for another thirty seconds…then missile streaks began to come out towards them en mass, with some still heading towards Kip.

“Looks like they noticed us,” Jarvan-1381 commented from the other enormous pod.

“The shells can take it…but we may need another lift afterwards.”

“Understatement of the year,” the fellow Clan Scorpion mechwarrior specialist said dryly.

A few moments later the pods began to take hits, with their thick armor absorbing the impacts after the limited shields went down. That hurt their insertion angle a bit, now that they didn’t have the invisible wings to navigate with, but such a situation had been anticipated and built into the design with the anti-gravs still capable of keeping them on course, though without the shield the front of the giant sphere began to sprout an ablative fireball of reentry friction in addition to the missile impacts assaulting it.

Watching the status telemetry, Cora rode in the shell down all the way to the surface, then braked hard allowing the damaged pod to set down on the surface with only a tiny thump as its landing legs sunk in and stabilized the giant egg as it continued to take missile hits, some nearly getting all the way through.

“We’re down,” she told Kip as she powered up the mech inside.

“We’ll get there as soon as we can,” her fellow trailblazer reported, with her seeing his group now running at top speed since the Type-1 was no longer shooting at them.

“We’ve got this,” she promised, triggering the pod release.

“Damn straight,” Jarvan agreed as his pod also began to crack apart along a single seam. The two halves rotated out exposing one side of the protective cocoon and the Archon walked his giant mech out, but Cora’s shell had been damaged enough that that pivot function wasn’t working so she triggered a secondary release and the two pieces flower-petalled out, with her hitting the jump jets and shooting her Mk. 3 madcat into the sky in a giant hop that got her outside the pod.

It took a couple of moments but the missile streaks hitting the pod eventually switched targets to the big mechs that had landed about a kilometer apart from one another. As soon as they did the ‘missile boxes’ on the mechs returned fire, save for the Mk. 3s didn’t have missiles. They were prototypes that Kip had been working on in conjunction with Cora and designed specifically to fight the Skarron walkers. They were slightly taller and massed more than a Mk. 2 Hoth, with both shoulder boxes containing all anti-air weaponry.

When those boxes came online the missile plumes disappeared in a torrent of topaz light as the rapid-fire Sammies ate up the missiles and began to push the explosive collision point back further up the stream given the anti-air’s exceptional range and firing speed. Cora and Jarvan both began walking their enormous mechs forward, with nothing but an occasional missile or two getting through to hit their shields.

“How’s that?” Cora asked as the Skarron walker continued to fire relentlessly.

“I want one,” Kip said seriously.

“We’ve got four more upstairs for you.”

“Sweet. How’s it handle?”

“Like a fat turret, but straight line speed is good. And it can run rings around their walkers. Everything looks good, but this is the first battle test so feel free to criticize,” she said as the Type-1 finally stopped firing and wasting its missiles now that it saw that they weren’t getting through.

“Show me some fireworks.”

“Not quite in range yet,” she said as she and Jarvan lightly ran the big, backwards-canted leg mechs across the ground with a touch of a hop in their strides. That was as much as they could manage given their weight, but in future years Cora knew they’d work on that and get them more speed. Right now though what they needed was a slugger to take on the big enemy walkers…and that’s exactly what Cora had given Kip using his basic designs and adding her own special touch.

“Do you want the starscreams to move up with you?”

Cora frowned. “Not yet. Let’s just see how we handle solo.”

Jarvan tagged one of the Type-4s that was closest to them and Cora saw the icon flash on her battlemap. “He’s all yours,” she told him, adjusting her line a bit more to starboard and tagging another for herself.

The two fat madcats trotted off towards their targets with Cora stitching hers with Sammie fire before her weapons came into range and was pleased to see she was able to whittle its shields down some 7% with those alone. That wasn’t something that she could have done with lachars, which was why all Star Force anti-air was eventually going Sammie once they worked out the conversion issues.

Cora kept her madcat moving forward, holding off on her primary weapons and getting within mauler range. Before she was quite there she opened up with the four cannons on the central body of the mech and bathed the Type-4 in mauler blasts that were spreading out and becoming impotent but still containing some damaging effects. With each step closer she got they became more condensed and dangerous, eating through the walker’s shields and then the armor, with the Skarron walker going down before she even got all the way up to it.

The tick-like design slumped to the ground with the front half of it melted off and its legs collapsing like toothpicks beneath it when they lost power.

“Well that was easy,” she said, ignoring the others and heading straight for the more distant Type-1.

“I’ll get the rest of the little ones,” Jarvan said, killing his a few seconds after hers.

“Give me some support fire when you can,” she said in agreement, focusing the primary weapons in her madcat’s two bulky arms and aiming them at the middle segment of the lateral Type-1. She was coming in at it from the flank…which normally would have been suicide given that all 7 segments would be able to target her with plasma.

Before she got within plasma range she opened fire with one of her small cleansing beams, hitting the wall-like shield that the Skarron walker put up in between it and the mech. The beam and shield collided and held out against each other for more than a second before the pale white beam disappeared. When its twin in the other arm fired a moment later the shield again reappeared with the distortion effect but breached almost immediately on impact.

The rest of it cut into the hull, then Cora began carving out a section of it like she was working on a giant pumpkin…all outside the walker’s plasma range.

Looking like it was totally outmatched the Type-1 fired off a gravity grapple, with the device hitting her mech in the left leg and nearly knocking her over. She struggled for balance and nearly had it until the device powered up and sucked her mech down face first into ground and held her there.

“Cora?” Jarvan asked.

She tried to leverage the mech back up, but the odd angle it had her pinned was giving her trouble.

“A little help,” she asked.

A cleansing beam shot out from Jarvan’s mech and sliced a swatch across the ground in between her and the walker, easily cutting the power cord to the grapple and releasing the gravity trap. Cora, now with her mech’s muscles seeming to work again, worked her boxy arms and legs around and got the mech back on its feet.

“Thanks,” she said, having antipicated that tactic but she’d been unable to get any of her weaponry pointed at the device or cable due to the way she fell. “Let’s cut this guy up.”

“Mid section?”

“Yes,” she said, targeting both cleansing beams where she’d previously been firing as Jarvan did the same. With the beams alternating as they recharged, the four bright but pale white beams sliced through the insanely thick armor on the walker with little effort, cutting up the middle segment to the point where it became dead weight and ceased to function.

Another gravity grapple came out and hit Cora again, this time landing between her mech’s legs and sucking her down into the dirt but she remained standing. Her arms dropped and nearly touched the ground while her mech’s feet sunk in deep into the soil but she remained standing. With some effort she got her body rotated slightly and fired a mauler blast out from her mech’s protruding chest and cut the power cord herself, with her mech’s handling once again returning to normal.

As soon as she did that the Type-1 began launching all the missiles it had from all six intact segments, pinning both the Mk. 3s down as they had to defend against it. While they were preoccupied the six intact segments on the walker detached from the damaged one, creating two three-segment sections that began walking towards the mechs as fast as they could trying to get within plasma range as they kept the mechs pinned with missiles.

“Looks like they want to slug it out,” Jarvan commented as his mech was throwing so many tiny Sammie blasts into the missile cloud it looked like he was a wizard hurling magic to keep the weapons at bay.

“Shall we oblige?”

“Since this is a test run, why not?”

“Let’s go,” she said, beginning to walk the mech closer and giving the Skarrons what they wanted, eventually coming into plasma range while the missile storm continued, but they didn’t stop there, with both madcats moving into their own mauler range and unloading on the two segments of the Type-1 and giving their heavy shields a good test…but in the end it was no contest and the pair of madcats destroyed the largest walker the Skarrons had without even taking a lick of hull damage, then they got around to cleaning up the remaining Type-4s before Kip’s group could even arrive.

6

July 3, 2549

Interstellar Space

Mid jump

Cal-com woke from his sleep early as a soft, repetitive tone brought him back to full consciousness as it grew ever louder in his tube. The Voku’s sight returned as he gave focus to his single eye, previously ignored as he floated inside the vertical null g chamber that encased his body. He reached forward and pressed a few buttons, canceling the weightlessness and audio suppression a moment before he triggered the release and the tube split in front of him.

The Voku naval commander stepped out, seeing one of his advisors waiting for him in the rest ward where hundreds of other tubes resided, many with occupants and more without. Neither Cal-com nor the other Voku had personal quarters, for when they weren’t sleeping they were working or training in some fashion, with time spent on anything else being viewed as a waste for military personnel.

As Cal-com looked at the slightly shorter Voku Hem-ra bowed slightly in apology. “We have received an update from our scout ships. The enemy fleet is larger than expected by 32%. I assumed you would want to prepare before our arrival.”

“You assumed correctly. Were the ships discovered?”

“Not according to the transmission.”

Cal-com nodded. “I will be in the oracle shortly.”

Hem-ra bowed again, dipping his elongated head in a curt gesture before leaving Cal-com to his personal prep. The commander, fully nude but with no exterior genitalia to be concerned about, walked over to a curvy corridor that wound its way through many pod sections and branches before he finally arrived at the prep area. There he took care of biological needs and cleansing before pulling on a body-hugging suit of clothing and thin shoes that covered his wider than Human feet. He added a few accoutrements to his arms and popped out his eyepiece, revealing his natural line of three eyes beneath.

Each was tiny and blacker than his skin with two ports set between them that the artificial eye plugged into. It was a technological implant that all Voku received once completing their basic training, but one that required a power source that Cal-com now had to replace. He took out the small charging bead and swapped it out with a new one despite the fact that the one he had was only a few weeks old. Prior to going into combat it was expected of all soldiers to replace the bead to give them maximum longevity with the enhanced eyesight.

The lateral rectangle that stretched across 80% of the width of his face actively scanned in a number of different modes as well as allowed Cal-com to see in wavelengths that his natural eyes could not. Those eyes still saw through the crystal-like implant, for otherwise they would atrophy, with the sensory enhancements being added to the visual input from the device and being smoothed together by the processing circuitry just beneath the ports that functioned off of the charging bead as well.

With the new bead in place he reinserted the small pylons into the ports and sealed the visor back in place with a double click. Good to go he walked out of the prep area and headed towards the nearest transit terminal, finding one some 40 seconds of walking away.

It was a personal model, barely larger than his rest chamber, and when Cal-com stepped in he had the cover seal over him and an options menu arise on the panel before him. He chose the oracle and the tiny pod whisked him away through the monstrous conglomerate that was thousands of individual base ships and a scattering of specialized ones that could be configured into various combinations to suit battle needs. All of them had been designed to be interconnected, with them now forming a giant jumpship/warship that was traveling between stars.

The command center on the conglomerate was the oracle, which Cal-com got to with only a bit more walking after exiting the pod. When he arrived he stepped through a circular door and into a wide open plain that only had a few workstations popping up here and there, with most of the 5 acre wide area simply being empty, which was due to their being in transit. During battle conditions this chamber would be packed with personnel, though it wouldn’t be this large.

Cal-com walked over to what looked like a random section of floor and knelt down, pressing his hand into a soft panel and triggering a transformation. A pedestal and two display monitors rose up out of the floor and gave him his command station which he quickly pulled up the scouting reports on…seeing as Hem-ra had said, a much larger Skarron fleet than had been anticipated. It was still within their power to handle, but the amount of warships they were throwing at the Humans was beginning to mount towards the level they were attacking the Voku with…to no avail.

The Humans were temporarily weaker than the Voku but the Elders had said they would grow stronger if they were preserved, and given what little time he had spent with them, especially warlord Paul, he didn’t doubt it. Never before had the Elders led the Voku astray, and while still somewhat primitive in technology the Humans had shown considerable ingenuity in their combat strategies and weapons development.

Keeping them alive long enough to become a worthy ally was his duty, though he didn’t have as large of a fleet as required to fight the battles for them. The Humans and their less capable allies were fighting two major enemies at the same time and playing for a defensive engagement while creating a safe zone in which to continue building and advancing. In Cal-com’s opinion it was a wise play, but they were outmatched heavily, with the only reason they’d survived this long without being overrun is that their enemies didn’t consider them to be as dangerous as the Elders indicated that they would become in time.

Ignorance had turned the tide of many wars before and it had served the Humans well thus far, but as both the Skarron and Cajdital lightly probed the Humans’ territory and discovered the level of resistance they could offer their ignorance was diminishing and their military assets being deployed were increasing. Soon, Cal-com feared, there would be too many enemies for the Humans to handle, despite their skills.

Without being able to directly protect them the Voku commander had to assist them. He couldn’t win it with the few troops he had, but he could do things to help them win…which is what this current mission was designed to do in that it would buy them additional time to increase their defenses and further develop their technology.

He only had 72 conglomerates at present to work with, and he was bringing 43 of them with him now, given the importance of hitting the Skarrons hard in order to diminish losses. The increase in fleet strength on the scouting reports worried him, but not in the overall outcome. He didn’t like the attrition that would ensure amongst his forces, so he spent many hours reworking their battle plans and running sims…most of which did not turn out favorable.

Frustrated, he kept up the effort until it was time that he needed to get in his daily workouts. He wanted to stay and work, but training was the lifeblood of his race…something the Elders had taught them long ago, and he wasn’t going to forsake their lessons out of eagerness or worry. Mentally setting aside the task at hand he left the oracle and cleansed his mind of naval concerns as he delved into a myriad of physical training exercises, letting his muscle take priority and drive his purpose for a long period of time.

He returned to the oracle afterwards and found, as he did most times, that his point of view had shifted as a result. Sometimes he lost his previous insights, but this time was one in which a fresh perspective was a welcome change. Reassessing nearly everything he had been trying to do in simulations previously, he went an entirely different way then started pulling back towards what he had originally planned.

He hit the sweet spot somewhere in between…as far as sims were concerned. The real enemy was unpredictable, but the Voku had had enough experience fighting them on the border of their own territory to program a computer enemy that mimicked their fighting styles adequately. Still, there was no way to know for sure what would happen when battle actually commenced aside from wading into it and working the problems as they arose.

Cal-com finished his simulations for the cycle and retreated to another section of the massive ship where he dealt with his subordinates and the maintenance of the vessels and the troops they contained. Such detail work was necessary and he never felt comfortable letting others handle such things, for they could make or break a campaign…and with the Elders specifically requesting they assist the Humans the importance of this campaign could not be overstated.

After that work was done it was time for nourishment and additional training, with him spending time in both physical activities and in simulator work…not the speculative assaults he’d been planning, but in combat games with other members of the crew designed to keep their skills sharp during the long down times in between planetside activity. Cal-com often piloted one of their Stranom mechs in the games and had an average ranking, given that it wasn’t his specialty. That fact that he could hold par impressed those with more experience than him in that type of combat and he liked to mix it up with them in the games, both to gage their capabilities in order to know how to best assess what they could and couldn’t do in missions he’d be assigning them, as well as to push his own skills and learn from those superior to him in their fields of specialty.

When it came to fleet operations he had few equals, so it was usually him instructing and training others, including those on his advisory staff. This cycle there was none of that, with them focusing on the mission prep, so Cal-com satisfied himself by indulging in the games for many hours up until his 79 hour day was complete and it was time he returned to the rest ward.

When he returned to a random tube he sealed it over him and deactivated the gravity with the sound suppression canceling out all exterior interference. In a well-practiced mode, Cal-com retreated within his own mind, cutting out most sensory stimuli and slipping into a vulnerable yet deep rest. The armor plating on the tubes and the internal locking mechanisms insured that no one could mess with him other than offering a soft tone to get his attention. Not having to worry about physical threat the Voku could lower their mental barriers and engage in a healing trance that allowed them to recover far quicker than had they attempted to do so on the battlefield. In only 15 hours Cal-com woke again to a soft, preprogrammed chime which brought him slowly back to reality and barely 30 minutes away from system entry.

Refreshed and fully prepped, Cal-com returned to the oracle just prior to the deceleration of the massive conglomerate against the star, dropping them out of their drifting interstellar jump inside the Skarron-held Achkor System. He triggered his own command center to rise up out of the floor, containing a number of different control stations around which his advisors situated with him taking center position and inspecting the battle feeds while allowing his staff to handle the more basic organizational tasks…leaving him free to watch and react as necessary.

There were no ships in orbit around the star…at least not on the visible side, which meant their entry would go down without incident. Cal-com’s conglomerate was the second in line to decel, with the first having arrived some 20 seconds earlier. Both vessels moved in closer to the star to clear the spacelane for the others to arrive and began a slow transition around the perimeter of the star towards the primary jumpline in to the planet of Zenniza, as the Human charts referred to it.

If there were any hidden Skarron reconnaissance assets they’d see the ships prepping to go in on that line, but as the others came in some of them deployed elsewhere, jumping off to other planets as Cal-com got additional updates from the scout ships that were already in system and now transmitting their updated intelligence to him rather than the burst transmissions they’d sent back along the incoming jumpline to his approaching fleet.

These reports gave him nearly up to date positions of the Skarron fleet and the Voku commander began tweaking his mission assignments. At the moment the conglomerates were still together, but with new orders going out a few tiny pieces began to break off and make microjumps of their own elsewhere in the system. Cal-com wasn’t going for a blunt, break the door down type assault. No, he was much more cagey than that, and was going to work this attack from multiple angles.

So when his conglomerate finally did make its microjump into the planet he had them come out in extreme high orbit, getting their first live sensor feeds and seeing what they were up against.

As expected, there was a huge Skarron fleet spaced in clumps around orbit that was no doubt intended to transition on into the ADZ and supplement the blockading fleets there. Cal-com also detected numerous transport ships in orbit, with him knowing that Achkor was also a ground troop staging system, with those transports potentially full of reinforcements being run into the worlds that the Humans were currently defending. The more of those he could kill in orbit the better, regardless of whether or not they were full.

Using a pedestal before him he added a few more ship assignments to the star to hunt down any transports attempting to flee the system. Even a few taken out could turn the tide in a single ground battle, and he wanted to give the Humans every advantage that he could.

“Renimar?” Hem-ra asked, using his Voku title that was the equivalent of ‘Grand Admiral’ in the Star Wars universe, with the skillset to match.

“Not just yet,” he cautioned. “Let’s see how they react first.”

7

Cal-com watched as the Skarron fleets in orbit began repositioning to assault those conglomerates and pieces of conglomerates that he’d shown to them in orbit, about 7 in total thus far with the others still elsewhere in the system and hopefully out of view. Those he was showing had been intentional, as he was trying to maneuver the Skarrons around to where he liked and after some 20 minutes of repositioning and shuffling on the enemy’s part he finally got the opportunity he was looking for.

“There,” he said to his advisors, pointing to a particular slice of low orbit. “Bring in Dorpa. Full engagement protocols and get us ready to move.”

His staff carried out his orders without so much as a verbal acknowledgement or gesture. The Voku military was notoriously efficient, knowing that delays in combat often resulted in losses of material, personnel, or opportunity. Cal-com watched the orbital displays, seeing the Skarrons continuing to reposition and forming up into larger fleet configurations in order to assault the Voku conglomerates, for they were familiar with this enemy. That Cal-com knew by the way they began arranging their fleet.

It was true that the Skarron Empire was huge and that Voku territory was a considerable distance from here and that in all likelihood none of these enemy troops had ever fought them before, but knowledge had to have traveled across their empire for they were responding to the threat that they knew the Voku to be given their pathetically ineffective attempts to take systems away from Cal-com’s home territory on the lower side of the galactic plane.

These Skarrons knew the Voku and knew they had to mass their fleet together or otherwise be chewed to bits once the conglomerates separated and chased down their ships. Cal-com knew he had a winning hand here, that wasn’t the issue, it was how many ships and soldiers he would lose in the process.

Suddenly there was a microjump into orbit as a streak appeared on the sensors, decelerating rapidly and coming down into a small gap in the Skarron formations. They weren’t aligned yet, still in transition, and the conglomerate came in right at a very bad spot where they were still spread out. Weaponsfire immediately sprouted from the conglomerate in the form of long range Javvens that were condensed packets of energy that were launched in clusters. They appeared to be a beam, but were actually a shotgun of individual orbs.

Those orbs spread out over extreme range, allowing the Voku to at least nip away at distant targets where they didn’t have the necessary accuracy and dozens of Skarron ships were showing hits on their shields within seconds as the conglomerate began to flake off pieces that reformed into hunter squadrons that rapidly accelerated away from the mass to hunt down the ships that the Javven were weakening.

Cal-com highlighted the largest combined Skarron fleet on the near side of the planet and signaled for them to make a tiny jump. Using their binary drives they enhanced Zenniza’s gravity pull and closed distance rapidly, then switched back over to gravity repulsion and braked hard, bringing the full conglomerate in to what otherwise would have been the Skarron’s prime kill zone. Cal-com kept his conglomerate intact and fighting as a single mass as he signaled others to start coming in, being the bait for his much larger trap.

The conglomerate’s shields were considerable, but the Skarrons had an idea of what it would take to get through them and they had more than enough ships in the local area so they moved towards the big mass rather than away and hammered it hard. It was a calculated risk for Cal-com, but one that he had made before many times. As that large battle escalated and he watched his shield strength consistently diminish, Skarrons ships were literally being shredded by short range Dwio cascades that essentially threw hundreds of them out like a fountain into the nearby ships.

The Skarrons ignored the losses, going for the big score and even circling ships around to the back side of the conglomerate to keep it from jumping back out. Soon there was a sphere of enemy ships encircling Cal-com and effectively pinning his ship in place unless he wanted to risk a collision…but that’s exactly what he wanted. The Skarron fleet was so close in that he was destroying a lot of it in the exchanges, but he needed it close for the next part of his plan.

With the press of a button the Voku commander activated the conglomerate’s auxiliary IDF and extended it out as far as he could, covering a spherical zone some 17 kilometers in radius and catching about 2/3rds of the Skarron fleet within it. It took an incredible energy expenditure to do it and most of the weaponsfire on the conglomerate shut down to compensate, with what energy they had left over going to recharging the shields, though a few Dwio cascades were still firing.

The IDF created a pocket of space around the conglomerate where external inertia was attributed to the entire field as if it was a single mass. This meant that any acceleration by the conglomerate would drag all the ships within the field with it…but at the moment that wasn’t possible, because the conglomerate’s gravity drives were also located within that field. And because all external forces were applied to the field rather than the contents, they had no gravity effect to push off of.

Nor did the Skarron fleet, leaving them drifting on their last known trajectories.

A few moments after the IDF extended conglomerate chunks began jumping in around it and disintegrating into smaller, faster attack ships that began encircling the Skarron fleet in a much larger sphere. Those ships outside the IDF began engaging the newly arrived ships immediately while the others were stuck in limbo save for conventional thrust which the Skarrons had little of. Those maneuvering engines were reserved for small scale docking adjustments and not capable of true flight, throwing off gasses for minimum thrust. Almost all maneuvering was accomplished by gravity drives, even with the Skarrons not having binaries.

With Cal-com’s conglomerate getting hit hard, the Voku commander held position and the field until his trap was fully deployed then shrank the IDF back down to the dimensions of his ship and the weaponsfire returned…as did the Skarrons’ maneuvering capabilities, but by then there were so many Voku ships inside and outside of them that they had no choice but to fight and die, for there was little opportunity for escape.

In order to preserve as much of his conglomerate as possible Cal-com didn’t have it disengage until the shields finally went down. With the exterior armor beginning to take hits he issued the warning to the crew then began the split along predetermined patterns, for the many pieces of the conglomerate could reconfigure into many ship analogs.

Standing at his command pedestal, Cal-com watched as force fields came up and bisected the oracle, separating the various command crews and containing the atmosphere in each of some 24 segments before the walls started moving and the ceiling and floor disintegrated. Cal-com’s section moved through the conglomerate until it arrived in a new location, with a much smaller oracle forming around it with the walls closing in and reforming into an octagonal shape.

As that happened, similar transitions were happening all throughout the interior of the conglomerate as the massive superstructure reset its internal design to what was needed, breaking apart the giant mothership and essentially ‘building’ the smaller ones. Cal-com hadn’t ordered the smallest possible units, and had kept a sizeable one for himself and two other subcommanders, known as Neppas, but the rest all went into fast, moderately small ships with decent firepower that could stand up to the Skarrons.

In addition to those there were tiny pieces coming off and turning into what were essentially supersized fighters given their speed and agility. Those moved off throughout the Skarron fleet, zipping in and out of ship formations and nipping at their shields for the larger ships to add to later, all the while creating a very chaotic battle environment that left the Skarrons unsure who to target for they weren’t standing still and slugging it out. A ship would move in, exchange fire for a handful of seconds up to a minute, then move on to engage elsewhere at speeds the Skarrons couldn’t follow.

The battle wasn’t short, and took nearly 3 hours to complete. There were so many Skarron ships just in this one location that the area became littered with debris that added ‘terrain’ to the battle, with the last stages involving a hide and seek situation that the Skarrons excelled at. Cal-com had to rein his ships in so they didn’t get too aggressive and fall into traps, for knowing they were as good as dead the Skarrons liked to go kamikaze and take as many of their opponents with them as they could.

Meanwhile there were other battles ongoing in orbit, with some of the Skarron fleets leaving to try and escape planetary orbit. Many made it out, for not all the Voku Neppas had gotten the Skarrons to fall into an IDF trap, but those fights then transitioned to elsewhere in the system because the fleeing Skarron navy ran into a blockade at the star, with so many ships lying in wait that getting to an exiting jumpline was going to be difficult. Given the size of a star it was hard to lock it down, but apparently the Skarrons didn’t like their odds so they redeployed back out into the system and bounced around from planet to planet, attempting to either get away from the Voku or lure them into smaller engagement traps.

That chasing game would continue for weeks, but planetary orbit was secured within a day…save for low orbit. The few Voku ships that poked down there received a hail of surface missiles and had to quickly gain more altitude before they were destroyed.

Cal-com had expected as much. Normally with an enemy once you took orbit you owned the planet. The more advanced races had surfaced defenses, but the Skarrons had for some reason decided to build such capability into their walkers. It was overkill as far as Cal-com was concerned, for it diminished their ground operations and kept them from being as effective as he would have liked had he been their commander, but in this situation it meant that in order to successfully move down into orbital bombardment range they’d have to either suffer the missile fire or take the walkers and surface launchers out first…and there were many of the latter as well, given the well-established Skarron cities on the planet and those had defense shields that would take considerable pounding to get through.

The Skarrons hadn’t amassed such a large empire by being pushovers, Cal-com knew, and given his two obvious choices he decided to go with the ground assault op. Scanning the planet he found several weak regions of coverage and massed ships there, commencing in orbital bombardment of one of the cities and several walker positions and traded Javvens for missiles, rotating his ships out as they became damaged and accepted the hits in order to neutralize the missile launching capabilities in that single surface region.

The walkers went down fairly easily, but the city lasted long enough that Cal-com’s fleet took considerable damage. They had so many missile launchers throwing up ordinance simultaneously that, on his screens, it looked like the enemy was sending a snake up to orbit to bite into his ships. This wasn’t the first time the Voku had done this sort of thing, for they’d counterattacked a few Skarron forward bases near their own territory, but the strength of the surface resistance was always a question mark without detailed intelligence…which he didn’t have here save for what the Humans had provided him.

He’d calculated for more than what they’d reported to be safe, and in fact saw that his estimates had been nearly spot on accurate…which both surprised and worried him. The Skarrons had fortified this city, at least, far more than the Humans knew, or perhaps since they’d last taken a look. That didn’t bode well for the rest of the planet, but this city at least was still going down, yet at a cost of equipment. Cal-com wasn’t going to lose any lives here, given his option for cycling out ships, but many ended up damaged before the city shields fell and the Javven finished taking out the hundreds of missile launchers within the city, often with them popping in ‘small’ explosions visible from orbit.

Those explosions ripped apart sections of the urban landscape with the Javven doing even more damage elsewhere. Cal-com ordered the offensive threats targeted, not the city infrastructure itself. He wasn’t trying to obliterate it, just clear the airspace to establish an LZ. Barbarians the Voku were not, but in this case the city inhabitants happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time…which was right next to their missile launchers.

When the return fire finally ended Cal-com had his damaged ships join the recovery conglomerate that had already started to form from the damaged/destroyed warships in the orbital battle. An intact segment went around and picked up the ‘wounded’ components and incorporated them into the whole, sweeping up even their own debris for crews to salvage or destroy as necessary. Those segments that could be repaired would be, then sent back out into other groupings to enhance them or form new ones. Recovery of damaged ships was essential for campaign longevity, and Cal-com had his fleet get on it immediately following the cessation of weaponsfire.

Once the Skarron city was shredded he sent down fighter squadrons to secure the local airspace against the enemy’s own fighter squadrons which were hovering around the edges of the bombardment zone, not wanting to accidentally get caught up in the downpour. With those fighter engagements paving the way he deployed ground troops, first through direct orbital drops for a number of his mechs, then through full transports that had been brought inside the conglomerates and now freed to fly free.

Those transports landed in the ‘safe’ zone and began offloading more troops and temporary infrastructure, allowing Cal-com to quickly set up a number of surface bases of his own, complete with shield generators and defense towers. Those guarded and created LZs for an even larger flow of troops and supplies to the surface, for the Voku commander was going to have to wage a ground war to secure the planet and he’d brought enough material and resources to make sure he got the job done. Last thing he wanted to do was come up short and have to try and stretch his resources.

He could do it, and had many times before, but he needed to quickly take the planet before the Skarrons in other systems could become the wiser…which was why he had ships stationed near the star to hopefully intercept any couriers they tried to send out, as well as ambush any incoming reinforcements or transports that would have no way of knowing the system had suddenly changed hands.

Information was critical in interstellar warfare, as well as knowing how to exploit the blind spots. The Skarrons didn’t have any known transmission capability between stars and operated explicitly off of couriers. That meant so long as Cal-com could keep any ships from leaving the system he would have a very large timespan to work with here, but let so much as even one ship through and it would just be a matter of time before an even larger Skarron fleet showed up to evict them.

He knew they would come eventually and was already planning for that battle, but the ultimate goal here was to take pressure off the Humans and buy them time…with the more days this system’s change of hands remained a secret meaning the more time he could give them.

And he was confident that if he gave Warlord Paul the time he needed that he would secure their territory. He was young, and didn’t have the wealth of experience that Cal-com had in his 3,832 years of military deployment, but he was smart and innovative and largely responsible for the creation and design of the Human’s navy which, while inferior to the Voku, had an interesting makeup, especially their use of pilot-less drone warships.

Cal-com knew that there was a serious risk of jamming that the Voku would never tolerate, but against the Skarrons and the Cajdital he didn’t think it would be a problem, given the type of comm system that Paul had hinted they were using. Obviously he wasn’t going to give the details of it to the Voku or anyone else, nor should he, given how much the Humans and their Star Force relied upon it. Also, the inclusion of other races into wings of their military was something Cal-com was studying with interest. Typically multi-racial organizations were doomed to self-destruct, but what Paul and his kin had set up seemed to be functional…all the while maintaining an all-Human core, which Cal-com found to be both wise and insightful.

Still, different races gave them different combat options. He could see it in the Skarrons and how they used a smaller race to supplement their own movement and size weaknesses. The Voku were strong in all areas and had never bothered to experiment with bringing in others for a variety of reasons, so Cal-com was very interested in seeing how it played out for the Humans over the long term.

And he intended to give them the time necessary to find out. Achkor was the Skarron’s main supply base to their invasion of the ADZ and as of now it was no longer operational…not to mention the Voku had just destroyed many of the ships slated to reinforce their assault fleets. Give Paul that bit of an assist and Cal-com was confident that he could finish up the rest of them.

That said, it meant that Cal-com had just put the target squarely on his newly captive system…which is exactly the way he preferred it. It was the place of the strong to be in the center of the storm in order to shield the weak, and in this war the Voku were the strong…though personally he didn’t consider the Humans to be weak, just young and needing some time to catch up. The Elders obviously saw merit in them, and even without that incredibly important edict Cal-com would have eventually come to the same conclusion on his own after seeing them fight in their curiously reserved, yet aggressive style of warfare.

8

September 1, 2549

Achkor System

Zenniza

Cal-com set foot on the surface of Zenniza for the first time, landing in their primary LZ that was now safe from enemy interference. Their overland push had consumed nearly half the planet with the Skarrons unable to hold them back. The lack of mobility of their walkers made for easy targets when the Voku could drop more from orbit on a whim, and whenever the enemy’s transports tried to pick up and relocate theirs the Voku fighters would harass them to the point that it was safer to leave the walkers on the ground where their anti-air weaponry could be effective in keeping the fighters back.

They still managed some movement, but mostly it was the Voku on the offensive, hunting down isolated walker groups and hitting cities when they later bunched them up to avoid such poaching. Slowly and efficiently the Voku took out more and more of the surface missile launchers, often attacking a city to destroy those very batteries then pulling back and leaving its conquest for later. Right now the key to the invasion was to get their navy into bombardment position. Once that happened, it was practically game over.

So far as he knew, no enemy ships had managed to leave the system. Many had come in to the star and been subsequently destroyed, but the blockade and the resulting surveillance provided by it had shown no further attempts to get out, meaning that with any luck the rest of the Skarron Empire still didn’t know that the Voku were here. And if they didn’t know they couldn’t send the forces necessary to reclaim it.

Cal-com expected more warships to arrive enroute to battling the Humans, so he knew there would be naval fights to come and there had already been 5 separate battles when small warship groups had arrived. He’d lost a few ships in those ambushes but the Skarrons had been totally wiped out jumping into a system they thought was secure. With his fleet deployed properly in orbit and the land fronts far from the LZ, it was time for the Voku commander to come down and officially lay claim to the planet in a ceremony he’d conducted numerous times before.

Within the conglomerates were also cargo ships carrying all kinds of equipment, some of which had now landed on the planet to deliver specific pieces necessary for a long term occupation. It was those pieces that required activation though they weren’t at the LZ, but rather at a specific site some distance away but still close enough that there was no threat of enemy counterattacks or sabotage.

Cal-com could have flown to the site but he preferred taking a Stranom instead and there were many situated here in reserve so they could be called upon for support or replacement as necessary. The Renimar walked up to one of the egg-shaped material constructs and placed a hand on the activation panel…which quickly caused a dent to form in the material as it reconstructed itself into a small pod. Cal-com stepped inside and turned around, facing out, and pressed another panel that sealed him inside with a flow of moving parts covering him.

From the exterior the giant egg began to transform into a tall bipedal mech with a head that, unlike the Voku’s pointy craniums, was flared out more like a Jackal from ancient Egypt and with a stocky body to match. The exterior armor plating was the last to form, with the tiny segments migrating to the exterior and locking into place forming a smooth, lineless mechanical construct that moved as if it was made of muscle as opposed to the obvious joints in the Human mechs.

Cal-com stood in his pod, with several restriction bands coming out to encircle his body. One wrapped around his head, giving him direct neural access to the Stranom that allowed him to operate it completely by thought. His eye piece registered the mech’s external sensors and fed the information directly into his visual processing matrix while machinery monitored his neural output, linking him to the machine in such a way that he saw, felt, and fought as the giant device…including light pain stimuli when it was damaged so he could instantly be aware of what was happening to it without looking on a display screen.

That was necessary to fight at speed, and as Cal-com brought the mech online he began accelerating up into a run that he held across the landscape with three other Stranoms encircling him in escort. His people knew better than to ever let him go off alone, even in secured territory, and the constant bodyguards were something that he’d simply adjusted to. He no longer even had to give them orders, they simply went wherever he went when outside a warship. Renimars were rare in the Voku and had to be protected, for losing even one of them would seriously hurt their Empire’s military efficiency.

Cal-com was one of only 29 at present, though that number wasn’t set. The most there had ever been simultaneously in their history was 34, with 7 having since been killed in a variety of ways, two of which had been accidents. Another had chosen to retire from the military and pursue other endeavors, which made him effectively dead to them. To relinquish the responsibilities of a Renimar was equivalent to treason, but that Voku had made his choice and Cal-com chose not to comment on it. He’d been one of his mentors early on and an individual he’d patterned his early years after…but no longer.

With only 29 Renimars for the entire Empire his being sent away from it on this mission was highly irregular. There were always wars being fought, on some level, with the Skarrons being a newer threat arising, so there was always work to do, not to mention dealing with internal matters and advancing their military through training, recruitment, and experimentation.

But the Elders had deemed this a priority so Cal-com had been sent. Keeping him alive was of such importance to the Voku that the light escort was to be expected, though both he and his bodyguards knew he could handle himself in the Stranom…it was the unexpected ambushes they wanted to guard him against, and for those there was no preparation available.

Today that wasn’t an issue for he made his cross country trek at decent speed and without enemy contact, even eventually arriving at the secondary LZ where the precious cargo had already been unpacked and spread out into the necessary arrangement. Being linked in to the Stranom, Cal-com decided to remain inside and let his biotelemetry be transmitted through it rather than going down on foot and doing it the normal way. This was still a battlefield, after all, plus it looked much more imposing to perform the activation ceremony from a mech.

Cal-com walked the mech up to one of the pieces that stood more than twice the Stranom’s height and reached out his giant mechanical hand towards it, placing it palm flat against the device. He opened a comm channel and recited several lines from a story, which also doubled as activation code in addition to his genetic identification. The ‘seed’ piece he was activating could only be done so by a Renimar or, in some limited cases, a Gahmorn, which was the equivalent of a fleet Admiral.

Once Cal-com finished speaking and his genetic ID was transmitted through the physical contact between him and the mech, then the mech and the device, it began to transform. As it did so he walked the Stranom over to the next piece and did the same palm press, but with different activation lines as he continued to recite the story of creation, detailing in metaphor what they were about to do to the planet they were still in the process of invading.

Cal-com went around did the same on all six pieces, then backed away as the final transformation began and the pylons the seed pieces had extruded sought each other out and locked all the segments together, forming one giant mining machine that continued to transform even as it began digging down into the ground beneath it in search of the raw materials that would fuel its growth.

Not everything could be got from one location, however, but there was a tiered hierarchy of seed planting. This location held all of the necessary components for tier one equipment that the giant machine would construct. Those machines would then be taken to other sites to harvest additional resources that would then be brought back to the seed. Those materials would then begin to be incorporated with the others and the creation of tier two machines would begin.

Likewise those would be sent out to find and harvest even more varied compounds, eventually escalating to the point where the seed would have all the necessary requirements for fueling its own growth, becoming bigger and bigger until it was essentially its own city. From there more preplanned stages would occur, with the Hatomek eventually sprouting more secondary seeds of its own that would be taken to distant regions of the planet or nearby planets to begin their growth. The secondary seeds wouldn’t require a Renimar for activation, only the primary, with the lesser ones being activated by high ranked, yet lower personnel in the command structure.

Cal-com had only been given a fixed number of ships and supplies, but in order to buy the Humans the time they needed he was going to have to hold the Achkor System and draw the Skarrons attention away from his allies for an extended period of time. In order to do that he needed to not just bust up Zenniza’s Skarron fleets and infrastructure but actually take possession of it and establish a full Voku presence.

Once he did that and could begin building more ships, mechs, aircraft, etc he could requisition personnel to man them from the Empire, drawing on reserve units and such. It would take time for them to get here, but likewise it would take time for the Skarrons to bring in their reinforcements as well, meaning he had a time game to be played on the supply front and this seed would allow him to build faster than the Skarrons could ever hope to do so.

Cal-com stayed and watched the seed continue to change shape until it finally settled on its necessary form and began pouring dirt and rock out of exterior ports into large piles around it that would eventually form a crater-like ring of material that would double as a defensive barrier. Already there were numerous mechs circling the site with defense turrets and shield generators in place on a wide perimeter to ensure that nothing interfered with the seed’s growth, but having a mass of material to block incoming weaponsfire was always a help.

That wasn’t the purpose of it though, for the seed was having to dig large shafts down into the planet’s crush to get at the resources it needed and that material had to go somewhere. Internal sifting machines sorted through what was being dug out, maintaining the valuable components and discarding the rest, all with a very small onboard control staff that wasn’t technically necessary. The seed could be operated by remote, but Cal-com always preferred to have people inside so they could troubleshoot as necessary.

Once the seed’s final transformation took place that crew boarded and began monitoring the automated process, sending Cal-com a message indicating the initial resource collection rates with a level 3 efficiency rating out of a possible 5. That indicated that this wasn’t the most rich site in natural resources but it was more than adequate for their needs. It also gave Cal-com a generic time estimate to the next phase of the operation.

Satisfied that all was getting underway properly Cal-com signaled his escorts to merge with his Stranom and the three other mechs walked over to his and melted into it. Internally the four pilots’ pods came together and the walls separating them disappeared. Each was still latched into place but the air was open between them allowing them to speak to each other without the use of comms, though there was no chatter here.

Cal-com took priority command of the now larger mech while the other three went into support/observation mode. During combat they would be useful, but right now they were simply extraneous passengers.

Cal-com waited for the much larger version to finish transformation then he looked out through the Stranom’s sensor ‘eyes’ from a much higher vantage point on the seed than he had had before, nearly seeing over the top of it as he raised the mechs arms up over his head in a clenched fist pose and opened the comm and external speakers on the mech and finished the ceremony with the last bit of the story, told in short segments of words with a rhythm intoning the importance of the moment.

When he finished a log amendment was made, indicating that this planet was now part of the Voku Empire, despite the fact that the enemy still controlled most of it, with nearly all the Skarron cities needing to be dealt with. Clipping their orbital weaponry was one thing, but there were troops and workers in them that could still fight and they would have to be dealt with when the time came.

Those cities closest to the seed and the primary LZ had been hit already, with the Skarrons being driven out and allowed to evacuate…or run, to be exact. Some had stayed and fought to the death, while others, especially the Aronsic, and eventually abandoned their posts and fled, many running outside the city with nowhere to go.

Cal-com hadn’t ordered hunting teams to go after them, preferring simply to take the city and eliminate the threat of it while they established their perimeter and their assault teams pushed on to more distant ones, clipping their defenses and leaving the house cleaning for other units to accomplish. That house cleaning was a matter that Cal-com had to deal with next, for they weren’t simply going to slaughter the enemy. Such things were a matter of necessity when your back was to the wall, but here, with the Voku predictably gaining dominance, offering a surrender was protocol and some of the fleeing troops had already submitted when a comm call over their own equipment had made the offer.

For them it was either try and make the long hike over land to the nearest Skarron city, for the Voku air cover wasn’t letting any transports through to pick them up…or face starvation. Many thousands of Aronsic had already been taken captive, with a much larger number to come, Cal-com knew. Accommodations for them had to be made, which the seed would eventually supply. In the meantime temporary prisons had to be fashioned using prefab constructs brought with them, but Cal-com wanted to use one of the captured and not completely destroyed cities for that purpose…which was his next destination.

His oversized Stranom split back up into four standard ones and they ran across the landscape back to the LZ where he boarded a transport while still in the mech and was flown out to the city that he had chosen for the prisoners. He roamed it in what felt like a giant suit of armor, inspecting the construction and adding a few orders here and there based on what he found intact and destroyed, planning out how his prison was to be built and seeing that the first captives were properly secured and fed, using first their own foodstuffs being recovered from the city. Once fully grown into a Hatomek the seed would provide all the Voku-made foodstuffs the prisoners and the assault force would require.

Cal-com stayed there for many hours, then eventually transferred back up to orbit and his command ship, resuming the traditional position of a Renimar…at least until a proper command center was built on planet, but that would be in the distant future, for it was far down the priority list when raw infrastructure was required.

9

February 11, 2550

Achkor System

Zenniza

Cal-com stood in the oracle onboard his command ship, giving the final orders to bring his fleet down into the low end of orbit and to set up for orbital bombardment. His ground troops had succeeded in destroying most of the Skarrons’ anti-orbital missile platforms, though some still remained on the walkers they had stationed in or near their cities. Strike teams had gone into those cities and hit the immobile launchers, knocking them out while leaving the rest of the infrastructure and troops alone. It had taken a long time to pluck the planet of its defense against orbital bombardment, but now was the time to put an end to this assault…one way or another.

Cal-com had already sent a message to the Skarrons, telling them which city they were going to obliterate and the timetable on which they were going to do it, giving them a chance to either surrender or flee…and to date none of the surrender options he’d given to intact cities had been taken. It seemed the Skarrons needed to be bloodied before they would consider that alternative and Cal-com sympathized, for surrender wasn’t in his own vocabulary. That said, what the Skarrons were doing was wrong and they should expect to have to pay a penance for their misdeeds, so when he was giving them the option of living it was something they should take, especially with the recent history between the two races.

But no, the Skarrons in the target city weren’t surrendering nor were they fleeing. Cal-com resigned himself to having to set a bloody example, having already given them forewarning. If they chose to stay and die then that was on them. The bounds of honor had been satisfied, though he didn’t like their stupidity. They had nothing to defend themselves with now, even though a handful of missiles did come up toward his ships as they got into bombardment position just on the border of the upper atmosphere, braking against the orbital drift and hovering in place.

Those missiles were shot down easily, with only an occasional one getting through to knock on their shields. The swarms that made for such an effective defense were no longer here, and as the timer eclipsed the window of evacuation he’d given the Skarrons he issued the order to begin bombardment.

Javven opened up with larger energy packets meant to sustain through the atmospheric friction, landing tiny hits by the hundreds of thousands in a blue/white sparkling rain that ate away at the buildings as if it were acid. Every hit destroyed a bit of the structures and those individuals standing outside. After a few moments a Skarron shield went up covering the city, drawing a bit of a surprise from Cal-com. His reports had indicated that the strike teams had taken it down along with the missile launchers, but apparently the Skarrons had managed to do some repair work…yet it was only showing 36% strength.

Even if it had been at 100% it wouldn’t matter more than a delay. The Javven rain continued to fall and stress the shield, diminishing its strength until the matrix finally broke and the deadly fireworks finally returned to hitting the city structures. They didn’t destroy them quickly, but then again they didn’t need to. This wasn’t a lightning strike with them needing to get in and out before reinforcements arrive. The Skarrons had no one in the system to come to their aid, so Cal-com waited patiently through the multi-hour bombardment without so much as a peep of reply from the Skarrons.

When it was finally finished the Renimar deployed nearby ground troops to the location to clean up what remained in the rubble fields. He needed to make sure the site was secure and couldn’t be used by the enemy for any future operations. That meant every piece of every structure had to be visibly inspected, including subsurface chambers. From orbit he could see that there were no intact buildings remaining, but there may very well have been extensive bunkers below that the enemy could hide out in.

Those would have to be probed and eliminated, then the recovery crews would begin moving in and taking bits and pieces of the rubble away to a nearby machine that was already beginning to travel their way. It was a recycling mining station that would both clear away what was left of the Skarron city as well as use those resources within the rubble for the Voku, sifting, sorting, and condensing them down into bricks of pure materials that would then be shipped off to the Hatomek.

Any surviving Skarrons recovered would be taken away to the prison facilities and kept there rather than simply being annihilated. Already Cal-com was collecting quite a few from battling units that got caught out in the open without anywhere to flee and he guessed that number would increase drastically once the destruction of this city was seen by the others across the planet. With the bombardment complete he issued an ultimatum to the next three, each with individual timetables, and began repositioning his fleet towards the location of the next one on his hit list.

It was two weeks later when the first large Skarron fleet finally arrived in the system, though Cal-com didn’t think they were here to fight him…but rather to transfer out to fight the Humans and their allies. When their long convoy first began to arrive the warships were jumped immediately, but their numbers pooled to the point where Cal-com’s ambushing fleet needed assistance with him bringing portions of the main fleet out from the planet to reinforce them, his ship included because he didn’t want to have to direct the fighting through signal lag.

Upon making a microjump back to the star his partially reformed conglomerate split up and moved off to engage the Skarron warships that were still continuing to arrive. Many of them were already destroyed with a massive debris field forming, but the others were arriving outside of it and getting enough forewarning that they began deploying into attack groups to counter the Voku.

Cal-com had sufficient forces to deal with them, but what he couldn’t do was contain them all. They were certainly up for a fight, but he regrettably noticed several make jumps back out, no doubt carrying word of the Voku presence in the system that so far he’d managed to keep a lid on.

With no way of stopping them he focused on destroying those that were here now and worked through most of them before the last of their convoy even arrived. The remainders went down easily enough given the mass of Voku ships waiting for them, then it was back to recovery operations…first for his own ships that had been damaged/destroyed, then bringing out ships to tear apart the Skarron wreckage and begin recycling it. Every bit of refined material that they could collect without having to mine was invaluable, plus they needed to clear the space around the star for navigational purposes.

Anything left behind deemed not of value would pushed into a descending trajectory into the star to be rid of it, but there was very little material that the Voku did not use, with the pushing being relegated to gas and dust fields that could interfere with navigation at high speeds. Those clouds were contained within an enlarged IDF field and dragged onto a collision course with the star before being released to drift on their new trajectory. The process was tedious, but necessary to maintain movement options.

In the past Cal-com had been involved in a number of campaigns where he deliberately created debris fields around a star in specific locations to give his fleet some ‘terrain’ to operate within, as well as to block certain jumplines. While it was true that a ship could jump from any point on the line, meaning they didn’t have to be in close to the star, the further away you were the weaker the gravity got and the less push you would get per jump. That forced his enemies to travel at slower speeds coming in and out of the system, and that was one of many different advantages that he’d used to win campaigns in the past…but for now he wanted this star clear, so his ships diligently went about removing the debris field and chasing down the bits of it that had drifted out to considerable distance.

With them beginning their work and an adequate ambush fleet in place to catch any more ships arriving in the system, Cal-com took the rest of the ships back to the planet and continued with the orbital bombardments of the now evacuated cities. The Skarrons didn’t want to surrender but had gotten the clear message that they were going to die if they stayed so prior to each attack there were long overland convoys of evacuees pouring out and traveling at high speed to the nearest city or outpost, or in some cases just into the countryside to avoid the deadly rain that was about to fall.

Those that headed towards other cities Cal-com ordered to be left alone. Those that headed out to nowhere he had engaged and a surrender forced upon them whether they agreed or not. Some died but many were taken prisoner and added to his haul of captives, for which he had to continually expand the prison facilities, but with the Hatomek up and running that was never an issue…only what else he could or couldn’t build due to the delay of resources.

It took another 5 months to completely secure the planet, with the last city choosing to fully surrender prior to the orbital bombardment. Cal-com went down to the surface in a Stranom to personally oversee the surrender and make sure the enemy didn’t have any tricks up their sleeve…but the truth was they were whipped and didn’t care to die. A sensible mindset to have given their circumstances, though they did find many bodies within the city of those who chose death over surrender.

Those were all Skarron bodies, not Aronsic, and Cal-com looked at them with disgust. Death was failure, not honor. If the enemy killed you then at least you had the dignity of going out fighting, but this…this was a betrayal of all that the Voku stood for and it disgusted him.

He took those with more sense and had them moved to the prison facilities, leaving the city intact for his own people to begin working on. They would clear out all the trash first then begin disassembling the components and recycling them, eventually tearing down everything and leaving nothing but a large hole in the ground where the subsurface structures were.

The same was being done across the planet, with the Voku removing everything Skarron that they weren’t currently using. The prison facilities would be the last to go, but eventually even those would be replaced with Voku construction and every trace of Zenniza having been a Skarron world would be eradicated. The planet and system were now part of the Voku Empire and they would look as such, with every building and structure that Cal-com created strengthening their foothold here, including some very large defensive weapon platforms beginning to be constructed on the surface that would be capable of reaching up into orbit.

Time…time was the key factor here. Given enough and Cal-com could lock down the system permanently, but he knew he wasn’t going to have decades to work with. The Skarrons were being alerted to their presence even now and the Renimar had no way of knowing how far back into their territory that message would have to travel until it got to a fleet nexus that could divert the necessary response ships their way.

He had his ships on a keen lookout for any scouts to enter the system, but to date none had arrived. Many more Skarron ships had, coming in on previous orders without realizing the change of hands, but in the past month they had had none arrive…telling Cal-com that word had at least gotten to the nearest links in the chain and those convoys stopped before disappearing into the maw that Achkor had become.

Knowing that the convoys could be redeployed around the system to still get to the front, Cal-com sent out scout ships of his own to the neighboring systems to wait and watch, not to jump them but to detect them when/if they came through. Once he had that information he could start to play blocker and even give the Humans a heads up to what was coming. He’d had some contact with them recently, with them informing him that they were extending a link of their interstellar communications system out to the system so they could stay in more reliable communication, both ways. When that happened they could coordinate somewhat effectively, but he already knew that the pressure on their worlds under blockade was weakening. If Cal-com could maintain the break in reinforcements another year or so he guessed the weakening would snowball and the Humans would break through.

But he couldn’t make that assumption, given that now the Skarrons knew of their problem and would seek to work around it. Cal-com had to find their new supply lines and shut them down, and in order to do that he had to put ships out into dozens of systems and physically look, augmented by some detection stations he was having constructed. Little more than permanent sensor probes, they would be able to monitor stellar traffic within line of sight, but his available resources were still low and most were going towards projects on planet, leaving him having to send out a small chunk of his fleet to manually monitor the possible routes.

It was another 3 months before he got his first hit. A ship returned to Achkor with a report of a Skarron supply convoy with warship escort passing through a system some 24 lightyears away from Achkor. Cal-com immediately dispatched an assault force to lay in ambush for the next one to come through, but he wasn’t going with it. Achkor was going to be his base of operations with him needing to remain here, meaning he was going to have to direct regional actions through intermediaries. He trusted his senior commanders with naval intercepts, but always liked to do everything himself when possible.

Waiting for word was always troublesome, but eventually another two reports of supply routes from other scout ships had him breaking up his fleet further to send assault groups out into ambush position. None of the enemy came to Achkor, but they were out there, he knew, and would come eventually. Having assault groups missing when that occurred worried him, but he had to keep the pressure off the Humans and that meant he couldn’t turtle up here and hold out. He had to extend his reach and become a major blocker to the Skarrons and hope the Humans could take care of things behind that naval umbrella.

The first report of combat came back positive. A ship returned with a kill count indicating an ambush had went down with disastrous results for the enemy. It had been a warship convoy, but his fleet had intercepted them beautifully and chewed them apart before they could fully arrive in the system, ending up with a 97% kill count.

It was those other 3% that Cal-com didn’t like. He didn’t fault his troops for that after watching the battle telemetry, but it meant that those surviving ships that had fled would cause the convoy route to change again. Had they got them all there would be no way of knowing that the Voku were there poaching and he’d hoped they’d get at least a short span of easy takedowns, but that wasn’t going to be the case this time.

The next report he got was more favorable…a supply convoy coming through one of the other routes that was completely annihilated as it tried to run. A surrender option had been given and decline, which Cal-com had demanded. The Voku were not going to become predators shooting up ships that had nowhere to go, but if the enemy didn’t take that offer they’d been instructed to blow them away. There was only so much mercy he was going to give to the enemy, and it was more about his troops being in the right than his concern for the enemy that had him issuing those orders.

Finally a scout ship entered the Achkor system, a Skarron ship, and was intercepted before it could flee. It was damaged and captured on his orders, with the crew all dying save for six due to decompression issues. Those he added to his prisoner count, but it was the ship itself that he wanted. A thorough look at its computer systems gave him some information about where it had come from and some fleet movements with him being able to identify a link in their chain further in towards the core and potentially the location where the hammer blow would come from when the Skarrons got around to coming back to reclaim Achkor.

Cal-com dispatched a small scout fleet to that system to poke around and see what they could find, again having to wait weeks or months to get a report back. During that time the link to the Human relay grid was finished with two separate transmitters being brought in by the Humans and deposited in high and odd orbits that would make it difficult for the Skarrons to get to without binary drives.

Those relays were adjusted to interface with the Voku comm systems then the Humans left again, leaving Cal-com with a faster communication option with his allies than courier ship would have allowed, though messages still took weeks to travel across the grid.

What it did gain him was continuous reports of what the Skarrons were doing on the ADZ border and a private line to Warlord Paul, with both of them beginning to exchange a large amount of information on a regular basis. Each respected the other for their skills, but over time that respect mutually grew as they plotted out the next phases of the war, pulling on both of their experience and skills and running ideas past each other.

During that time Warlord Paul also broke the Skarron blockade of the Dvapp world he’d been defending, just as Cal-com had expected him to if he’d provided him with an opportunity. Hopefully the rest of the Humans and their allies could do the same in the coming years. In the meantime he had a planet and system to fortify, with him sending a ship back with requisition requests…for as his infantile shipyards came online he was going to need more personnel to fill them, along with the myriad of other positions in his fleet and on the planet as it started to grow into a full Voku battle colony.

10

November 30, 2550

Reesi System (Beta Region)

Metropolis

Megan stood in the command nexus on the planet, safely inside one of the cities on their secure continent. The Skarrons still retained theirs and the fighting was now on the third, with Star Force holding its own and keeping the Skarrons contained to the southern chunk with combat operations going round the clock. The trailblazer was still mounting sabotage missions to the Skarron continent but most of her efforts were focused on the center of fighting and in keeping the enemy off of theirs.

Right now the Skarrons were making another push in orbit, with Megan dancing her defense fleet around between Sentinels and killing what ships she could. With Skarron transports coming down towards their continent they were hoping to bait her fleet out into the open to engage it…otherwise she’d have to let the transports land uncontested. She wasn’t about to do either, so she was personally handling the navigation for a number of ships in order to get them to make an in-atmosphere strike run underneath the Skarron fleet.

Meanwhile she had another group make a strike up into a higher orbit, essentially backdooring the enemy as they focused on low orbit. They had so many ships that it wasn’t easy pickings, but even if she could manage a few kills it would be worth it. Until now they’d had too many in position there to risk it, but now with the trap they were setting having repositioned some of them it was time to try.

She let one of her naval commanders handle that strike, for right now the Skarron ambush fleet was coming down towards atmosphere hard as the ships she’d sent after the transports tore fiery meteor plumes through the air as the friction mounted on their shields. They hard braked against every gravity well they could find and stopped short of ramming the transports, ending up a couple of kilometers beneath them and in prime position to strike.

The Skarron escort warships moved off immediately, but Megan had sent enough ships…18 in all…that they were met and challenged, leaving some 6 drones free to pursue the transports and hammer them hard at close range with Talon cannons after the maulers stripped their shields off. Within 20 seconds the first of them tilted off course and out of control, falling into a death spiral that would land it in the ocean and hopefully away from any aquatics units or infrastructure down there.

Megan wasn’t overly concerned about that, for the water itself acted as a shield against impacts if it was deep enough. A brief look at the battlemap told her that particular area of ocean was clear of friendlies so she concentrated on the other transports while the higher drones quickly cut apart the Skarron escorts. Higher up the ambush fleet was coming down into the upper atmosphere after them, forcing Megan to make a choice…bring the rest of her fleet down as well and fight it out there or let the Skarrons move about with impunity, hoping they’d go back up after the transports were either destroyed or landed safely.

Frowning, she was about to issue the orders for her ships to come down in-atmosphere as well, because she couldn’t give the enemy the chance to strafe ground troops if they were so inclined, but before she could issue the thought a notice beeped in her mind, letting her know that there was activity at the star. A quick glance indicated that there were ships incoming, signal lagged, but otherwise occurring in realtime. She expected more Skarron reinforcements after such a long drought without them, but then she was relieved to see Star Force ID tags begin popping up.

She began composing new orders to be sent to them, indicating where she wanted them to hit…for with a chunk of the Skarron fleet in atmosphere and additional Star Force ships in play they had an opportunity in orbit so long as the Skarrons didn’t get too belligerent down on the planet. Megan almost sent the order, then stopped when she saw that one of the incoming ships was a command ship…and it was the Excalibur.

Grinning like an idiot, Megan recomposed her message into a short two sentence request and sent it off…then turned her attention back to the Skarron fleet in-atmosphere.

They were descending fast, trying to get to the few remaining transports that had yet to be shot down, or more likely trying to get to the ships that had done the damage in order to exact revenge. The closest Star Force city was some 2,000+ miles away from their location, but that distance wasn’t all that comforting. It was true that it would take them some time to get there moving in the friction of the atmosphere, but Megan had to do something to stall them from whatever they intended.

The trailblazer dispatched some two dozen additional drones from orbit and sent them shooting down into the atmosphere towards the Skarron fleet, knowing they’d see them coming but also know that those few ships wouldn’t be enough to stop them. They’d be wondering what she was doing and hopefully that confusion would stall them. If not, she could harass them with the ships and maybe get in a few kills…or if necessary fly them straight into the maw and slug it out. Whatever she did she had to keep the enemy fleets split so Paul could work his magic up top.

Eventually two Skarron transports made it to their LZ on the Skarron continent, with the atmosphere lighting up with missile launches as the walkers on the ground fired on the drones. Their anti-air and shields held up well, enough for the warships to redeploy towards the descending enemy fleet, which cut out the missile fire from the walkers didn’t want to risk hitting their own in the brawl that was about to ensue.

Megan didn’t want to count on their good sense so she reconfigured the drones’ shields into needle points and aimed them sky high. With a boost from their gravity drives the drones shot up through the Skarron formation, creating some significant atmospheric disturbance on the way by that buffeted the enemy ships a bit, then the drones peaked in the upper atmosphere above the enemy fleet and began firing back down on them with their own missiles and rail guns, for at the moment they were outside of both plasma and mauler range.

A portion of the Skarron fleet moved up to engage them while the rest continued descending down to the surface, intent it seemed to lay claim to their continent there and perhaps drift over to the neighboring ones for some naval support of their ground troops. Megan ignored that for the moment, hoping the timing for everything worked well, but she sent a warning ahead to the closest troops telling them to be prepared to scatter if it came to that.

Just then a ship jumped into orbit…right into the midst of the mid level enemy fleet. Megan saw it was the Excalibur as the battlemap updated and the command ship began targeting the enemy blockade directly before any of its escorting warships jumped in and began deploying drones in a flurry of activity. The big donut-shaped ship literally advanced up to pointblank range and opened up with every weapon system it had, tearing apart the Skarrons as they quickly moved to arrange themselves into a conical formation so they could pound the Human ship for its arrogance.

But behind it came many Warship-class jumpships, all spewing drones like a hive and sending little bees out to surround the command ship as it continued to push forward into the enemy lines. The smackdown the Skarrons had expected to give to the command ship soon turned into an even fight…then a not so even one as Megan’s warships in low orbit came up to assist and caught the Skarrons in a pincer movement. For a while they decided to fight it out, then with more and more ships coming in from the star the enemy broke ranks and fled en mass.

Both Megan and Paul sent ships after them, killing many on site before they could get to adequate jumplines, then tracking down others as they ran across the system…with Paul having left a few ships behind at the Star in ambush for just such a retreat. Those ships got many kills as the Skarrons fled right towards them, but some of the enemy ships made it past and out…with the majority scattering around the system and being hunted down in the coming days.

The enemy fleet in atmosphere chose to hold position, fighting off the few drones that Megan had originally sent after them and then taking up permanent residence in the sky over their controlled continent. They didn’t advance to the contended one or Star Force territory, merely sitting and daring the Star Force ships to come down and get them…which would bring them within the firing range of their walkers.

It was the best tactical play the enemy had and a sticky one. Megan couldn’t let them stay down there, for it would be too easy to drift over and start shooting surface targets. She could bring her own ships down over their continent and play a chess game in-atmosphere, but hovering warships ate up a lot of fuel so it wasn’t something they could maintain indefinitely…nor could the Skarrons.

That said the smaller ships could stay there for weeks with their current fuel loads, so for the moment it was a good play for the Skarrons. What they would do after that point was up in the air, but for the moment it looked like they had good position to survive and become a nuisance until the figured out what to do next.

Megan was about to have a chat with Paul about their next move when the Excalibur suddenly dropped out of mid orbit and headed down to the atmosphere in a slow jump, braking just prior to the planet’s boundary and sinking into the gasses like a boulder being thrown into a pool of water.

“You son of a bitch,” she said in a whisper as she watched him take the monstrous ship down with a host of drones following it at a safe distance to avoid the violent disruption in the air…not to mention the mountain of missiles coming up at it from the walkers on the surface.

The command ship’s huge mass and heavy shields ate up the missile fire with ease while the fiery wall of air in front of it destroyed or shook off many of them. Then when it finally slowed and came into weapons range of the Skarron fleet the missile damage began to add up and the big ship’s shields began to weaken, but as they did the drones caught up and kept to the blind spot it was creating for them before zipping around its hull and engaging the Skarron warships and walkers head on.

Sitting there literally daring the enemy to shoot him down, Paul took the naval fight into the atmosphere and littered the landscape with the hulks of the enemy ships who couldn’t maneuver half as well as the drones could in atmosphere. Paul used that maneuverability to his advantage with Megan wisely letting him assume control of all naval forces insystem while she began organizing ground troops for an insertion onto the Skarron continent.

Gravity grapples shot out from many of the walkers below, tugging down some of the drone warships but they couldn’t do anything to the command ship. In a costly battle to both sides Paul used his drones like a disposable hammer to stun and delay the enemy fleet while the Excalibur killed them, accounting for nearly a third of all the enemy warship kills and then began hammering the nearby walkers that simply didn’t have the necessary firepower to take it down.

With its shields hanging on at 7% and beginning to recharge, Paul dismissed most of the surviving drones back up to orbit to keep them safe before drifting his command ship across the Skarron continent, taking down additional walkers and strafing enemy LZs and the infrastructure they’d begun assembling, some of which was quite far along given the newness of this invasion campaign. He got ID tags from Megan’s sabotage teams on the continent and made sure to avoid shooting anything near them, but otherwise just strolled his big ship across the countryside like a scene out of Independence Day shooting anything that wasn’t supposed to be there.

Megan let him go and concentrated on other ground aspects, seeing that he was simultaneously overseeing the hunting teams elsewhere in the system. Within a few hours she had flocks of dropships taking off from safe zones and carrying mechs towards a new LZ on the Skarron continent that an aquatics team had just carved out, mounting a quick assault on an enemy shoreline outpost and securing it and the nearby area by taking out the three enemy walkers that had been present.

That was the foothold she was going to use to start taking back their territory. She wasn’t sure how long Paul was going to keep the command ship in atmosphere, but as long as he was out doing his thing she was going to take advantage of it and grab up some quick gains that, for the past two and a half years, had seemed virtually impossible to attain.

As Paul had reminded her many times, in the rock/paper/scissors contest of interstellar warfare…naval beats everything.

“Hey,” Paul finally said some hours later as his holo popped up in Megan’s nexus. “Sorry for the kill steal.”

Megan grinned. “No you’re not.”

“You’re probably right,” he said straight faced.

“How long you sticking around?”

“As long as it takes to secure the planet, then we’ve got other Dvapp worlds to cleanse before this lull ends.”

“Any idea how long that will be?”

“Permanently if the Voku get their way, but there’s no way the Skarrons are going to accept this defeat. If they’ve got the ships available they’re going to hit back. Question is how far away are those ships going to come from and how much time do we have.”

“Same old same old,” Megan said, feeling like they were back to square one.

“Not quite. Aside from Randy losing a Sentinel all the others on this front are still intact and we’re adding to their numbers. Give us a few more years and the Skarrons are going to have a lot harder time running troops down to planet.”

“Especially if we can spam the system with drones.”

“That’s on my Christmas list as well. No, I think the hammer is going to come down on Achkor. If we have enough time to clean up the front, I want to be in a position to help them.”

“We definitely owe them,” Megan agreed.

“Can you stay insystem and build or are you going to redeploy?”

“After all we did to save this world I’m not abandoning it now. Give me the time and we’ll get it buttoned up.”

“Deal,” Paul said with finality. “I’ve got a few more hours of ground time with the Excalibur then I’m heading back to orbit. We’ll work on the rest of the walkers from there.”

“How much fuel did you burn?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Still, that’s a pretty sick move. Sorry I didn’t do something like that sooner.”

“Not such a good idea when you have an enemy fleet over your head,” he reminded her.

“Still, I’m skittish over bringing any large ship in-atmosphere. If you don’t have a good pilot that can account for the medium turbulence…”

“This wasn’t a spur of the moment decision,” Paul said, cutting her off with a grin.

“One of your side projects?”

“Something like that.”

Megan stared at his holo for several long seconds. “You took the helm.”

“Wasn’t going to trust anyone else on that fast of a descent. Not my first time either with a command ship.”

“Why am I even surprised?”

“Good question,” Paul mocked.

Megan sighed. “Terrible 2s.”

“Have you seen the training logs?”

“Whose?”

“I’ll take that as a no. Might want to take a look at Jason and Emily’s progress.”

“Oh?”

“Jason passed me up a month ago, and Emily is almost ready to tie me.”

Megan’s eyes went wide. “Holy crap. Who’s on top now?”

“Aaron by a level over Jason.”

“I’ve been so busy I haven’t checked…though I can see why you’d make time. Back to number 2…no, make that 3 now?”

“Four, actually. Morgan caught back up.”

Megan couldn’t help but laugh. “Knew that was coming.”

Paul glared at her. “More a result of me spending way too much time in a nexus.”

“I hear you there,” Megan said, losing a bit of her merriment. Like Paul she’d been trying to oversee every operation personally in order to tweak things to get whatever small advantages she could buy them.

“Two, maybe three days?”

Megan cringed. “Probably more like 4. Got a lot to do down here.”

“Four then,” he said, referring to them getting together for a decent training session. “You got any ground ops I can jump into? The kids can drive the car from here on out.”

“A few, but I’m going to have to stay back and quarterback.”

“Send me the list. I need to get my commando mojo back on. Been stuck in space the entire time with the Dvapp.”

Megan slowly shook her head in dismay.

“Jealous?”

“Yeah, actually. Good to have you around again.”

“Likewise.”

“List will be coming. Right now…”

“…bad guys to kill,” Paul finished.

“And if you don’t mind, have your student driver swing by this location,” she said, sending him coordinates, “before you pull out.”

“Will do.”

“And do you have any ground troops in that thing?”

“Afraid not. The Excalibur has been on a strictly naval mission. But you’ve got me now, so throw me at something tough.”

“You know I will,” she said, cutting the comm and immediately digging into the mission files searching for something worthy of his skills. She knew they’d catch up later in person, but right now they had a war to fight and she needed the badass trailblazer out there racking up a kill count. The enemy fleet may have been eliminated, but the war on Metropolis was far from over.

STAR FORCE Facebook Page

STAR FORCE Wiki

1

May 1, 2552

Gamu System (Delta Region)

Mensqua

Jamka waited patiently as the Lemickas vendor counted out the Critel’s currency chips, a somewhat unusual procedure given the electronic banking systems the ADZ worlds used but spacers were notorious for preferring hard currency, especially when they dealt with various races. Given that the Lemickas sold a good percentage of their products to spacers they had a well-established system in place to handle large currency transfers…which always required at least two counts.

Jamka watched as the shorter Lemickas ran his Star Force credits through a machine that counted for him the second time, shoveling the small stacks into the input cone and watching them disappear inside. Each credit had an electronic signature inside the durable shell of the palm-sized currency, identifying which coin it was and what value it had. Given the two bags worth that the Critel had laid on the counter the Lemickas had opted for the machine rather than a hand count.

Most of the credit coins Jamka had given him were large, but given that he was purchasing starships that was to be expected. Most of the coins were 1,000 credit triangles, but there were a handful of 10,000 thicker triangles thrown into the mix plus a lot of lesser valued coins that brought the two bags’ full total to what the purchase cost of the 6 vessels would be, given that Jamka had counted them out himself earlier.

Once the vendor confirmed the exact price was paid it transferred ownership records to Jamka and gave him a physical pass card that would allow him to take possession. Without another word the Critel left the vendor and headed off through the shipyard. The interior was a massive commerce hub, designed and built by the Lemickas to facilitate their business, with the actual construction slips for their starships spaced around it in clumps. Some of them held completed starships, others held those still being built or refurbished.

Jamka’s new purchases were located in two different holding areas, with him headed first for the communal areas where his crewers were waiting for him. They were a mix of Critel and four other races, but all had worked for him for multiple years and they were individuals he could trust. Less savory individuals that his business relied upon to function had been left behind to be picked up later, for the last thing he wanted was for one of his new purchases to go missing as soon as they left the system.

As crazy as that sounded it wasn’t unheard of. There was corruption and backstabbing going on every day in the ADZ, and while there were no outright wars going on inside thanks to Star Force’s restrictions on such things and their willingness to throw their superior tech around in order to enforce them, everything else was practically a free for all so long as you didn’t poke the sleeping giant.

Those areas where Star Force had no presence, which was most of the ADZ, the local races controlled or ‘claimed’ to control their societies, but largely it was all a jumbled, chaotic mix of cultures, codes, and lawlessness. Jamka had heard plenty of stories of ships going missing from other spacers’ fleets for a variety of reasons, but usually it was either pirates or an inside job.

Now would be a perfect opportunity for someone to steal one of his new purchases, with only a handful of people to form skeleton crews, which was why he’d pulled several of his most trusted employees off their current assignments in order to bring them here to man the ships as they took them back to base.

Jamka rounded up his shippers from the lounging and entertainment areas, allowing them a few minutes to finish up their meals, then took them straight to the restricted sections of the shipyard that his pass card got them into. As a group they walked through the more or less deserted corridors until they came to another vendor station where Jamka presented his credentials.

After a quick check he was given access to one of the nearby airlocks that connected to the first of the starships he’d purchased. He boarded with three of his crew, inspecting the medium-sized cargo hauler and finding all was in order. The Critel left the crew onboard to do a more thorough inspection and proceeded to the next ship on his recent purchase list, leaving behind three more there and at the other ships he eventually got through checking.

Jamka stayed onboard the last, intent on commanding that vessel out of Lemickas territory himself. He proceeded with a full inspection and conferred with the other temporary Captains, finding everything in order. He’d expected no less given the Lemickas’ reputation for craftsmanship, but he’d learned long ago not to take anything for granted.

The ship he’d taken was the smallest of the six and the only warship. It was designed for a crew of 60, but him and the seven others with him would be enough to get it moved out of the system and back to their base in the Vannsep System. He’d only come to this world to make the purchase, but otherwise did no business here. Mensqua had a minimal Star Force presence, as all Alliance worlds did along the borders between the 8 regional slots, but they also possessed a planet of their own in the system and that kept a lot of shenanigans from going on.

On the down side, that meant that a lot of the local economies relied on the Star Force markets and there was little business opportunity there for Jamka’s fleet. He serviced areas of the ADZ where Star Force had no economic presence, or rather where they had so little that they couldn’t meet the full demand. That accounted for most of the ADZ, but not this system. The Lemickas had two territorial slots on this world and were in the process of securing a third from a deal in the works with the Densan, who were trying to consolidate their own holdings into a few, highly developed regions and selling off the others for an exorbitant price.

Word was they were currently haggling over that price, but once the deal was settled the Densan would leave the planet and the Lemickas would expand into the new region. Such shuffling was occurring on a slow, but steady basis throughout the ADZ as the various powers sought advantage over the others. The Lemickas were choosing to develop Mensqua specifically because of the Star Force planet in the system because it offered them a much greater resource base than the limited facilities on Mensqua…and the industrious little race of bipeds was buying up everything they could from the Humans and using it to fuel their own shipbuilding industry.

That industry was larger than Star Force’s own now, given that they built quality ships that undercut Star Force’s prices by a hefty margin and there was such a huge market for ships within the ADZ that no one faction could supply it all. Most races preferred to spend their limited resources on that which would give them the most return in the ongoing power games being played on the economic front, and in most cases they didn’t want to suffer the expense of building their own shipyards when there was a much cheaper and efficient means of purchasing starships from a nearby vendor.

The Lemickas were happy to be one of only a handful of such large scale providers and Jamka bought exclusively from them. Star Force ships were preferred, but they were far too expensive. The Lemickas built solid ships that he could rely on and still make a profit…besides, Star Force queues were so backlogged that he’d have to wait years to get a purchase order from them. So much of their production was going to the warfront now that the Lemickas and a handful of others had actually surpassed them as the primary starship vendors within the ADZ.

They also built warships, which Star Force did not sell. Jamka needed another because the piracy rates were beginning to creep up amongst his competitors. His own fleet hadn’t been hit yet, but he was having to run some convoys without an escort and that was something he literally couldn’t afford to do much longer. Star Force ships were constantly on the prowl in Alliance systems and their own, but with the fronts sucking so many of them away the pirates had gotten a bit bolder…sometimes too bold and Star Force would nail them, but the successful strike rates were climbing and in truth most of the other races didn’t care so long as they didn’t hit any of their shipping lines.

That left independent shippers like Jamka as easy prey if they couldn’t defend themselves…and given the fact that virtually all of his business occurred well away from Star Force’s fleet he needed the ability to fend off at least light attacks and perhaps scare others away before they could happen.

Jamka would have brought one of his current warships into the system to escort the cargo ships out if he hadn’t been purchasing one of his own today. He’d brought along enough crew to be able to fly and shoot at the same time, but he didn’t expect any trouble here. No, if there was to be any pirate activity it would be in transit or at their eventual destination.

Once all six ships were checked and prepped, Jamka had his fleet move off from the shipyard and gradually transition over to the stellar jumpline. They made a group microjump out to the double stars at system center, ending up at the larger of the pair and transitioning around to their exiting jumpline. Running their drives nearly as high as they would go, the Lemickas-built ships launched themselves into a slow jump without the benefit of a jumpship.

It would take nearly 3 weeks for the first leg of their journey and some 8 in total before they arrived at their home base, but the ability to free fly through the ADZ without having to own a jumpship or purchase a berth on one was something that could never be overvalued. Star Force’s ADZ transit system would have gotten them to their destination within 2 weeks, but the cost of taking all six ships in the hold of a jumpship was far more expensive than the fuel and time he would expend traveling independently. It was one of the reasons for the profit margins he had, for Star Force vessels available for sale didn’t have the drives strong enough to make independent jumps.

That wasn’t due to a lack of tech, but because they built them small and efficient knowing that they’d only need to make insystem microjumps. Those independent shippers that went that way utilized either their own jumpship fleet or, more likely, purchased travel berths on the grid, giving them faster shipping times but much more costly ones.

And Jamka’s customers valued cost more than they did time.

They also valued not having to deal with Star Force in any way, shape, or form, especially if some of the cargos they were having shipped didn’t match up with ADZ protocol.

Jamka knew better than to risk that, so he kept his fleet clean of any obvious contraband…at least anything large enough to stand out to a casual inspection. Small items, a few individuals seeking to go unnoticed…that sort of thing was standard practice and considered a small risk, but Jamka wasn’t going to go any further, for the stories of how Star Force had dealt with previous violations had put the fear into many independent shippers. ‘Break their rules and they take your ships’ was their standard practice…and they wouldn’t return them, essentially putting you out of business for the first offense.

Several large shippers had had their entire operation shut down by Star Force, with their Archon strike teams coming in and blowing through any personal security they’d had in place. No, the wise knew to avoid Star Force and their code of conduct…and be extremely clean whenever operating under their gaze.

Technically the entire ADZ was under their code, so there was always a risk of them finding out about violations and coming down on you for them, which was why Jamka wasn’t going to risk his fleet on anything obvious. That said, when operating in the shadows you had to let a few small violations slip by just to pick up some extra credits.

The systems that Jamka’s small convoy moved through were inhabited save for one, which made it the biggest risk of getting jumped. When they arrived there were a scattering of other ships in transit as well, but none came near to his and he made sure they spent as little time as possible making the transition around the star to their outgoing jumpline. After that the chance of pirate raids was less, but he knew better than to ever let his guard down.

Eventually he arrived back in the Vannsep System, which had no Star Force presence whatsoever. It was a Lacvamat system, with three inhabited planets, one of which belonged to the Reen. The system itself had been given to the Lacvamat along with 5 others for them to colonize independently, putting them on par with the Scionate, Dvapp, and Hycre colonies that existed without Star Force assigned territorial slots on Alliance worlds.

The Reen had negotiated with the Lacvamat to get their own planet in the system. It wasn’t a very good world, barely habitable for their race, but it was their own and outside of Star Force’s leash. Technically they still had to obey the same rules given that they were in the ADZ, but Star Force had no outpost in the system, making it a defacto ‘free’ zone, though with the Archons able to snoop about one never knew when or if they’d come down on you.

On occasion you’d hear of a clandestine raid that scooped up somebody from somewhere, but for the most part Vannsep was Star Force-free territory…with all the economic opportunities that entailed.

Jamka brought his six ships into orbit around Leerbot, one of the two Lacvamat planets, where he had a private space station. He might be an independent shipper, but he wasn’t one of the smaller ones. The station they were about to dock with held over 50,000 of his people and serviced a fleet of some 178 ships of varying sizes. Most of those were out on business runs at the moment, with only a pair of warships and 3 cargo ships accompanying the station in its lazy orbit some 2,200 kilometers above the thick-atmosphered planet.

The Lacvamat were an aerial race, with four wings and a very private mentality. Only a few locations on the surface were accessible to outsiders, but where visitors were allowed they were welcomed warmly. The Lacvamat were heavily invested in the power grab going on within the ADZ and sought to maximize the advantage they had in possessing their own systems. Star Force had granted them that based on their previous relationship and their willingness to evacuate their entire population into the ADZ prior to their systems falling…something that many other races had refused to do, resulting in a lot of people dying who otherwise could have been saved.

The Lacvamat had chosen not to take part in the frontline defense of the ADZ, but they maintained their own sizeable warfleet and patrolled several systems outside their own, essentially holding a bit of turf and keeping their eyes and ears open for incursions by the lizards or anyone else. Their territory wasn’t on the edge of the ADZ, so their position was fairly stable, with many other races complaining about them being given preferable treatment then refusing to help out with the common defense.

They weren’t alone in that position, for there were many races living off of Star Force, the Hycre, and the Protovic’s superior military forces. Rather than try to find ways to assist them as some of the lesser races did, the Lacvamat kept to their own business with their eventual aims being anyone’s guess. Jamka had based his operations here because of the business opportunities and the Lacvamat’s willingness to work with outsiders, in orbit at least. They’d allowed an independent contractor to build the station for Jamka, as well as giving him cover to operate his business and ship throughout their system in return for a few favors here and there.

And Jamka wasn’t the only one set up here, for the system was a central hub of the ‘shadow’ sector within the ADZ. The Scionate also operated in a similar manner, but ever since the recent Star Force coup there had been a subtle shift away from the quadrupeds’ independence push. The Scionate were now more in line with the ‘proper’ Star Force backers, though they still maintained a significant chunk of the shadow business opportunities.

The Lacvamat had gained from their newfound respectability, recruiting more of the unsavory elements into their territory along with the legit who simply wanted to get away from Star Force’s choking presence. Jamka serviced both factions, making inroads where he could and expanding his business and fleet whenever possible.

Always on the lookout for trouble, Jamka kept an eye on the public warning system the Lacvamat had in place and as he brought his new warship in last to dock with his base and begin getting the full overhaul that it would need to be brought up to proper ‘shipper’ specs…meaning a lot of concealed compartments and other scoundrel gems…he noticed a small warning flashing up, with location coordinates of a new no-go zone within the planet’s atmosphere.

He pulled the warning up, wanting to know ahead of time of any trouble going on anywhere in the system, and saw a report of a ship having gone off course and entering a restricted zone of the planet…then according to the report it had exploded while on descent through the atmosphere. The immediate area was being locked down by Lacvamat security, heavily, and there was an unnecessary reminder to everyone else not to go anywhere close to the explosion zone where they were now beginning to recover debris.

That made no sense to Jamka, for if the Lacvamat had shot it down there would be no need for such a lockdown. Something about this didn’t feel right, and the Critel made sure to keep up to date on the news reports and official warnings coming in…as well as the unofficial word that began spreading around, for within a week all hell began breaking loose down on the planet and the Lacvamat fleet came down to low orbit and put a planetary lockdown in place with no one being allowed to come or go.

A day later a similar freeze was put on all orbital traffic, stranding Jamka and his ships at his station, but he knew better than to defy the warnings. The Lacvamat were not to be trifled with, and whatever was going on had brought them out of their normal seclusion into full militant mode.

Jamka knew his best bet was to simply stay still and silent and hope whatever was going on would sort itself out without him or any of his people getting caught in the middle of it.

2

August 12, 2552

Plenx System (Dvapp Territory)

Rvitx

“Where are they?” Donn-1001 asked in the trade language, leaning over the holo table in his striker armor as the wind whipped across the open air outpost.

One of the four Dvapp with him extended a tendril from its column-like mass and pointed to a nearby area on the battlefield map.

“Here. There are several subsurface caverns that the Aronsic appear to be moving through.”

“Do you have them charted?”

“No.”

“Then we do this the hard way. Heavy scout team, formed on me. We’ll go in and flush them out, but you have to keep them away from here,” Donn emphasized, pointing to a relatively flat section of the barren, rocky landscape on the map that held the entrance to one of the Dvapp’s mining stations. It was mostly below ground with only a small surface facility, but it held subsurface tunnel links to 5 nearby facilities…and similar tunnel links were allowing the Skarrons to assault many other Dvapp facilities in the area. If they broke through here, they were practically inviting them to spread further.

“I do not know if we can,” the Dvapp said honestly. The Skarrons had no walkers in play, but they were flooding the area with infantry while the big toys from both sides were off playing elsewhere on the planet.

“Slow them down when they’re crossing terrain, but do not let them mass out in the open. Buy me time to plug a few holes.”

“We will try.”

Donn nodded and left the holotable, walking across the small prefab Star Force outpost and electronically tagging two other Archons nearby to follow him. He picked up a half dozen Dvapp on the way and the 9 of them ran out through the entrance and onto the orange/brown cracked ground that made up the majority of the planet. A few meters out and they ran up a hillside before sliding in between boulders and making their way over the varied terrain towards the caverns the Dvapp had indicated.

It was more than 8 kilometers away straight shot, but with so many ravines and other topography a straight anything wasn’t going to happen. Donn didn’t have a jump pack, which would have helped him greatly, because his Dvapp troops didn’t have any. He only had a few Archons and commandos assigned to what was a low priority region on the planet that had been basically left up for grabs while the heavy fighting was occurring elsewhere.

Only some local ‘troops’ were available, but Paul had sent him to the region to do what he could while he and the others fought the heavy opposition in orbit and some 6 different ground sites, two of which the Skarrons had already secured and built into fortified anti-air havens. With the Voku disrupting Skarron reinforcements the enemy had abandoned all but six invaded systems, choosing to throw everything they had at them while leaving the ground troops on the other worlds to do what damage they could before being wiped out.

Donn had come from one such Protovic world that they’d just finished cleaning up, and it hadn’t been an easy affair. With so much anti-air fire capable of coming from the ground troops most of them had to be taken out down low else risk losing a sizeable chunk of your navy to do it from orbit or the air…and right now Star Force couldn’t waste drones taking the easy route, leaving the dirty work up to the ground troops.

That hadn’t entirely been true here, with several naval strikes supplementing the Star Force troops before a warfleet had arrived to reinforce the Skarrons’ hold over orbit. Their blockade of the planet had only grown in number as fleets from neighboring systems had redeployed here to help secure the ground gains they’d made. Two small Star Force fleets had come as well, with Paul commanding one, that had kept the Skarrons from attempting a forced overrun of the 6 Sentinels around the planet.

That no longer looked to be in the cards, but an enormous number of ground troops were being escorted down to the surface en mass and a huge surface campaign was underway. While that was happening the Skarrons were pushing out to secondary and tertiary regions with infantry alone and taking most of them almost by default. Donn had been sent to try and secure one of the regions now coming under assault by taking command of the Dvapp there and adding a little Archon magic to the mix...though it was questionable as to whether that would make enough of a difference.

He’d already reorganized their shoddy defense, for most of these Dvapp were not soldiers. They were essentially militia rounded up from workers and denizens that were otherwise simply going to be killed as the Skarrons came through. Under his direction the past 3 days they had begun to offer more resistance, but the Skarrons kept progressing forward despite the many ambushes Donn was organizing against them.

Recently enemy infantry had been popping up into locations they had no business being in, with the newly revealed subsurface caverns giving the Skarrons an underground route to bypass some of the surprises the Archon had been laying out for them.

It was to the nearest of those confirmed locations that he was now running, with two acolytes in tow trying to keep pace with the much faster Archon. He slowed enough not to lose them while the Dvapp scurried across the ground like bouncy snakes, moving in a mix of a crawl and leaping stride as the giant, crystal worms moved as fast as they could. A lot of the time they’d simply fall on the rocks rather than try and step around them, melting into the crevices and moving past in a partially liquid fashion, but over flat ground they couldn’t keep up with Donn and were just barely managing over the varied terrain.

Inside their bodies they carried their weapons, suspended in the midst of the crystalline goo as if they’d ate them. Each was a hard shard about the size of the Archon’s forearm that made up their version of a rifle that fired a yellow energy beam about 3 times as intense as a lachar. The beams were long in duration, requiring them to be held on target as opposed to a quick flash that Donn’s plasma rifle wielded, but given that the Dvapp didn’t move that fast to begin with they fit their physiology well and could burn through the Skarrons’ thick skin quickly when given the opportunity.

About halfway to the waypoint he’d put on the battlemap for him and the other two Archons to track towards they met up with a few Hobbit scouts. Donn broke left and began to flank them as the line moved forward, then another Archon moved out to the right giving them flankers on both sides. The striker accelerated on his zigzaggy path now that he had no one following him and got up to within 10 meters of the first Hobbit, gunning him down with a quick pair of plasma streaks before he noticed the four more nearby via Ikrid.

Heading straight for them he rounded a car-sized boulder and mowed down the two nearest him with plasma, then kicked another aside before telekinetically yanking the rifle out of the hand of the fourth. He killed those two within a pair of seconds and moved on, eventually coming back up to the line of Dvapp that had continued moving forward at pace, knowing they had to get to those caverns sooner rather than later.

Donn eventually got back into the lead position, with the acolyte coming back as well after dealing with a pair of scouts on his side of the line. After a lot more running the Archon brought the full scouting group to a halt, with the Dvapp literally melting into the rocks around them to get out of sight while Donn cautiously walked ahead as far as he dared, using his Ikrid and Pefbar to scout ahead.

On the other side of the hill he was kneeling against was a large group…too many to hit, but at the moment they weren’t moving. Donn plucked a few recent memories from the closest of them and confirmed another cavern exit nearby with more infantry coming up through it and assembling for a new push on the Dvapp infrastructure further to the south.

Getting an approximate size on the deployment, Donn got his scouts moving laterally and worked his way around it, eventually getting back to their original path on the far side while logging the position of the enemy troops on the battlemap so those back in the outpost would know where they were. What little aerial surveillance they had was complicated by the rocky terrain, and it was possible that the intermittent cloud cover could block it entirely.

He didn’t know if this group had been spotted or not, but it was better that he log it just in case and sent the data back with a pulse transmission, knowing that if the Skarrons tracked it back to their location they wouldn’t find them, given that they were staying on the move.

It took a while and some more dodging/killing of scouting groups until they eventually got to the entrance that he’d been made aware of back in the outpost. It too had troops pooling around it, but less than a minute after the scout team arrived the enemy infantry began to move out, sneaking their way through the house-sized rocks and cracks within the ravines and traveling in several strands across to where Donn didn’t know, but they were heading in a generally west direction.

He logged that too, then brought his team down into the hollow that the troops had just left, finding several overhangs cut out by wind or water a long time ago that had the ground chewed up with footprints. Nearby was a narrow crack in the rock that led to the subsurface caverns, with Donn heading in without hesitation given that his Pefbar gave him a limited heads up to what was ahead, though too much rock would block his ‘x-ray’ vision as well.

The two acolytes followed him in, then the Dvapp after that, taking them out of transmission range and into the planet’s crust in search of more enemies and where they were moving about.

As soon as he got inside Donn began recording a new map, placing waypoints for himself and the other two and having them move off down every branch they came across with their armor emitting a low level signal that essentially measured the shape of the hollows and added a crude schematic to the map on his HUD, though several times it would update in chunks when one of the acolytes came back into normal battlemap transmission range, which in this case was line of sight of only a few meters given the rock that was everywhere was blocking all standard signals.

The Archons tried to run to save time, but the chambers were so narrow and jagged that the best they could manage was a slow jog most of the time until one of the acolytes finally found a route out of the maze that led to a much larger chasm some 215 meters below the surface.

Donn followed the others down there, with the acolyte signaling for silence as they approached. When the striker came through he got down on his belly and crawled across the small slope down to a large boulder where his fellow Archon was crouching…and on the other side of which was a dry creek bed with hundreds of Hobbits milling about.

His armor sensors were mapping out only part of the chamber, which was more than a football field wide and stretched off both to the left and right in a ragged U-shape that had them currently on the peak. The Hobbits were scattered, apparently waiting while more came in, for Donn could hear movement to the left in the extreme distance as well as sense some of the closer minds. There were more coming this way, not in great numbers but enough that he knew this scattered group was going to grow…and there were a few Skarrons with them.

The Hobbits could see well in the dark, he knew, but the Skarrons less so. The chamber was pitch black, without a single light to see by and the Dvapp moving around mostly by feel, though knowing they were going underground they’d ‘ingested’ a small nightvision device that gave them some sight capability when used, though at the moment none of them were for they didn’t want to give away their location with the little pings of lights that they emitted.

“More on the way?” the acolyte next to Donn asked via the comm, with the other holding back in the narrow tunnels with the Dvapp.

“Yeah, with most outside my range I’d guess,” he said, crouching down behind the rock and ‘looking’ with his psionics.

“Map or fight?”

“I don’t think we have the option of just mapping, but we can’t engage them head on either. Fight and run, but without knowing where we’re going that’s going to be tricky.”

“Send me out to map the right side,” the acolyte suggested. “If I get into trouble you can ambush, and at least you’ll have some idea of what the layout is.”

“Nice to have a volunteer,” he commented. “Go quietly as far as you can.”

The acolyte crawled off to another rock without a word and disappeared around the far side, with Donn tracking him via Ikrid when the battlemap signals eventually cut out from so much rock in between and no lateral transmitters to relay. A quick telepathic signal brought the other acolyte down out of cover, crawling up beside him to the spot the other had just left.

“What’s up?”

“Hold the fort and keep the Dvapp here. I’m going left and getting a better read on the layout.”

“Kind of crowded that way.”

“I know,” Donn said, leaving the group behind and moving off. There were Hobbits some 20 meters ahead of him that he had to avoid, but with a few Jedi mind tricks it wasn’t difficult. Finding the proper rocks and crevices to move through was, and Donn forced himself to go slow and be as invisible as he could while his armor automatically updated the battlemap for every meter that he crossed.

The Archon got some 150 meters down before he could go no further, not because of geography but because of too many eyes being nearby. He stopped and tried to knock a few of them asleep, but those standing wouldn’t go down so easily, and the third one that he tried shook off the effect just enough to stumble and fall over a small cliff, landing two meters down and drawing the attention of the others.

When that happened the two that were asleep looked to be dead at a glance and an alarm went up, prompting Donn to get moving before they could figure out where he and the others were. Jumping out of cover he ran, slide/hopping across two large boulders up to the nearest Hobbit and punched him down into the ground, knocking him out with a single hit then jumping another one before the first white orb lit up the dark cavern as he was spotted.

Blue plasma streaks tracked the source of the orb and killed that Hobbit, with many more popping up like fireflies as Donn ran about gunning down the few easy targets he had before probing a little deeper and eating up some of his shield energy, knowing that his battlemap would continue to update until he eventually got too much attention and had to fall back…fighting his way through more of the Hobbits that were seeming to come out of the rocks from every angle.

A second blue plasma lance shot by him, followed by three yellow beams that reminded him of the sentinels from Halo. They burned into their targets for what seemed like an overly long period of time, but took them down in single hits save for the Skarron that came charging down through the widest gap in the rocks…and extremely angry from the brief emotional surge Donn picked up from it when he pulled a location trace on the nearby minds.

As soon as the striker got back behind cover his attention went directly to his battlemap, with the section from the other acolyte not yet having been added…then suddenly it was, all at once as the Archon popped up on the map some distance away but at higher elevation, giving the signals line of sight, as well as his comm.

“Found another entrance with a group assembling. Small enough for us to take if you’re not too busy.”

In the distance the other direction Donn felt a swell of minds pop up on his Ikrid radar, making for a waterfall of enemies churning down the chasm towards them.

“Might as well, we can’t go the other way,” the striker said, switching to his exterior comm after telepathically telling the other acolyte to get moving. “Get moving,” he told the Dvapp. “I’ll bring up the rear.”

3

Donn fired two plasma lances back into a pack of Hobbits that were chasing him aboveground, with many more spilling out behind them as he ran looking backwards but with his Pefbar on so he could see where he was going without tripping over or running into rocks. The scout group had managed to slaughter all the Hobbits in the assembly area, but that only seemed to tick the rest off even more and they were pursuing them heavily as the group came up out of the surface entrance and began fleeing across the complicated terrain.

The other two Archons were on point, clearing any Hobbit scouts in the way while leading the Dvapp out. All six were still with them, but their physical size had shrunken after taking lots of body hits. The tiny portions of their crystalline structure that had been vaporized by the enemy plasma had been left behind as the rest of them reformed into whatever shape they needed, but Donn knew they couldn’t keep getting whittled down forever so he’d volunteered himself to play rear guard and harass their pursuers long enough for the Dvapp to get away.

That was easier said than done given that he was almost out of ammo, but he did have psionics to use. Right now he was just trying to get some distance on the Hobbits, but a few dozen meters ahead he came to a blind spot and disappeared from their view.

When the Hobbits got to that spot and turned the corner he was gone…then suddenly they fell to the ground twitching as they got hit by some invisible weapon. Two of their own plasma rifles flew up into the air and into the Archon’s hands as he reappeared, with the Hobbits unable to do anything as he shot them dead with their own weapons.

More enemies kept coming so Donn had to stay on the move as his team made progress further to the east to where the Dvapp had a forward firebase. It was little more than a camp, but it had some defensive weapons and barricades that served the troops there. It was 4 kilometers off, and with the damage the Dvapp had taken they weren’t traveling over ground as fast as they had been on arrival so Donn needed to buy them as much time as possible.

He thought about leading the Hobbits off another direction, but nixed that idea with the thought of them splitting up and catching up to the Dvapp from behind. Speed-wise that shouldn’t happen, for the Dvapp were still faster, but with such an irregular terrain he wasn’t going to risk them getting ambushed from behind and decided to keep fighting a rear guard action while he monitored their progress via Ikrid.

Back and forth he ran, engaging a few then getting some distance from the others only to come at them from another angle. Twice he nearly got in over his head and took armor damage, but he succeeded in buying enough time for the others to get a decent head start, then ran to catch up with them before they finally made it to the outpost.

Once there the task wasn’t done, for the Hobbits were still following and appeared to be going to mount a full assault on the wide ravine where the camp was. Donn grabbed some ammo from a small stash of Star Force supplies there and headed back out, climbing up a small ridge and taking a sniper position, more to see from than shoot, and plotted out his next ambush.

Six hours later the camp was overrun and the survivors were forced to retreat on a Dvapp cargo ship that came in to pick them up, but overall more than 2,500 Hobbits lay dead throughout the ravine along with a few dozen Dvapp, though their bodies literally melted away upon death, leaving only a puddle of pure liquid goo behind.

When the transport brought the three Archons and some 211 Dvapp back to a city that hadn’t yet come under attack, Donn was flagged down by a newly arrived detachment of some 22 commandos and the ranger that had come with them. The striker jogged over to his fellow Archon who exchanged a wrist clap, which had both men shaking hands by grabbing one another’s wrists in a firm binary grip.

“Nice work out there,” the ranger commented. “Saw the results on the way in.”

“Glad to have some more help,” Donn added, releasing the Archon’s hand.

“Actually we’re your relief. Paul needs you in orbit ASAP.”

Donn frowned. “What’s up?”

“He didn’t say, but knew you wouldn’t want to leave the Dvapp on their own so he sent us to replace you…immediately.”

Donn had mixed feelings about that. The region was still far from secure, and no matter how many Hobbits they killed there always seemed to be more to replace them.

“We’ve found a series of subsurface caverns that the Skarrons are moving through. I wouldn’t recommend going down there again, but we haven’t fully mapped out their tunnels. They’re using them to pop up where we aren’t expecting them.”

“Peachy.”

“Any chance of air support?”

“Not yet, but we’ll do what we can to hold down the fort.”

“Alright,” Donn said, having a bad feeling about leaving. Ranger or not, Donn’s higher level psionics were going to be missed in the swap out. “Good luck.”

“Likewise,” the Archon said, with the pair parting and Donn heading for the nearby dropship that had brought the commandos in along with a good pile of supplies.

He ran up the ramp and into the hold, then found the pilot conversing with a couple of crewmembers.

“I take it you’re my ride?”

“As soon as we get the rest of the cargo off, yes. We’re supposed to take you directly to a ship waiting in orbit.”

“What ship?”

“A transport.”

Donn frowned again. “Can you get me a comm to the Excalibur?”

“Just a minute,” the pilot stalled, finishing up his conversion with the crew before they moved off to help unload crates, then he moved into the cockpit and got a link to the command ship in orbit.

“There you go,” he said, giving Donn his seat.

A brief conversation via audio with the bridge crew quickly brought about a small hologram of Paul’s torso appearing above the cockpit control board.

“Sorry for the pullout,” the trailblazer apologized.

“What’s going on?” Donn asked, pulling his helmet off and swiping at the sweat on his forehead with his armored fingertips.

“Not my idea,” Paul floated, “but Davis needs you. There’s a situation brewing with the Lacvamat and with all his special teams deployed to the front he wants you to come back to head up the investigation.”

“Me or all of Crimson Team?”

“Just you, as far as I know.”

“I trust this can’t wait?” Donn wondered aloud.

“53 million dead with the count rising by the day,” Paul said flatly.

“What the hell?”

“There’s an information packet waiting for you, I’ll let you sort through it without any commentary from me. The transport you’re heading towards is leaving the system within 2 hours and will get you back to Iona. From there you’ll have to make your own way.”

“Diverting even a transport for me is reckless with as bad as we need supplies out here.”

Paul smirked, but it was a humorless smile. “I’m not. It’s a scheduled return. Davis’s message came in 13 days ago. No point in pulling you out until your ride was ready.”

“Thank you,” Donn said, realizing that Paul wanted him down on the surface supplementing the Dvapp as much as the striker did.

“Figure this out. We’ve got enough on our plate as is.”

“Understatement of the century,” Donn said as Paul’s transmission cut out. He wondered just what the hell was going on back inside the ADZ, but without Paul giving him any hints he was just going to have to wait till he got to orbit to find out.

In order to make that happen sooner rather than later Donn went back into the hold and helped with the cargo offloading, cutting a few minutes off their schedule. Once the dropship was empty it took on a couple more passengers, all Dvapp, and lifted off…flying first across the surface to another landing zone in a major city where the crystalized aliens got off, then the dropship headed straight up to orbit and into the hangar bay of a large cargo transport.

Once onboard Donn was greeted by the Captain and taken to temporary quarters where he could get out of his armor and cleaned up in the interim before the transport left planetary orbit and met up with a distant jumpship tucked safely away from the Skarron fleet far out in the system where they couldn’t easy go. Donn ignored the shower and fresh set of clothes waiting for him and sat down in his armor at the comm terminal and logged in, pulling up the message packet that Paul had promised would be waiting for him.

There were several files of data, but the striker went first to the personal message from Davis which became a small hologram set in front of the flatscreen monitor and hovering over the keyboard.

“I apologize for interfering with your efforts on the front, but I need an experienced hand in this situation,” the Star Force Director said without preamble. “Whether or not you need to pull more of your team in or others is a decision I’ll leave to you. What we know as of now is that on June 24th a ship exploded for no apparent cause in the atmosphere over the Lacvamat world of Leerbot. Within a day a number of illnesses began to register, followed quickly by a planet-wide epidemic. A bioweapon is suspected but as of yet it hasn’t been identified nor who used it. The planet is in lockdown and the Lacvamat are gearing up to start a war with whoever they think did it.”

“They don’t know, but with more people dying by the day they’re ready to blow a hole in whoever did. I need you to find out what’s going on and take whatever steps are necessary in dealing with it. There’s no time to bring you back to Earth to discuss this in person, so I’ll leave the details to your discretion so you can get onsite as quickly as possible.”

“I don’t know where this investigation will lead, but I get the feeling that it’s an inside job…and by that I mean another faction within the ADZ. I have no proof of that, but with as much attention and resources being focused on the war fronts there is still a high level of animosity and competition between the races and without the ability to fight conventional wars against each other due to our edicts and the Protovic and Hycre backing us up, the belligerent ones may be reaching for secondary means of conducting warfare.”

“The ship in question was a standard commercial transport, no racial affiliation and belonging to an independent shipper that apparently died in the explosion, though that hasn’t been confirmed. It appears like a dead end attack with no way to backtrack to the source. We can’t have that, or we’ll start to see more popping up and the interior of the ADZ could end up turning into a third front. As you well know we don’t have the resources to deal with that, so find out what’s going on and bust the appropriate heads. I’ll deal with the backlash and fallout later.”

“I’ve attached all the data I have at present and will send updates as they become available, but the Lacvamat are keeping a pretty tight rein on this. They’ve agreed to allow us access, more as an unbiased witness to legitimize their payback when they find out who’s to blame, I imagine, than interested with any real help, but we’ll work with it none the less. I’m told the bioweapon is race specific to the Lacvamat, given a number of offworlders on planet that haven’t been infected, but they’re not allowing anyone to come and go for fear of a second detonation. They’re quarantining the various regions of their planet to try and keep it from spreading, and with a local population of 4.3 billion the death toll could climb much higher if those quarantines are breached…so expected resistance regardless of any permission you’re given.”

“Beyond that I have little more to say. This is a very bold attack, and one that I hadn’t predicted was coming. The races are constantly making various moves against and with one another, but nothing this overt. This is a game changer and I need information as to what’s going on if I’m going to get back ahead of the curve. As you know, our guests in the ADZ are here because they have nowhere else to go, not because they like each other. Push things far enough and twist the right arms and things could get very nasty very fast.”

“But above all else I need to know the truth about what happened. Faster would be preferred, but I can’t operate off of guesswork. Figure this out, Donn, before we start fighting a civil war that will giftwrap the ADZ for the Skarrons and lizards.”

The striker let out a slow whistle as the hologram finished and shut down. Now he understood why Davis would call him back from the front. He’d originally thought the Director had crossed a line, but he should have known better. The man was a civilian and knew not to get involved in military affairs, but he was quite right in saying that if the races in the ADZ started fighting each other it would take so many resources to stop that they’d be handing the Skarrons an easy win, Voku help or not.

The Lacvamat had the largest military that wasn’t currently involved in frontline warfare…and the fact that they weren’t meant they’d essentially been piling up warships and resources to protect their own systems against invasion. That was useful, because it meant Star Force and others didn’t have to worry about them so much, but it also meant that if they wanted to misbehave they could do a lot of damage.

An exploding cargo ship as the means to deliver a bioweapon to a planet’s atmosphere was very odd…not to mention that a single detonation could cause such a widespread contamination. Donn sifted through the data Davis had sent but in it was not a chemical or genetic profile on the ‘weapon,’ which confirmed his suspicions as to why Paul hadn’t mentioned such…the trailblazer wasn’t entirely convinced it was a bioweapon, and Donn couldn’t disagree with so little data, most of which was just speculation on the Lacvamat’s part.

What he did have were casualty numbers and travel logs, both the Lacvamat’s copies of the passage of vessels through the system in question and all of Star Force’s logs for the surrounding systems and the now exploded ship.

Davis had already backtracked it to several locations, all of which Donn quickly put into a file as places of interest. The owner was an independent shipper that possessed only the single vessel, which had been modified three times in varying shipyards, none of which were Star Force. It was a Lemickas large-scale hauler, capable of carrying large pieces of machinery or a vast amount of cargo, making this independent shipper in a league with those that possessed a dozen or so smaller vessels. The Scionate in question apparently wanted all his eggs in one big, decently armed basket…for one of the modifications made to the vessel were light defensive weapons that included some beefy missile racks that would keep most low level pirates at bay.

Nothing unusual had happened, as far as the official logs were concerned, at any of the previous port calls for the ship, leaving as Davis suggested a ‘dead end’ that basically meant this was a free attack. Without an enemy declared the Lacvamat would have no one to strike back against…legitimately, though they might just pick one based on suspicions or circumstantial evidence so they could appear to be doing something. If that happened Star Force might actually end up fighting them in order to prevent the injustice.

But Donn knew he couldn’t let whoever did this get away with it or, like Davis had so pointedly commented, it would most likely lead to other races or factions seeing an opportunity to strike at their enemies under the radar and turning the ADZ into a clandestine war zone.

The truth about what had happened had to come out, and it looked like whoever had done this had covered their tracks well. Donn just hoped his skills were up to the task to ferret this out, regardless of whether or not their mysterious attacker had made a mistake. Hopefully he had, but if not there were other ways, Donn knew, to find answers…especially when you had the ability to read minds.

But he couldn’t do anything here, so he was glad that Paul had left him in combat up until the last moment so he didn’t have to sit and wait in orbit. Shortly after Donn got out of his armor and into the shower the transport made a microjump in a convoy under escort out to the waiting jumpship where the smaller transports all attached within the exterior hold and were encased in the big ship’s IDF, making their piggyback ride into the star effortless as they floated in place and were attached to the jumpship’s superstructure by flimsy pylons that never would have been capable of the stresses of the ship simply turning to starboard without the IDF holding them all in place.

Donn stayed in his quarters reviewing the data that Davis had sent him for several hours before transferring over to the jumpship and indulging in the sanctum there, splitting his time between training and data analysis as he waited out the journey back deeper into Beta Region where he was going to pick up a few old friends and make some new ones along the way.

This mystery was a huge one, and he wasn’t about to tackle it alone.

4

October 2, 2552

Vannsep System (Beta Region)

Leerbot

The Rover-class jumpship braked against the Lacvamat planet’s gravity well, coming out high enough to avoid the orbital blockade of the avian race’s warships that had the quarantine still firmly in place. The jumpship was only three times the size of a Star Force heavy cruiser and fell within the ‘scout’ family, with the exception that the rovers were armed warships designed to function as both transport and escort for personnel transfers when a full warship wasn’t an option…and with every one needed on the front the rover had been the obvious choice of transport for Donn and his adhoc team, given that they didn’t know how many different worlds they would be needing to visit.

He’d picked up his ride at Iona along with a third of his crew, two of which were medtechs, four Archons that he personally knew, two more that he didn’t but that were insystem with skill sets he wanted, three Kiritak crewers and a Human Captain for the rover, and an eight member special ops squad from the Kiritas. The others he had accumulated at two other stops enroute to Vannsep, including a Knight he’d come across accidentally while in a spaceport, who was transitioning back to Earth for extensive medical work on battlefield injuries…including a severed arm.

Donn had gotten permission to pick up a regenerator in Iona, so having that with him he grabbed the Knight and added her to his team while giving the 7 foot tall woman as many foodstuffs as she could eat over the following days with the regenerator using the additional biomass to slowly begin regrowing her arm and mending her other battle damage. Star Force now had tech to regrow limbs that didn’t require a regenerator, but those devices were huge and located almost exclusively on Earth or elsewhere in the Solar System, requiring transport back ‘home’ to deal with such injuries save for a handful of very expensive medical ships that were floating around the ADZ that could accommodate the same.

The regenerators were reserved for special circumstances and this Knight had gotten wounded in the wrong place at the wrong time with none available. Had she been critically wounded she would have been moved to the closest planet with one, which would have been Horizon in Iona that had four…or now three since Donn had borrowed one. Given that she was stable she’d been assigned to recovery work on Earth, which would have involved recalibration training for the new arm and an overall break from combat to reset herself.

After two minutes of talking with Galia Donn knew that wouldn’t be necessary and had pulled her into his squad, realizing that mentally she was good to go and would rather get back into some sort of action rather than sitting back on Earth while others were still fighting.

She stood beside him on the bridge, a full head taller with both warriors outside their armor as they looked at the mass of Lacvamat warships corralling the orbital infrastructure traffic into very tight lines, but it appeared that they were letting some traffic come and go up here at least, but there was nothing moving to and from the planet’s surface.

“Find me someone to talk to,” Donn told the Captain who was seated nearby. “Start with those warships.”

“Any one in particular?”

“Start with the big ones.”

The Captain motioned to one of the Kiritak who got on the comm and started chatting in the trade language…and didn’t stop for some 10 minutes before he finally turned and gestured back to the Captain who activated his holographic communication display with the image of a fleshy winged Lacvamat seated on a perch with its folded wings angling up like points bracketing its double-skulled head.

Donn walked up beside the Captain so he would be in transmission view, but put a hand on his shoulder when the man tried to get up to give him his seat.

“You are the investigators?”

“We are,” Donn answered evenly. “We require passage down to the planet, both to the origination point and anywhere there is currently the illness. We do not need access to uncontaminated areas.”

“Your movements will be allowed, but only if preapproved. Do not wander about.”

“Our ship will file all movements on planet prior to flight,” Donn promised, but not saying anything about personnel on the surface.

“An escort will be waiting at these coordinates,” the Lacvamat said before cutting the comm, obviously annoyed at having to let the Star Force ship through.

“Coordinates received,” the Kiritak helmsman noted.

“Take us in,” Donn said, seeing that the coordinates were relatively high up in orbit when they popped up on the holographic map.

The rover made a lazy jump down to a midway point, braking to a stop before adding some lateral momentum to bring them around to a second mini-jump down lower to match up with the given coordinates where some 16 Lacvamat warships were waiting with starfighter escorts numbering over 300. Once there the ship was wrapped up in escorts and given additional navigational prompts that led them through a non-linear course down through orbit that took them more than 2 hours to hit the atmosphere.

There the warships backed off and the starfighters remained, bringing down the rover to the point on the planet where the cargo ship had exploded and began the whole mess. Donn picked a spot nearby the debris field where the bits and pieces had rained down and had the ship land there…after getting permission from the Lacvamat.

Huge landing legs extended from the underside of the rover that sank down more than a meter into the semi-soft dirt nearby a settlement that was now evacuated. Unlike Star Force cities the Lacvamat lived in spires on the flat and cliff dwellings where they had available terrain. The nearby structures were situated on the cut-out side of a small mountain with the rover being nearly half their size. A temporary camp of structures that looked to house many more individuals was spread out in little chunks across the nearby area, and Donn guessed those were the recovery teams for the ship debris.

“Armor up,” he told Galia after they landed.

“Babysitting?” she guessed.

“You’ve got the medtechs. I’m going to roam.”

Without complaint the tall redhead walked off the bridge leaving Donn with the four man crew of the tiny jumpship.

“Not sure how long this will take, so just sit, keep your eyes open, and the door locked.”

The Captain hesitated, then he simply nodded. “Will do.”

Donn followed Galia out and headed to the small training facility on the ship. It wasn’t a full sanctum, not even close given the ship wasn’t large enough to hold one, but it had been enough to keep them occupied during jumps as well as serving as an impromptu armory. When he got there Galia was already part way into her armor with the others looking on waiting for orders.

“Archons suit up, Brad with eagle, Kiritas stay put, medics grab your puffs,” he said as he started to step into his own armor, sliding his casual shoes into the hardened plates.

There was a sigh of regret from the Kiritas, but the Humans moved immediately without any questions. The ‘puffs’ Donn referred to were extremely low grade, light armor that also doubled as hazard suits. The Archon armor did likewise with a filter upgrade, which they all had in place, but until the medics confirmed that the recently identified contaminant was truly only hazardous to Lacvamat they weren’t going to take any chances.

They exited via airlock mode, with an energy shield covering the exit point so as not to exchange atmosphere with the outside, with Donn leading the group and getting a few meters past the foot of the ramp before a pair of Lacvamat swooped in and landed nearby. Both were covered in a thin, translucent material that was their version of a hazard suit.

“We will take you where you need to go,” one of them said without preamble.

“We need all the information you have gathered, access to the ship fragments, and the ability to roam around the area without interference.”

“You will find nothing that we have not already discovered,” the other said.

“Maybe, maybe not, but we came here to look and confirm your data. We can’t do that if we can’t make an independent analysis of our own,” Donn emphasized, picking up on a few of their thoughts…which were that this was just a for show exercise to give the Lacvamat analysis the credibility it needed with the rest of the ADZ…ostensibly for a counterattack at whoever they fingered.

“He will search from the air,” Donn continued before they could object. “The rest of us will search on the ground. Please make sure that none of your security forces shoot him down.”

“Yes please,” Brad-7919 said, wearing a heavy backpack that stretched from above his shoulders almost all the way down to his feet.

The two Lacvamat looked at the awkward Human, not sure what to make of him, but they relented and had a short conversation with a comm device attached to their heads, coordinating with the rest of their security forces that were several thousand strong and covering the area, most of which were currently on the ground but many of the long winged avians were currently in flight, soaring around with little whip-like tails trailing them through every twist and turn they made as they glided about, rarely flapping their ample wings as they surfed the air currents.

A group of three redirected from their patrols, which had reformed above them after the rover had landed, and dove down to the surface meeting up with the pair as several more flew in and circled overhead.

“We must stay with you at all times. Do not attempt to go off alone.”

“We’re here to help,” Donn reminded him. “And we won’t try to lose you, but it’s your responsibility to stay with us.”

The Lacvamat that had spoken huffed once through its dragon-like nostrils and stared at the Archon’s brown helmet from its widely set eyes, one each on the double lobes of its tiny skull. It had but a short snout, but behind it was a cranium thick enough to double as a wrecking ball…and the Lacvamat were notorious for head butts on their almost snake-like necks.

It didn’t say anything, merely waiting on the Human to move.

Donn turned and pointed Brad up into the air, then looked back at the Lacvamat as the ranger shot up into the sky on his flight pack. “We need samples of the bioweapon to study. Have you recovered any from the debris?”

“No need,” one of the medtechs said from behind him in his aqua-colored armor as he was messing with a field kit attached to a platform on his left arm. “It’s still in the air.”

Donn frowned and turned towards the medic.

“There is none remaining, except within the bodies of the sick and dead,” the Lacvamat said.

The Archon’s head ping-ponged back, with him searching the alien’s mind to see if he was being genuine or lying, but having little prior contact with the race made mind sifting a bit uncertain.

“It’s trace amounts,” the medic answered in English. “Their equipment might not be able to detect it.”

“It should have dissipated by now,” Donn argued, “unless there was a renewable source nearby.”

“Agreed.”

“Do you have your dead nearby?”

“They have been taken away to deal with properly. You will not be examining them, for none remain here.”

“What have your people studied the bioweapon with? Where did your samples come from?”

“The infected.”

“Are there any infected nearby we can examine?”

“Not here. They have been quarantined elsewhere.”

“Arrange for us to get access to them after we finish here.”

“That is not my task,” the Lacvamat said firmly.

“Then pass on the request to whomever’s it is,” Donn said, matching its tone and adding a bit of Ikrid influence with it.

As soon as Brad shot up into the air he had two Lacvamat pacing him, with several more diverting from nearby and flying in to assert their dominance. They hadn’t expected the Humans to be able to fly, even with technological augmentation, and they swirled around him as he got some 150 meters up and held position, visually scanning the area. The area was rolling flat, with tuffs of scraggly vegetation dotting the otherwise barren terrain. It was mostly dirt, very few rocks, but those that were there were jutting up from underneath, almost as if something was punching segments of bedrock up and into view to form small mesas.

Brad could see the various temporary structures the Lacvamat had set up to collect/analyze debris and began tagging the closest ones on the battlemap for the others to see. As soon as he got those marked he moved forward using the hand controls on the short armature on his left side, loosely attached at his elbow and giving him a gripbar/joystick to navigate with. The anti-grav unit was fairly simple, equipped with two differential drives that could push off of various portions of the planet’s mass to provide lateral movement, as well as to keep the rectangular pack from spinning about on a singular levitative point.

One of the units was near his head, the other near his feet and situated so they would swing ‘up’ with gravity’s pull on his body and the rest of the unit. At the moment he was ‘standing’ vertical with his body spinning a bit to the left that he wasn’t able to control until he finally tipped the upper edge slightly forward and allowed gravity to settle the orientation on the anti-grav ‘pins.’ That left him facing down ever so slightly as he moved forward, gaining speed slowly as he crossed the landscape with the Lacvamat lazily keeping pace beside him.

The flight pack or ‘eagle’ as they referred to it wasn’t a combat piece, given its size and awkwardness. He couldn’t fight with it on his back when on the ground and it made him a sitting duck in the air, but if one needed a good view and the ability to cross terrain quickly without a dropship or fighter the flight pack was the way to go.

It was a civilian tool, but one that came in handy in a variety of situations.

Brad continued tagging Lacvamat sites so Donn could see through the battlemap where to go without having to wander randomly, but as he did so he tried to get a feel for the debris impacts. He imagined most of the crash craters were underneath the little peach domes they’d constructed, but he was able to spot scratch marks and some other small trash on the barren landscape, with him actually descending to one spot for a look.

When he landed he deactivated the anti-grav and walked across to a scrub bush, carrying the 280 lb pack like it was a Knight riding piggyback. One Lacvamat landed with him while the others kept to the sky, circling overhead and watching.

Brad knelt and picked up a marble-sized piece of charred metal, holding it in his armored hand.

“Ship debris?” he asked.

“Everything of consequence has been recovered.”

“How large of a radius have you recovered pieces from?”

“Wherever you see our collectors. We set them on top of the locations rather than moving the items for study.”

“Are the objects still here?” he asked, dropping the tiny fragment.

“Some have been removed for further study after a forensic analysis was completed.”

“Do you happen to know the spot where the ship exploded…in the air, I mean?”

“It is marked.”

“How?”

The Lacvamat tilted its head to the air and looked in a specific direction. Brad followed its gaze and saw nothing.

“What am I supposed to see?”

“Hear,” it corrected him. “The beacon is auditory.”

Brad adjusted the controls for his helmet and searched through the range of sounds that his ears weren’t capable of processing…finding a light, repetitive ‘beep’ that he was able to isolate the location of. Using his helmet’s zoom he examined that position, finding a tiny object hovering in midair there.

“What is the purpose?”

“To assist the search teams, as well as to mark remembrance.”

“I want to get a look from that vantage point.”

“Can you fly that high?”

“I can go to orbit if needed…I’ll just run out of air.”

“Then follow,” the Lacvamat said, a bit more eager to help than the others.

Brad reactivated his flight pack and took off again, angling up to a spot high in the air where he began to mentally calculate the possible debris patterns, as well as working in all the little dome sites below, trying to figure out some insight that the natives may have missed.

5

“This it?” Donn asked.

“Yes,” Brad answered from high in the sky overhead. “The distortion ripples are centered about two meters to your left.”

“Give me a moment,” the Archon said, sitting down on the ground crosslegged by himself while the rest of his team was out inspecting various sites, mostly those that the Lacvamat had set up. The striker had an escort with him, but they stood back and remained silent, not understanding what the Human was doing but not caring to question him either.

Donn took a deep breath through his filter mask and extended his senses, clicking on his Pefbar and looking down into the ground around him. He was sitting on what he would have described as a ‘sand wash’ in that it wasn’t hard packed ground. It was firm enough, but the top layer was loose and had moved around a bit in a pattern Brad had spotted from above. There was no visible debris in the area, but they’d seen similar crash site damage before and suspected there were pieces that had been buried and covered over in the turbulence.

The Archon was sitting down to get his head an extra meter of range, with the Jedi pose being a mere afterthought. Focusing his Pefbar into a ‘spotlight’ cone he searched beneath him as far as it would reach before rotating it around and scanning the area. The grainy black/white images in his mind were hard to decipher the further away they got, but he did find several rocks beneath him that had been caught up in what was a small ravine that had been filled in with sediment, probably years before, but the top layer and several jabbing scars beneath were made of looser material that he knew was a recent deposit.

And at the bottom of those scars were six pieces of untouched debris.

Donn activated his all-team comm. “Got something guys, but it’s going to require some digging.”

Galia was down on her hands and knees, her head buried in the hole she was scooping out with her big armored hands that was already two meters deep. Her white armor was only half visible, from the chest on out to her legs and feet which were almost vertical as she kicked dirt and tiny rocks up past her body as she dug further with the assistance of an Archon’s Pefbar as a guide.

Donn was digging his own hole a few steps away, as were four other Archons while an army of Lacvamat surrounded them and the site, keeping others away and monitoring the Humans closely. They’d called for digging equipment of their own, but Donn wanted to get to it first…plus he didn’t want to wait. The softness of the wash being what it was they’d decided to go at it by hand, though in his case he was actually scooping as much telekinetically as he was pawing it out, though with his head down in his own gopher hole the Lacvamat couldn’t tell the difference.

“Got something,” Galia said over the comm, but Donn kept digging after his own and didn’t pop his head out, seeing that he was only half a meter away from his.

“Brad?” Donn asked.

“Got it,” the free Archon said, stepping over to Galia while the others continued to dig and tapped the big Knight on the butt twice, hard enough to get her attention. She pulled out and let him down into the hole where he started pushing away small amount of debris telekinetically and cleaning off the edges of the shrapnel as one of the medics came up behind him and stuck a probe into the hole beside him.

“Concentration is spiking. Nothing too dramatic, but far higher than the latent amounts in the air.”

“This is a big one,” Brad commented as he ate away at the sharp and frayed edges of the junk, creating a little cave around it as he progressed and having to make a little telekinetic dome above his head to catch falling material to keep it from refilling the hole. What he caught he chucked back out past his legs, making for a dirt sprinkler that was spitting out a nearly constant fine spray of material as opposed to Donn’s hole that was chucking large glumps out periodically.

“Galia, we need to widen the hole. Play plow please,” Brad said, pointing her to his right.

“Muscle coming,” she said, kneeling beside him and reaching her thick arms down in next to his hip and pulling large handfuls of material out from the sidewall. A lot of material fell back in, but Brad pushed it back up to her and between the two of them enlarged the entrance to more than two meters wide, enough for him to finally pry the piece loose. It was too heavy to lift telekinetically, so he leveraged it out by hand to get it loose then pulled out, letting Galia do the heavy lifting while he added some telekinetic pull from a distance.

It took a while to get it out, given the bad angle the Knight had to reach down at, but eventually the trashcan-sized, razor sharp fragment came out and she put it down on the flat ground nearby with both medics scurrying over to it and taking samples…with a trio of Lacvamat techs coming over as well.

One of the medtechs looked at his sensor analysis and immediately pulled out a device from his satchel of equipment and placed it on the ground nearby. With the flip of a button a semi-visible bubble shield activated over top forming a 3 meter high and wide radius around the piece of junk that would contain the atmosphere inside but otherwise wouldn’t interfere with their movement.

“Containment shield,” he explained to the Lacvamat. “The debris has a fresher concentration of toxin given that it’s been buried since impact.”

One of the flyers extended a wingtip and touched the shield perimeter, finding that it could move through without interference, then it stepped inside and touched a device to the debris next to the medtech.

“I am detecting only trace amounts.”

“Our equipment is more sensitive, and I think there’s enough of a concentration lingering on the debris to get a sufficient sample for a full analysis.”

“We have samples taken from the bodies of the infected,” the Lacvamat said, as if his collection was both pointless and redundant.

“I’d like a comparison. The more we know the better.”

“Got one,” Donn said, pulling a baseball sized piece out of his hole with two more segments still buried a few inches lower.

“Bring it over here, please,” the other medtech asked. “Inside the shield.”

Donn stood up and walked it over, then headed back to his hole for further digging.

The second medtech waved a sensor around the device, picking up a decent concentration of the toxin on one side, with almost nothing on the other…indicating that, as they suspected, the toxin was released through an explosion that coated the various pieces as they were hit in the blast radius.

“Any idea what this junk is?” Galia wondered over the comm.

“Afraid I’m not that kind of tech,” the medic replied. “But that doesn’t really matter. It’s the toxin on the pieces that we need.”

“Have you determined if it’s safe for us yet?” she asked, watching him work as the others continued to dig in their holes.

“Just collecting now. Analysis later. I’d keep your armor on, just in case.”

“Do I need to take a dirt bath before heading back inside the ship?”

The medic laughed, then fell short when he realized she was serious. “No, we’ve got some cleansing fields that will do a better job of it.”

“Inside the ship?”

“Yeah…oh, crap. Guess the Kiritas will have to bring them out.”

“Worry about that later,” Donn said, coming back out with another piece as more Lacvamat flew in, some of which were carrying equipment bundles of their own. “This is a piece of a gravity drive. Scan it.”

The medic did as requested as the other was still pulling samples off the big piece. “Yeah, we’ve got good levels on this piece as well.”

“Liquid?” Donn guessed.

The medic chewed on his lower lip inside his helmet for a moment, but it was the other one that answered. “Almost. These particles resemble more of a gel. It’s mostly cloying powder now though.”

“Binder?”

The medic shook his head. “Can’t tell with this equipment. Have to wait until we get back to the ship.”

“Do you think you have enough to identify?”

“Should.”

“Good,” Donn said, heading back to his hole to get the third piece.

After the Humans were done with the debris pieces they’d recovered the Lacvamat took possession and conducted their own analysis, but the small amount of toxin recovered, equal to about 6 grams of material, was more than enough for the pair of medtechs to do a thorough analysis. Coupled with the blood and tissue samples the Lacvamat grudgingly allowed them to take from several of the infected the next day, they were able to get a good handle on what the toxin was and how it had been delivered…as well as how to shut it down within the local population.

The shutting down part wasn’t something they could accomplish on site, unfortunately, but once they got back to a system with access to the communications grid they’d get the data to Earth where they’d be able to synthesize what was needed. To date no relay had been built in any of the Lacvamat systems, with them preferring to remain somewhat isolated within the ADZ. That choice was going to cost them many more lives in the coming days, but at least Donn knew that they could eventually stop the spread of the toxin…which was, in fact, a bioweapon.

It was an airborne spread, self-replicating toxin that was accomplished through a bacteria that did the spreading and acted like miniature factories for the toxin. Typically bioweapons were viruses or some manner of manipulation of an individual’s body to cause it to malfunction. This didn’t fit that mold for the toxin produced was straight up poisoning…it was the fact that it was being manufactured within the individuals’ bodies by the bacteria that made it a very creative and dangerous weapon…especially since the toxin it produced specifically targeted an aspect of Lacvamat physiology.

That particular function, a regulatory organ that was interlinked with their blood stream and balanced various levels of nutrients and natural toxins, was caused to go berserk, in some cases shutting down and in others triggering massive surges in a very random fashion. In this way the Lacvamat infected would not die of the same cause, disguising the source aside from the fact that the mass of deaths occurring were happening at relatively the same time.

The Lacvamat had identified the toxin in their bloodstream but had missed the bacteria…or rather had ignored it, for it mimicked the types found in the planetary atmosphere. It was almost as if someone had purposefully disguised the toxin producing nano-factories to keep them from being discovered. The medtechs had a quibble over that, with one suggesting that it was coincidence and the other believing it had been intentional. Either way, the Lacvamat had missed the source, believing that the toxin was somehow being spread from individual to individual when in truth it was the bacteria doing it.

And that bacteria was airborne…at least it could survive in the air, which was why trace amounts of the toxin had been detectable upon arrival. Unless a way was found to neutralize the effect of the toxin or kill the bacteria it was possible that the bioweapon would spread across the entire planet…not to mention potentially spread to other systems by infected individuals or even just some bad air taken in during a cargo transfer.

The bacteria wasn’t a crazy spreader, which was also probably why it had been missed, but its growth and spread rate was solid and steady, meaning that whoever had done this intended to kill off the entire planet’s population…and potentially all other Lacvamat within the ADZ if they expected carriers to move it to other worlds.

It was fortunate that they’d put the quarantine in place immediately. Hopefully none of the bacteria had been transferred off the planet to date.

But the medtechs’ analysis left Donn and his team with more questions. First of which was whether the toxin would be harmful to any other race. A brief inquiry into that led to three other potential problems, those being the Bali, Veeslah, and Quo…all minor members of the ADZ. They had a similar circulatory system that may or may not be affected, but for all the ‘major’ races there would be no threat, though they could still be carriers of the bacteria.

Which begged the second question of why blow up a ship in atmosphere to begin the spread of the bacteria when all it would take was one person arriving on planet and unleashing a small sample into the atmosphere. Given enough time it would spread and the Lacvamat would grow sick and die just the same, even just sending a contaminated person in amongst the population could do it, in theory, but a small, pure sample of the weapon was a sure way to get it deployed, so why go for the huge amount they’d deposited in the explosion?

It was faster, obviously, but Donn had a gut feeling that wasn’t the reason. Someone wanted to be seen doing it. Though no one had claimed responsibility the destruction of the ship and the subsequent mass infections and deaths made it clear this was an attack, whereas a small, covert planting of the bacteria would have left no traceable source. If your aim was to kill the Lacvamat that would have been your best bet, and to do it on all their worlds and the worlds they frequented in other systems. Contaminate them all simultaneously then sit back and watch them die.

But that hadn’t occurred, for no other illnesses had been reported in the ADZ to date. Only here, on Leerbot, was there an outbreak following the highly visible ship self-destruction in the atmosphere.

That told Donn one thing…this was a field test set up for a third party to witness. It was meant to impress someone in a way that could not be anything other than a deliberate attack.

Which made Donn suspect an independent faction, possibly selling bioweapons and using this attack as their advertising campaign.

There were other possibilities, but as the striker considered them he kept coming back to this one. His instincts told him this was just the beginning, and they were dealing with someone with considerable biotech capability, based on what his own medtechs were telling him. A level far beyond that which they knew any of the other races to possess.

Fortunately Star Force had already risen to a level above and beyond the others and would be able to counter whoever’s handiwork this was, but it meant there was a significant threat out there that had to be tracked down and neutralized…and Donn thought he had the first clue where to look.

The binder that held the bacteria and toxin-laden gel together had been identified, giving him one item on the shopping list to track down. Fortunately it wasn’t commonly used, so the list of potential suppliers wasn’t impossibly long. He also had the itinerary for the ship that had been destroyed to compare with and was planning on following that lead up first, but with the list of suppliers added to that thought process and the huge amount of gel necessary to have spread out so fast across the local region of the planet, his list of potential worlds shrunk rapidly.

He admitted there could be a great deal of diversion capable, but if he assumed the attackers to not have expected someone to be able to analyze the binder after the explosion, or at all, then they wouldn’t have gone far to get their materials. He put in a data mine request along with the information packet they were going to send back to Earth, looking for supply shipments of the binder and the other items that the medtechs suspected were used in its construction. Keeping the bacteria alive and, apparently, producing toxin required a number of nutrients in the gel, for otherwise the explosion wouldn’t have coated the debris with it.

It had been saturated, which with the concentration levels being guessed at and the production rate determined from the bacteria analysis gave Donn a loose timetable as to how long the gel had sat prior to detonation…which was in months. That gave a data range to search, but such a search was best left to analysts that did this stuff regularly. They’d scour the information grids on every available world and track down what he needed, if it was there to find.

That left Donn to go after the ship lead while he waited to see if they would find anything. First port of call then was the last world the ship had passed through enroute to Leerbot, with the rover lifting off from the infected world inside of three days and taking a close pass near to the star with its shields down where it sunbathed a bit to kill any bacteria caught on the outer hull before making a jump following what Donn hoped would be a trail of bread crumbs…if he could find a solid one to start with.

6

December 22, 2552

Weema System (ADZ border)

Weemstra

Morgan jumped from the cliff edge, pulling her legs up underneath her as she passed through the apex of the leap and fell like a rock out of view and down into the valley below, letting her speed build before finally goosing her jump pack to slow her descent. She didn’t bleed all of it off and let the remainder punch her through the treetops as she straightened out her legs and made herself into a needle that pierced the blue below.

Small branches snapped as she passed through, but the bush-like trees had no thick or firm supports, being a mass of flexible straws that ended with puffy blue leaves. The impact felt more like hitting a pillow than the sound of crunching branches attested, with her brown padawan armor taking the minor blows as she finally got down to the swampy ground below. Her boots sunk in two inches on landing, then she was off running through the thin puddles that dominated the very wet planet that the Skarrons had conquered 14 years ago.

The native Jenfor had been evacuated into the ADZ long ago, those that survived anyway, and the planet had remained just outside the ADZ on the upper edge of Beta Region. It was technically beyond the border but so close as to be within the contentious region, yet the Skarrons had never heavily colonized it. Star Force had never fought here, nor had the Protovic or Hycre. It was one of many small, single planet civilizations that had been run over by the Skarron advance. There were many still out there, hoping not to become the next victims or completely unaware of what was happening around them.

There were so many star systems in the galaxy that no one claimed them all. Races chose the ones they wanted and ignored the rest, with many people living in the ‘fly over’ systems and not attracting notice of the giants passing through them. The Jenfor hadn’t been so lucky, but the system was a lower ranking Skarron outpost, still thoroughly defended, but never having gained much notice. The ADZ had always been too busy elsewhere to do anything about the Skarron presence there, but now with some breathing room thanks to the Voku, Morgan was leading a coalition of ADZ troops to remove the enemy from this tiny piece of the border, regardless of whether or not the Jenfor would ever return.

Running at high speed and weaving through the clumps of shoots that led up to the canopy some 4 meters over her head, Morgan navigated via her battlemap as her ‘agile’ armor amplified her speed with its powered setting. One of two variants to the ‘standard’ version of Archon armor, the agile version was slightly less bulky due to some 46% less material, making up for it with double shield generators. That worked well in short, quick engagements but lacked the staying power of the standard or ‘heavy’ versions that had additional armor plating.

Paul favored the heavy for some reason, but Morgan had picked up the agile as soon as it came out of prototype stage and right now she was glad she had, because between the looseness of the feel and the power amplification she was doing some 39 mph through the vegetation enroute to a Skarron battery she had to take offline before a contingent of ground troops dropped directly into the center of one of the Skarrons’ highest populated areas…as far as military troops were concerned.

Those ships were operating on a countdown clock, meaning Morgan had to get to and disable the primary anti-air defenses before they landed while some 6 other engagements were already taking place across the planet plus two more in orbit. The ADZ didn’t have many troops to spare, but Morgan had brought just enough to take care of business…if she could do some of the heavy lifting on the ground personally, which is how she always preferred it.

The Archon had already covered some 20+ kilometers from her drop point, having been run in close by a skeet and dumped off in a way that the enemy wouldn’t notice. She’d essentially been scrapped off the Star Force fighter as it dove towards the surface and clipped the treetops, making sure there wasn’t a falling silhouette that could be picked up on sensors.

The recent fall she’d just made had been unavoidable, for she was approaching on the blind side of a mountain ridge that was really more of a mesa edge. The rocky wall hopefully would cover her fall against the outpost’s sensors, but regardless she was on the clock and had to keep moving as fast as she could manage over the squishy ground.

True to her word, Morgan got to the outpost perimeter with 16 minutes to spare and crossed into the buildings with another hefty jump, moving up through the foliage again and popping out onto the rooftops that the forest was encroaching on. The Skarrons hadn’t burnt it back, or rather not recently for the growth near the edge was all fresh and faint blue, suggesting they’d just gotten lazy and hadn’t kept it ‘mowed’ down.

Once up top she leapt from building to building until she was finally noticed, then she dropped down and killed some two dozen Hobbits and a pair of Skarrons before running a bit to keep them guessing as to where she was, then she leapt back up to the rooftops and moved towards her primary target…not the big anti-air lachar battery, but the power source for it. It was located in a special building that was mostly equipment and storage overtop the actual power source that was buried below ground.

She fought her way into the building with little resistance that could stop her, though the streets were sprouting more enemies by the second. Watching the countdown in her opaque helmet she worked her way down to the generator and killed the staff there before taking a moment to look around and find the sweet spot, finally crossing to a particular bank of equipment and lighting it up with her plasma rifle to get through the casing.

She stepped forward, latching her rifle on her back after shooting one more Hobbit that scurried in and took a shot at her. Her shields caught it as the Archon dropped the enemy and dug her hands into the melted holes to get grip points, then with a foot put forward for support she yanked hard, using the power setting in her armor to enhance her own insane strength. It took three pulls, each of which warped the material further, before it popped off and exposed the interior.

Digging a hand into her thin satchel located underneath the jump pack near the small of her back, she pulled out three explosives and armed them, set to a detonation trigger in her helmet as well as a countdown that she programmed for 6 minutes just in case she couldn’t get a transmission through. Morgan buried them in the exposed equipment then ran out, brandishing her rifle and shooting all those she came across up until she hit a group of 20 or so pouring down after her.

She didn’t have time to kill them all so she just Fornaxed and ran over their twitching bodies, needing to get to the surface now rather than later.

Eventually she broke through into the outside air, running into a wall of white plasma orbs as soon as she exited the door. Jerking to the right she ran, getting a few steps into her sprint before mentally triggering the detonation signal. Her shields dipped significantly, then there was a huge earthquake that nearly knocked her off her feet but she managed to maintain her balance while the Skarron troops couldn’t. Their aim knocked askew she disappeared into a side street and kept running, now enroute to her secondary objectives.

The outpost had no missiles, but the lachar battery would have been enough to kill several of the incoming transports, beefy as it was. The two main defensive towers should also have been down, now without any primary power source, but there were smaller ones that had their own generators. Those were now her targets as she could see in the sky above, with some help from the ID tags on her HUD, the escorting drone warships dropping first to draw any potential fire as the bigger transports came down to an LZ a few kilometers away.

They were ahead of schedule by a good 2 minutes and it had nearly cost them, but fortunately Morgan had been ahead of schedule too and it looked like the battery hadn’t got a single shot off for the ships were showing no damage or shield depletion, though there were a swarm of fighters moving about picking at them where they could. An Axius squadron was up there was well, eating through them with regularity but still outnumbered. This was going to be a tough fight, but so long as there were no Skarron surprises in store they should own them…if there weren’t any more snafus like this timing issue.

Morgan would deal with that later, if she remembered. Right now she had a million things to kill and not enough ammo for all of them, for the enemy barracks were emptying in a nearby facility in light of the incoming attack and she wanted to get to and whittle them down before they met the Scionate and Canderous troops on the ground.

There was a turtle coming down with them to handle the single Type-5 walker nearby, with everything else being infantry…but a lot of infantry. The other walkers were engaged in other locations on the planet, leaving the door open for this main strike if one was bold enough, for there really was a lot of infantry present, plus a horde of workers that probably weren’t going to up and surrender.

But for a trailblazer ‘infantry’ was basically free kills, especially one with Jumat. Morgan stayed in the outpost for a while, killing as many as she could come across as she zigzagged her way from turret to turret and over to the main barracks, then crunched an ambrosia senzu beam that she telekinetically pulled out of a rack of the potent doses inside her helmet. There were 12 different concealed slots tucked away wherever there was room and Morgan had 12 beans there for future use. It took some wiggling to get it around to her mouth, but when she did it went in and the trailblazer started the mental countdown to overdose, making sure she’d get to the mass of troops pouring out and heading towards the LZ before the negative effects began to hit her.

She was still in the Skarron infrastructure, now working her way across the lower rooftops with several long jumps across the streets when she saw the first elements of the enemy infantry begin to engage the Canderous scouts in the forest on her battlemap. She couldn’t visually see them because they were below the canopy, but she could see the carpet of Hobbits sprinkled with Skarrons disappearing underneath it like a line of rabid fans bunched up to get the first copies of Halo on release day.

Morgan couldn’t get ahead of them, so she opted for a rear attack, maybe make them hesitate a bit and buy her troops more time to unload and get into position. She knew the Canderians had rocket launchers that could pop the Skarrons in one hit, so it was just a matter of them chewing up the Hobbits and that would come down to numbers, position, and patience…for they were each worth at least 5 of the little jerks in a firefight. Trouble was, there were literally tens of thousands of them coming out of the barracks, which wasn’t a building but an entire complex.

That didn’t discourage Morgan, rather it enhanced her determination as she came to the last building and did as big of a jump as she could off it, maxing out the jump pack to send her several hundred meters ahead where she dropped down like a bomb into the edge of their swarm in the gathering plaza outside the barracks.

She crunched one Hobbit on landing then sent out a Fornax pulse that toppled more than a hundred of them around her like bowling pins with her shooting as fast as she could pull the trigger on her rifle and not aiming at any specific one. There were so many that so long as she aimed level to the ground she would hit someone, so she fired over the heads of the downed ones and killed/wounded those beyond the circle of disoriented enemies…who then began standing back up and blocking the return shots starting to come at her.

Those shots hit and missed, with the misses in turn hitting other enemies as an added bonus. Morgan turned the shields on her arms and legs off and began punching/kicking the Hobbits around her as they stood up, pausing for split seconds to fire plasma shots before she was back to hand to hand. She did that for some twenty seconds, getting adjusted to the combat situation and smiling inside her helmet as she began to work up a bit of a sweat and the first twinges of ambrosia overload began to hit her.

She let it build a bit more then ran through the mass of Hobbits, knocking several aside to get her further into the midst of the group but nowhere near to the center, then she dropped her rifle and extended both hands out to her sides, summoning the Jumat into her limbs then throwing it out like invisible punches that knocked two or three enemies down with each rapid fire blast.

White plasma was everywhere, and the more Morgan batted the Hobbits around the more friendly fire hit them…and those that didn’t were usually shell-shocked enough that they didn’t immediately get up. Others were injured or sometimes killed if they were close enough to Morgan when she released the concussive energy, with it hitting them like a brick wall and snapping their small bones in some cases.

When she got to one of the Skarrons she paused a brief moment to get a larger concentration, then in theatrical mode pulled both hands back and did a Kamehameha as she took several plasma blasts to her shields…with one of them not making it all the way to her, for the plasma orb actually was thrown backwards as she released the Jumat. It dissipated before it hit anything, but the residue washed over a Hobbit near the Skarron that she knocked upside down, flipping it backwards and onto its arms with its thick legs kicking around like a crab trying to right itself.

“Morgan, get out of there now!” a voice yelled in her helmet.

“Wha…” she said, caught off guard and getting whacked in the face with a Hobbit plasma orb. She pulled herself back into the moment and threw off a few more Jumat blasts while telekinetically picking up her rifle and bringing it into her left hand while continuing to use her right to knock enemies aside and cause continuous confusion.

“Just get out, the LZ is compromised. We can’t wait for you.”

“What…” she said, getting knocked down as a Hobbit tackled her from behind. She twisted on the ground and kicked him off before throwing up a wave of concussive energy that cleared the perimeter around her fallen body long enough for her to get up and start running towards the edge of the mass of troops back towards the buildings that she’d jumped in from. “…is going on?!”

“The Scionate are pulling out…all of them. Every unit and ship across the planet is leaving.”

“What the hell?” Morgan said, shooting some more as she got her mind into fleeing mode as she watched her shield strength closely. Fleeing was going to get her more hits, but it couldn’t be helped. Without the LZ pushing forward with troops there was no way she was going to be able to take on the whole Skarron army by herself.

“They’re silent on the comms too, so I don’t know what they’re doing,” the naval specialist ranger in charge of the orbital fleet and overall mission organization said in dismay. “But they’re leaving us hanging in a very bad way, and not just where you’re at. I’m scrambling to make adjustments, but just get yourself out of there now!”

“Going,” she said, forcing herself to stop running in a straight line as the shields covering her back began to get close to breaching…and if the shots got through to her jump pack she was going to be in real trouble.

Morgan turned to the left and circled around, throwing off more Jumat and going aggressive again, tearing up and confusing the enemy enough to cover another quick sprint closer to the edge but not on a straight line. She stopped again and repeated, making small frog hops through the mass until she got to the edge and headed towards one of the building doors, stopping just in front of it and doing a Jedi jump up to the roof as she was covered with plasma hits.

When her feet hit the rooftop edge she threw herself into a roll, getting out of the line of sight of those troops as her shields finally did breach. She rolled over her rifle and haphazardly got to her feet as the turtle shell of a jump pack rocked her sideways as she rotated around on top of it.

“Shit,” she said, getting a notice on her battlemap that a pair of fighters were breaking off from the main engagement and heading her way. She knew she had to get back down to street level or get roasted by them, so she ran across one building and jumped to the next, chancing one more before dropping off the edge and down out of sight…and landing on the back of a Skarron elite below.

Morgan didn’t even try to kill it, she just sent an Ikrid pulse into its mind that rendered it into a zombie. She didn’t have time to concentrate enough to put it to sleep, so she just stunned it enough to jump off its back and Jumat blast her way through the Hobbits escorting it as they opened up on her weak shields with their plasma.

Knocking them askew she ran off to the nearest corner, getting around it and out of firing range as she kicked in her powered setting and ran as fast as she could as more tiny soldiers and their ugly elephant-sized overlords kept popping up into view wherever she fled.

7

“Damn it,” Kev-10001 said, resisting the urge to punch the control sphere he was holding onto as he oversaw the planetary operations from orbit. He had 6 Warship-class jumpships contending with the Skarron fleet and guarding the cargo ships that had brought the troops in. He would have dismissed them to an obscure part of the system for safe keeping except that he couldn’t spare a single ship to go with them as escort plus some of them still had troops onboard.

There were also Axius and Canderous warships in system but the bulk of their naval force, some 62%, were Scionate…all of which were pulling out of the fight to screen for their own transports that were picking up their ground troops and leaving the system. The Skarrons had obviously seen this and were pressing their attack, and the ranger didn’t have enough ships left to hold them back for long. As it was he was sacrificing some of his drones just to buy time to recall their own ground troops from the most dangerous planetary zones, with those in somewhat secure ones packing up to leave as well.

They couldn’t continue the assault without the Scionate for they just didn’t have the numbers, and anyone left down on the planet was going to be in a world of hurt…meaning he had to get them out before they were overrun in orbit and the logistics weren’t in their favor. He knew he couldn’t get them all out and it was the Scionate’s damn fault. If they’d just given him a 10 minute heads up that would have been something, but they hadn’t offered a peep of warning or explanation over the comms. They just up and started to leave, without him or anyone else realizing what was going on until several of their positions on the ground started to collapse as the Skarrons poured through the positions the Scionate had been holding.

The Scionate in Axius weren’t going with them, they were sticking with their units and they knew nothing about what was going on, but as glad as he was for them not abandoning ship it didn’t matter much at this point. Star Force was in full retreat now and losing men in the effort, which Kev was trying to minimize.

Worse yet Morgan was still down there, but she’d ordered him not to waste a dropship on her. He knew he just couldn’t leave her down there, but when it came to picking up 50 some commandos or her, he gave the trailblazer better odds at surviving another hour. But it wasn’t just her. Pretty soon he was going to lose control of orbit and there would be no more dropships heading down to the surface…and they had tens of thousands of troops down there.

Focusing on the task at hand he kept sending out Ikrid orders through the control sphere, taking personal control of the naval battle while tweaking ground movements…anything he could to make a difference, and there was no time to plan. They were already in over their heads and every second counted, so he didn’t waste time venting and worked the problem even as the dread in his gut began to grow as he noticed the casualty reports coming in on a side screen.

Morgan dropped from the rooftop, falling through a few meters of clean air before landing in the vegetation at the outpost’s edge. She hit hard, her jump pack now gone and discarded as it had been shot and damaged. Her feet twisted as they hit the straw-like stalks and she came down on her shoulder, jarring herself as she bounced around a bit inside her armor, but between the thin gel layer and the squishy ground she didn’t injure herself.

Rolling onto her feet she got up into a run as the nearest exterior entrance opened up and Hobbits flooded out into the forest chasing after her. She got four steps into her run before a geyser of dirt and steam blew up in front of her as a plasma blast from a strafing fighter burst through the canopy and hit two meters away.

The trailblazer jerked and juked but kept running, knowing her speed was her best defense as she put distance between herself and the outpost, but heading in a zigzag around the perimeter rather than running a straight line away that the enemy could anticipate and follow with or without seeing her. She didn’t know how well the sensors on the fighters would penetrate the foliage, but if she could lose them then she was going to do her best to do so…and if not she was going to make herself as hard a target to hit as possible.

She knew she could outrun their infantry, so long as they didn’t have any outside the perimeter already to collapse back down on her. It was the fighters that were the problem, and given the little demonstration she’d just made of her combat prowess the Skarrons knew she was a high value target and they weren’t just going to let her slip away.

Morgan pressed hard, covering 4 kilometers in just under 10 minutes but unable to lose their fighters that were stitching the forest around her with plasma. However they were tracking her it wasn’t precise, for they were missing most of the time but every now and then she’d get a wash of plasma that would take her shields down and melt a touch of armor. Fortunately the material had corovon flakes in it that resisted the high heat well, leaving her with the ability to take several direct hits, but while her shields would regenerate her armor would not, leaving every nick the Skarrons made a permanent victory for them.

Eventually she came to a break in the canopy and had to turn to her right, running along the side of a lazy river to avoid direct visual contact with the fighters. Wondering where she was going to go next as another plume of fiery foliage burst out in a spherical ‘pop’ to her right, she made a rash decision and veered left, jumping into the river and submerging herself as far as she could, down about two meters and digging her hands into the silt on the bottom to pull herself down the rest of the way.

The filter on her helmet locked up, keeping the water out and engaging her backup oxygen supply. It wouldn’t last long, but she should have a few minutes without holding her breath and the water would block the plasma. Question was, could they track her under water?

Not staying in place so their infantry could get to her last known position, Morgan pulled herself upstream against the light current, clawing her way across the riverbed and glad that it was muddy water. She could see where she was going thanks to the battlemap sensors that gave her a crude proximity map, but she one upped that and clicked on her Pefbar, getting a much more detailed visual. Once she got about 20 meters upstream a cascade of plasma came down where she had been, churning up the river and tracking up and down it…both ways.

One of the fat fighters came to a hover over the river, close enough for Morgan to make Ikrid contact though she resisted the urge to bring it down. She hacked into the pilot’s mind and observed what it was seeing, and with a bit of translation work got the feeling that they were tracking her shields.

That was odd, because to date they’d never shown an ability to do that. When she’d hit the water she’d turned them off so they didn’t waste power against the physical pressure. Pulling herself further upstream she got some more distance as the fighter began moving along the narrow riverbank, with the foliage on either side only a meter or two away from the craft as it moved downstream searching while others zipped by overhead.

Keeping her shields in standby  mode Morgan continued to move underwater, but finding it taking too long she risked a bit of disruption ripple and formed two pillars of concussive energy outside of her legs, pooling the energy on the outside of her armor before releasing it slowly down towards her feet. The light pressure pushed against the water and moved her forward, with the trailblazer reaching her hands out in front of her and forming a guide fine to adjust her depth and direction as she moved further up river.

She kept going up until her oxygen ran out, then trolled over to the riverbank and poked her head up inside some of the overhanging blue leaves. The filters unlocked and began to pull small amounts of oxygen from the air to recharge her backup as she breathed normally, sitting and waiting as she extended her Ikrid out to its limits in search of nearby minds.

She immediately noticed a creepy little six-legged lizard a couple meters above her head, but other than him and several others along the river bank and some smaller stuff up in the trees she was alone, now that the fighter had gone back up to altitude. Keeping her shields turned off, Morgan slowly crawled her way up out of the water and through the foliage on the edge, then disappeared off into the forest intent on putting some distance on her last known position as far as the Skarrons were concerned.

Ella-2109BB-17 twitched, sending a spike a pain through her abdomen that cut through the sleepy haze swallowing her head. She fought it further, bringing herself back to consciousness enough for her to open her eyes…seeing the inside of her battle helmet and half a visor full of mud as she lay on the swampy ground with something obscuring her vision a meter away. She tried to roll her head over but the pain exploded again as she tried to move, with her briefly remembering getting hit with plasma before she’d blacked out.

Gritting her teeth the Canderian forced herself up a few inches, raising her helmet out of the ground where it had been half buried. She didn’t have a chance to swipe the mud off for as soon as she got some elevation she realized the thing blocking her vision was a body…along with several others around her. She was laying on the battlefield they’d just fought on along with the dead.

With that thought bringing her fully awake she checked the battlemap, seeing that nobody was around save for a swath of red dots…indicating the position of other suits of armor with suspected deceased individuals inside. The dots had to be manually added after the fact, so that transmitters that wouldn’t be turned off wouldn’t cause nearby active troops to think reinforcements were nearby.

Ella saw that her own dot was tagged as red as well. She bit back a scream of pain as she twisted when her arm slipped on the mud beneath her, falling face first back down to the ground and remaining there as she adjusted the battlemap to take the red off her dot.

She didn’t know how bad her injury was, but it wasn’t going to let her do more than maybe walk. She couldn’t fight, and didn’t know how much blood she’d lost, but she obviously couldn’t stay here. The Canderian resolved herself to finding a way to move, but first she needed to figure out where exactly she was and what the situation was.

Readying herself for another flare of pain, she clenched up her muscles and pushed herself up to her knees with her head still on the ground.

The tears in her eyes attested to the lack of disappointment in her body’s response, but she somehow managed another transition, rolling backwards so she sat on her heels and got her torso upright so she could look around, but her first glance was down at her gut…which was missing a huge chunk of armor. Beneath it was missing skin and muscle, with charred flesh mauled up in a mess so bad that she made herself stop looking.

Knowing that she wasn’t going anywhere on her own, she searched on her battlemap for any nearby units, extending the range out as far as she could. There were still several contacts in orbit transmitting their locations, but nothing on the ground aside from more red dots. There was nothing for her to flee to, so she did the only thing she could, knowing she wasn’t going to survive very long with this wound. She unsafed her primary transmitter and activated the emergency beacon setting, transmitting in the open and with a signal strong enough to reach orbit.

It wasn’t stealthed like the battlemap signals were, so the Skarrons could pick it up too if they were looking. Hopefully that wasn’t the case, but there was nothing else she could do. Looking around she saw dead everywhere, both Canderians and Hobbits, along with a good number of Skarrons too but the distribution was all wrong. Normally the Canderians would make the enemy pay for a defeat like this with 10/1 kills, but they’d been blindsided by not one, but two infantry surges that caught them in the flanks as they’d been executing a hasty, but controlled retreat.

Ella had been hit early, but even she knew the numbers they were facing were all wrong. Someone had screwed up badly for that many enemy troops to be that close nearby. And with so many Canderians dead around her they had to have either been hit by heavy weapons or so many infantry that there literally was no way to shoot them all.

But that didn’t matter right now, survival did. Looking around for somewhere to drag herself, all she saw was bodies and scorch marks on the plain they’d been running across. The forest edge was too far away to get to and the narrow ravine in the center didn’t have enough terrain to hide in, so she picked the biggest thing around, that being a Skarron body, and started dragging herself towards it.

She crawled half a meter before having to stop, biting back the pain, then resigned herself to moving only a few inches at a time so her abdomen didn’t have to flex too much.

Bit by bit she moved herself over some 35 meters, finding a plasma rifle on the way and dragging it with her up to the side of the dead thing that was missing one of its arms. It lay a couple meters to her right, with the plasma gun still attached to its ‘wrist.’

She poked it with the rifle several times, wanting to make sure it was dead, then moved herself up alongside the elephant-sized corpse and lay down on her side, curling up in a ball and trying to hold as still as possible without putting tension on her abdominal muscles that weren’t fully there anymore.

It was hours before anyone got to her, but eventually a shadow crossed over her helmet and she lifted her head slightly to get a better view…but there was no one there.

The shadow moved, and only then did she realize it was coming from further away. Despair flowing in her as the last hope of survival was dashed, she replaced it with spite and summoned up as much anger as she could to push back against the pain. Grabbing her rifle she got to her knees and saw the Skarron walking nearby that had cast the shadow, then the scattering of Hobbits around it, none of which had seen her yet.

The big one wouldn’t go down easily, but she wanted to get at least one of the small ones. With her back obscured by the corpse she stayed put, not thinking that she had enough abdominals left to stand, and leaned back against it, giving her torso some stability as she raised the rifle and took aim at the closest Hobbit.

The Canderian hit it with the second shot, then put two more in it before switching to the targets that suddenly began swarming into her vision. Plasma orbs popped all around her, including one that hit her leg, but it caught on the intact armor there and she kept shooting, not knowing how much ammo was in the rifle and just pumping the trigger as fast as she could.

More plasma began to hit her, with her armor melting off in various places. Her helmet took a hit and her battlemap went out, with either the transmitter or receiver having been slagged. At the very least that made the red dots disappear.

The Canderian killed/wounded four more Hobbits before one of their little fiery white orbs hit her exposed gut, burning through what remained of her muscles and tearing apart her internal organs in a splash of charred tissue.

Her arms sagged and her rifle dropped out of her hand, with her being dead before it even hit the ground.

8

December 30, 2552

Weema System (ADZ border)

Weemstra

With a thought Morgan rendered the Hobbit scout unconscious, dropping him to the ground a few seconds before she broke from cover and scurried across the remains of one of Star Force’s firebases. It had been wrecked from fighter bombardment with nasty blast marks of melted material everywhere but was more or less intact and abandoned. The Skarrons had been here and gone, leaving only a few roaming troops doing what Morgan didn’t know, but if she wanted to stay alive she had to keep scrounging supplies from what was left behind, and this was the best place to look.

She’d come down to the planet with nothing other than the senzu beans in her helmet, but the orbiting fleet had managed to send a supply pack down to her through hot drop…several actually, with a cluster of little meteors raining down in the region she was in. She’d gotten to one before the Skarrons had gotten to the others, grabbing as much equipment as possible, including foodstuffs, but it had already been a week since then and the supplies weren’t going to last her forever.

With those stashed a few kilometers away in a place marked on her battlemap, she’d come across what had been a battlefield but with the bodies having been removed. The Skarrons had picked up their own dead first, then it seemed the Hobbits had scavenged the others and ate them, for the armor pieces were laying everywhere without any occupants. There were a few tree clumps but otherwise the location the firebase had been put up in was an empty, squishy plain that was just on the dry side of being a swamp.

Those troops in the firebase had evacuated long ago, the lucky ones anyway, and those ships in orbit had long since left. So far Morgan hadn’t come across any other battlemap signals from surviving troops, though given how spread out they were across the planet that didn’t mean much. The nearby LZ was the only one she was within range of, and it had sprouted three different firebases that had been left behind in the rushed evacuation…not to mention the equipment packs on the Star Force troops.

Those were strewn about with the armor pieces, and Morgan stopped next to one to look inside. Keeping her Ikrid senses alert for more roaming scouts she opened the pack and found it half empty, with some ammo and other useful items but no foodstuffs. Morgan plucked a few clips out and moved on, searching another two packs and likewise finding no foodstuffs, only a wrapper in one, suggesting that the Hobbits had eaten them too. After that she abandoned the battlefield and moved inside the remains of the firebase, finding it similarly looted.

At least all the cargo crates were, having been opened and emptied of everything edible, but when Morgan checked the emergency supplies in the walls she let out a sigh of relief when the hidden panels were still in place. She opened one and found both foodstuffs and water, plus medical supplies and other useful stuff once she opened up all of them throughout the base, giving her enough survival gems to stay alive a good while longer…if she had a way of carrying it all.

The trailblazer made the snap decision to leave most of it in place, resealing the panels that the enemy obviously didn’t know were there and deciding to come back for it later as needed. Taking a single satchel with her she left the firebase and headed across the chewed up ground dotted with disconnected armor segments and came up on the Hobbit she’d rendered unconscious. She knelt next to it, accessing its mind and making a few memory wipes so it wouldn’t remember falling, then she moved its body around into a sleeping position and input the idea that it’d decided to take a quick nap.

That way when it woke it wouldn’t raise an alarm. She needed to be a ghost here, both to keep the troops off her and to keep her stash in the firebase safe. Anonymity was how she was going to survive, and even one missing scout could betray her position if she made this one ‘disappear.’

Morgan got across the plain without incident, then headed back into the blue-leafed trees and took an evasive route back to her stash to make sure she wasn’t being followed, coming up on the car-sized boulder in the riverbed that had a small nook on the far side up next to a small cliff wall. She stomped her way across the water and circled around the rock, with her footprints being erased by the water.

Once out of sight she came up on a small patch of dry land pinched in between the boulder and the cliff wall with enough foliage over top to make a roof that would keep her invisible to any fighters passing overhead. Taking a moment to search the area with her senses she waited for nearly a minute before sitting down and pulling her helmet off. She swiped several beads of sweat onto her armored fingertips then flipped them off into the pool of water nearby, sending small ripples out in the otherwise calm puddle around the boulder base.

She tossed the satchel aside and began unlatching the armor on her chest, eventually undoing all the connected segments and crawling out of it and leaving the open shell on the ground like a carapace. Making another check of the area with a mental sweep, Morgan pulled off her sweat-soaked clothes one piece at a time and moved into the shallow pool, submerging her body as much as she could in the slightly cool water and trying to pull some of the persistent heat out of her chest. The weather had gotten insanely hot two days ago, and her armor only had so much heat dissipation capability built into it.

Part of those systems were now offline, having been damaged by plasma the second day, so her internal ‘air-conditioner’ was only minimally active and these cross country treks were causing her to sweat out way too much water. Fortunately the drop kit she’d recovered had a device that allowed her to drink the river water or collect moisture out of the air and she was using it a lot, but her internal heat levels were still too high and she guessed she had a fever.

It was odd, because Archons almost never got sick. Their immune systems were so buff with all the training that the worst they ever got was a little sniffle, but new planets had new biological problems to contend with and she was pretty sure she’d picked up something here that her body was fighting off well, but leaving her a bit heat sick in combination with the temperature and the oppressive humidity.

She spent several minutes in the water naked before crawling over and grabbing her sweat soaked shirt. Still kneeling in the pool she wrung it out then dipped it underneath the surface and tried to hand scrub as much of the grime out of it as she could. Morgan repeated the process with the rest of her one set of clothes and laid them out to partially dry as she stayed in the water trying to get her temperature down while mentally scanning the area every few minutes.

So far her hideout had remained secure, but there was more than Skarrons and Hobbits about and three days ago she’d been jumped during the night. Fortunately she slept with armor on so the cat-like beast’s claws only scrapped her plates before she woke up and none too gently sent it packing. Since then she’d been on the lookout for more critters, both on land and in the water, not wanting to pick up any leeches or other nasty stuff while skinny dipping, but there was no way she was going to stay in her armor and roast if she could help it.

Morgan dipped and washed her hair in the water then swam out around the rock and into the river where she could feel the current and relieved herself with her body mostly below the surface to keep her little pond clear. She looked around in the bright daylight as she did so, with the blue foliage everywhere along the water’s edge on both sides. Chirps and squeaks were audible everywhere, making for a quiet din that made her even more nervous about enemies sneaking up on her. If she hadn’t had psionics to give her a definitive answer as to what was out there she would have driven herself crazy with worry.

She didn’t have a watch on, for it would interfere with her armor, so she didn’t know how long she spent in the water, coming back in and almost sleeping in the puddle for a long time before walking out and drip drying…which was difficult in the humid air. She wrung out her hair and put it back into the ponytail she’d had since she’d began basic training then grabbed her mostly dry clothes and put them back on before getting something to eat and stashing away the new supplies with the rest that she had hid until a bush that she’d uprooted outside and brought into the nook to cover the hole she’d hand dug.

After that she waited a long time, sitting down on the ground and pulling her knees up to her chest and thinking. She didn’t have anything else to do and she needed to reduce her calorie expenditure down from her Archon high metabolism. Her body didn’t like doing that, but she gave it at least a short run in armor each day to help and keep her from going totally stagnant, but she really didn’t like just sitting and waiting…though given the circumstances that was what she had to do.

And given that her body was used to a lot of activity she couldn’t sleep much, which left a lot of time to just sit and think…and she really would have killed for a video game right now, even if only played in her helmet’s HUD. When she got off planet that was one of the to-do items going on the techs’ list.

After she’d had too much staying in place she got back into her armor and took a walk around, scouting out the immediate area. Moving slowly she didn’t burn many calories and spent the rest of the day tracing a circle around her hideaway several kilometers in diameter looking for scouts and just getting a better feel for the topography, which was varied and vegetation covered. Underneath the trees were ravines, switchbacks, and all other kinds of things that made navigation difficult. A good place to hide in, but also to get cornered in, especially if the fighters returned.

Ever since she’d switched her shields off they’d been absent, which was something else she needed to get back to the others to tell them sooner rather than later, though right now there was nothing she could do other than try and commandeer a Skarron ship…and if this forced inactivity lasted much longer she might start to get ideas in that direction, despite the impossibility of it. Even if she could manage to fly it she’d never get past the ships in orbit.

No, she had to wait for rescue, meaning her fate was now in someone else’s hands…and that was something that Morgan absolutely hated.

Two days later, after another cooling session in her private pond, she put her armor back on and saw a recorded message waiting for her. Cursing herself for not having put it on sooner she played the transmission, which as it turned out was intended to be one way.

They were going to try a hot extraction for her and had come down into orbit on a trial run to get within broadcast range, giving her the message that included coordinates and a timestamp…indicating that her ride was coming in a little over 2 days from now at a point 52 kilometers away.

That was a decent hike, but given that they didn’t know exactly where she was they’d just had to pick one that looked favorable in the general vicinity of her last known position. The 2 days was to give her time to get there, and potentially for orbital concerns. A ‘hot’ extraction meant it wasn’t going to be secretive and the enemy was going see them doing it. That meant the retrieval team had to get to the LZ ahead of the bad guys, grab her, then get out again before they got blown away.

Morgan had organized such things numerous times and knew they were tricky, but the news led to a surge of energy in her, for now she had something to do…get to the LZ and secure it in a way that they could pick her up in a manner of seconds.

With that goal now before her, her mind set itself to the task at hand and the heat no longer seemed the dire threat it had been previously. She had a countdown and knew she could put up with it for that long.

Morgan pulled out one of the emergency satchels and put enough foodstuffs in it for 3 days then hid the rest back in the hole on the off case that the extraction went bad and she was still stuck here. Taking it all with her would make her too awkward, like a combat-ready Santa with sack and that just wouldn’t do. She needed to be mobile and intended to make the LZ ready to go…with a slim backup plan and a place to retreat to if needed rather than potentially having to drop her stash and leave it behind in order to run if the Skarrons got to her.

Putting the now shriveling shrub back over the hole, she left the nook and stomped back out into the water, crossing the river and moving up the far bank and into the trees as she accelerated up into an easy jog headed towards her distant extraction point.

Morgan watched from the treetops where she had climbed up to get a view of the sky as the dropship made its way down to the surface at a breakneck pace. At first she could only see it on battlemap sensors, for it was broadcasting its arrival in no weak terms, making her aware of where it was so that she could be ready…and ready she was. She was standing on the highest leaves of the trees, scanning the skies looking for Skarron fighters as she watched the dropship come down like a distant meteor with her helmet’s zoom.

When it got within a couple of kilometers overhead she let go her awkward hold on a cluster of straw-like stalks and slid down through the leaves, falling through the massive plant and eventually hitting the ground on her side, smacking the wet soil then rolling over and onto her feet before running out onto the gravel wash on a U-shaped bend in another river. The wash had no trees or vegetation of any kind, making for a small clearing for the dropship to come down in.

By the time Morgan got out there it was growing large overhead, and within the next 17 seconds it disappeared behind a nearby ridge, then zipped out over top of her a moment later with an opening boarding ramp as it rapidly descended down to the gravel.

The trailblazer ran for it and jumped up onto the ramp before it had the chance to touch ground.

“Go!” Morgan said over the comm as soon as her foot hit the metal, launching her inside between two Archon acolytes at the entrance.

The scenery outside whipped to the side as the dropship spun and accelerated upward. Neither Morgan nor the other Archons felt the shift due to the IDF, allowing them to casually close the ramp as a bit of wind pushed in to kiss Morgan’s armor as she tossed her nearly empty satchel to the ground with a sigh of relief, pulling her helmet off and heading for the cockpit.

“Nice to have you back,” one of the Archons said, following her.

“You have no idea,” she said, not looking back at him. “Note to the wise, the Skarrons can track our armor shields in the forest. We have to turn them off to avoid detection.”

“Damn,” the other one said, with the two exchanging glances. “What kind of range do they have?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not far. Get them overhead and they’ll own you.”

“Good to know,” the Archon said as he followed Morgan to the cockpit as the pilot was pushing the dropship as hard as he could to get up out of the atmosphere. On the holographic monitor they could see several fighter squadrons pursuing them, as well as nearby warships coming fast on an intercept…but at the same time three drones were moving down to cover for them.

“Where’s the rest of the enemy fleet?” Morgan asked.

“Busy on the far side. We had to pull them off to get you out.”

“How many others are getting picked up?”

The pilot shook his head. “You’re the only one to last more than 3 days.”

Morgan was silent for a moment, then turned and punched the wall with her armored fist. “What the hell happened?”

“I’m sorry, we couldn’t get back to the surface.”

“I meant with the Scionate,” she said, both fire and ice in her voice.

“I don’t know. I don’t think we’ve gotten a courier back with news yet, and with no relay in this system…”

“How many dead?” she asked angrily.

“I don’t know that either.”

One of the Archons behind her pulled off his helmet with an apologetic look on his face. “Twenty six thousand, four hundred and eighty one,” he said painfully slow. “We also lost most of the drone fleet covering the evac.”

Morgan closed her eyes and clenched her jaw, suppressing a string of vitriol that she knew would never be sufficient.

“Looks like we’re going to make it,” the pilot said after several dead seconds. “The drones are forcing the fighters off.”

“Thank you,” Morgan finally said, her voice now calm…yet dangerously so, like she was ready to snap and pounce at the first enemy to show itself.

“We don’t leave people behind,” the pilot said, fully aware that Morgan had ordered his dropship and others to skip her the first time in order to evac more troops.

“No, we don’t,” she said, glancing at the holographic map and seeing that they were nearly in the clear. Tossing her helmet to the floor and having it bounce off the wall and skitter around she began unlatching her armor with angry pulls. “Our allies are another matter.”

“What are we going to do?” the Archon to her right said, wrinkling his nose a bit at the smell of her rancid clothes.

“Get some answers,” she said, stepping out of the armor and into the crisp, cool air of the dropship with the planet’s excessive humidity blissfully gone, “then break some bones.”

9

January 24, 2553

Hatten System (Scionate Territory)

Inner Zone

Commander Yen’ten watched from the pit as his jumpship braked against the star and came back to relative speeds with the system, allowing for the continuous transmissions from the two inhabited planets in the system to begin registering properly, giving him the information he needed to plan the next jump…a small one across the system to the further of the two planets.

An insertion point in a friendly section of orbit was being repeatedly transmitted for any incoming fleets to hear, with the urgent call for reinforcements going out not just across the system but across the ADZ. Yen’ten’s troops had been on the border fighting Skarrons at Weema when the courier ship arrived with the recall orders, and since then they’d been on a breakneck course back to Scionate territory with him sucking his fuel reserves dry in order to get here as quickly as possible.

Running his gravity drives further out from both origin and destination systems allowed for greater speeds but had a diminishing return as the gravity weakened, costing you more fuel for less thrust. At the moment speed was more important so his giant troop ship had trimmed the navigation as closely as they could, now arriving with barely 4% fuel reserves. That would be enough to get them across the system with some left for maneuvering, but they weren’t making a stellar jump again until they got refueled…and the only way that was going to happen was if they won the ongoing fight occurring on both planets.

The Scionate troop jumpship came out of its microjump into middle orbit amidst a group of Scionate warships holding the rendezvous point while far more numerous fleets of Lacvamat ships dominated low orbit…but not enough to blockade the planet, which had the surface tied up in battles that saw the enemy pushing over 2/3rds of the smaller planet of Orril and with a solid but contained foothold on Rewqt. According to his information the Lacvamat were pushing Orril hard, intent on wrapping it up then moving their troops over to Rewqt to then conquer that world, with Yen’ten being ordered to send his 36 transports worth of ground troops down to Orril.

They had to hold that planet or lose the system, and with so many Scionate troops deployed elsewhere in the ADZ there was no way of telling when the next group would return. Three systems were under assault, all smaller ones. The Lacvamat hadn’t been so bold as to hit their Capitol or primaries, but they were succeeding in taking the targets they were striking, due in no small part to the fact that the Lacvamat had no troops on the front and were essentially hitting the Scionate with a dishonorable, blindsided attack.

But that advantage wasn’t going to last, for the troops on the fronts were being recalled en mass to defend their territory, giving the Lacvamat a window of opportunity that the local defenders were trying to stall out…with little success. A quick glance at the overall troop disposition and Yen’ten knew his transports would be going down heavily outgunned, but they had to hold at least a piece of the planet to deny the Lacvamat the clean sweep. More troops would be on the way, he knew, and the Scionate were the dominate military power of the two, so if they held long enough the scales would tip in their advantage, but they were going to have a very bloody price to pay in order to do that.

There was no question whether or not they’d pay it. The Lacvamat had hit Scionate territory and every single one of the quadrupeds was now out for blood. They’d do what was necessary to attain eventual victory, even if it meant fighting and dying here to buy time for others to finish the job.

The jumpship waited at the orbital rendezvous point long enough for the other ships following it in to arrive, which took nearly two hours, but that was as long as they were going to wait. Two more jumpships, one a troop ship identical to Yen’ten’s and one a warship carrier that added desperately needed firepower to the Scionate orbital presence. With those ships and the others working as escorts, Yen’ten ordered his transports to disconnect and head down to the planet to make a contended landing in a very hot LZ where the troops already on the surface were losing ground rapidly as they retreated across a massive grass plain with only a few small cities to find shelter in.

Mik’tal ran hard, keeping pace with the Scionate tank alongside him. The big, blocky rectangle shielded his right side and the hole in his yellow armor as the skies overhead were filled with distant Lacvamat. Little energy orbs dropped like rain, landing randomly across the landscape from the unarmored flyers that were too far overhead for the infantry to shoot back at. The few Valeries in the air were consumed by the Lacvamat’s own fighters, shaped like a boomerang similar to their starships.

Those fighters were nearly the Valeries’ equal, despite the inferior technology…but then that was to be expected of an aerial race. Trouble was that meant the Scionate had lost air superiority, which meant they’d effectively lost the ground war because the Lacvamat didn’t fight on the ground. They flew overhead and rained down ordinance on the infantry, landing only when there were key structures to take.

In those few situations the Scionate were eating them alive, making it hard for the Lacvamat to take the few outposts and cities ahead, giving Mik’tal and the other fleeing troops somewhere to run to. They’d just had to evacuate one of their major cities, with so many Lacvamat flying overhead and dive-bombing his unit that they’d been hard pressed to see the sun in the sky. The enemy was attacking in swarms, even on the ground, making it virtually impossible for the Scionate to hold out once the city shields went down, though his unit had made them pay for the victory with many kills when they came down inside the buildings.

Mik’tal had barely gotten out alive, more due to luck than skill, then had taken so many orb hits from above as he ran that his shields had gone down and his armor was penetrated on his right side. The wound was light, but it pained him as he ran…but run he did, for the Lacvamat were still overhead raining down glowing little purple orbs that were hitting the tank beside him and every now and then himself when he got unlucky.

Staying as close as he could to the tank he avoided taking another hit to his exposed side, but the further he and the others ran the more of them got hit, for there were more than 500 infantry running alongside 18 tanks and a myriad of civilian vehicles as they made their way towards the outpost ahead, which was already throwing up anti-air against the fighters pestering it ahead of the Lacvamat ‘infantry’ swarm.

Small twangs of energy discharge were sounding everywhere the orbs hit, then suddenly there was a loud screech of plasma overhead just before a Valerie shot over the tank so close that Mik’tal flinched. Two more quickly followed it and a glance upward saw the Lacvamat swarm changing its normal flow as the Scionate fighters flew directly into their midst, shooting or ramming them out of the sky.

The first glint of hope in many hours forced Mik’tal to continue looking up as he ran, catching an orb to his armored face that then drove him down into the ground. His head hit and tripped him up, rolling his armored body over in a bad somersault as the tank continue to move ahead of him. A small personnel transport behind him hit him in the head as it didn’t slow, knocking him down a second time underneath it as the anti-grav vehicle floated over him.

He held still for a moment, then popped up and got into the clear before the next vehicle in the convoy could do the same, nudging aside another Scionate and falling back into the group as they ran with the orbs continuing to drop even as the Valeries tore into the swarm…but the Lacvamat weren’t letting the ground troops go, intent on killing them in the open and having more than enough flying infantry to do it, no matter how many of them the Valeries took down.

Mik’tal continued to run, seeing a few others around him go down to the purple rain accompanied by the occasional falling Lacvamat corpse, as they were still two kilometers away from the outpost and the more or less clear sky over it that was still in contention with weaponsfire and enemy fighters continuing to go at it, though the outpost’s shield appeared to be down, which was probably why the Lacvamat weren’t pulling back despite the losses they were taking.

Mik’tal’s skin rippled with goosebumps as a loud rumble sounded on his right and grew louder quickly, with the sun going out above as a Scionate troop transport flew in low overhead, pushing the enemy infantry away with its own anti-air fire but more importantly blocking the airspace above the convoy so they couldn’t rain down fire on them. Elsewhere nearby other troop ships were coming down right into the swarm and beginning to unload with Mik’tal very glad for the help but knowing that the Lacvamat weren’t going to be easily displaced.

He just hoped all these Scionate weren’t coming in to see their quick deaths.

The transport overhead stayed with them all the way up to the city, but then it began taking heavy plasma hits as the Lacvamat version of walkers began pounding it. They were fighters, but so bulky and heavily armed they were more like mini flying turrets…and a group of 60 or so were coming in through the infantry swarm to hit the transport, as well as firing down underneath it.

The vehicle to Mik’tal’s left took a hit, then quickly two more that exploded a chunk of it out that bowled over four Scionate ahead of him before tearing into the grassy plain and setting small fires in its wake. He didn’t know if they were injured or dead but he didn’t stop, knowing that he’d end up like them if he didn’t get indoors and the outpost was just ahead. He kept running, trying to block everything else out, including a plasma blast that fried the Scionate next to him and took down his own shields, leaving the left side of his armor a melty mess.

A few seconds later and his left rear leg seized up as the melted metal hardened and locked the mechanical joint in place. Mik’tal fell, then got up into a three-legged limp continuing forward as another tank flew directly over him. He had to duck to keep from getting hit, but was momentarily glad for the air cover.

When it passed him by he saw troops coming out from the outpost towards them, fresh troops, one of which came up to him and knocked him over with her head, then rolling him up into a rescue carry over her back with his armored paw in her mouth as she retracted her helmet into segments that pulled back down her neck.

Glad for the awkward help, he let her carry his massive bulk all the way into the outpost gate where she dumped him to the side then disappeared, with him seeing her helmet reform just before she went back outside. Now laying next to a building, Mik’tal dragged himself over to the nearest entrance and went inside, relieved to be out of the deadly rain, and inspected the damage to his armor and realizing he was going to have to jettison it. He couldn’t fight with three legs, so he began peeling it off and pried his leg out of the jammed section, leaving him with only the wound on his right side hindering him.

He was alive, for the moment, and needed to either find a new set of armor, which was unlikely, or find some way to assist the others that didn’t involve taking weaponsfire.

Ven’poi ducked his Valerie down through the Lacvamat swarm again, cutting through three of them with the bladed front of his fighter before even getting to fire the scatter gun, mowing down another dozen within a few seconds, but for every cluster he killed more came in to replace them. The sky was literally cluttered with the enemy, making for a target rich environment that had a very bad time targeting him. Their weaponry was designed to use gravity assist to cause heavy damage on the ground, with their air to air setting being very inaccurate. Add to that their reluctance to fire laterally for fear of hitting their own and Ven’poi had virtually a free fire zone to work through up until the enemy fighters got to him.

Somehow the swarm knew when they were coming and parted for them, allowing their fighters and heavy fighters through without any collisions. Their boomerang-shaped fighters took after him immediately, two against his one, and he knew he had to run. Dropping down to the surface was suicide, for the infantry would bombard the hell out of his ship, so his only choice was to go up and above the swarm…and quickly finding that’s where the other Scionate fighters had gone as well.

The boomerangs came up with them, both the small and the large versions. The larger ones were slow enough that Ven’poi could stay away from them, but the Lacvamat fighters would retreat towards them whenever the Scionate got the advantage, forcing them to either peel off or go head to head with the flying death traps. The heavies had enough weaponry and armor to slug it out with tanks, making his Valerie severely outgunned. The only way he could take one down would be to nip away at it with hit and run attacks, but the Lacvamat fighters wouldn’t allow that, making for a potent two-punch combo that frustratingly gave them aerial dominance over top the swarms continuing to assault the ground troops below.

Ven’poi knew they couldn’t win, so he focused on doing damage. Every enemy he killed here without getting himself shot down would be one less the Lacvamat would have to throw against other Scionate tomorrow. With that in mind he engaged the enemy fighters when and where he could, but when they tried to draw him off towards one of the heavies he let them go, dipping down to the upper edge of the swarm and killing dozens more infantry there before the fighters returned to chase him off again.

Eventually the outpost beneath them was overwhelmed, but the newly arrived ground troops were holding position a kilometer outside it with a tight cluster of tanks with infantry around them firing up randomly into the air and managing to hit the Lacvamat infantry enough to do damage, even when their plasma spit only brushed against them. The tank blasts did far more damage, and through sheer number of weaponsfire the swarm began to thin.

Then like clockwork when their numbers diminished to a predetermined level, the Lacvamat swarm turned and fled, all of them, in a matter of seconds as their fighters flew around behind them, covering their exit as they left the Scionate ground troops behind to reclaim what was left of their orb-battered outpost.

Ven’poi tried to chase after them, but their fighters wouldn’t let him or the others get close to the swarm that was now tightly bunched up to make it easier to protect as they flew rapidly across the landscape back towards one of their surface encampments, which were literally prefabricated vertical buildings where the flyers would roost. Ven’poi desperately wanted to bust one of them up, but their defenses were too strong to go up against with anything less than a full ground assault…or a warship.

But still, the idea was to hurt and stall the enemy. With that momentarily accomplished the Scionate pilot flew back over his own troops, waiting for orders on where to go next and getting a recall order to his carrier transport. He flew back inside the bay and set it down on the appropriate spot, then abandoned the cockpit and let the crew move it to where they wanted for service and repair, for he’d taken a few hull hits during the fighting.

Others hadn’t been so lucky, and a number of slots in the bay remained empty. Pushing aside thoughts of the dead, he headed further into the grounded ship to get some water and an update on their next mission…keeping himself ready to be called to the hangar at any time. They’d come down directly into the heart of the fighting and it was unlikely that they were going to get much of a respite, for the enemy was hungry for their world and wouldn’t be denied for long.

How soon the rest of the Scionate military arrived would determine the fate of this planet, and Ven’poi truly didn’t know who would come out the victor, with only the relentless bloodshed to come being a certainty.

10

January 29, 2553

Plenx System (Dvapp Territory)

Rvitx

Paul read through Morgan’s report, his anger growing at the Scionate, but he wasn’t overly surprised. This was the third notice that had come through the relays of Scionate units suddenly abandoning their assignments. A day ago he had gotten the answer as to why…the Lacvamat had cited that it was the Scionate who had launched the bioweapon on Leerbot and the avians had subsequently attacked one of their systems in response. Given the amount of troops the Scionate had devoted to the border they were at a disadvantage to the otherwise inferior Lacvamat, necessitating the recall to defend themselves against what, according to the few reports had made their way out to Paul, was a huge offensive.

But that didn’t excuse the Scionate leaving other troops behind. According to Morgan they didn’t even tell her they were leaving, just up and pulled out in the middle of fighting resulting in many dead soldiers and even Morgan had to pull a Houdini just to survive. Paul didn’t care if Earth was under V’kit’no’sat attack, he wouldn’t sacrifice others to return to defend his home a few hours early.

Fortunately some of the other Scionate commanders had been more tactful, informing the Star Force and Protovic troops that they were leaving but still offering no explanation. Paul expected that was because they didn’t want to argue when their minds were already set, but regardless of their motivation they’d just significantly weakened the Skarron front and handed the enemy two worlds that were in contention…maybe more, with the reports filtering in through the relay grid and those, like Morgan’s, that had to get back to a grid nexus just to log in and be sent.

There were no Scionate units in Plenx, so Paul hadn’t lost any of his troops but several other systems had. He wanted to send some of his off to counter the losses but he couldn’t afford to do so. He’d finally gotten the Skarron offensive on Rvitx pushed into a stalemate and was using it to reset the battlefield to his liking. Given time he’d push the Skarrons back but he needed all the troops he could get to do it. The fighting was still heavy and looked to favor the enemy, yet Paul could read between the lines and knew he just about had them beat, so long as there weren’t any surprises heading his way.

No, he couldn’t reinforce anyone else. The best he could hope to do was win this campaign quickly so he could leave it in Dvapp hands and move off to another…but this was a planet he was talking about and taking it back from the enemy wasn’t going to be easy nor quick, and it was going to take his unique skills to lead them to do it, so he couldn’t redeploy himself either.

If the weakened systems were going to get reinforced it wasn’t going to come from him…which he explained in detail in a message that he sent out, hoping some of the others would be in a better position to help. If it wasn’t for the Voku disrupting the Skarron reinforcements the Scionate and Lacvamat would have just handed the enemy the border worlds...and he wasn’t entirely sure that they hadn’t. Right now there were at minimum 12 systems that were vulnerable. He didn’t know if the Skarrons could take advantage of that or not with the limited fleets they had, but those with troops already on the ground were beginning to roll over the weakened opposition.

Paul expected more updates to come in emphasizing that point, but his hands were tied so he tried to put it out of mind and focus on the problems before him…reclaiming the Dvapp planet and preserving the surviving civilian population while killing as many of their warships as possible.

Morgan waited for the boarding ramp to lower fully before she walked out the back of the Eagle-class dropship and onto the plaza surrounding the Scionate ruling den on Vaadsip, leaving about a 300 meter walk between the ship and the entrance with yellow-armored quadrupeds surrounding it and blocking her way. They began to part as she got close, seeing that she had no weapons, opening a path to her up to a pair of Scionate standing in front of the closed doors in their ceremonial armor, indicating that they were permanent guards assigned to the den rather than the standard military versions surrounding it as backup security.

“Permission is required prior to entry, Human,” one spoke, referencing the fact that Morgan’s dropship had simply informed the Scionate that it was coming down. The Scionate hadn’t fired on it, despite their never agreeing to let it land, but giving her access to the ruling den wasn’t going to happen, especially after what had happened the last time she was here…though it was for that reason that the other guards were giving her extra room as she passed through them. Her armor color had changed and the designed thinned down a bit, but otherwise she was still the same intimidating presence that she’d been when she, Paul, and Kara had kicked the old bloodline out of power…for which this one was still grateful.

Morgan didn’t stop walking forward, nor did she say anything. There was a brief staring match as she approached the two, then when it appeared she was going to walk between them they moved to block her way.

With a single stiffened palm, she pushed her arm forward on the go and threw both armored Scionate back through the air and into the closed doors with a concussive energy blast, bouncing them off it hard and dropping them to the ground.

“Open the doors or I will myself,” she said loudly, coming to a standstill a few meters in front of the tall, closed entrance.

She let her demand sink in for a long moment, then when there was no response she pulled back her arms into a Kamehameha position and readied a large blast to begin breaking through when the doors cracked open and began to slowly pull apart. The two shell-shocked guards stepped aside at the insistence of others that had received a comm message from those inside and got out of Morgan’s way as she continued to walk forward, meeting up with a ceremonial honor guard that led her in and through the building…more to keep others from interfering with her than to keep her from going where she wanted, which was obviously next to impossible to do with the Archon.

When they came to the audience chamber the guards stayed outside, allowing her private access to the room…that held only a single occupant. As she walked inside the doors closed behind her, sealing her inside with the Scionate leader, Jen’ton, coming down off his pedestal and meeting her halfway wearing no armor.

“I do not apologize for the recall order,” he said stoically

“One hour,” Morgan said icily. “One hour and I could have arranged a pullout. Your people gave no warning and left in the middle of battle. I lost 26,481 soldiers, most of my fleet, and the planet because you idiots couldn’t open a comm channel.”

The Scionate’s eyes narrowed. “Where was this?”

“Weema.”

Jen’ton frowned and turned around, walking back to his pedestal and accessing the controls there to bring up the battle reports. It took him a moment to find the ones for the system Morgan had mentioned, then even longer for him to read through them.

Morgan gave him time, her anger not abating with it.

Finally the Scionate leader shut off the holograms and turned around. “If what you say is true I have no record of it. Our troops recalled from there withdrew without incident.”

“I was on the planet at the time.”

Jen’ton looked up at her. “I will investigate the matter further. If the commander in question abandoned his post prematurely he will be punished for it.”

Morgan took a step forward and suddenly Jen’ton found his throat constricting and his body being lifted up into the air with his legs and backside dangling from an invisible grip.

“Twenty six thousand,” Morgan repeated ever so slowly, “four hundred and eighty one of my people are dead because of the Scionate. The planet we fought to retake is now fully in the hands of the enemy. My ships were destroyed trying to save as many of us as we could evacuate in the time you didn’t give us. The entire front is now weakened and vulnerable to a Skarron push, with even a small one now capable of taking more worlds. You betrayed us and the entire ADZ.”

“Re…lease me,” Jen’ton demanded.

Morgan held her Vader choke, pinching her fingers a little closer together and tightening her grip while she pulled her helmet off with her other hand, then tossed it onto the ground to her left.

“We told you that we would not tolerate any more misdeeds,” she said as the doors far behind her burst open and the guards rushed in, running over to where she was strangling their leader with her magic.

Morgan raised her ‘free’ hand, though technically her other one wasn’t necessary other than for theatrics, and summoned up a surge of Jumat, pooling it outside her armor for a moment then throwing it out in a hemispherical wave as the guards got within a few meters of her and Jen’ton, bowling them over with ease while her body didn’t so much as twitch.

“Killing…me won’t…change anything,” Jen’ton said defiantly.

“I was going for pain,” she said, taking a quick moment while the guards gathered themselves to access the Scionate’s mind and inject a stinging pain sensation…the feeling of a plasma burn from her distant memory translated as best she could into Jen’ton’s realtime senses. She forced it into his mind for only a second, just enough to get his attention before she telekinetically threw him over top of her and to the ground in front of the guards as she opened up and emitted the largest Fornax field she could, sending everyone around her also the ground.

She held the effect, simultaneously targeting one mind at a time and sending the Scionate individually into a deep sleep, neutralizing the guards until half of them were down and staying down, then she released the field and began to pick off the others in twos and threes, leaving Jen’ton to slowly stand up in the center as his dozens of guards were dropping like flies around him.

“Blame the Lacvamat!” he roared, both fear and anger in his tone. “They invaded us. We have to defend our own worlds!”

Morgan didn’t answer, still looking at and dropping guards as more came in and ran over to the fallen others. One actually fired a plasma shot at her, but she saw it coming and put out a telekinetic ‘net’ that actually caught the fiery ball of gas a few meters in front of her. She held it in place and let its glow fade out into nothingness before releasing the now hot air into the room…then she pointed at the one who had fired at her and sent a Jumat blast his way, knocking him back four meters to where he skidded across the ground and into the legs of another oncoming guard.

“What would you have us do?” Jen’ton demanded as she continued to mow down guards with her ‘sleep stun.’ “Let the Lacvamat take our worlds and kill our people? They are already close to doing that with the troops we recalled. We must defend our own kin!”

Morgan swiped an arm through the air sideways and bowled back another half dozen at range, then finally looked at Jen’ton, who was crouching three meters away and to the right. “Not by sacrificing others.”

“We have a right to defend our own first.”

Morgan’s rage ticked up a notch when he said ‘right’ and she telekinetically grabbed him again, dragging him across the floor and under her. She dropped a knee down on top of him and held him in place while once again emitting a huge Fornax field, dropping all the conscious guards in the room, then picking off a few more with her sleep stun before finally relenting and seeing Jen’ton’s eyes focus on her again as his body began to recover its function.

“You speak of honor as the foundation of Scionate society…but the truth is you have none. What you have is a bastardized version that puts you and your kin above all others, and where they cross swords with honor to you slay it to justify your own pride. Those you abandoned on the front are no less valuable than those at risk to the Lacvamat. You could have withdrew your troops in conjunction with us, we could have formed a plan that would have kept the front relatively secure with no unnecessary losses but you didn’t give a damn about anyone else! You just up and pulled out…and to what, fight the Lacvamat?”

Morgan raised her arm again and threw out another Jumat wave, knocking down the guards that kept trying to get close to her and their besieged leader despite the mounting bodies all around testifying to the stupidity of that notion.

“Your military is superior to theirs,” Morgan bit out. “You didn’t recall everyone to defend yourselves. When your pathetically slow jumpships finally arrive you’re going to push them off the worlds they have taken and then annihilate them for the impudence of attacking you! You let my troops die to go on a bloodlust!”

Morgan repeated her Fornax field, taking down and neutralizing a few more before continuing to speak.

“The Lacvamat claim you poisoned their world. They’re reacting the same way you are. Irrationally and dishonorably striking back at their supposed enemies.”

“We did not attack them,” Jen’ton said, snarling up at her face that was only a few inches above him, close enough to smell her Human breath. “If we had we would not have hidden our intent.”

“You sure about that?” Morgan asked irreverently. “Seems you don’t know what the hell your people are doing. Perhaps you should investigate that too,” she said, throwing up her arm again as more guards got a bit too close and sending these flying backwards so hard they took down others behind them, some of which were knocked unconscious by the impacts.

“We are not to blame in this war,” Jen’ton reiterated. “Why are you not on their homeworld?”

“They didn’t abandon my troops in battle!” Morgan said, slapping him hard across the face with her armored hand before emitting another brief Fornax field. “We put you in power to rule wisely and you stab us in the back, you treasonous bastard. We’ll deal with the Lacvamat on our own terms, but as you damn well know we don’t have the troops to spare. We don’t even have enough to hold the border worlds without you, and we’re going to have to scramble to try and find a way and hope the Skarrons don’t recognize and take advantage of the weakness.”

“You aren’t defending yourself against attack any more than the Lacvamat are. You’ve been building towards this for decades and now that you both have an excuse you’re going to go all out, damn the ADZ and everyone else in it, just to fulfill your bloodlust…and you know we can’t stop you without pulling troops off the border, which we WILL NOT DO.”

Morgan knocked some more guards down, but more and more kept coming in, making the room very cluttered and forcing her to keep rendering them unconscious in order to maintain a buffer zone around her and their leader.

“If you want to fight go ahead and bleed your dishonorable asses dry. The Sentinels we have guarding your worlds won’t defend you or the Lacvamat. In fact, we’re going to move them to the front to try and help fill the holes you’ve left us with. If the Skarrons or lizards or anyone else feel like jumping across the border and hitting you, well, you’re going to have to defend yourselves on your own merits…but then again you’re good at that, aren’t you? Going it alone and all. Putting yourselves first and saying to hell with your allies, so I think you’ll understand the concept, but don’t misunderstand this as consent. We simply can’t stop you…now. But don’t expect that to always remain the case.”

Morgan Fornaxed again, this time having to take down more than before. Apparently the masses outside on the plaza were finally working their way inside.

“And if you have a change of heart and feeling like fighting our true enemy again, you won’t be doing so with us. Pick your own battlegrounds, because we’re not sharing ours with ‘allies’ that may or may not stab us in the back again. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…not happening.”

Morgan stood up and telekinetically pulled her helmet back to her, slipping it on and no longer worrying about an errant plasma blast hitting her. She released her invisible hold on Jen’ton then kicked him hard in the gut, breaking at least a rib and sliding him a meter across the floor before Fornaxing again and pulling down the guards that were nearly on top of her as if she suddenly commanded the gravity of the planet to increase tenfold. They all dropped and she ran across their wriggling bodies, heading for the exit and busting her way through the troops there and all the way out to her waiting dropship.

A group of the troops outside approached her hesitantly, not sure whether to jump her or not as the boarding ramp lowered once again. Morgan walked to it, almost daring the Scionate to jump her, then held up a warning finger and waved it at those she felt were considering it. Remembering what had happened before they let her go, with other less wise troops coming back out of the den and trying to chase after her, but they were too late. The dropship took off and headed for her warship in low orbit…without any interference.

It left immediately, taking her back to the weakest areas on the front to do what she could on the ground in lieu of the armies of Scionate troops they no longer had. A trailblazer might not be able to replace the millions that had been lost, but she could at least rack up a decent kill count in their stead and hit some secure facilities to try and stall the Skarron advances while others began plucking the Sentinels out from Scionate and Lacvamat territory and redistributing them to the front.

STAR FORCE Facebook Page

STAR FORCE Wiki

1

April 2, 2553

Ezreal System (Zeta Region)

Karmath

Leote crept around the alleyway, shrouded in a dull brown cloak that hid his combat armor from view…not that there were that many people around to see. It was night and a few hours before the traffic flows would start manifesting themselves for the coming day. Better sections of the city had day-round traffic but the slum the Kiritas was currently in had a much more lazy routine, though there were always a handful of people milling about in some various stages of depravity.

He blended in well enough, though there were no other Kiritas or Kiritak on the planet. At least not in this regional zone belonging to the Mesoni. They operated a fairly loose society with a large number of other races intermingling with their populations and making up about 55% of the inhabitants, so Leote’s small form wouldn’t attract too much attention so long as he kept his head hidden. Kiritas were well known in the ADZ for their connection to Star Force, mainly due to the Kiritak that were deployed across dozens of star systems doing all kinds of work directly for Star Force as opposed to the Kiritas who were a semi-independent member nation within the overall empire.

Leote and the Kiritas kept to themselves for the most part, with the Archons not wanting them to play a role in the fighting on either war front due to the fact that their technology wasn’t up to par with the other races. It wasn’t for lack of trying, and Star Force had given them many upgrades…but through lessons rather than gifts, forcing them to advance on their own rather than simply be handed tech they didn’t understand. When it had been heard that Star Force had given the Hycre and Protovic advanced weapons tech some of the Kiritas had openly complained, though most loyal ones like Leote knew there was always a reason behind what their patron Humans did.

The truth was the Kiritas weren’t ready, and independence did have its drawbacks. Kiritak were already fighting in some small theatres because they’d been born and raised as Kiritak as opposed to being born Kiritas and transitioning over to Star Force service. Still, those Kiritak fighting were doing so in defensive rolls, for as far as Leote knew they had no line combat units with Kiritak in them.

Both the Kiritas and Kiritak were support players within Star Force and the ADZ, but for those like Leote that didn’t mean no combat…just not the full scale invasion scenarios others were having to deal with. Leote had seen more than 120 years of clandestine missions and small scale combat, having first been part of the Kiritas military then transferred to their special ops units that, unlike their line troops, actually went offworld and did something.

And they’d been doing a lot in recent years as the ADZ population continued to blossom…for with that growth there were always shady characters taking advantage of others and someone had to stop them. With the Archons and Star Force’s line troops busy fighting the big wars, units like Leote’s got to pick up the slack and fight the small ones in their stead. That was no small task and Leote was grateful for it. The more the Kiritas got to fight the better it would be for his people…despite the fact that most of them weren’t up to his level of skill.

This wasn’t the first alley he’d staked out, but it was the first time he’d worked directly with an Archon and that put an added emphasis on not screwing up. Right now the others were inside the building complex he was creeping around the outside of, covering a possible escape route for those inside if they bolted when the Archons went in. The other 7 members of his unit were likewise spaced around the perimeter at places the Archons expected the Compact might flee from and he was here to make sure that they didn’t get away again.

They’d been on their trail for months ever since they’d interrogated their first captive and began the chase. A shipping invoice trail had led them to a courier who had placed the order and was part of a quasi-military organization that had numerous divisions, mostly legit and commercial, but with a not so public presence in the shady regions of the ADZ…and a much larger one that Star Force had realized existed. Leote’s team had hit two previous facilities, both with some of their people managing to get away.

Enough had been caught, or computer records found, that the chase was able to continue across multiple star systems leading them here to what they suspected was a major hub of their illicit activities. The Archons and the Knight were going in, with the Kiritas being deployed as a safety net to catch some or all of the potential fleers if they managed to somehow avoid the heavy hitters.

Leote had been on station for more than three hours, getting his cover established and becoming part of the scenery as he alternated between sitting and standing against a wall, making himself look like the others that had nowhere else to go. It was sad, given everything that Star Force had done for the Mesoni and other races, that they would run such a poorly organized society. The freedom that many sought here was the freedom to misbehave, and with that came the class of rundown, trodden upon ‘support’ that the rest of the society stood upon.

This never would have happened on a Star Force world, and at least the nearby outposts along the border strips gave these people a possible escape, but once again it was made clear to Leote that life in Star Force was not the norm in the galaxy. Many of the Kiritas took for granted the lives they had and didn’t realize how messed up everyone else was, which was why Leote and others like him were eager to do everything they could to help Star Force fight its wars, on any front, so when the Archons called he and the others had eagerly responded.

And tonight it looked like he was going to make himself useful, for one of the side entrances about 50 meters down the alley suddenly opened and a Rama came out, turning to the left and plodding down the opposite direction. The big, beefy biped was literally all chest and arm muscle, with short, tree trunk-like legs that Leote knew wouldn’t let him outrun the Kiritas so he watched for a pair of seconds to see if anyone else was following him out. When there wasn’t he threw off his cloak and sprinted after him, his armor making small dull clicks on the dry, grimy ground as he scurried down the alley, tail swinging side to side behind him in stride, and caught up to the big guy about 10 meters shy of him getting to the main street.

Before he could get within physical contact range the Rama turned around and swung a huge four-fingered fist at him, but Leote lithely hopped over it, kicking off the giant’s shoulder and falling behind his back. As he dropped the Kiritas reached out and stuck a small, hockey puck-sized object onto his back, then rolled across the ground and sprinted away from the next fist to fly, getting a couple of meters of distance before triggering the handheld remote for the stun mine.

With the trigger press the stun energy surged out through the physical contact, soaking through the Rama’s clothing like a stinger would, and tipping the hulking mass over as he fell unconscious to the ground.

Leote hopped back over to him and nudged his head with his armored foot, making sure the mine had delivered enough stun, for on a race of his size all that bulk had a way of eating up and negating the energy. The Rama didn’t move, but the Kiritas jabbed him with a tiny stun stick anyway, making sure he was going to be out a while, then took up guard position until one of the Archons could eventually get to him, for there was no way Leote was going to be able to drag this one off without an anti-grav lifter.

Galia dragged the Rama by the arm back inside the building to the private lounge where the other prisoners were gathered, not even bothering to try and pick the big guy up and put him on her shoulders. She knew she could, for he wasn’t that heavy, but it would leave her vulnerable and she didn’t feel like trusting the local denizens that much. After she got him inside the Knight deposited him next to the last four individuals she’d claimed from the Kiritas, then headed back out to get the 5th of what was 12 reported captures…with a few having slipped their grip again.

This time, though, they had some 40+ captives and hopefully that was going to be enough to get the answers they needed.

As Galia walked out Donn knelt next to a Drepwen with his exposed fingertip on his forehead, probing deeply into the unconscious mind as he had been doing the others. There was only so much information he could get when they were asleep, but he was using it to sift through the lot and figure out who would need a thorough interrogation later. Right now they were in the middle of a raid on a world that they hadn’t announced their presence to, and while technically Archons could go anywhere within the ADZ, slums like this didn’t take well to following rules, meaning that this wasn’t a safe place to stay and chitchat.

And even the governments of a lot of member races didn’t hold to that policy, though they’d initially agreed to it upon being given territorial slots as they fled the lizards and others, giving rise to a number of previous conflicts when Archons had gone in to investigate or put the smack down on someone who deserved it. Star Force wasn’t about to back down under public pressure, and routinely asserted the agreed upon rules despite the pushback. Donn wasn’t too sure how this particular region worked, but he knew the Scionate and Lacvamat had gotten extremely territorial given that they held systems with no Star Force presence.

The Archons usually asked permission, just to be nice, but if they refused they’d go in anyway…and Donn had had a great deal of experience doing just that with Crimson Team, though most of their ops were not public knowledge and had them going in and getting out before any of the locals even knew they were there, much like this mission. Any forewarning to the local authorities might have tipped off the Compact that they were coming, so Donn had expected to have some local security troops showing up on the doorstep to deal with the ‘interlopers’ in response to an alarm.

That hadn’t happened yet and the Kiritas would give him a heads up before anyone else could get inside, though the complex was quite large and the 8 of them couldn’t cover all the entrances, just the main ones. Donn figured he had a few minutes at least to do some probing and he wasn’t going to waste a second of it. He needed answers, badly, for the Scionate and Lacvamat were already fighting a civil war within the ADZ over this attack with several others on the edge of getting involved, though Star Force and the Protovic had bullied them into staying out of it…for the moment, but there were numerous secretive treaties between the varied races within the ADZ, not all of which Star Force knew of, with a lot of plot lines going down now that the real fighting had started and it was obvious that the major powers were too tied up on the fronts to do much about it.

Like Davis had said, he needed the truth to work the situation with, and Donn knew that assignment was up to him and him alone given how shorthanded they’d gotten trying to reinforce the Skarron front.  Reserve units kept in Epsilon Eridani and Sol had been called up, taking a gamble that those two systems wouldn’t get hit anytime soon, and sent to plug some of the holes along with the Clans doing the same and stripping off a lot of their homeguard units, as many as they dared anyway, and sending them out to the front.

In theory the Core should be out of danger, but Donn and the others knew better than to leave their backdoor open just in case someone was bold enough to hit it. Right now though it looked like they couldn’t play cautious and still hold the front so they were going to leave it slightly ajar and hope no one noticed.

When Donn accessed the Rama’s mind he got a mess of thoughts he didn’t understand, for their race was one that didn’t originate in the ADZ. They were native to a region below Protovic territory, with only a scattering of their individuals migrating up to a number of worlds. He’d never encountered one before, aside in passing, and as a result had to spend extra time trying to make a mental connection, focusing on the trade language that they both spoke.

Getting lost in the process he didn’t notice Brad approach, with the Archon startling him as he put a hand on his shoulder.

“Got something over here,” he said as Donn flinched.

“Oh?”

“Check the hotty,” Brad said, referencing the one Human in the lot.

Donn walked over to the brunette, who was casually attractive, and pressed his fingers against her forehead, not to increase efficiency but in order to create a link given the latent Ikrid blocks that she didn’t even know she possessed. It didn’t take long for Donn to find what Brad had referenced…a link to a command structure, in which this woman was a handler, so to speak, for the orders coming into this facility from their superiors.

“Take her,” Donn said, heading back to the Rama. “I’ll get back to you on the others.”

Brad picked up the woman over his shoulder, took her out of the room and through the facility, eventually coming to a roof access corridor that he climbed, making mental contact with the Kiritas up top who was waiting for him when he emerged on the roof. The Human dropped his treasonous kin on the ground and headed back down, leaving Jorfi to deal with her.

The Kiritas pulled the squishy Human over his shoulders and carried her across the grimy building top to where they had a mantis stashed between two higher sections that hid its silhouette from view against the semi-lit cityscape. He took her inside and gave her an extra tap from his stun stick to make sure she wouldn’t wake before binding her wrists and ankles and leaving her there, the first of what would be four snares on the night.

The rest of the captives were quickly interrogated for what little they knew then left behind as the Archons, Knight, and Kiritas eventually all came up and boarded the mantis with Donn flying them out and across the Mesoni airspace until they hit one of the neutral Star Force strips of land that gridded the planet. There they came to a ‘clean’ city, leaving the depravity behind and landing in a well-organized and friendly spaceport, shifting their captives over to Star Force security for safekeeping.

Then Donn dismissed the others to free time and went with the captives, intent on doing the full interrogations himself and needing at least a few days to do it. Meanwhile the other Archons would be following up the data traces they’d pulled from the computers in the complex. Until they had their next breadcrumb to follow they’d be staying put, with the emphasis now on Donn and his mental interrogation skills.

So far the Compact had operated with decent security, keeping only certain individuals aware of what they needed to know and offering no possibility of breaches…but what this organization did not know was that the Archons had the ability to pull up memories, including faces and other obscure facts that the individual who observed them might not even had known of. It was often from these innocuous tidbits that they’d be able to pull traces in the local databases and at least narrow down what they were looking for, but in this case that wasn’t going to be necessary.

The Compact had never expected anyone would be able to be traced this far back, and between the Human and the Critel he was able to break open their quarry. Both Compact members had been in contact with a medtech that had been in the same facility and overseeing the creation of the contaminated gel in a small test set. The full creation had happened in another facility that Donn and his team had found earlier, but it was here that they’d been given the tools and instructions necessary in order to complete production in a ‘safe’ external site.

That medtech was a Gnar, and given the memories Donn was reviewing it had also been the bacteria’s creator…or at least involved in the creation and not just a handler, given the snippets of verbal chitchat he was recovering. Not all of it was there to be found and Donn knew he wasn’t getting a full picture because of his limited skills, but because he had two minds to search through who had overseen the same instructions he was able to gleam a lot more detail with the binary pull than otherwise, giving him information about the Gnar that hopefully would be able to lead them to him.

That information, coupled with security footage recovered from the area surrounding the complex and local city eventually gave the Star Force analysts a potential identity, which they sent over to Donn’s team a couple of weeks later after an extensive electronic hunt.

The Gnar’s name was Yeveni Sammish Veen, and she was not only a medtech but one of the senior experts on the ADZ’s ‘Expeditionary Medical Team’ or EMTs, which was not a Star Force-led organization, but one put together by a number of other races to track down and combat various diseases and conditions resulting from the abnormally high mixing of the races that was having the downside of transferring one race’s ‘germs’ to the others and often with unpredictable results, some of which were lethal.

The EMTs sought out such cases and developed countermeasures, essentially being a good will effort that Star Force approved of without any interaction, and one which contained some of the most experienced medical professionals outside of Star Force.

Donn didn’t know what that meant in terms of the big picture, but to have someone so noteworthy involved in this sent up a warning flag in his mind, along with the feeling that they were about to get to the bottom of this…so long as he could get to Veen before she had a chance to disappear.

2

April 19, 2553

Solar System

Earth

Jason woke up…and immediately wished he hadn’t. His head as pounding but it was the rest of his body that was on fire. He’d had Bo stun him so he could get some rest, but now that he’d come out of it the pain hadn’t subsided and for a moment it seemed worse…but that was just because he wasn’t mentally fighting it. As soon as he fully woke up everything got back in line and his internal defenses reestablished, with him weathering the pain like a champ…and it was that internal clenching up that he had been trying to circumvent with the stun, for while it was active he couldn’t sleep…at all.

Jason rolled out of bed, feeling every fiber of his body complaining loudly and with needles, and looked at the clock.

Two hours and 18 minutes…that was better than nothing, but not nearly the sleep he needed. Deciding to take what progress had hopefully been made and put it to use he stood up and walked over to the nearby mirror and stared at his short blonde hair and ran his fingers through it, undoing a smashed section from his pillow. His gaze dropped down to his own eyes and he stared at his reflection, reminding himself that the pain was worth it as the twinkling grey of his irises attested to his recent ascension to tier 3…and not just tier 3, but one of the abilities that the V’kit’no’sat Zen’zat had never discovered…at least not by the point when the pyramid lost contact with their data network.

Kex was an ability that the V’kit’no’sat knew of, one of the mysterious 5 that the Zen’zat had never achieved and as such there was no data on it in the pyramid, leaving only Kara’s dragon knowledge for him to work off of. The full body modification made sense, but aside from a little hopping around Jason hadn’t been able to do anything other than fight the pain. He’d got the ability on the first try, which was probably why he was in such agony. Like when Bo got Sav, this was Jason’s third day of transition and the process was neither fast nor pleasant.

But those eyes attested to significant power, and even as his body complained it now held an impressive new strength. Not the processing power that Bo possessed, nor the concussive energy that Morgan wielded, but an entire revamping of his musculature and connective tissue, including an alteration to his skeleton that essentially gave him the Spartan treatment from Halo…only with far more impressive results.

According to Kara the strength was merely a byproduct of the process, which was designed as an agility upgrade. Jason hadn’t been able to test it yet and wasn’t going to today either, but he was able to jump insanely high. His vertical had at least tripled, and that was him only half trying. He now had a Jedi jump, at least, and was interested in finding out what else he could do, but right now he was just going to try for a short, slow run to get his body into some semblance of rhythm.

He pulled on some shorts and running shoes and headed for the track, aching with each step as he walked through the restricted training section of Atlantis where he and his team had been at it for the past 7 years…with ample results. He was now Padawan level 34 and top Archon, two levels ahead of Aaron, and they’d isolated some 7 ascension triggers outside of battlemeld. Vermaire was a bigger beast than ever, with him still able to beat the crap out of any Archon one on one and hold his own against 2, but when he threw in his own developing psionics he was truly a problem for others to try and deal with.

Jason’s psionics let him own him, however, so most of their duels were non-psionic, but put him up against 100 veteran commandos and he’d tear through them with ease. Vermaire was literally a juggernaut and still the standard bearer for the Knights, which Jason hoped could at least attain half of what the Black Knight had accomplished.

He was also very glad that he was here in the training group, because he gave the Archons the challenge they needed by beating the crap out of them time and again, just like in the old days, and they responded to that challenge in a myriad of ways, occasionally finding a way to take him down, then he would adapt and counter it with the end result being them both improving at a remarkable rate. His size, however, was becoming a huge asset.

Jason and the others had always known that was the case, which was why they’d created the Knights with the intent of using the V’kit’no’sat physical enhancements to beef them up to the 7 foot tall range, with a myriad of other upgrades along with it. What he hadn’t realized was how much a larger brain helped boost the psionics. In theory was one thing, but having the Black Knight Fornax and generate a field larger and more potent than any Jason had ever seen before was chilling.

And it was chilling because Jason had had the ability far longer than Vermaire had, yet he had already surpassed him in raw strength…not duration or accuracy, but in terms of raw power he had more because he had more brain tissue generating it, essentially a bigger emitter than Jason would ever have. The trailblazers got stronger with time, but he would never have as much tissue as a Knight did…and the Zen’zat were all Knight size.

Above and beyond that, the V’kit’no’sat were larger still and had so much brain tissue due to their size that their psionics were going to be difficult to combat. He knew there were ways to go about doing it, especially the battlemeld techniques that allowed two or more individuals to essentially share their tissue and amplify their abilities, but Jason was realizing that their psionics were really only crowd control for low level or small enemies and not a true threat to the big guys.

Which was why there was tier 3, with the change in eyes to match. Bigger size had its disadvantages too, and number one of those was agility. Vermaire was fast, mainly due to his endless training, but his higher mass required more power to redirect because of his momentum and the same was true of larger opponents…which was why the Archons had decided not to use the physical enhancements that the Knights did. They wanted their original small size and created the Knights so Star Force would have the best of both worlds.

Now, go up against an Era’tran and you were in trouble, but as far as small movements go the Archon would have the advantage. Boost that advantage high enough and you could theoretically evade them forever…though takedown power would still be lacking.

Jumat was that takedown power, and Kex was the agility.  Throw in Sav as an upgrade to both and you’d be at another level entirely, not to mention the other tier 3s.

But without any data on Kex or the other undiscovered psionics it was still a question mark as to what exactly Jason could do with it…and it was quite a surprise when he finally got to the track and painfully started to jog that he found his stride to be completely messed up. It was like his body had been switched out for a new one and his timing was completely off.

But it was a fast off…with him covering ground awkwardly, but quickly.

He hadn’t started the timer, so when he finished a couple of laps he stopped and painfully stretched out a bit, with his body still adamant that moving was a bad idea. He stepped back up to the start line and triggered a holographic pacing icon with his normal workout speed and hit the start button, with it shooting out ahead of him at speed while it took him a moment to accelerate.

He was tired…very, very tired, but he kept pace with it easily for a mile before he stopped. The lack of sleep was really grinding on him now, on top of everything else, but his excitement overrode that all and he readjusted his holographic tracker to match his personal record for the mile, which was a 2:24 on the track. The turns slowed him down a bit as compared to a straight line run outdoors or on some of the linear tracks, but this was the one he had access to in their training area and he was going to make the most of it. He set the program and started it, taking off at race speed and waiting for the pain explosion…which didn’t disappoint.

And his stride was so floppy there should have been no way he was going to hold a lap at pace, but somehow he came around with the marker and stayed with it up till the halfway point. Then he ignored the pain and pushed harder, with his stride seeming to smooth out a bit and him pulling away from the marker on the third lap.

The fourth one was where he ran out of gas, with the ascension and lack of sleep getting to him, but he swam through to the finish and managed to stay ahead of the hologram, recording a 2:21 pr as he crossed the finish and dropped to the track, curling up in a ball as the pain began to get worse as the numbing stress wore off and he got the full sensory load.

Totally worth it, he told himself. He was a physical mess right now and had just ran faster than ever before. The thought of how fast he might be once he recovered made him smile in spite of the pain, with him knowing that Paul was going to be soooo jealous of him now…on top of the fact that he was top Archon.

When the eventual update made its way through the relay network to Plenx Paul wasn’t onboard ship to see it. He’d gotten the naval situation stable enough that he’d left command in the hands of Admiral Caster, the most junior of all the Admirals within the fleet. Given Paul’s own naval skills having an experienced Admiral on the same ship was deemed a waste of personnel, so Paul always took the ‘rookie’ under his wing and sent the others out to where they could have more of an impact as he passed along some of his knowledge to the newbs…which were usually at least 200 years old by the time they got to him.

Caster had a been a long time Captain of a Warship-class jumpship, recently promoted up to Admiral with the same type of duties only multiplied exponentially given the size of the command ship and the fleet that came along with it. He was competent and had spent a few years with Paul, enough for the trailblazer to trust in his skills to handle the situation now that the orbital conflict wasn’t at risk of going south barring any stupid mistakes that he knew Caster wouldn’t make.

That left the ground war on Rvitx as the trouble spot, and as usual Paul threw himself right into it, assigning himself to commando duty and going down in his heavy armor to help make up for their lack of troops. Rather than fighting with a Star Force or Dvapp unit he went solo, dropping from high altitude down into infantry-only theatres and fighting his way out of them to a nearby outpost or Dvapp city…and racking up a significant kill count on the way.

Paul preferred the heavy armor, which had about 30% more plating than the standard version and 50% stronger shields, because it gave him additional battle longevity as opposed to the regular or agile armor, both of which weren’t necessary given the opponents the faced. He wouldn’t have wanted to go up against a Zen’zat in this armor, because he would have needed the extra speed, but like all Star Force armor it wasn’t actually bulky and was still designed to move with his body like a thick second skin.

To Paul it felt like wearing two layers of clothing as opposed to one, preserving most of his agility and giving him plenty of speed while allowing him to just plow into Hobbit units without worrying about racking up too much shield damage. Those few extra seconds were enough to essentially make him an invulnerable tank in small scale engagements…and that he took to the bank, killing far more enemies in the same amount of time as he could have in the other two armor variants.

Slowly, region by region, they were pulling the Skarrons back, with them not being able to mount the infantry attacks on secondary areas…and Paul handing a lot of those when they did. Without the ability to simply flood the planet with infantry the fighting was being constricted down to fewer and fewer areas, with those containing their walkers and other anti-air capability. That gave Star Force and the Dvapp air superiority everywhere else and took the pressure off a lot of the remaining Dvapp cities…those that hadn’t been taken or destroyed previously.

Paul stayed on the ground for the next three months, personally leading one of the major assaults on a Skarron-captured city and taking down several of their walkers himself using his Ikrid. The fighting was heavy and the enemy dug in hard, without Star Force or the Dvapp able to call in additional troops, but being the strategic mastermind that he was Paul found a way and ground it out until they finally broke the walker support and were able to bring in their air cover…after which that particular city fell within 2 days.

Paul stuck around another day to help clean up lingering infantry then finally returned up to the Excalibur for a few days of badly needed training and to catch up on naval matters before heading back down again for the next heavy assault…with the Skarrons having seen how they’d taken down the other city and no doubt preparing a few surprises for them when they tried to do so again.

It took him a while before he got around to catching up on the training logs from the other trailblazers across the ADZ, as well as filing his own embarrassing numbers. Fighting the enemy mattered, but he hated when it took him away from his training…and his first workout had been total crap, having been away from it for so long. He’d lost both strength and speed, but knew he could get it back. Trouble was he wouldn’t be here for long, needing to go back down to the planet for the next assault.

That frustration blossomed when he got to Jason’s logs and personal messages. Not only was he eating through Archon levels like they were a bag of Doritos, he’d somehow managed to join the tier 3 group that only Morgan and Bo had attained to date…but he’d even one-upped them by attaining a psionic that even the Zen’zat hadn’t achieved. That was insane, and Paul wanted to be back training with them so much he nearly punched the keyboard in front of him.

But he didn’t, for he knew Jason felt the same way about being on the front. Both of them were where Star Force needed them to be and doing what was necessary to secure the future, both against the current threats and the big one looming on the horizon. Attaining a psionic that the Zen’zat hadn’t was HUGE, and Paul made sure to remind Jason of that when he sent back a reply…and to remind him that as soon as the found the trigger for it he was going to be the first one Jason shared it with.

When Paul was going through the training logs of some of the other trailblazers posted to various regions within the ADZ a news warning icon manifested itself with a recent update. Paul paused what he was doing and pulled it up, with a notice that a Protovic system had just been evacuated due to insufficient ground troops to hold the two inhabited planets there. What few civilians remained had been successfully pulled out, but despite there being two Sentinels in orbit and an adequate defense fleet comprised of two Star Force Warship-class jumpships in support of 254 Protovic line warships, they’d completed lost control of the surface.

Unable to prevent some troop and cargo drops from occurring, the Skarrons were reinforcing their ground gains and littering the landscape with missile turrets. They didn’t have the ships to even scratch the Sentinels, but other than dropping them down near the atmosphere and bombarding the planet, which the notes suggested the Kip was already doing, there was nothing they could do.

Paul knew that his fellow Archon would kill as many of them as he could, but the planet was now theirs and all they had to do was build underground where sensors couldn’t see them and they’d have a safe haven from the cleansing beams, which could drill down into the crust to a decent depth, but without knowing where to shoot and having ground troops to follow up, the Skarrons could establish strongholds out of Star Force’s reach.

His mood soured by the news of the loss, he mentally cursed the stupid Scionate and went back to reviewing workout logs before heading two bed. After a couple of days of intense training and some long sleep sessions Paul would return to the surface and lose himself in battle, his planet and campaign heading in the right direction, at least, due in no small part to his personal presence there.

3

June 3, 2553

Sului System (Scionate Territory)

Favrrcor

“Jack, you better get up here.”

The ranger paused mid swing at the punching bag in Balboa Lane as the voice broke through over the chamber’s speakers. He glanced at the wall panel that held the comm unit and telekinetically flicked a few switches.

“What is it?” he asked, knowing that only something serious would warrant interfering with his training.

“Looks like the war has finally showed up on our doorstep.”

“Who?”

“Lacvamat.”

“Damn. On my way,” Jack-81118 said, logging out of the training sequence he was in and resetting the chamber to normal with all the various objects retreating back into the walls as he exited enroute to the command center in the outpost.

Favrrcor was a primary Scionate planet, the only one in the system but one of their major habitation centers. Star Force had no presence in the system aside from a tiny outpost on the surface that held some 5,400 personnel who were due to evacuate soon. They weren’t a colony or civilian center, but a military outpost with one purpose…controlling the single Sentinel in orbit.

It was scheduled to be removed, as were they, but they weren’t first on the list and the jump cradles needed to move the big sections of the station were hard to come by. Jack’s assignment to this post was really a dead-end one, but there had to be a senior Archon in charge of such a massive piece of weaponry, not so much to operate it, but to make decisions about who to shoot given that there were no other Humans within the system.

They’d been deployed here as a courtesy along with the Sentinel, as well as to make sure no one, including the Scionate, messed with the control station. Most of the people he had in the outpost were defense troops whose purpose was to safeguard the outpost, with the balance being a few techs and other support personnel. The Sentinel itself was completely remote controlled and sat in geosync orbit above them, a tiny dull star amongst the others in what was currently the planet’s night cycle.

It was a necessary deployment, but a boring one. Jack and the others focused on training exclusively, with several commandos and Knights having requested such an assignment strictly for that reason. A few had seen combat on the lizard front and needed a breather, while the bulk of the others were rookies getting some time outside of Sol. Jack’s time was split between his personal training and drilling the others, of which only four were Archons.

But today his assignment here was going to come heavily into play.

By the time he reached the small control center the Lacvamat fleet had already jumped into orbit in numbers that stunned even Jack. There were no troop ships or other transports…it was a massive fleet of warships that were already pouring down into low orbit and literally hunting the Scionate defense fleet. It had been reduced by about 30% to send relief to the other worlds under attack, but even had it been at full strength he doubted they could have handled the Lacvamat fleet he still couldn’t believe he was seeing. They outnumbered the Scionate ships 12 to 1.

“What do you want to do?” one of the remote gunners for the Sentinel asked.

“Bring the shields up on the Sentinel and lock down the outpost. If anyone’s outside call them back immediately. We’re going turtle and watching how things play out.”

“We’re not going to defend the planet?”

“This is their fight, we’re to stay out of it…since we don’t have a means to stop it.”

“What if they come down here?”

“We’ll jump off that bridge if we come to it, but right now I’m not seeing any transports.”

“They could be holding them back for later.”

“True,” Jack agreed, “but by the way they’re deploying I think they’re just here to target the navy and orbital defenses. If they wipe them out then the Scionate either have to leave the planet unprotected or pull ships from elsewhere to cover, leaving less to engage them in the invaded systems.”

“Uh oh,” another gunner said in a nearby seat as all 4 of them in the control room saw a chunk of the Scionate fleet begin to run…right up towards the Sentinel sitting on the boundary between mid and low orbit.

A split second later the comm lit up with an incoming transmission prompt.

“Damn you,” Jack swore, sitting down and tapping the activation button with a hologram of the front half of a Scionate materializing next to the tactical holo.

“Archon, we request fire support,” the ship Captain said as numerous little icons began winking out across the map as Scionate ships were being destroyed as packs of the Lacvamat’s boomerang-shaped warships hunted them down no matter where they went with slightly better gravity drives that gave them a maneuvering edge.

“Negative,” Jack said stiffly. “We’ve been ordered not to interfere. This is your fight.”

“You were put here to defend the planet, and we are under attack. Acquit your purpose.”

“We’re pulling out the Sentinel and evacuating this outpost as soon as we get the necessary transport. Until then we’re just spectators.”

“Please. One warrior to another. This is not a fight, it is a slaughter. We can’t outrun them and there are too many to fight. They have the star blockaded and mean to hunt us all down no matter where we attempt to flee. Your Sentinel is the only safe haven available to us.”

Jack chewed on his lower lip, his gut twisting up inside. The Scionate was right, the Lacvamat had them beat and they both knew it. As he watched other ships try to flee some didn’t make it, while others made microjumps out of orbit with packs of Lacvamat ships jumping after them. If the star was blockaded as the Captain suggested then the system had just become a giant death trap for any non-Lacvamat ship.

Jack was about to suggest they flee down to the planet’s surface when he saw others doing the same with the Lacvamat ships following them down there as well, right into the face of surface defenses in order to get to the ships and make the kill. If the enemy was eager enough to get the Scionate ships that they were willing to turret dive the surface defenses then there really was no safe place for the Scionate to go, leaving Jack to tell the Captains of the ships headed towards him that they simply had to die.

But that’s not the way Star Force worked, and there was a reason a ranger had been assigned to this station.

“Surrender,” Jack told him.

“We have tried, they will not accept one. They are here for our blood.”

“No, surrender your ships to Star Force. We’ll take possession of them so they can’t be used against the Lacvamat later and preserve your lives in the process.”

The Scionate hissed, an involuntary reaction that quickly faded and transitioned into reluctant acceptance. He didn’t want to give up the fight, but faced with all but certain death he understood the escape route the Human was offering.

“Agreed. What are your orders, Archon?”

“Bring all surrendering ships within a radius of 60 kilometers, but not within 10 kilometers of the Sentinel. Power down weapons but keep shields up and cluster together to perverse the station’s firing lines. I’ll inform the Lacvamat of the transfer of possession of the ships. Any of you coming within said radius will automatically be surrendering. If you try to leave again we’ll fire upon and disable your ships. Understood?”

“Understood and thank you. I will pass along word to the others.”

Jack switched off that comm channel and searched for one to connect to the Lacvamat fleet. “Power up the weapons and get the seats full.”

One of the gunners nodded and started bringing the massive defense platform to life as well as putting out a call throughout the outpost for the other gunners to report to the control center so they could get more hands on the controls, with it being established protocol that the less multitasking you had your controllers doing the more accurate and effective they would be.

Six more people came into the control room in a rush before Jack was able to get through to the Lacvamat, with a hologram of one of the perched avians coming to life beside the tactical map that showed more and more Scionate ships altering course and heading for the Sentinel.

“We’ve been told not to interfere in this stupid fight of yours,” Jack began, letting a bit of anger cross over into his trade language accent, something that he’d have had a bit of trouble doing a hundred years ago but he’d become fluent enough in it now that he had little trouble transmitting the appropriate emotional tones, “but we’re not going to sit by and let you slaughter their fleet. Those ships coming within range of the Sentinel are surrendering to Star Force. Their crews will be removed and we will retain possession of them, not to be returned to the Scionate to use against you later. You can consider them out of the fight, but we will not let you kill them. We can’t stop what you’re doing elsewhere in orbit, but here they will be safe and out of the fight.”

“If they attempt to leave the zone around the Sentinel we will fire upon and disable them, ensuring that their surrender is legitimate. Likewise, if you come within firing range we will defend those who have surrendered. Unless you also want to surrender your ships, stay outside of Sentinel range.”

The Lacvamat bobbed its thick head back and forth angrily. “So you side with the assassins?”

“We’re not siding with either of you idiots. Both of you should be fighting the Skarrons, not each other.”

“Tell that to our dead.”

“I don’t know or care what happened elsewhere. Here, now, the Scionate are surrendering to Star Force and their ships that do so will be of no threat to you. You have my promise on that, as they have my promise that they will be allowed to surrender. I will hold to both promises, so keep your distance.”

“We will not be denied our kills.”

Jack smiled dangerously. “You have a lot of ships insystem, but your fleet is no match for a Sentinel.”

“We will not attack your station, but if you think you can keep the Scionate from us you are wrong,” the Lacvamat said, ending the transmission.

One of the gunners raised an eyebrow and glanced at Jack. “Tell me he just didn’t…”

“He did,” the Archon confirmed, pulling up a targeting prompt so he could operate part of the Sentinel’s systems. He started with defining a ‘line in the sand’ distance range from the Sentinel and began an automatic transmission that was sent out into the clear along with a brief message he recorded also for autoplay, informing everyone on the planet and in orbit what the ground rules were. Scionate inside had to stay inside and would be safe, Lacvamat had to stay outside or be fired upon.

As the first Scionate warships and civilian transports began arriving Jack began tagging parking zones and pinging the ships as to where to go, hoping to line them up so they didn’t interfere with the Sentinel’s weapons batteries and give the Lacvamat blind spots to approach from if they were so stupid.

“Jack?”

“I see it,” he said as a trio of Lacvamat ships were nearing the line as they continuously pounded on a larger Scionate warship that was throwing back some weaponsfire but otherwise was overwhelmed.

Jack dialed down the power on one of the large cleansing beams as low as it would go and lined up a shot, waiting to see if the Lacvamat would cross the line and hoping the Scionate ship would survive that long. It was already taking hull breaches, but momentum alone would bring it across the ‘safe’ line within the next 20 seconds.

A large explosion blew out a chunk of the ship just prior to the line, then the four ships passed it…with the Lacvamat continuing their attack and ignoring the distance markers.

Jack fired immediately, sending out a very pale white beam that hit one of the boomerang ships on the shields and sucked some 22% out of them. He fired on the other two in turn, giving each a warning shot but to his gall the ships didn’t turn back. They had the Scionate ship nearly destroyed and he realized they were going to try and finish it off regardless.

With a roll of his thumb he dialed up the intensity on the beam and fired a brighter lance out from the distant station and punched through the weakened shields, burning a short line into the hull. He did the same to the other two, rending them vulnerable to the few weapons batteries still firing from the Scionate warship as it moved further within the safe zone…just as his comm lit up with an incoming transmission from the Lacvamat.

“Sorry, busy,” he said as he dialed up the intensity again and put a hole straight through the starboard side of one of the boomerangs where he knew a gravity drive was. As soon as he did the ship twisted as the intact drive that was operating under minimal power to stay with the limping Scionate warship pulling that side around and the dead ‘wing’ fell backwards.

Still the three ships wouldn’t let the Scionate warship go and it was near to being destroyed, already with hull breaches in numerous areas.

“Damn you,” he said, turning the cleansing beam back up to full intensity and cutting one of the Lacvamat ships in half with a drifting shot.

He thought that would scare the other two off, but he was wrong. They kept hammering the Scionate ship until its gravity drives were destroyed and the blocky ship began to list, with only two weapons batteries showing any return fire.

Jack gritted his teeth and fired again, bisecting the second ship and then quickly the third when it wouldn’t turn back, leaving the damaged Scionate warship drifting in towards the Sentinel at the same rate as the Lacvamat pieces that probably still had living crews aboard in some sections.

Finally Jack accepted the incoming comm.

“I warned you idiots,” he said icily.

“You dare to strike us?” the Lacvamat said angrily, following by a series of words in its native language that the Archon didn’t understand, but got the gist of.

“Stay outside of range,” Jack repeated.

“If you want to fight with these mongrels, so be it,” the Lacvamat said, cutting the transmission again as numerous dots scattered around the planetary map began repositioning, abandoning those ships that they were chasing elsewhere and beginning to head for the Sentinel, knowing that they could track the others down later. Right now they had to get at the ‘safe’ ones, and to do that they needed numbers.

“Shit,” Jack said, realizing what they were about to do.

“Orders?” the gunner beside him asked.

“I think they’re about to dive in and try to get the Scionate ships before we can kill them all.”

“Suicide run?”

“They know they can’t take down the Sentinel, but that isn’t their objective. They want the Scionate and we can’t put shields around them, only scare the Lacvamat off. They’re about to call that bluff which means we have to shoot fast and hard and play defense with offense…and that means it’s about to get very bloody. Barry, you’ve got herding duty. Get the Scionate ships where they need to be as they come in. The more they can overlap shields the better.”

“On it.”

“I’ve got the main,” Jack said, taking control of the extra large cleansing beam while leaving the other 10 large versions to the gunners. He set the firing sequence into shorter bursts, giving him more shots per cycle given the fact that it wasn’t going to take much power to get through the Lacvamat’s shields and hulls. They were about to face a zergling attack, and when that happened the big guns were pretty much useless. You needed the small, rapid fire or area of effect weapons to manage the horde. The Sentinel didn’t have any of those, but it did have short range weaponry.

As he began lining up his first shot and tagging the ships that he wanted the others to target so they didn’t waste shots accidentally doubling up, he saw Barry begin parking the Scionate ships that were coming in by the dozens on the opposite side of the station from where the bulk of the Lacvamat ships were approaching from. There were boomerangs coming in from all directions, meaning there was no ‘back’ to hide the ships in, but placing them opposite the largest number meant those ships would have to come close to the station in order to get to them.

Making an alteration to the plan, Jack tagged a few fallback positions in very close to the Sentinel and had Barry organize with the Scionate so when the word was giving they could orderly come down within the short-range defenses of the station if Jack and the others couldn’t keep the Lacvamat off them at range.

With that done, Jack targeted the first ship cluster to pass the line and opened up on it with the main battery, spitting bits of cleansing beam that punched directly through their shields and hulls on single hits, damaging them with ease as more and more Lacvamat approached and crossed over the designated ‘safe’ line.

As they did the other gunners opened up and the region around the Sentinel lit up like the night sky on the fourth of July.

4

June 14, 2553

Huey System (Zeta Region)

Quacker (Alliance World)

Donn dropped down from a decorative railing along the ceiling of the rightside wall of the promenade, landing in a crouch amongst the sparse pedestrian traffic in the Javvi city and scaring the nearby octopeds who scurried out of his way as he approached the security escort around the Gnar heading his way some twenty meters down.

As soon as she saw his black armor the envirosuit-clad medtech turned and ran, leaving her mix of bodyguards behind to deal with the Archon…but she shouldn’t have bothered, for it took Donn all of 8 seconds to dispatch them and another 6 to catch up to her, with the Archon getting a firm telekinetic grip on her slightly plump body and pinning her against the nearby wall.

“Hello Veen,” Donn said casually, looking from his helmet into hers…though hers was necessary, given that she couldn’t breathe a ‘normal’ atmosphere and requiring ammonia in addition to oxygen.

“Release me at once!  How dare you…”

“Cut the act. You running is as good of a confession as anything. You should have played it cool, not that it would have helped. We know what you did, and now you’re going to give us the details.”

“What are you accusing me of, Archon?”

“That little mess between the Lacvamat and the Scionate,” Donn said, telekinetically moving her off the wall and forcing her to walk. “Let’s move this conversation to somewhere more private, shall we?”

“You have no right to take me into custody! I am a member of…”

“See this helmet,” Donn said, pointing at his faceplate. “Underneath I’m giving you the ‘I don’t care’ look, now move on your own or I’ll drag you off.”

“No, I will not,” she said through her mask via electronic synthesis giving her a bit of a robotic voice. “You have no right…”

Donn sighed and linked to her mind, shutting down her voice and dropping her into a deep sleep as he caught her body and lifted it up over his shoulders in an awkward carry, but with a bit of telekinetic assist he got the armored little alien in place and carried her off, then turned around and stared down one of the bodyguards getting up and coming back at him.

“You don’t want any of this,” he said, not bothering to even take up a defensive posture. “Just leave.”

The Calavari returned his stare, then calculating his odds of taking down the smaller Human that had just beat him and the others within seconds decided to talk rather than fight.

“She is our responsibility,” he said, almost pleading.

Donn hesitated a moment, sensing his conflicting responsibilities. He wasn’t a Star Force Calavari, but an independent hire to protect members of the EMT as they moved around the ADZ, often through less than savory regions where they were hunting various ailments.

“This one is going to prison, and will require your services no longer.”

The Calavari huffed as another of the bodyguards, this one a Densan, got up and stood a few meters back. “For what crime?” the four-armed giant asked, not believing that the healer could be responsible for anything untoward.

“She created or helped create the bioweapon used against the Lacvamat. I assume you’ve heard of it?”

The Calavari looked from the Archon’s helmet to the unconscious Gnar on his back. “Are you certain?”

“Yes, and we intend to get additional answers from her, so stand down. You can’t stop me anyway.”

“Will you sign off on her transfer from our custody?” the Calavari asked, drawing a smile from Donn.

“Sure. Follow me and I’ll put everything in order,” he said, turning his back on the guards and carrying his captive off through the city with those he had just beat the crap out of in the blink of an eye following him at a respectful distance.

Davis read through the report from the Sului System, amazed at the lengths both the Scionate and Lacvamat were going to in order to kill each other. The Lacvamat had actually gone up against a Sentinel in order to try and destroy warships that had surrendered to Star Force in order to escape destruction. He gave the Archon on site credit for offering them that out, and for enforcing it, for it seemed that after the Lacvamat had lost so many ships and eventually left the system some of the Scionate tried to go back on the deal.

The report noted some 13 Scionate ships that the Sentinel had shot and disabled as they tried to ‘unsurrender’ and leave. The report went on to indicate that the civilian ships rescued from the attack were allowed to leave and return to service on the condition that they evacuated the warship crews, after which, having no means to take possession of them given how few Star Force personnel were in the system, the Archon ordered the empty warships destroyed.

An addendum to the report indicated that the Scionate had requested permission to destroy the pieces of Lacvamat ships within the firing radius of the Sentinel. The Archon on station had flatly refused, wanting to rescue and take prisoner any survivors, but the Scionate wouldn’t comply and waited for the varying pieces to drift clear of the Sentinel, after which they pounced on the ship fragments with the handful of their own warships that had survived the assault.

Those pieces that had yet to drift clear and contained surviving crews were left to die a slow death, protected by the Sentinel but without any Star Force ships insystem to rescue them. The Archon had tried to co-op some independent shippers in the system into service but they all likewise refused, not wanting to cross the Scionate whose umbrella they operated under even for the ridiculous amount of credits he’d offered. Frustrated to no end the Archon had gone up to orbit himself in a dropship and managed to rescue a handful of Lacvamat before they died, then he’d brought them back down to the outpost and almost had to fight the Scionate on the ground to protect his prisoners.

They’d surrounded the outpost and demanded that they be turned over, but he and his defense force held firm and the Scionate eventually backed down but did not leave until the evacuation crews finally got to the planet and began dismantling both the Sentinel and the outpost, with the Lacvamat prisoners going with it as the Star Force personnel fully abandoned the Scionate planet.

Davis didn’t fault the Scionate for defending themselves, nor for their anger at being attacked, but several instances that had come to the Director’s attention were proving them to be far less honorable than their reputation and egos asserted. Killing helpless crews onboard incapacitated warships and abandoning line units in battle to their deaths was unforgiveable. He knew you couldn’t judge an entire race by the actions of a few, but then again the actions of a few should not be repetitive ones, with this recent report indicating that the Scionate were putting themselves and their agendas ahead of honor when it became inconvenient…and honor wasn’t something you could switch on and off at will.

And the Lacvamat were even worse. They’d been attacked, and rightly were incensed, but they’d given Star Force all the information they had and by no means did it finger the Scionate. Unless they knew something they weren’t sharing then they were using the bioweapon attack as an excuse to air old grievances and it appeared the Scionate were doing the same thing now that fighting had broken out, with neither side interested in the truth or honor. Both were out for blood and it looked like they were going to get it.

And neither race was happy with Star Force either after the Sentinel incident. The report Davis was reading was an update, with bits and pieces coming in to him through the relays as events progressed, including scathing messages from the Lacvamat over the destruction of their ships and Star Force’s protection of the enemy and taking sides where they’d claimed to be neutral…as well as the Scionate’s utter vehemence over the destruction of the warships that had surrendered to Star Force. Apparently they hadn’t taken the ‘surrender’ seriously at all, and were more than angry about losing so many needlessly, not to mention Star Force’s reluctance to defend their planet as the Sentinel was put there to do in the first place.

Davis could sympathize with the latter bit, because the Scionate in that system were probably not the ones making decisions for the rest of their race and could well have felt betrayed by the surrender demand made by the Archon on station, but Davis wholeheartedly agreed with the solution he’d come up with. It kept Star Force out of the fighting while not being party to a slaughter that simply watching and taking no action would have been. Scionate lives had been protected, as the Sentinel was supposed to do, it was just their ships that were lost, and Davis wasn’t going to worry about those after how many drones Star Force had lost covering the Scionate’s sudden pullout.

Still, he realized that there were probably a lot of people out there getting burnt because of the actions of others and he wanted to minimize that as much as possible, but the economic penalties he was handing down to both races were going to hurt them considerably. That couldn’t be helped, but he knew he needed to do something else…creative, to move the situation in a more civilized direction.

He wasn’t sure what that would be, but he was working on it and was glad to get the Sentinel incident resolved in such a decisive way. It would give him some more social ammunition to use and hopefully would serve as a testament to Star Force’s stance. They weren’t going to take sides in this war, but they weren’t going to be manipulated into becoming a helpless bystander. Those individuals wanting to flee the fighting would have a sanctuary to run to, and he intended to emphasize that point going forward.

But there were rumblings amongst the other races that worried him, for the bad blood between the Scionate and Lacvamat was small compared to some of the others, and now that there was blood in the water and Star Force was shown to be too busy fighting to defend the ADZ to put a stop to it…

Needless to say he had a bad feeling about this, and his gut feeling was about to be proven right.

The Lacvamat had overextended themselves, hitting the three systems they had with such numbers as to take two of them and being on the verge of taking the third, and had taxed their military to the brink, with the subsequent naval assault in Sului having drawn off so many of their warships from their defensive fleets that the Scionate saw an opportunity and chose to take it once the bulk of their fleets had returned home to fight.

The Lacvamat capitol had been stripped of the majority of its defenses in order to fuel the assault forces hitting the Scionate hard, so while the fighting continued in those three theaters with increasing tenacity a backdoor armada was put together as quietly as possible with the Scionate taking better than 12% of their military out of view and forging it into a hammer that they intended to crush the Lacvamat capitol with, ending the war with one bold stroke by destroying the heart of their civilization that otherwise would not have been possible if the Lacvamat hadn’t stripped their defenses down to such an extent.

When the Scionate armada began to enter planetary orbit over Keeson the hordes of civilian and non-Lacvamat ships began to scatter like roaches, leaving only the weakened defense fleet and a number of orbital platforms standing between the Scionate and the planet. They engaged them directly, coming in with superior numbers and equipment, then began landing their troops even as the battle raged in orbit, with the Lacvamat unable to prevent them from getting to the atmosphere.

In a display of cunning strategy, yet barbaric sacrifice, the Lacvamat fought and lost nearly 75% of their defense fleet and stations before they sprung their trap. The Scionate knew the size and strength of the Lacvamat military and knew they didn’t have the numbers to stop this armada in orbit, nor to adequately resist the ground force they were bringing with them and even now beginning to field on the planet below…but what they didn’t account for was there being another player on the field, let alone two.

Jumping into planetary orbit from their hiding spots elsewhere in the system, the Lacvamat’s allies closed the trap they’d cunningly devised with both the Gnar and Nammet fleets coming in behind the Scionate and pinning them against what was left of the Lacvamat forces. It was by no means an easy fight, but the three races combined were now the superior in number and positioning, resulting in a very bloody battle that left little opportunity for the Scionate to retreat…and on top of it, the Scionate had been so overconfident they’d begun landing their ground troops, with a host of transport ships now vulnerable to naval assault in orbit and others trapped on the ground.

Some of those in orbit were able to flee, but many who tried were tracked down by the Gnar and destroyed along with all the troops they contained…something that would have been incredibly difficult to do on the ground, but was pathetically easy when they were all boxed up onboard mostly defenseless ships, for the Scionate escort fleet was fighting for its life and unable to protect them.

After several hours of battle the Lacvamat fleet was left decimated. It had been the sacrificial lure to attract and pin the Scionate, with the Gnar and Nammet fleets being the hammer to spring the trap and kill the Scionate…and that they did, but at a cost. They lost nearly half their ships but succeeded in destroying some 94% of the Scionate armada, including 72% of their loaded troop ships, with the rest being on the surface of the planet.

Those troops were already deployed or deploying, but were now greatly outnumbered by the Lacvamat on the planet, then to add insult to injury the Nammet brought in a number of their own troop ships to assist in the slaughter of the Scionate. The Gnar, not being well suited to the atmosphere, kept their assistance to warships alone, but continued to safeguard orbit and make sure any Scionate transport trying to flee the surface wouldn’t make it out alive.

It would take more than 2 months before the tenacious Scionate ground troops were completely eliminated, for backed into the corner that they were, unable to flee and having no hope of rescue, they admirably committed themselves to doing as much damage to the enemy as they could and made good on that goal, but in the end they were wiped out and the Lacvamat capitol remained more or less intact, now with a much stronger defense fleet that the Scionate couldn’t hope to counter as more and more Gnar and Nammet ships arrived. With word having gone out about the ambush and the new alliance between the three races they were going all in, sensing an opportunity to stick it to the Scionate and depose them from their dominant position within the ADZ…as well as to get back at them for past grievances.

What had gone from being a pointless war on the part of the Lacvamat, given the superior military of the Scionate, had now shifted into one that had the dominant race on its heels, and given the Scionate’s penchant for getting even with those who attack them, the Lacvamat, Gnar, and Nammet knew they had to go all the way and annihilate the cats or potentially suffer for it in the long run. It was a gamble, but given the opportunities it presented they’d decided to make their play and made it well, for by destroying the Scionate armada at Keeson they’d eliminated a huge portion of their military, with the Scionate now in a position to choose between defending their own worlds and stripping them down in order to make counter assaults.

When news of the events spread throughout the ADZ the backroom deals started occurring at a frantic pace, with both the Lacvamat and the Scionate bargaining hard for allies to bring into the fold and many races sensing opportunity to be had or just the opportunity to fight their adversaries where Star Force, the Protovic, and the Hycre had been preventing it before…but now with the floodgates open and the peacekeepers otherwise occupied they had their chance and weren’t going to pass it up, regardless of the long term implications it would have on the ADZ and their mutual defense against the Skarrons and lizards.

Right now that didn’t seem to matter, only the old bad blood coming back up to the surface and the ‘injustices’ happening to both the Lacvamat and Scionate, for both were victims and in the right according to their point of view, with few people interested in the truth and siding with those they previously favored while using events to seemingly justify their actions.

It was mostly subterfuge and propaganda. The truth was these races wanted to fight each other and now they had an excuse, with their bloodlust and greed overriding their better judgement and Lacvamat and Scionate territory being the playground on which they were going to settle old scores.

5

Donn sat crosslegged on a table in the holding cell opposite the blue-tinted force field separating the Archon and security officers from Veen, who was now outside her envirosuit given that the other side of the cell had been reconfigured to the atmosphere necessary for her race. Her previously plump form was no longer present, having been mostly mechanical necessity to store the ammonia needed for long duration excursions.

Breathing both oxygen and ammonia, some Gnar opted for less than full suits outside their own facilities, but most preferred the total coverings that concealed a very muscular, yet short physique. This Gnar was no exception, save for her musculature was more lengthy than bulk, due to the fact that she was a sedentary creature rather than a fighter.

Donn sat with eyes closed, making it look like he was napping as the two Star Force security officers questioned Veen at length, with no results. The Gnar was adamant that she had nothing to do with the bioweapon attack and was holding to her story, thinking that there was no possible proof to backtrack to her, and already demanding an official inquiry and that her people be informed of her imprisonment.

The Archon didn’t care about any of that, for he was already inside her mind and ferreting out the answers he needed, many of which were prompted by the questions being asked, with the true answer flashing in her mind so she could quickly avoid it, giving him plenty of threads to work with. It had been only 40 minutes since they’d begun questioning her, and only a few hours since he’d plucked her out of the Javvi region and brought her to one of the Star Force cities on the boundary strips, but already he had solved the riddle as to who was responsible for the attack…with him gathering up additional names and data as he made a thorough assessment of the intricate web these medtechs had woven.

Veen was one of a group of 16 from numerous races that had chosen to band together in the name of profit and, ostensibly, creating bioweapons to use in the defense of the ADZ. They’d conducted small scale attacks on individuals, assassinations and such to fuel their research, with this being the first large scale attack and pulled off in such a way to broadcast to all the shadow lurkers out there that they were in business and capable of delivering.

The Lacvamat had been chosen as a test in order to secure a contract with a wealthy, independent buyer who wanted an assortment of weapons created for him. The Critel apparently had a long running grievance with the avians and wanted them hurt, badly and publically, and Veen’s little syndicate had come through in that regard. Currently they were working on three new bioweapons for the buyer, as well as making subtle contacts with others through a network of shadow brokers, all the while keeping their identities a strict secret.

They hadn’t expected the Scionate to be fingered, or any wars to break out. They’d thought the attack would be untraceable and subsequently tolerated for lack of an enemy to strike back at. With the Lacvamat and Scionate now fighting an all-out war against one another Veen was worried about the future of their now blossoming profession, given that it appeared that Star Force didn’t have the manpower to curtail the fighting…but recent inquires by a number of new parties suggested that the fighting might actually spur a new clientele that wanted bioweapons with more immediate, battlefield applications.

Donn got the sense from her that such things were years off, and that it had taken her and their little group more than 15 years to develop the toxin-producing bacteria they’d used on the Lacvamat, with Veen being responsible for modifying them to specifically target their physiology. They didn’t have an arsenal of lethal weapons capable of ravaging populations, but they did have some very select and nasty little assassination weapons that they’d been using for some time now and Donn needed to identify what they were and where they were being produced/held…and that was taking him longer than he’d expected, for the Gnar’s mind was a touch more resistant than most.

Occasionally Donn would telepathically feed the security officers new questions, with Veen starting to get worried as they were getting more and more specific, wondering how exactly they knew what to ask and if one of the others had been compromised…but she kept to her plea of innocence like a champ, completely unaware of the Archons’ mind reading abilities.

When he finished with her there were no further inquiries made, nor statements made to the public or notifications sent to her government. She was simply sent off to a prison facility and kept there under secrecy until Donn said otherwise. He and his team now had a laundry list of people to round up and facilities to hit, and he wasn’t about to give them a heads up that they were coming.

Once they cleaned this up they’d make public their findings and deal with that mess, but right now the hammer needed to drop and drop fast, with the travel lags going to be problematic. To that end he decided to split up his team into three groups, each which would head to different systems to round up the various individuals using ships commandeered for the occasion from what was in orbit. It took a couple of jumpships off their normal routes, one being a cargo ship and the other an ADZ transit ship, but he couldn’t wait and used his Archon authority, which was essentially limitless, to get his teams moving, with him taking the rover and heading to the furthest site on his hit list with Galia and two of the Kiritas.

Essentially isolated from the rest of the ADZ, the Hycre world in the Gavchi System contained some 18 billion inhabitants in what was a relatively underdeveloped world. There was little infrastructure in place to accommodate that many evacuees from the handpicked worlds in their original territory that had been abandoned, but since the Hycre preferred the atmospheric conditions on the more or less pristine world they were comfortably getting by with living in the open while additional facilities were slowing being built across the gas giant.

Orbit traffic was virtually nonexistent save for material shipments from mining sites elsewhere in the system and the occasional interstellar transports. The other races had no business to conduct here and Gavchi wasn’t on any of the current trade routes, making it an out of the way system in Gamma Region and well away from both fronts. There were some other threats in the area that existed below the Humans’ core region, but they were minor in comparison and didn’t require much of a defense fleet to keep subdued.

So it was with some surprise when a Scionate jumpship arrived insystem, with it quickly making contact with the planet and asking for the senior military and diplomatic officers.

WHAT DO YOU REQUIRE? the diplomatic officer on station replied, not bothering to contact the others unless this inquiry was deemed worthy.

“We have come to discuss the current war,” the Scionate answered in his native language, knowing that the computers were going to have to process it into the Hycre’s own, intelligible language.

WHICH ONE DO YOU REFER TO? THERE ARE THREE.

“I’m referring to the Lacvamat assault on our worlds, which the Gnar and Nammet have joined in.”

I AM TOLD THAT THE HAMMIDS HAVE DECIDED TO ASSIST YOU, AGAINST THE WARNINGS STAR FORCE HAS ISSUED.

“They have, and we do not take orders from Star Force.”

WE AGREE AND SUPPORT STAR FORCE’S EDICTS. YOU JEOPARDIZE ALL RACES WITH YOUR INTERNECINE. THE LARGER THIS CONFLICT GROWS THE WEAKER THE ADZ BECOMES.

“We only defend ourselves against the Lacvamat. They were the ones who began this war.”

ACCORDING TO THEM YOU STRUCK FIRST WITH THE BIOWEAPON ATTACK.

“A lie.”

WE DO NOT KNOW EITHER WAY. REGARDLESS YOU AND THE OTHERS ARE WASTING LIVES AND SHIPS THAT COULD BE PUT TO USE SECURING THE BORDERS. IF THEY FALL THE ADZ IS ALL BUT LOST. ONLY THE HUMAN CORE, OUR WORLDS, AND PROTOVIC TERRITORY WILL SURVIVE. THE REST OF THE ADZ IS WEAK AND VULNERABLE. YOU SHOULD BE CONCENTRATING YOUR RESOURCES ON STENGTHENING IT. INSTEAD YOU DESTROY.

“We cannot help that now, save for ending this war quickly. For that we ask for your assistance.”

WE WILL NOT TAKE SIDES IN THIS CONFLICT. OUR FLEET IS CURRENTLY FIGHTING NECESSARY BATTLES.

“Securing the ADZ is necessary. As I said, we did not start this fight, the Lacvamat did. Then they recruited other races to join them in their push for our destruction. We were fighting on the front before they attacked us, they were not. We would like to return to fighting our true enemy, but cannot while our worlds are at risk.”

ARE YOU WILLING TO COME TO TERMS IF WE NEGOTIATE?

“It is not us that are the issue, it is the Lacvamat and others. I do not believe they are interested in a settlement.”

BUT ARE THE SCIONATE WILLING TO ACCEPT ONE?

“This war must end, and if a settlement is feasible that is preferable, and acceptable so long as the terms punish the Lacvamat accordingly. We will not accept a simple desist. We have lost too many lives for that.”

AND YOU WISH TO LOSE MORE IN COMPENSATION?

“We wish to decisively end this. We would have accomplished this on our own had the Gnar and Nammet not intervened. We have been betrayed twice, first when we were attacked while the bulk of our troops were fighting on the front, then again when we struck their vulnerable capitol and their secret allies ambushed us. They destroyed enough of our fleet and troops that we will not be able to quickly defeat them, even with the Hammids’ help. We require someone with greater strength that can force a surrender through either negotiation or military force.”

IF WE DO NOT KNOW WHO IS AT FAULT WE CANNOT FORCE AS SURRENDER, ONLY A CECESSATION OF HOSTILITIES.

“That will not be enough. Two Scionate systems are currently in Lacvamat hands. They must be returned.”

WITHOUT KNOWING THE SOURCE OF THE BIOWEAPON WE CANNOT GIVE JUDGEMENT OTHER THAN TO CONDEMN THIS WASTE OF RESOURCES.

“For the sake of the ADZ this has to end and end quickly. The Lacvamat are intractable. The only way to end this is to overwhelm them and force a surrender. The Humans will not intervene and the Calavari are now on their leash. The Protovic are defending their own territory, as are we, and we will not ask them to pull ships away from their own worlds to save ours. The Hycre are in a different situation, and we ask you to involve yourselves so that we can put an end to this.”

DO YOU KNOW THE SOURCE OF THE BIOWEAPON?

“We do not.”

IF YOU WERE STRUCK BY IT AND BELIEVED THE LACVAMAT WERE RESPONSIBLE, HOW WOULD YOU REACT?

“That’s irrelevant now. They had no proof it was us and they attacked anyway. The bioweapon is past history, with the current conflict made of long held grievances.”

WE CONCUR WITH THE SECOND POINT, BUT THE BIOWEAPON ATTACK IS OF IMPORTANCE. HAVE YOUR PEOPLE LEARNED NOTHING OF ITS SOURCE?

“We have had other concerns and no access to the attack site. We know nothing more than the Lacvamat do. Our concern is with events going forward.”

HAD YOUR WORLD BEEN THE ONE ATTACKED YOU WOULD LIKEWISE BE OUT FOR BLOOD. A NEGOTIATED END TO THIS WAR WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE OF THE BIOWEAPON SOURCE.

“Then a military victory is the only viable solution. Your assistance will make it much more bloodless and preserve more of the ADZ’s resources. Without you the conflict will grind on for years, perhaps decades. The Scionate will not yield, but our enemies are stacked against us and this looks to be a very long conflict. The sooner it ends the sooner our forces can return to the Skarron front. For this reason alone we ask you to intervene.”

AND WHAT IF WE INTERVENE ON THE SIDE OF THE LACVAMAT? WILL YOU SUBMIT?

The Scionate’s hologram scowled. “We are not in the wrong.”

IRRELEVANT. WILL YOU SUBMIT?

“We will not submit when we are in the right.”

THEN WHY DO YOU EXPECT THE LACVAMAT TO DO OTHERWISE? THEY WERE FIRST ATTACKED WITH THE BIOWEAPON. FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW THEY ARE IN THE RIGHT. WERE YOUR SITUATIONS REVERSED YOU WOULD DO THE SAME.

“Then we are at an impasse and fated to destroy one another.”

SO IT WOULD SEEM.

“Is there nothing you can do? We are willing and able to contribute to the front, the Lacvamat are able but not willing. They conserved their fleet while we expended ours for the benefit of all. This does not make us equals, yet you regard us as such.”

YOUR PAST CONTRIBUTIONS ARE NOT OVERLOOKED.

“Then I ask, what would you suggest we do?”

STOP FIGHTING.

“How? The Lacvamat will not stop until we are all dead.”

IF THE SKARRONS BREACH THE FRONT YOU WILL BE JUST AS DEAD.

“And if we don’t fight back the Lacvamat and their allies will destroy us long before the Skarrons can get to us. We did not start this fight, but we will defend ourselves. You would do the same if your worlds were to come under attack.”

OUR WORLDS HAVE COME UNDER ATTACK BY THE CAJDITAL. WE DID NOT WISH TO ABANDON THEM, BUT WE WERE WISE ENOUGH TO REALIZE THAT THEY COULD BE RECLAIMED LATER. MOST OF THE POPULATION OF THIS WORLD CAME FROM LOW PRIORITY WORLDS THAT WE EVACUATED IN ORDER TO PRESERVE OUR MOST VALUABLE ONES. DO NOT LET YOUR PRIDE OVERRIDE YOUR STRATEGIC WISDOM.

“You would have us concede the worlds the Lacvamat have taken from us?”

YOU ARE CURRENTLY WASTING VAST AMOUNTS OF RESOURCES TO RETAKE THEM. ARE THEY TRULY SO VALUABLE?

“They are our home. We will defend our territory no matter how large or small the world may be.”

THEN YOU WILL BLEED YOUR FLEET DRY.

“Which is why we need your assistance. We have no wish to annihilate the Lacvamat, merely to recover what is ours and put an end to this.”

YOUR ATTACK ON THEIR CAPITOL SUGGESTS OTHERWISE.

“Taking out their leadership was deemed the quickest way to end the war. It would be over by now had their allies not intervened. They had severely overextended themselves.”

SO YOU BELIEVED. THEY KNEW THEY HAD SUPPORT THAT YOU DID NOT. THAT IS NOT OVEREXTENSION. IT IS AN ERROR ON YOUR PART. YOU SOUGHT THEIR DESTRUCTION AND FAILED. NOW YOU TALK OF PRESERVATION OF LIFE. YOUR MILITARY DOMINANCE OVER THE LACVAMAT HAS BEEN EFFECTIVELY COUNTERED AND YOU HAVE AN EVEN FIGHT BEFORE YOU. WE WILL NOT TIP THE SCALES IN THAT FIGHT.

“You would have us annihilate each other? How does that benefit the ADZ?”

IT DOES NOT, BUT NEITHER SIDE IS INCLINED TO DO OTHERWISE. THE SCIONATE WILL NOT YIELD. THE LACVAMAT WILL NOT YIELD.

“It is not a matter of who will yield but of who is in the right. They invaded us. We are not at fault. We did not create the bioweapon. The Captain of the ship that exploded in their atmosphere was Scionate, but he was not affiliated with us any more than the independent Lacvamat mercenaries are with their government. We have been wronged, and our blood is running freely. We cannot tolerate this.”

AND WE CANNOT INTERFERE WHEN WE DO NOT KNOW WHO IS RESPONSIBLE. WE ONLY COMMENT ON THE INEVITABLE OUTCOME. IT IS A WASTE THAT WILL WEAKEN THE ADZ FURTHER.

“We agree. Something must be done. That is why I have come here to ask for your assistance.”

THE ASSISTANCE YOU SEEK WILL NOT HAPPEN. WE WILL NOT FIGHT IN THIS WAR. NOT FOR YOU OR THE LACVAMAT.

“Then fight to stop it.”

IF SHIPS ARE TO BE DESTROYED THEY WILL NOT BE OURS. WE HAVE BIGGER THREATS FOR THEM TO COUNTER.

From there on the conversation continued to loop for multiple days as the Scionate tried to plea their case to varying Hycre on the planet, none of which would accede to their requests in even the smallest way. The Scionate diplomat couldn’t understand their resistance, because the Lacvamat were clearly the ones to blame. After the incident with the Humans and the change of bloodline leadership the Scionate had been extremely faithful to the Alliance and they had not initiated this fight, despite their past bad blood with the Lacvamat.

They had been attacked and defended themselves. The issue with them pulling out from the front so suddenly was a separate matter, with the inclusion of the Gnar and Nammet making it clear that the Scionate didn’t have the luxury of only using part of their military to fight the incursion. They were in a fight for their very survival and had to go all in.

And that’s what they ended up doing, recruiting allies from every race that would listen, right down to independent military units and mercenaries that were willing to work for hire or favor. With the Hycre unwilling to take sides the Scionate were left on their own…and they were willing to take up that challenge. The condition of the Skarron front concerned them but honestly there was nothing they could do about that now…short of letting the Lacvamat kill them and end the war that way, which was never a thought in any of their minds. Besides, the Lacvamat weren’t going to help out on the front anyway, so the only way to get back to bolstering it was to win the war and free up their troops.

Now that wasn’t a foregone conclusion. The Scionate were in trouble, having to fight a real war and not just a series of skirmishes, so they pushed aside all thoughts of the Skarrons and focused on their immediate enemies…races they had once called allies or at least associates, and who now were out for their blood.

6

July 3, 2553

Vensi System (Protovic Territory)

Ven

“You two ready?” the dropship pilot’s voice asked in their helmets.

“Always,” Travis answered for the both of them just before the aft boarding ramp cracked open and a flurry of wind shot inside, with both level 2 rangers waiting on the edge in armor and jump packs as a countdown began inside their helmets linked with the navigation system. Both of the twins watched it diminish down to a handful of seconds as the falcon zipped across the mountainous landscape, sometimes so close to peaks that that Karen felt she could literally reach out and touch them.

There was also the occasional plasma orb visible, shooting up and missing the kamikaze dropship and its insane pilot as they flew deep inside enemy held territory on the last of two contested planets the Skarrons were holding onto in Protovic territory…and holding onto with a vengeance. Most of the Protovic cities had either been evacuated or captured, with a band in the southern hemisphere still inhabited and fueling the planet’s resupply. That band was where the heavy fighting was occurring, with the Skarrons pressing their army advantage even while the naval situation in orbit was up for grabs.

The Protovic were holding their own up there well, with a bit of assistance from Star Force, though that ‘assistance’ was racking up far more kills per ship given that all of the drones in play were equipped with Talon cannons. Had there been more of them Star Force would have been able to push the Skarrons from orbit, but right now they were just barely managing to keep the Protovic fleets in play as they systematically chewed up ships given their superior gravity drives, often ambushing the enemy reinforcements coming into the planet.

Virtually everything in the region that the Skarrons were getting past the Voku was coming here, with several other systems having been abandoned or evacuated…with their troops redeployed here or to the neighboring planet in the system, Dahwa, where there was also heavy fighting. Every other star system in Protovic territory was now back in their hands save for one…though most were wrecked beyond immediate repair. Their fleet was also thin, not to the point of cracking, but after so many decades of continuous warfare their numbers were down and they desperately needed a breather to build up their ship count and train new personnel.

They were throwing most of their remaining army units here, attempting to stall the full Skarron takeover so they wouldn’t have a second uncontested foothold in their territory. Star Force was assisting with what few troops they had available, for most were deployed to Dvapp territory where the Skarrons were making more gains…and with the pullout of the Scionate several of the worlds just on the far side of the border that Star Force had been assaulting, either to reclaim or remove the enemy presence, were now back in Skarron hands and growing, slowly with the lack of adequate supplies, but the longer they were left to develop the easier it would be for the Skarrons to launch future assaults.

Ven and Dahwa were the key points now. If the Protovic were allowed even a short respite from the war they’d come back stronger than ever and be able to kick the Skarrons out completely. If the Skarrons were able to hold onto and even secure one of the two worlds, let alone both, they’d dig in hard and play the waiting game as they held onto their footholds while the rest of their empire found a way to deal with the Voku on Achkor, and even if the Protovic could reclaim one of the systems they wouldn’t have the strength anytime soon to take the second, meaning the Skarrons were going to be around to stay for a long time.

A number of reserve Star Force units had been pulled out of the core to replace others in Beta Region on ‘secure’ worlds, freeing up the more veteran units there to redeploy to the front in order to counter the Scionate pullout and make several strategic pushes in key places while the rest of the engagements in 9 systems played for a stall. Some of those were minor league battles now, with neither the Skarrons nor the Alliance sending reinforcements. They had to make do with what they had available, which burned Star Force even more because with the Scionate’s help they could have been able to at least marginally reinforce those positions and sweep away the Skarrons…but right now, even with all the reserves they’d pulled up, their outcome was still up in the air.

Karen and Travis has been pulled off their special ops work long ago and had spent the past two years fighting on another Protovic world as they maintained their remarkable advancement rate despite their irregular training. Now rangers with Karen holding the barest of leads over Travis in their training marks, they were being deployed into the Skarron rear to cause some havoc…which was what they’d been doing for quite some time now that their commanders had seen what they could do with their battlemeld psionics. Rather than splitting them up, which having two rangers together for these missions would normally have been considered a waste of resources, they were being sent out into more dangerous areas together, always together, and taking down key facilities or drawing heat off the major engagement zones.

Though in truth what they were doing was minor compared to what was happening down there, but even the loss of 1000 Hobbits could turn the tide in a close engagement, and as of this campaign their kill count stood at 3,421 with an additional 85 Skarrons…which the two were keeping track of by reviewing their helmet telemetry in their few spare hours.

In truth they were probably close to 4,000 by now but hadn’t had time to check, just having come out of a mission to reinforce a Protovic army defending a mountain stronghold. They’d gotten there just in time to work their magic and the Protovic had held…barely, but the facility remained in their possession and opened up the surrounding region to future operations rather than forcing the natives to retreat further.

That was the thing about Ven…it was all mountainous, with not a flat piece of land on the planet aside from the scattering of lakes that dotted the surface, one of which held a Star Force aquatics outpost that the Skarrons had no counter for. It was a strategic stronghold that Karen and Travis were operating out of north of the main inhabited band of cities literally hanging from and drilled into the mountainsides.

It made a mess of conventional ground warfare, but the giant Skarron walkers were still able to maneuver around better than the Star Force mechs and Protovic tanks…that latter of which could only operate in the wide open ravines, for they had been built heavy enough to tackle the Skarron walkers and no longer had the speed or maneuverability that they needed for traditional engagements. They were literally flying turrets carrying cleansing beams with some smaller versions, none of which could do much to support the infantry in all the nooks and crannies of the mountains.

Star Force was deploying an army of their smallest mechs, mostly ravens and neos, with the latter being used for their ability to work over the rough terrain with a skilled pilot, but there were so few on the planet compared to what was needed that, while they dominated wherever they were located, the Skarrons’ infantry hoard was winning most of the planet for them…with their walkers coming in only to hit the big defense targets, such as city shields and turrets.

It was very much an infantry war here, with the big machines playing support, and in infantry wars the Archons dominated…let alone a battlemeld-linked pair of rangers.

When the countdown expired Karen and Travis walked off the ramp together, not having to say anything to each other for they already knew what the other one was thinking. Trusting the telemetry they dropped into freefall, immediately goosing their jump packs to break against some of the lateral momentum as they fell into a deep river at the bottom of one of the ravines…with Travis nearly missing and hitting the rocky sidewall.

He created a telekinetic wedge between himself and it, acting like a crash bag, and deflected himself down into the fast current a meter shy of the rock, disappearing underneath the water and coming back to the surface some 40 meters down as he swam to the side and came up near to where Karen was, with both of them quickly disappearing into the rocky jungle using their jump packs to get over tricky terrain.

They moved quickly for about 10 minutes before they finally noticed overhead Skarron fighters. Knowing to keep their shields turned off unless necessary, they kept moving under the canopy as much as they could manage and avoided their detection all the way up to a Skarron outpost that was little more than an encampment underneath the trees with a few single story prefab structures set up to accommodate the troops temporarily stationed there as they moved from one point to another on trails the Skarrons had been carving out of the trees, dirt, and rock for months…all of which usually operated below the canopy, making their movements virtually invisible to any fighters or orbital surveillance.

And with the great distances involved the Skarrons weren’t walking. They’d brought in tread-wheel transports that looked like giant centipedes in that the ‘wheels’ were made up of hundreds of individual segments that would literally wrap around rocks and allow the trucks to move over bad ground without having the energy expenditure that anti-grav would require. They had flying transports for that, but they were spamming the surface with these trucks and moving both troops and supplies everywhere they had built their roads.

The outpost ahead contained both troops and workers for doing more of that carving, with at least one branch being extended nearby. When the twins came to the edge of the outpost they didn’t offer up any warnings or give any sight nor sound of their approach, simply sliding into the camp and opening fire on one of the Skarrons there that was out in the open and moving from point to point.

Both Archons hit it with a combined Fornax blast before Karen jumped up on top of its fallen form and blasted into its back with her plasma rifle while Travis stayed on the ground and shot the Hobbits nearby that were coming to the Skarron’s aid and attempting to shoot his sister. Both of them kept the big enemy down with Fornax blasts until it was dead, then Karen jumped off and helped Travis clear a path through the enemies that were popping up everywhere to the largest of the buildings.

They fought their way inside, killing the Hobbits there before a lot of them could even get to their weapons, then split up and came out different exits, with Travis staying outside and fighting in the open while Karen snuck over to the nearby building and killed six more Hobbits inside, but passed over the knot of Engineers she found there. For whatever reason their race never fought the Humans, and in return the Humans didn’t target them. They were workers, not combat troops, and even though they were on the enemy’s team building and harvesting raw materials for them, they were no threat and treated accordingly.

Once the Hobbits began to pool outside to numbers that would jeopardize the Archons’ shields even with half of their shots missing, the twins used their Lew ability and both started generating an Ikrid field between the two of them, creating an invisible column of energy connecting the two Archons that they then ran through the Hobbits, taking down all those who passed through it with a disoriented visual and auditory wash implanted into their minds. It was temporary, just a little bit of mind tricks that made them see blots and bright flashes of light while hearing distracting sounds, all of which was delivered not to a targeted enemy, but to any that passed through the energy field.

The twins rendered some 80+ of them unable to fire back within four seconds of sprinting around either side of the group, then they proceeded to fire away at the enemies outside those effected, shooting those who could still shoot back while hitting them with individual Fornax fields and trimming the plasma fire coming back at them considerably.

Between Fornax, Lew, and a few other psionics, Karen and Travis kept the mass of Hobbits and two more Skarrons distracted, disabled, or confused long enough that the two of them were able to fight and shoot their way through them…then they broke up and chased down the scattered remainder of the combat troops and killed them before returning to the outpost and ignoring the Engineers as they came out of the buildings to look at what was going on. The two Archons quickly moved to the racks of equipment lining the storage buildings walls and pulled out several fuel canisters that they converted into a makeshift bomb.

After getting the Engineers clear they detonated it, blowing apart the building and at least damaging the handheld equipment so it couldn’t be used to carve out new roads, after which the twins got to work on the big pieces of mechanized equipment that looked like miniaturized and beefier versions of their combat walkers. Gone were the thin legs, leaving thick columns that supported crab-like work walkers that could cut down trees, move dirt, or carve out sections of rock.

For those the twins pulled out small explosives from their packs, with both knowing exactly where to put them on the machines in order to disable them. They planted some 14 in total, all linked to a single detonator and made sure the Engineers were clear before wrecking the lot with a quick pyrotechnics display that caught some of the nearby tree branches on fire.

Travis looked over at the group of Engineers just staring at them blankly, throwing them a sarcastic salute then leaving them and their residential buildings and food supply intact as he and his sister ran off down one of their roads heading towards the next link in their mountainous supply chain. They couldn’t do anything about destroying the roads themselves, but they could wreck the equipment being used to create them and kill their workforce, for most of the Hobbits were doubling up their infantry duties with construction ones.

Leaving the Engineers alive could have been seen as a strategic mistake, for they could go to work again, but in truth the only reason the Archons were targeting these camps and killing the Hobbits on sight was because they were actively assaulting the Protovic world. Had this been a Skarron world the Archons wouldn’t have killed them so…lithely, but they were here doing harm or helping others do harm to the Protovic and that they couldn’t tolerate. Those Hobbits, while building roads, would just as quickly pick up a plasma rifle and go into battle. The Engineers wouldn’t, which was why there was no point in killing them.

Not to mention the fact that a good number of them were defecting to the Alliance, for they were seeing more compassion from their enemies than they were their masters. Karen and Travis didn’t care about that now, for they weren’t on a recruitment or rescue mission. They were hear to cause havoc and havoc is what they were going to cause…but there was a very fine and firm line between being a slayer and a butcher, and butchers they were not going to become.

That was a lesson that Bri had drilled into their heads, and they hadn’t truly understood until she showed them some of the results. While the twins had always been told how Archons were supposed to think and behave, all the way back into basic training, it had always been focused on them doing the right thing rather than seeing how it affected others. Once they’d gotten to see and hear firsthand from some of the Hobbits that had switched sides and get their point of view did they stop looking at the enemy as targets.

They were people, and not always involved due to their own choices. The Hobbits in particular were a slave race that would be killed on the spot if they didn’t fight, which meant that Star Force wasn’t just going to kill them off. They were going to help them if they could.

But if they were trying to kill their allies and doing a good job of it, well, the kid gloves would come off fast enough. Bottom line was, Archons would let you stop being an enemy, and would always give someone that option…but if you chose to be an enemy then they would treat you as such, with their dislike for killing quickly disappearing when you put someone else’s life in danger.

They were warriors and took on the role of slayer in a heartbeat if necessary, and right now, with the Skarrons pressing hard against the inhabited band of the Protovic planet, slayers were what Travis and Karen had to become…and they were very good at it.

7

October 23, 2553

Evelynn System (Scionate/Star Force Territory)

Shadow Isle

“Report please,” Admiral Victor asked when walking into the moon base’s command center.

“A large Lacvamat/Gnar fleet has arrived insystem and is moving to assault Night’s Veil. Information is still updating, but I would guess they’ve already begun combat.”

“Damn, they are getting bold,” Victor said, sitting down in his chair and accessing his personal holos with information coming in directly from the insystem relay network. Though Star Force had no presence on the Scionate world they did maintain a number of surveillance posts throughout the system, including planetary orbit, though at present Night’s Veil was on the other side of the star from Shadow Isle, which was orbiting a large, uninhabited planet full of valuable resources cloaked in a noxious atmosphere named Widowmaker.

It and the three moons surrounding it belonged to Star Force, while the rest of the system was Scionate property. Shadow Isle wasn’t a transit grid nexus, but rather a more private Star Force colony used as a military staging base that doubled as a storage depot, collecting both shipments of supplies from other systems as well as a scattering of mining outposts on Widowmaker, though those operations were mostly remote operated from the moon, with only a few hundred personnel on the planet to facilitate the machinery and handle the quiet excavation of subsurface tunnels that Star Force was creating without anyone else’s knowledge.

To the Scionate the moon was just a little backdoor Star Force outpost recently created since the transfer of ruling bloodlines and an added bit of penance on the part of their race…while also serving to bolster the system’s defense as Star Force kept a decently sized naval force there to service both Beta and Gamma Regions with reinforcements as needed. Most of that fleet had since been dispersed, but 3 warships and several hundred drones were still present around the moon as a defense fleet.

So far the Lacvamat had stayed away from Star Force worlds, even going so far as to avoid transitioning through one of their systems given the bad blood resulting from the Sentinel incident, but now they were hitting a Scionate planet right next door and Victor wondered just how far they were prepared to push this…and if the Scionate were going to flee to the moon to seek sanctuary.

Admiral Victor was the senior commander on the moon, given that it was primarily a naval way station, with a handful of lower ranking Archons on site for security reasons but no high level ones. Technically they outranked him, but given his experience they let him handle the security of the moon and planet below while they worked on their training and dealt with any odd problems popping up. They were stationed here primarily as backup, and Victor hoped they wouldn’t be needed in the coming days.

A new fleet of six warships was due to arrive within 2 weeks, fresh off the shipyards in Epsilon Eridani, and he truly didn’t want to have to waste any of their drones with this mess that was about to unfold, but so far the Lacvamat hadn’t shown any signs of strategic sensibility…though their tactical acumen was proving to be significant. They were handing the Scionate their asses where the reserve should have been true, both out thinking and out maneuvering the dominate military power and putting them on the defensive, but with no planning for the long term or how it would affect the ADZ as a whole.

If the front fell the Skarrons would come in and wipe out the Lacvamat, which would make this war all but pointless.

Then again blood feuds rarely made sense outside their fanatical context, which was why the Admiral wasn’t entirely sure the Lacvamat would avoid the Star Force world. It was small and isolated, and if they truly wanted to control the system they’d have to take it out…which would put them at war with an opponent far more powerful than the Scionate but so overwhelmed with the Skarrons that they couldn’t do much at the moment.

At the Sentinel incident they hadn’t fired on any Star Force craft or facility, they merely braved the weaponsfire to get at the Scionate, showing that they weren’t going to listen to Star Force’s edicts, but then again they weren’t, Victor hoped, stupid enough to cross the line into actually fighting them.

As the updated reports made their way across the system and to the command center the Admiral watched with keen interest how the combined Lacvamat/Gnar fleet systematically drove the Scionate out of orbit, with many of the ships fleeing to elsewhere in the system but the attackers didn’t follow them. Instead they held onto low orbit and began landing a large number of troop ships, some of which were Nammet but none Gnar. They opened up three different ground invasion sites and went about the process of what looked like a legitimate grab for the world.

Victor couldn’t do anything about it, given that his orders were not to waste ships on their blood feud, but he hated watching a fight going on nearby and sitting it out. The Scionate also sent out a plea for help the second day, which he had to grudgingly refuse. This war never should have been happening, but given that it was the Scionate were the defenders. He didn’t know about the legitimacy of the bioweapon attack, but the Lacvamat were the ones to start the actual fighting and he really didn’t like having to leave their insystem neighbors vulnerable when they were being assaulted.

He had to keep reminding himself of the Skarron threat and that his ships would eventually end up fighting there, as would he once the reinforcements arrived. He’d be transitioning out with a new commander coming in, for his stay here was just a temporary one.

But none of that mattered to his gut. Combat was going down and he wasn’t involved…and that just felt wrong.

8 days later the situation changed when a relief fleet arrived from the Hammids and Victor took keen interest in seeing how they were going to fight. To date they hadn’t taken part in combat on either front, but for some reason they’d sided with the Scionate and, so far as he’d been updated, this was the first time their troops were being thrown into battle.

Their fleet wasn’t large, but it was strong enough to defend itself and the massive number of transports it was escorting down to the surface. Victor wished he had some surface surveillance posts or even some stealth drones in play, but he didn’t. All he could see was from high orbit and where the ships went, with only a very tiny glimpse at what was happening down on the planet.

Nammti was riding in one of the first transports to go down, her wings tucked in closely as she and her broodmates were packed together in a rack so cramped it was hard to breathe as they waited to be released into open air. Her feathery wings were stiff and cramping from the long wait that had her cooped up with the rest of them prior to arrival in the system so they could be deployed tactically once they arrived no matter what the circumstances were.

She didn’t know any more now than she did before loading, but when the signal came the floor beneath her feet opened up and she dropped out of the transport like a rock, letting gravity pull her down and away from the others before spreading her wings and nulling her fall. There were so many other Hammids around her that it was hard to fly, but they’d practiced such maneuvers ad nauseum in the past and they all managed to avoid hitting one another as they formed up into groups and flapped their way down to a surface position now being marked for a diving attack on her visor.

She wore a headset and light harness around her body that mimicked the old Calavari design and had actually been created with assistance from one of their techs. It provided an energy shield that would shield her from plasma while not interfering with her flight in the least. Physical objects would still get through, but their enemies didn’t use many weapons of that sort aside from missiles, which would be mostly useless against the flocks of Hammids given they were deploying in the tens of thousands.

Each was about half the size of a Lacvamat and could outmaneuver them with ease, and as she flew with the others Nammti saw that the distant ground below her was covered with a swarm of Lacvamat that were their targets. She’d never liked the fleshy avians who didn’t have a single feather on them, nor their overly militant attitude. Hammids knew how to fight but were very reserved in doing so given their fragile bodies. They couldn’t put armor on else lose their flight capability so they had to brave the fields of combat without protection, at least until the shield generators had been built.

That gave them some measure of survivability, but their strength had always been in their numbers and being able to chip away at a superior enemy until they were wore down enough that they either retreated or were destroyed. The Lacvamat had a similar strategy, except they liked to bombard ground troops from above where they were out of return fire range. It was a cowardly method of attacking that the Hammids didn’t employ, though they would bombard the surface, but through diving runs rather than just lopping ordinance down…though in part that was because of their smaller size their weapons had a much shorter range of attack.

But the Hammids also believed that if you were serious about fighting then you’d do it face to face, with the way the Lacvamat fought being disconnected to the point of cruelty. They killed opponents without even seeing them, leaving them little more than statistics, and in war the Hammids fought people, not statistics.

What the Lacvamat were doing to the Scionate had nothing to do with a bioweapon. They’d been the major contender of the quadrupeds for dominance over internal ADZ matters while the big three were focusing on the fronts to keep everyone safe, including the Hammids, who had been devoting a steady supply of resources to the Protovic in lieu of sending their own people into battle. The anti-air capability of the Skarrons would be a literal death sentence to them, and the lizards were not much better.

During the defensive battles they’d fought, the lizards had slaughtered the Hammids save for when they had overwhelmingly superior numbers. If it wasn’t for Star Force and the Hycre helping them relocate to the ADZ they would have been wiped out long ago. They knew they couldn’t fight either enemy directly, so they’d decided to wage war on the resource front and had been doing so ever since the ADZ had been created.

But now was different. The Lacvamat were jeopardizing everyone with their bloodlust and the big three couldn’t pull troops away from the front to stop it. Despite Star Force’s warnings of consequences for getting involved, the Hammids had decided to take matters into their own hands and come to the defense of the Scionate…as well as to make the Lacvamat pay in a way that no other race could, avian to avian.

As Nammti flew with the others they corkscrewed their way down, forming numerous tornado-like spires that hit the topside of the Lacvamat formation, attracting the attention of their fighters. Some of the Hammids’ own Valeries moved to intercept the flying boomerangs, but some small carnage couldn’t be helped as the Lacvamat fighters unloaded scatterguns on the descending flyers. Their shields saved many of them from small hits that would have winged or killed them on contact, but those that took the brunt of the fighters’ attack were turned into puffs of feathers and burning flesh.

Knowing that there was nothing she could do about it Nammti took her chances and continued descending with the others down into the Lacvamat swarms, charging her two tiny plasma pistols located on either leg as she stretched her short arms down and pressed the activation levers. The Hammids were flying quadrupeds, but when in air they were mostly wings and beak, keeping their appendages tucked up underneath their elongated bodies for maximum aerodynamics. Nammti’s pistols were ankle bracelets with loops around her four claws that allowed for firing and weapons control, now that she’d hit the ‘on’ switches.

Knowing that she wanted to take the Lacvamat down as quickly as possible she triggered the holding charge, which contained and grew a tiny plasma burst so that when she finally did drop down on the back of one of the disgusting fleshy flyers she literally touched the back of it with her two short legs and unloaded one of the pistols’ charge into it.

The Lacvamat dropped into a death spiral as soon as the blue plasma discharged, burning a hole through its thin torso armor and either killing or wounding it, Nammti didn’t know, but it was out of the fight and she flew towards the next one headed in a similar direction, with many more zipping by on alternate trajectories in a jumbled, chaotic mess that the Hammid found to be neither. She was used to flying in thick, complex swarms…at least more so than the Lacvamat were, which gave her an easy second kill as she came up on one of them that was distracted trying to shoot from its chest launcher horizontally at another Hammid.

Nammti tagged it on its exposed head, burning a hole into the left side of its double skull and dropping it down through the air while she dodged another dead Lacvamat coming down from above as her two pistols began to charge up again. She flew evasively until they were, then went about poaching more targets as her kin did the same.

Though she couldn’t see it, the Scionate on the ground were ducking for cover wherever they could find it on the tree-dotted savanna as the corpses fell more rapidly than the Lacvamat’s purple energy orbs. Both races were falling out of the sky as the fierce aerial battle escalated, but it was clear that the majority of those being killed were the Lacvamat, with their heavier bodies thunking the ground and often the Scionate as they got hit falling from above, whereas the Hammids fell softer, dotting the landscape with burning feathers rather than seared flesh.

Unable to fire up at the maelstrom the Scionate were left with nothing to do other than run and hide for fear of hitting their allies…but that didn’t matter, they were grateful for the distraction and used it to either get to nearby cover or to push ahead to the grounded Lacvamat transports and hit them on the surface while the two aerial races were so consumed with each other they virtually forgot about the troops on the ground.

Never before had these two races fought against one another, but within minutes it was clear that the Lacvamat were at a serious disadvantage. The Hammids had never been considered a serious military power, with their starships and tech being on the lower end of the ADZ hierarchy, but where the Lacvamat were usually the more agile and dominated the skies over the groundpounders the Hammids took that away from them…and couldn’t function without it. So used to being nearly impervious to infantry attacks high up in the sky they were completely caught off guard by the Hammids’ agility and ferocity.

The normally tranquil race was coming at them with an anger that could not be explained and that had rarely been seen before, and they were showing far more skill in flight combat than they should have had given their pacifistic racial philosophy. The Lacvamat knew they’d sided with the Scionate prior to this invasion, but they hadn’t expected anything like this. Being the larger and stronger of the two they’d expected to own the little ‘birds’ in the sky, but that was not the case at all.

Within hours the Lacvamat began evacuating their troops off the planet, completely unable to contend with the Hammids in the air and attempting to go after their ships in orbit, but what was left of the Scionate fleet guarded them intently, often sacrificing themselves to keep their new allies safe, and together they pushed the Lacvamat invasion fleet off the planet and out of the system, for while they still had more warships in play they were so stunned by the reversal they became stupid and didn’t use what they had available or they could have possibly retained control of orbit.

Though that wouldn’t have mattered if they couldn’t make any gains on the ground, so they turned tail and ran…and ran hard, with the Gnar going with them and being equally perplexed as to how they’d lost the ground campaign against the ‘benevolent’ Hammids.

Admiral Victor watched all this from afar, not knowing what was going on down on the planet, and being equally perplexed as to how the Lacvamat had been driven off of Night’s Veil. He didn’t feel right about asking the Scionate after his fleet had been sitting out the fight, so he didn’t discover what had happened until months later when the rest of the ADZ was informed through indirect means and word filtered back to the Skarron front where he was taking the new warships into battle to help secure one of the remaining Dvapp worlds under significant assault.

8

November 11, 2553

Solar System

Earth

When Davis saw the message packet come in from Donn he skipped over the other items on his notification panel and pulled up the long overdue update…which he quickly discovered was not an update, but a mission end summary. The Director read through it slowly but eagerly, line by line revealing the full nature of the bioweapon attack’s creators and financier, who’d been the last individual that Donn’s team had apprehended.

According to the report they’d made a clean sweep of all 16 high level medtechs who were part of the privateer unit that had created the bioweapon without the others being alerted, then finally they’d picked up the Critel who’d paid for the attack, with all those involved taken to the nearest Star Force prison facility for holding until they determined what to do with them. Donn stated that he wasn’t going to get into that and the length of prison sentence he was leaving to Davis along with all other loose ends as he got back to the front…unless Davis required anything further from him.

Included in the packet was a thorough explanation of the nature of the wayward medical unit and their activities, including several assassinations that Donn had pulled from psionic interrogations. It was also noted that the group intended to develop bioweapons for use against the Skarrons and lizards, ostensibly for the defense of the ADZ, but even if that was the case you don’t practice by killing your own people.

Bioweapons had long been a sticking point with Star Force. Many races preferred using them opposed to sending in troops of their own, but history had showed that whenever they did and the enemy found out it usually caused more trouble than it was worth because they’d be targeted with an even harder reprisal. Now that was from races that fought each other regularly and only did so haphazardly, not an all-out war like the Skarrons were waging. Tick them off all you wanted, it couldn’t get much worse as far as their intent was concerned.

Star Force didn’t use them because they and chemical weapons were considered ‘dirty’ weapons by the Archons. Davis was less opposed to using them in certain circumstances, in the way of disabling rather than killing, such as gassing a target in order to render everyone there unconscious, but the Archons were adamant that they weren’t going to fight that way. Davis didn’t entirely understand why, but he agreed with them on most points and bowed to their wisdom on the differences.

But Star Force did have a bioweapons program, and a beefy one at that, so they could design and test defenses against the very weapons they were building. The Archons knew the danger of such weapons and they wanted as many immunities against them as they could get, but there was a strict ban on ever using any of the bioweapons and likewise Star Force had banned them from the ADZ as well. Davis knew that didn’t mean there weren’t bioweapons out there, but the races or groups that had them had to keep them secret else Star Force would come and take them away, along with instituting heavy penalties.

But Davis knew the idea of creating bioweapons to fight the Skarrons was going to be something many races would favor in lieu of sending troops to the front. He wasn’t going to advertise that that had been one of the aims of this rogue group, but he had to be prepared if it came out anyway…or if the bioweapon attack gave others the same idea. He didn’t think it would be an easy fix, for the Skarrons and lizards undoubtedly had the tech to counter such weapons after the fact.

But it was the lingering thought that, with the pyramid database, Star Force might be able to develop a neutralizing weapon against the Skarrons that would cover the loss of the Scionate. Something they could seed into the atmospheres of the contended planets that would render those who breathed it in unconscious, and tailor it to the Skarron and Hobbit physiologies.

It wouldn’t affect their walkers or aircraft, but any unarmored ground troops would be neutralized shortly after landing. In fact, the more Davis thought about it the better an idea it seemed, and as he was writing up the press release for the bioweapon attack investigation results he couldn’t shake that something was off. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something he wasn’t seeing.

There weren’t any trailblazers in Sol at the moment, aside from those in deep training and he didn’t want to bother them so he held off for a couple of days, trying to think it through on his own.

Killing through bioweapons was usually gruesome, for people didn’t have an off switch and killing them required causing damage of some kind despite myths to the contrary. But even if there was a magical kill gas that just eliminated opponents without damage it would be an area of effect weapon, meaning you just targeted an area and all those within it would be effected…which meant you didn’t really know who you were killing, and that inaccuracy was something the Archons would never tolerate, nor would Davis.

Bioweapons could be tailored to kill individuals, either by genetic identity or through delivery method, such as a dart as opposed to a gas. But again that left the question as to why you were fighting. Star Force didn’t fight to kill, they fought to neutralize threats, which was why so many stun weapons had been created to supplement their lethal ones…but even the lethal ones weren’t kill machines. They could wound an opponent without killing them, whereas a bioweapon just killed.

Then there was the surrender option. Star Force wanted to neutralize threats, and if they chose to surrender or otherwise stop being a threat that accomplished the goal and there was no need to kill them. Bioweapons didn’t allow for that, essentially being a death sentence when employed and unable to be rescinded if the situation changed. Even if a counteragent was devised there would be a lag in implementing it, and that sort of thing was needlessly sloppy to the point that Davis would have objected even if the Archons hadn’t.

But that still brought him back to the stun issue…if bioweapons could be made to stun and not kill, why not develop and use them?

It bugged Davis so much that he went ahead and sent a message to Jason, not knowing if or when he’d respond given the intense training he was undergoing, but not wanting to wait for the delay that sending a message out of the star system would entail.

It took all of 9 hours before Davis got a response that, in typical trailblazer fashion, cleared up the ambiguity that was plaguing him.

IT’S ABOUT CONTROL. ALL OUR WEAPONS ARE TAILORED TO OUR ABILITY TO DECIDE WHEN AND WHERE TO USE THEM AND OCCUR IN A SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME, MEASURED IN SECONDS. A BIOWEAPON IS NOT UNDER OUR CONTROL AFTER RELEASE, NOR CAN WE RECALL IT. IT IS ESSENTIALLY POISONING THE LOCATION RATHER THAN ATTACKING, AND WHEN YOU DO THAT YOU ARE HOPING THAT FUTURE EVENTS ARE TO YOUR LIKING WHEN YOU NO LONGER HAVE CONTROL OVER THEM.

THE POISIONING COULD AFFECT SOMETHING ELSE, OR COMBINE INTO A NEW COMPOUND WITH NEGATIVE RESULTS. IT IS UNPREDICTABLE IN THAT IT IS NOT 100% PREDICTABLE. BIOLOGY IS BASED ON ADAPTATION AND CHANGE, AND ANY BIOWEAPON PRODUCED WOULD HAVE A SIMILAR EFFECT. CHEMICAL WEAPONS WOULDN’T, BUT THEY CAN CHANGE AND ALTER BY ACCIDENTAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS. A SMART ENEMY COULD DELIVER A COMPOUND THAT CHANGES YOUR OWN ENVIRONMENTAL POISONING INTO A WEAPON AGAINST YOU OR OTHERS.

BOTTOM LINE IS WE’RE NOT GOING TO USE WEAPONS THAT COULD CAUSE MORE HAVOC THAN WE INTEND THEM TO. AS FAR AS STUNNING ENEMY TROOPS EN MASS, USING ENERGY-BASED STUNS IN LARGE SCALE IS IN DEVELOPMENT, BUT THE POWER REQUIREMENTS ARE HEAVY. WE CAN’T TAILOR THE ENERGY TO ONLY AFFECT CERTAIN RACES, BUT WE CAN INCLUDE DESTUNNING ELEMENTS INTO OUR ARMOR SO WE COULD, IN THEORY, STUN AN ENTIRE CITY AND HAVE OUR TROOPS WAKE BACK UP WITHIN MOMENTS WHILE THE ENEMY REMAINS DOWN FOR HOURS.

SATURATION IS THE CURRENT ISSUE, BUT USE ON AN OPEN BATTLEFIELD WOULD NOT BE AFFECTED. WE ARE DEVELOPING A DROP POD FOR THAT BUT SO FAR IT’S NOT LOOKING TO BE ECONOMICAL ENOUGH GIVEN THE SIZE OF THE TECH WE’RE NEEDING TO USE. EVENTUALLY WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO DEVELOP STUN NUKES, BUT THE LARGER THE RADIUS THE MORE POWER IS REQUIRED AND THE MORE THE ENERGY DISSIPATES.

WE CONTROL THE STUN ENERGY, BUT WE WOULDN’T CONTROL A STUN BIOWEAPON. IT WOULD LINGER WHERE THE ENERGY DOES NOT. THAT COULD PROVE ADVANTAGEOUS IN CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES, BUT OUR SPIDEY SENSES ARE TINGLING WITH POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS THAT WE DON’T WANT TO MESS WITH, SO WE’RE STICKING WITH CONTROLLABLE WEAPONS.

Why Davis hadn’t seen that earlier he didn’t know, but after reading it he mentally facepalmed, shaking his head and eternally grateful for having the trailblazers to help him run Star Force. They had a clarity of vision and purpose that complimented his perfectly, and now it was time for him to make good on his half of the equation.

With now 5 races involved in this growing internal ADZ war he needed to stop the others from jumping into the mix, and there were rumors of several being on the fence in that regard. He highly doubted those already fighting would stop when he revealed the truth about the bioweapon, but hopefully a little light shed on the true course of events would restore some sanity.

But Davis also realized that this conflict might need to run its course. He’d kept the various races bottled up within Star Force restrictions to the point where he knew there was considerable hostility between them beneath the surface and it seemed like now that they thought they had an opening with the front limiting Star Force’s ability to intervene they were going to make up for lost time and have it out.

The more they did so the weaker the ADZ became, but it could also be turned into an advantage in the long term…if they managed to hold the Skarrons and lizards off that long. Axius was already taking a bite out of the multi-racial dominance in the ADZ, increasing Star Force’s population by leaps and bounds while attracting many of the best individuals from the varying races to what was proving to be a better way of life. Also, until recently, it had been the place to go if you wanted to fight and had attracted a lot of the top warriors…who to their credit hadn’t abandoned their posts and were still fighting on the front.

That said, Star Force was still only 11% of the ADZ population and several races, such as the Reen, were multiplying so fast that the dynamic was always in a constant state of flux. Already they had contacted Davis requesting what he wanted them to do to help, for they had no military of their own, and were eager to curry favor in return for more territorial allotments. They assumed that the penalties being handed down for those fighting would include territorial losses and they wanted in on the redistribution if possible.

They knew the key to dominance in the ADZ was population growth, and to accommodate that they needed more territory. Star Force had asserted that all worlds within the ADZ boundaries were theirs to divvy up, regardless of whether or not they’d colonized them, and to date they’d made that assertion stick with the backing of the Hycre and Protovic, otherwise there would have been an insane territorial grab with more fighting happening over that, he imagined. He didn’t trust the Reen, who obviously had their own agenda, but for the moment they were behaving themselves and playing by the rules, hoping to gain advantage in this chaotic war.

And they weren’t the only ones. There was a huge shift undergoing and a lot of it depended on what Davis would do to the Lacvamat and Scionate. At the moment there wasn’t much he could do with the Archons busy to the point of breaking, but as always power was more than just military might, with the economic arena just as important.

Now that he knew the Scionate weren’t responsible for the bioweapon attack that put their fighting down to self-defense. That didn’t excuse what they did during the pullout or how they were fighting the war, but it made the Lacvamat as the ones who were in the wrong. He suspected that would not matter to them, and they’d probably cite Star Force as being allied with the Scionate, but it did mean the penalties on the Scionate would be less than had they actually instigated this whole mess.

They’d already lost 2 systems to the Lacvamat and were on the verge of losing a third with four more now under varying levels of attack. So far most of the fighting was occurring on Scionate territory rather than Lacvamat worlds, and it was entirely likely that at least one of the worlds the Lacvamat had taken would not be returned to the Scionate afterwards…but that was just thinking ahead. Without the Archons and their fleet to enforce any of his edicts he was going to have to work this from a different angle for the time being, and to that end he decided to open up another Alliance World.

There were four already in the planning stages, none of which had been assigned regional owners, but with so much material being used to boost warship production the additional of new worlds and their construction required some heavy Star Force infrastructure that was lagging behind. And if he couldn’t curtail the fighting between those races involved, he could reward those that were staying out of it…as well as getting them to supply the resources to get the Alliance World up and running.

The Reen had wanted to help, and now they’d get their chance. He’d offer them 3 territorial slots out of the 8 available in exchange for a number of materials that he’d negotiate later, then open up a similar arrangement for several other races who had resources to spare. Being as territorial hungry as they were, he could bring additional resources into Star Force’s coffers, perhaps even more than needed for the construction of the planet, while giving those less belligerent races a boost in the internal power struggle…as well as hinting that more would be coming in the future for those who played ball.

That would put fear into those races sitting on the fence and might even convince the five engaged to rethink the wisdom of pushing this conflict as far as it seemed they were intent on going…which was to annihilate the opposition.

Davis had already blacklisted those five races from Star Force purchases of starships and construction contracts, not that there were many available given the heavy war production, but those vacancies had moved up others on the waiting lists and that in turn would also affect the power struggle down the road. But he knew he had to do more than that, so with the bioweapon attack mystery solved he began laying out a plan of numerous little tweaks, nothing major, that he would begin to use to reshape the ADZ in this time of turmoil and leave the territorial penalties to the future when he had the ability to actually enforce them.

He also had two requests from races outside the ADZ still standing, and decided to act upon them now. Both were races with worlds along the border of Epsilon Region, which Star Force hadn’t colonized very heavily as yet, but of these two races one already traded with the ADZ and the other one wanted to begin to do so in considerable amounts, with both requesting a foothold world to act as an emissary to the rest of the growing community.

Giving them an entire world wasn’t going to happen, but he would give each a single regional slot on a scheduled Alliance World coming online in Epsilon within the next 14 months, along with the promise of more territory if they proved themselves valuable. That would also mean that two of the slots that would have gone to present ADZ members would be taken away by outsiders, sending the message that the power struggle wasn’t going to be a purely internal affair and Star Force could bring in as many outsiders as it wanted, meaning new players in the game that, as far as percentage went, would diminish the current ones.

Growth was the key to everything, and he needed to make the races fighting one another pay in that regard. If they kept fighting and wasting resources and lives then they’d be curtailing their own growth while others expanded even further with Davis’s assistance. That might not be enough to get the blood feud stopped, but it would be an ever-present reality that cooler heads would respond to as they saw the writing on the wall.

Hopefully that would prevent some of the races considering throwing in with either the Scionate or the Lacvamat from adding to the internecine.

It wasn’t a good situation, but Davis had learned long ago that even in catastrophes there were always opportunities if you looked hard enough. The real question was whether or not the Archons would be able to hold the line without the support they deserved.

He didn’t know if they could or not, for he was reviewing the stats daily as they came in, but he’d learned long ago not to bet against them. He would do his part on the interior, and hoped they’d be able to pull another Houdini, keeping the Skarrons pinned down and out of the ADZ interior for a good while longer.

9

December 15, 2553

Plenx System (Dvapp Territory)

Rvitx

Paul waited, tucked underneath a rocky overhang as the Skarron troops moved all around him enroute to a major offensive. They’d gotten reinforced by a trio of transports that had made it down from orbit, with his warships having gunned down two others as they came in. The ones that landed, though, had added just enough troops that the Skarrons were mounting one last push to try and break the Star Force troops that were all that was holding the native Dvapp defenders together. Both sides had been so wore down that the number of troops on the planet was a small fraction of what it had been in the beginning, and a windfall of new reinforcements from either side would easily tip the scales.

The Skarrons hadn’t gotten a large one, but it was enough that they thought they now had the advantage, and it was all rooted in the Type-1 walker they’d received and was now covering for the rest of the 26 walkers and infantry in the attack column moving across the rocky terrain towards one of three remaining Dvapp cities. The rest were either evacuated or destroyed, with the planet essentially having been turned into a debris field with more dead than you could count, especially with the Dvapp corpses melting away and not sticking around long enough to be noted.

Most of Star Force’s losses had been in the way of machinery rather than troops, with them having more people available than mechs and fighters, but they’d still lost a lot, and without those valuable machines the excess personnel wasn’t much of a help, especially when they didn’t have enough places on planet to house them. Most of his dispossessed troops were now back up onboard the jumpships, including those commandos and Knights who he didn’t have replacement armor for. He wasn’t sending them into combat without it, so he’d had to evacuate them.

That left a small core of Star Force troops to head off the Skarrons while the Dvapp tried to rouse what limited resistance they could. Nearly all of their combat troops had been killed, with only militia remaining. For some reason the Skarrons were targeting the Dvapp harder than others, not just in the number of systems under assault but in killing all those they came across. They’d actively pushed the residential areas rather than gunning for the Star Force troops, atypical of their normal methodology which had them going at the strongest enemies and most highly valued targets straight off.

But that didn’t matter now. This last assault was going to make or break the invasion of this world, and if Star Force couldn’t turn it back the Skarrons were going to run the table and eliminate the remaining settlements, and there was going to be nothing he could do about it short of bringing down his limited warships for fire support…and that was practically suicide with the Type-1 in place, not to mention the other walkers with their anti-air capabilities.

If he’d had more drones he could have taken it out regardless, but he couldn’t waste what he had and still hold onto orbit. There were Skarron ships up there, and if he weakened his fleet enough they’d pounce, but for the moment Star Force and the Dvapp were the stronger and keeping the enemy back from low orbit, aside from the occasional resupply run that they pretty much had a 50/50 chance of intercepting. Paul just wished they’d gotten the transport bringing in the Type-1, for that beast of a machine alone was going to decimate what mechs he had left.

In this late game scenario it looked like the limited reinforcements were going to win the Skarrons the planet and that no matter how much Paul tweaked their defenses it just wasn’t going to be enough. He was going to have to bring the warships down and try to take out the Type-1, but then there would be nothing preventing the Skarrons from bringing their own ships down into the atmosphere after they finished off his fleet in orbit and pounding the crap out of his surviving ground troops.

Either way the Skarrons had already won, or so his Dvapp colleagues had pointed out, wanting to start evacuating the few people they could in the hours they had before the Skarron assault column got to them. Paul wasn’t going for that and had his mechs and handful of fighters standing behind in ambush positions within the varied terrain, given they were able to move around much easier with jump jets than the Skarrons could walking overland on their spindly legs.

They couldn’t take down the Type-1, but they’d stand a decent chance against the Type-3s and 4s. There was one Type-2 in the mix as well, but that one would just have to be dealt with the hard way. Chew up the others first and they could isolate it, but the key to it all was taking out the Type-1. So long as it was in play they were doomed.

And they had nothing that could contend with it short of a fleet of drone warships.

They were beat, pure and simple, and damn the Scionate for pulling out when they did.

That was the general sentiment in the mini war council between Paul, a handful of his Archons, and the Dvapp, which was when the trailblazer quoted Darth Vader and left their headquarters, deploying himself out ahead of the rest of his troops that he’d carefully arranged into the ambush formations he wanted.

Don’t underestimate the power of the Force.

With him concealed in his tiny hollow with his shields turned off so the Skarrons couldn’t track him just in case their sensors could penetrate the rock, which he doubted, he waited and watched with his psionics as infantry and then several of their walkers passed by his position. He could actually see a piece of one of the Type-4s out the open side of his hollow standing atop a ridge that gave him a view of its upper half, but it was too far away to notice him behind them and only a few inches of helmet showing on a direct line of sight.

No, Paul was tucked away nicely and now in the center of their army waiting for the enormous Type-1 to come across his position, hoping he’d guessed right about what path it would take.

The seven segmented walker was mid formation, leaving it with flanking units on all sides to protect it from attacks, though in truth there was nothing around that could harm it. Right now it was providing aerial cover for the rest of the mechs and capable of throwing up a flat, circular shield above itself or the nearby area to protect against bombardment from orbit or fighters, though Star Force didn’t usually use any bomb-type weapons. They wouldn’t get through the anti-air lachars anyway.

Stretching his Ikrid to its limits Paul waited and watched through the rock behind him, sensing the infantry minds and those in the nearest of the walkers until he finally felt the big one coming slightly to the east. He thought it was going to be close enough, but given the height of the segments this was going to be a stretch as was and he didn’t want to add any more meters than necessary. He knew he couldn’t reposition without drawing attention, and right now his only chance was to stay hidden. Get even close to that thing and it’d bathe the surface with so much plasma they wouldn’t even have to aim to hit him, just spam the area with shots.

He felt the minds in the first segment and tracked their movement, mentally plotting out the closest they would come to him. Each piece had its own crew, which worked together to move the giant centipede around, up until they decided to split it apart. That didn’t happen unless one segment needed to be jettisoned, because the shield generating strength of the flat ‘plates’ it created to defend against heavy attack were much stronger when all the segments were combined, though the armor alone was enough to protect it against an insane amount of weaponsfire.

But it would do nothing to block Paul’s Ikrid.

When the first segment hit the closest point to Paul’s position, with the first of its legs coming down some 250 meters to his left, he reached out and tried to connect to one of the minds he was sensing. His contact was very light, given the range, but he focused his mental power and tried to make it as efficient as possible. At first he didn’t think he was going to be able to do it, then he finally got a very faint connection that allowed him to pull information from its senses and allow him to see the inside of the walker along with a few of its surface thoughts.

He quickly realized it wasn’t the one he wanted and switched to another, then another. It wasn’t until his sixth connection that he found the Skarron that had the control panel that he wanted.

Implanting the suggestion proved even harder than reading its senses and took numerous layered attempts to get the impulse firmly imbedded to cut the power to the plasma cannons and divert it to the shield generators to block an incoming orbital bombardment that would destroy the walker if he didn’t scrape together as much power as possible.

It didn’t work at first, but with the layering going on more and more eventually it just snap activated the Skarron carried out the suggestion. There was a large, audible crackle outside as the shield formed over top the big walker even as it continued to plod forward, prompting him to act quickly. He switched to another mind in the crew pit and hammered it hard with layering, feeling it pop a moment later as the rest of the crew focused on the loss of power to their weapons and the shield going up, prying the other as to what was going on.

With that confusion taking place the other Skarron lowered the boarding ramp, with Paul bolting out of cover the moment he felt him hit the switch. Having planned out his run through the terrain via Pefbar earlier, he climbed up a small ridge, shot by a half dozen Hobbits that he didn’t even bother to flip off, and ran underneath the outer legs of the forward segment of the Type-1 as it continued to walk forward.

As it moved a long, thin tendril extended down from the underside forming a stairway. Cringing, he saw it hit a rock and twist a few seconds before he got to it, but the trailblazer jumped up onto the narrow ‘straw’ before it had a chance to break off and climbed the odd staircase in a hurry, needing to get inside before the plasma cannons overhead came back online.

A jolt underneath his feet signaled that the Skarrons were pulling the boarding ramp back in, with him only halfway up. He didn’t bother trying to reacquire mental control over the crew, instead run/jumping up it and staying ahead of the collapsing sections behind him in a race to get to the hatch before the steps beneath him vanished and he fell.

With the help of his jump pack he took several meters in each step, coming up to the opening and ramming into a Skarron poking out the entry parlor to see what was happening below. He drove his armored shoulder into its face, denting into its mount as he hit and rolled/jumped up onto its back as its arms bent over and tried to grab him with more of a limb-bending attempt than he had ever seen one try, for it didn’t have any weapons on them to shoot him with.

Paul didn’t bother fighting it, merely Fornaxing and sliding across its back and heading through the extremely large interior of the walker and into one of the auxiliary crew bays. The main control pit was further up, with these Skarrons being techs/gunners, and Paul bypassed them as well, neutralizing them with his Psionics and running past, heading for the ‘bridge’ of the segment and having to climb through several levels in order to get there.

When he got inside the giant control room he pulled out his rifle and started shooting, having to throw a lot of shots into the Skarrons to take them down, then even more at the ones coming up from below to counter him with some small weapons they’d appropriated from somewhere. He took care of them as fast as he could, then those that came after him unarmed, resulting in a corpse-filled room with even more minds staying away below.

Rather than go back down after them he went for the control consoles and began inputting commands, drawing off the memories of those below when he encountered something unfamiliar, and stopping the big walker in its tracks. He ignored the questions coming in from the other crews and disconnected the forward section, a process that took an incredibly long amount of time.

When it finally separated from the other 6 pieces he walked it forward and rotated it around, powering up the plasma cannons and using a blind targeting lock to get them to remotely shoot without their gunners manually targeting each one, then began pouring plasma into the unarmored connective tissue that he’d just exposed.

Catching the other segments off guard he took the moment while the plasma was pouring out to activate the missile launchers in the uppermost section of the segment and fired on the nearby walkers…unloading the entire payload in his segment and damaging a lot of the Type-4s while pouring most of the missiles into the somewhat distant Type-2, enough at least to get through its shields and damage its armor on the starboard flank, though the thick plates and sturdy shields protected against the missiles far better than he’d expected. He’d hoped to take it down, but then again he only had the missiles in his segment to work with and the walker’s anti-air was chewing up a lot of them.

By that time the second segment had been disabled so badly by the pointblank plasma fire that it had become dead weight, the other 5 segments disconnected from it and pulled back, leaving Paul with his intact segment on the other side of the still standing damaged one and able to use it as a blocker as his armor began taking hits from the nearby walkers he’d just fired upon with the long missile barrage.

Paul created a plate shield over the exposed connective tissue on his segment’s backside and closed his eyes for a moment, reaching out to the surviving crew in the damaged section and trying to access one of them…but it was no good, for those in the control pit had died in an explosion and those in other sections didn’t have access to the missile control.

Oh well, he’d have to go after the others then.

Taking the pilot station and having to use a lot of skill and telekinesis to operate the controls meant for a quadruped with four arms, he walked his enormous segment around the other into a wave of plasma coming from the 5 segments that were in the process of turning their flank towards him so they could all fire simultaneously. Knowing his armor would hold up for a while he didn’t bother to try and shoot back, for that would have required a different control console. Instead he focused on accelerating the sluggish mass towards them, with it stutter stepping across the bad footing and him almost tripping it up three different times.

Piloting the walker wasn’t a point and click endeavor, but he had practiced before on captured machines and simulators for just this type of situation and managed a half decent walk over to the middle segment of the remainder of the Type-1 and rammed it.

Though by ‘ram’ it was more of a slow moving kiss as armor hit armor and the shield covering his backside began to weaken. With the range now being as close as it was going to get Paul reached out with his Ikrid and tried to access the minds in the segment ahead of him…with success.

About a minute later a huge plume of missiles shot out from that segment and nailed the Type-2 that was getting near to plasma range. Paul sent all of them into it, consuming it in a black-smoked billowing fireball that eventually dissipated into the remains of a crippled walker with its leg segments having collapsed and its previous flank wound having been expanded upon into massive internal damage.

Paul tried to reach out to the crews in the other segments but they were too far away, so he kept control over a mind or two in the middle one and made them lock down their legs so the whole walker couldn’t move without disconnecting from them. Then, like a student driver backing out of a minor crash, he pulled his plasma-eaten segment away and walked it to the side, losing more plasma cannons by the minute as the hull was ravaged by fire coming in from multiple angles.

Now in front of the segment to the left he walked it forward and kissed it with an impact, bringing it within his Ikrid range so he could hijack the minds within. Knowing that his time was nearly up, he didn’t bother sending missiles at the other mechs, but instead programmed them to fire straight up…and come back down on the other segments from above.

10

“That’s it, let’s go,” Yavi Soloson said, lifting her neo up out of the crouch it was in and climbing the side of a steep hill when Paul signaled. It took several seconds to get to the top, but then she had a clear view of the distant Type-1 now broken up into pieces and clouded with missile impacts. That walker wasn’t her target, but the other smaller ones nearby were, with a Type-4 less than half a mile down the far side of the hill.

She popped up both mauler cannons and ran forward, dodging the outcroppings and other rocky tripwires the terrain had for her as other mechs came up and over the hill along with her, two being neos and a pair of starbrights that opened fire immediately with their plasma streamers. Yavi held off on her maulers until she got down the hill and on relatively flat ground, then she began trading fire with the tick-like walker as the rest of her star collapsed on it, not giving it a real chance to do anything more than weaker her shields.

Her maulers ate through the plasma-resistant armor after the starbrights took down its shields from behind, then the other neos ran on by leaving her to finish it off as they headed for a more distant Type-3 as other stars were popping up at various places and jumping on the walkers that were redirecting themselves towards the messed up Type-1 at the behest of the crews in the loyal segments.

With Yavi’s attention on the walker before her she didn’t see the carnage taking place on the disloyal segment until after she’d finished off the Type-4 and began to move to back up the others as they tackled the Type-3. Plasma from a dozen walkers was pouring into the thick armored hull of Paul’s segment, with it blasting apart the interior when the shield plate finally went down and exposed the unarmored linkage.

Even as it did another section of the Type-1 sprouted missiles that traveled up and came back down on the adjacent segment, covering it with so many explosions that the dust and debris even swallowed up Paul’s piece, with his ID signature coming through clearly as he declared his location via battlemap. Yavi didn’t know how he was going to get out of that mess but he was thoroughly trashing the Type-1, leaving the smaller ones for her and the other mechwarriors to handle. There were a lot of them, but with the jump they’d got from coming out of concealment the enemy was situated all wrong to bunch up and fight them, leaving a few easy first kills before the real slugging match began.

Yavi pulsed her neo’s weak jump jets and added momentum to a jump up a steep but short cliff, getting her mechanical foot on the rim and traveling over before sprinting some 150 meters up to another Type-4 that had two buddies not far off that began throwing plasma spit her way. Ignoring their weak attacks she charged directly for the closer walker without support and began blasting away with her maulers at pointblank range.

Her shields went down fairly quick, given the amount of plasma coming back at her from the taller walker, but her maulers ate through the forward section with an appetite for armor, melting it off after punching through the shields and letting her deliver a kill shot to the interior before the enemy plasma did more than kiss her hull. Rather than collapse the Type-4 locked up, becoming a dead statue on the rocky battlefield that she took a moment to reposition and hide behind while her shields started to recharge.

As she did that a distant madcat threw some missiles into the side of one of the walker’s near her as another neo came in from the same angle. She waited to coordinate with it then jumped out of cover as both assaulted the closer of the walkers, doubling up their mauler damage and taking it down quickly given that its shields were weakened from the missile strike.

That left one more, which the pair of the mechs took down with only minor armor damage to hers and none to the other. After that it was on to the interior and closer to the broken up Type-1 where the hard fighting was going on and the rest of the walkers were grouping up, meaning heavier plasma fire coming their way when they headed after them, needing to make the most of Paul’s disruption while it lasted.

Paul tucked himself into a corner of the control pit, wedged in between a bulkhead and a bit of computer panel that wouldn’t stop much in the way of shrapnel but it was the best location he had available as the explosions around him blew plasma gouts into the chamber as his walker segment got hammered by the others. He’d managed to take out their missile launchers up top and do some damage beyond that, but the lower sections of the Type-1 segments were still intact and bathing his captured piece with plasma, blasting through the armor while the other walkers hammered the exposed backside that was now shieldless.

He’d long since given up on using his segment as an offensive weapon, now focused on surviving the destruction while reaching out with his Ikrid to any Skarrons within range, of which there were only a few in the segment directly touching his as it leaned into the other, now that its legs were not fully powered. Paul took control of a few of their gunners and turned plasma cannons on the far side against their own walkers in that direction, causing more chaos as the Star Force mechs came out of concealment at distant positions and began fighting their way in.

He couldn’t get a whole lot from the battlemap given the amount of walker around him interfering with the signals, but every now and then he’d get a surge of update and could see his people doing well and chewing through the isolated walkers on the edge of the engagement with no losses of their own.

The wall ahead and to the right of him blew out in a wave of shrapnel that danced over his padawan armor’s shields, failing to penetrate but scattering debris all over the chamber as he kept tucked in next to the rib-like bulkhead. He could feel the nearby crews trying to get the Type-1 moving, but he kept his foot on the brake with the control of the crew directly ahead refusing to move their legs in conjunction with the others.

Eventually the other segments saw they had no choice but to detach, and when they did Paul knew they had them if he could goose the damage rate up a bit. Using the gunners within reach he targeted the exposed sections where the connections were broken and threw plasma into them before shield plates formed, knocking out some of their functionality and actually preventing the shields from forming over one of them that had already been partially damaged into the connective tissue from the missile strikes.

Paul continued throwing plasma into it as his remotely controlled segment began taking fire itself, meaning he was now getting the Skarrons to shoot at two of their own segments. He kept up the chaos until a much larger explosion breached the control pit and knocked him against the wall so hard that he lost his mental link…then a wash of machinery rushed over him and he was buried in debris as his segment finally lost all power to its legs and came crashing down to the ground.

It took Paul a long time to crawl his way out of that mess, and by the time he finally got a clear view of the outside sky most of the other walkers were down, along with most of his mechs according to the battlemap. The few that remained were harassing one intact segment of the Type-1 that was showing heavy damage but still throwing off some 30% of the plasma fire it was normally capable of.

Paul spotted a pair of mechs finishing off a Type-4 nearby and signaled to them, with the madcat making a quick jump his way before walking around the debris from another Type-1 segment and into view as Paul ran/climbed towards it. Like a tick he crawled up the back of the armor-damaged walker and clung there as the mechwarrior turned to face the nearest enemies and walked forward.

The one-armed neo that was pairing with it fell into step and the damaged duo approached one of the three remaining ‘small’ walkers and began trading fire until it came within Paul’s psionic range, with the crew taking repetitive Fornax blasts that kept them unable to operate the controls. The return fire ceased and the damaged mechs pounded the Skarron walker until it crashed to the ground, then the neo ran ahead of the madcat and the two headed for the Type-1 piece as four other mechs were engaging it and getting pounded in the process.

The neo didn’t last long, going down before it could get anywhere near the spindly legs, but it bought enough time for the madcat to get Paul close enough to start Fornaxing at extreme range, with a chunk of the plasma fire dying out immediately. Eventually the madcat made its way up to the legs and walked underneath the teetering segment, allowing Paul to Ikrid link with the crew, turning their remaining plasma cannons against the other remaining half-dead walkers and assisting the mechs in finishing them off…as well as sparing them the defeat that was heading their way, for even a partially intact piece of a Type-1 had enough plasma to eat away the shields and armor on tier 1 mechs quite easily, and there were no larger Star Force models on planet at the moment.

Eventually only the Type-1 segment was left, which then opened up and extended its boarding ramp down to the madcat where Paul hopped off and ran up inside, shooting the crew dead in a short-lived killing spree as he ran about to hunt them all down. Once he returned to the boarding ramp and got back within battlemap signal range and saw that all of the enemy were truly down and out of the fight did he sit down on the top of the alien stairs and take a breather, feeling his head about to cave in from the excessive psionic usage.

But that didn’t matter. He’d recover and the Skarrons wouldn’t, for this was their last major offensive. They had only a handful of walkers left on the planet guarding their remaining bases, five Paul knew as of last count, and each was isolated from the others. He could take them himself if needed, meaning the planet was all but back in ADZ hands.

As he rested his aching head he got on the comm and organized infantry search parties to come out and search the debris. Whether they shot them on sight or took them prisoner they had to account for all the Skarrons, including those probably still alive in the hulks of the Type-1.

But that was cleanup work, important and occasionally dangerous, but nothing that would jeopardize the fate of the planet. So long as the Skarrons didn’t get more reinforcements the Dvapp were about to get their world back, broken and busted up as it was, but it would be theirs again.

Paul stuck around on the ground to help with the searches, using his Ikrid to spot the location of minds, before grabbing a dropship and heading up to orbit. There were still Skarron warships up here, but Admiral Caster was doing a good job of keeping them at bay. As they approached the Excalibur Paul cringed, seeing that the chunks missing from the hull had expanded a bit in his absence, but then he realized the outlines were nice and straight, not the ragged cuts from weaponsfire, meaning it was the work of the crew disassembling surrounding components in order to repair them properly…or at least as much as they could outside of a shipyard.

The damage had been a necessary tradeoff earlier, taking hits that he knew the big ship could take and survive instead of wasting valuable drones that he needed for multiple, simultaneous hits. As powerful as the command ship was, it could only be in one place at one time, and as much as he didn’t like doing it he’d used it to beat down the Skarron fleet multiple times while holding his drones back.

The results were still visible, making it look like a wounded ship that was a sitting duck, but it had so much bulk and redundant weapons systems that it was still quite lethal, especially when its shields were up. Some of the generators had been lost, along with two gravity drives. One was supposed to be repairable but the other had been slagged. That would slow the ship a bit, but not stop it from making decent jumps, for the command ships had multiple gravity drives in order to achieve the insane speeds they were able to travel.

Fortunately the sanctum wasn’t anywhere near the damaged areas, with the crew sections being located towards the interior. That was where Paul was heading next, and even as the dropship came in close to the massive ship he saw the central plug disconnect and head down to the surface to pick up the damaged mechs and other equipment as they continued the cleanup rather than send repetitive dropship flights.

It was empty of troops, unfortunately, but with luck they wouldn’t need any more here. Paul wasn’t counting on that, but he did have his fingers crossed.

When the dropship landed he walked off and found Caster waiting for him on the deck.

“Bad news?” he guessed.

“Yes and no,” the Admiral said, falling into step with him as the trailblazer headed out of the landing bay. “We got word that a Sentinel is on its way here and should be operational within 18 days.”

“That’s good news,” Paul said happily. This world had had none to begin with, making the naval situation even more tricky. Putting one up wouldn’t stop the Skarrons from getting to the ground, but it would give what was left of the Dvapp fleet a safe haven to run to if/when the Skarrons came back.

“I also got word that Veernad finally fell. They’re finishing up evacuations before they get completely overrun, but they’re conceding the planet and system.”

“Damn it,” Paul swore angrily. The Dvapp planet was some 13 lightyears away and the next planned stop for the Excalibur after securing Plenx, but apparently they were too late. He stood still for a moment, then took a step to the left and punched the wall with his armored hand while the Admiral patiently waited nearby with other passing members of the crew giving them both a wide berth.

“Where are they headed?”

“The Dvapp to Keema, the Clans to Metropolis,” Caster said, referencing the still intact Dvapp capitol.

“How much is left?”

“About twice what we have here, ground wise. Shall I have their naval assets transferred to us?”

Paul pulled his helmet off and blew out a sigh. “Feel like going hunting?”

“Always.”

“Give me as many full jumpships as you can, send the remainder on to Metropolis.”

“Rendezvous here or at a neutral location?”

“Here. We’ve still got a few locals to run down now that we don’t have a blockade to maintain.”

“Shall I wait on that?”

“No, my young apprentice. You may begin causing havoc immediately. Call me if you get stuck. I’ll be doing some badly needed training.”

“Nice work down there,” Caster added. “You pulled out a victory single handedly.”

“No, not single-handedly. I just carried.”

“Impressive none the less.”

“Gave me a headache,” Paul mildly complained.

Caster smiled then nodded, touching two fingers to his temple in a brief salute before heading back to the bridge and leaving the trailblazer to start getting himself back into shape.

Paul didn’t even bother showering before heading to the sanctum. He got out of his armor and into fresh clothes then hit the track immediately, intent on running the stagnation out of himself. Almost non-stop combat missions had been taxing on him, but not in any beneficial way. Having been away from his normal workout routine he’d gotten rusty and sloppy, but he knew his body and mind would readjust quickly enough, but it was going to be an ugly process and he wanted to get through it as quickly as possible.

And when Archons wanted to get through something quickly, they hammered.

Paul spent the next 6 hours in high cardio training, a mix of running, swimming, and agility drills before finally retreating to his quarters and logging into the terminal to begin checking updates and messages, with a lot of backlog to get through. He’d had access on the surface via Star Force facilities, but he’d had such little downtime that he had passed over everything that wasn’t priority flagged.

He wasn’t going to get through it all now, but he worked through the recent stuff and got himself up to date on what was happening on the ship and across the ADZ, including the stupid war occurring on the inside. If the Scionate were still here where they belonged they’d have punted the Skarrons out of Dvapp space by now rather than having lost another world to them. That put the count at 3 now, giving them footholds on this section of the border that needed to be routed out sooner rather than later.

But Paul didn’t have the troops or ships to do it, and was barely hanging on to what they did have. The incoming Sentinel would help, both for the planet and his sanity, reminding himself that the longer they held on to territory the more of them would be made back in Sol and transported out here, fortifying the border worlds they possessed, so he wasn’t fighting a pointless campaign, as much as it felt sometimes.

Plenx was so weak right now that a healthy Skarron sneeze would take it, but thanks to the Voku the Skarrons were as starved for reinforcements as Star Force was.

He saw a new message from Cal-com, dated 28 days ago, and pulled it up, intent on it being the last message he read before heading to bed for his eyelids were getting so heavy he wasn’t sure how productive he was going to be if he kept pushing through his stack of mail.

What it contained was a bit of intel taken from the Skarrons, indicating a troop shift spinward, which was in the direction of Zeta Region from Earth’s point of view. The Skarrons were redeploying, and it didn’t appear to be related to the ADZ or the Voku.

That caused an eyebrow to raise, despite his fatigue. If the Skarrons were redeploying away from the ADZ that was definitely good news, but if they had somewhere else to go where was it and, more importantly, who were they fighting that was of higher priority?

STAR FORCE Facebook Page

STAR FORCE Wiki

1

March 19, 2554

Cdat System (Dvapp Territory)

Haxplet

“Any movement?”

“Not on the ground,” Nevil said, looking through his sniper scope from his perch on the rocky hillside, “but I can see the transports coming in.”

“We are so about to get owned,” his fellow commando said, taking a glance back at the 200 or so Dvapp troops in the valley below. They and several other units in the area were set up to attack the fringes of the Skarron base just a few kilometers away, but word had come down that the enemy had gotten a reinforcement fleet into orbit and was fighting their way down with multiple transports…and that the limited navy that Star Force and the Dvapp had in place wasn’t going to be able to stop them all from getting to the surface.

Nevil frowned. “Um…something’s wrong. They’re not carrying walkers.”

Donald mimicked his frown, though both commandos were wearing full armor and couldn’t see each other’s faces. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve got the closest one lined up and there are no walkers hanging underneath it.”

“Must just be a troop ship then.”

Nevil adjusted his sights to match the battlemap telemetry being transmitted down from orbit and sighted the next transport. “Negative. Another one is empty too.”

“Maybe they don’t have the big toys to throw around anymore. Good for us, except the infantry alone are going to be more than we can manage.”

“I hear ya there,” Nevil said, sighting a third equally empty transport, as far as the exterior underside latches went. He saw the drift angle they were taking and moved his rifle to the side and ahead of their path, pulling back the insane zoom and looking at the bit of the enemy base that was in view. “Hold up, we’ve got activity…north side. Troops coming out.”

“They might be trying for a hot drop,” Donald said, adjusting his crouched stance in agitation. He hated waiting for the fighting to start, though this next battle wasn’t one that looked to be anything less than a slaughter…which meant a fighting retreat trying to whittle down the enemy’s numbers as they moved.

“Walkers are not coming out…they’re heading back in?”

“What?”

“Perimeter walkers are pulling back. What do they think we’ve got out here that can touch those transports?”

“Pulling back to the LZ?”

“Looks like.”

“What’s that mean for us?”

“Mechs will have to reposition. They’re going to be too far away to hit at full strength.”

“Damn…there goes our ambush,” Donald said, biting his lower lip. He knew orders would come down eventually, but right now the comms were silent.

“I think the ambush was off as soon as they started coming down from orbit.”

“Point…so where does that leave us?”

“Keep our heads down and wait,” Nevil said, still scoping the LZ as the first of the transports got close. “You know…” he said, trailing off.

“For the record, you didn’t finish that sentence.”

“The infantry is coming out of the city and it looks like they’re headed to the LZ.”

“Joining up with the incoming for an immediate assault?”

“Should be the other way around.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Give me a moment,” the commando said, watching the first of the giant transports land next to the small Skarron base, nearly right on top of the infantry and walkers but in an open spot just large enough to fit its bulk. As it settled large doors on the underside opened up and Nevil could see one of the ramps lower to the ground…with the infantry outside running up it and into the ship.

“Son of a bitch, they’re loading.”

“Loading?”

“They’re getting onboard.”

“Gotta be a hot drop coming.”

“Won’t be on us.”

“They’ve gotta be going for one of our bases.”

“Walkers too,” Nevil noted as the second transport came in and didn’t land all the way, hovering over the surface as several of the docking arms reached down and grabbed the nearest walker, pulling it up and into one of the niches on the underside of the transport, with several more headed its way.

“This is too weird.”

“Explains why the transports were empty. Are all of them?”

Nevil readjusted his sights and scanned the incoming ships. “I don’t see a single walker under them.”

“Must be really short-handed right now…same as us,” Donald said as deployment orders flashed an incoming message icon in his HUD. “Here we go,” he said, pulling them up. “We’re moving a klick to the west.”

“Archon chess pieces,” Nevil said, referencing themselves. “Looks like they’ve got a plan. Let’s hope it’s a good one,” he said, looking up from his rifle and crawling back behind the nearest rock before he stood up and looked down at the Dvapp below that were just now stirring as they began to redeploy.

“After you,” Donald said, waving his hand forward as the two commandos came down from up high to join them.

An hour and a half later Nevil was ducking behind a jagged rock as a quartet of Skarron fighters flew over pelting the ground with plasma blasts. He saw a nearby Dvapp literally evaporate when it got hit, blowing bits of goo everywhere, some of which washed over his grey armor. A split second later two skeets zipped past overhead in pursuit, with blue mauler blasts reaching out towards the slower fighters and blasting one out of the sky before they got out of Nevil’s view.

One of the incoming transports had been loaded with enemy fighters, which had taken to the sky and moved directly against the friendly infantry positions around the base even as their walkers continued to load up for their hot drop. It was obvious that they were providing cover fire, but they were doing so far more effectively than the commando liked. The Star Force mechs were nearby but out of sight, leaving this group of Dvapp temporarily exposed, but at least there were friendly air assets in the area to keep the Skarrons from getting too comfortable up there.

Nevil held position, knowing there wasn’t much he could do right now with no enemy infantry nearby to shoot. He thought about trying for a shot on the fighters, then dismissed the notion given how low powered his lachar rifle was compared to their shields and armor. About two seconds later when another section of rocky terrain blew out and threw debris across him and three nearby Dvapp he change his mind, tired of just sitting and waiting to get hit. With the rocky fragments bouncing off his armor and being expulsed by the Dvapp’s bodies after penetrating a few inches deep, he swung his sniper rifle off his back rack and tucked in backwards to the nearest crevice that gave him a good view of the sky and tried to pick out a moving target that he might be able to hit.

The Skarron fighters were slow, but they were still aircraft and moved a hell of a lot faster than anything on the ground did. Nevil knew he’d need a long range shot to have any chance of getting a bead on one, so as a pair swung around a couple kilometers away and started heading  in his general direction he brought his scope up and  tried to get one in range.

To his surprise he got a lock on one fairly quick and kept his arms as steady as he could, then pumped out a phaser-like beam burst, with the continuous lachar just nicking the upper edge of the fighter and hitting its shields. He fired again, then got two more shots in before the fighter zipped past on the right. He was pretty sure he hadn’t hit the hull, but at the least he drained a touch of shield energy off…which might make a difference.

Another bit of movement in the distance got his attention and he swung his scope around…then checked his fire as a Star Force ID tag hovered over it, indicating it was a Starscream-class mech in flight. To his relief it was heading directly towards them, taking a bit of Skarron plasma on approach but its shields and armor plates were so thick it almost didn’t matter. The heavy ‘super fighter’ flew in near to Nevil’s position and came to a hover, then began transforming some 600 meters away and dropped onto the top of a small rise with its newly formed feet landing on the rock as its shoulders formed and popped up anti-air turrets.

They began spraying lachars through the air, covering Nevil and the rest of the nearby infantry and pushing the Skarron fighters back, save for those attempting runs on the mech. Regardless the repetitive explosions nearby the commando ceased and he breathed a sigh of relief, along with a deeply felt thanks to the mechwarrior for flying in…and the for techs who’s thought of creating a flying mech in the first place.

Nevil put his rifle back on his armor rack and moved to a different position, trying to get some view of what was going on in the direction of the enemy base but not wanting to expose himself and press his luck. As he darted from one rock to another a Skarron fighter blew apart overhead with the debris falling some 40 meters nearby in three separate chunks, one of which bounced off a rock in a shower of pieces and caused the commando to duck for cover.

He didn’t get hit but one of the Dvapp nearby did, getting a sharp piece impaling it all the way through its jello-like mass.

“Are you alright?” he asked, scurrying over to it.

For a moment it didn’t respond, then it melted around the shrapnel, flowing out onto the ground and Nevil thinking it was dead, but the pool reformed and became another meter-high pillar ‘crouching’ on the landscape.

“No, but I will live,” it finally answered him, vibrating to create the sound, for the Dvapp had no mouth or vocal chords to speak from.

“Way to stay alive, buddy. I envy you that.”

“And I envy your armor,” it said, forming a pair of legs and walking over to a different rock to take cover behind. It left behind a small pool of goo, with Nevil seeing just how much material it had lost from the impact. He knew if they lost a certain amount of core material they’d die, though he was never sure how much that was or what ‘core’ material was comprised of. He just knew they were damn resilient to physical impacts and could soak up several plasma blasts before going down too, though it had a lot more effect on their crystalline bodies than blunt force trauma.

“Nevil, they’re pulling out,” Donald broke in over the comm.

“What do you mean?” Nevil answered his fellow commando, who was some 230 meters to the south.

“I mean the Skarrons are pulling out…as in off the planet. The transports are taking them back up to orbit, and not just here. It’s happening everywhere.”

“We are not that lucky,” Nevil argued.

“Luck or not, they’re leaving.”

“They bring a fleet into orbit just to pull them out?”

“Looks like.”

“I thought they liked to fight to the death.”

“Just be glad they’re not this time.”

“Agreed.”

“Keep your head down, their fighters aren’t gone yet.”

“Will do,” he said, lying and breaking out of cover to running up the hillside to find a partially obscured viewpoint on the distant base just in time to see one of the big ships lift off and start to head up to orbit, with several more already on the way and the others still on the ground, loading up.

Nevil pulling his rifle off and sighted in on the base, ignoring the few fighters still zipping overhead and trusting the starscream to keep them off him as he scoped out the activity at closer range.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, seeing more infantry and walkers being loaded up. They really were leaving.

“Here and here,” Paul said, pointing out the two star systems in Dvapp space that the Skarrons were holding onto. “Everywhere else they’re pulling troops out.”

“To reinforce those positions?” Megan asked from across the display table that held several different maps and intel reports.

“We think so. A lot of the convoys are still in transit.”

“Where’d the evac fleets come from?”

“Cal-com said they must have pulled a long flanking run to get around them. They didn’t come through the systems he’s got blockaded.”

“Well, good for us they didn’t bring in more troops.”

“Bigger fish to fry.”

Megan wrinkled her nose. “Need a better metaphor.”

Paul frowned. “You’re right, I do.”

“I don’t think we’ve got the troops to do more than annoy them if they’re consolidating their forces,” she said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “They’re making it easy on us giving up the contested worlds, but the two they own are going to get very tanky very fast if all these troops are headed their way…and we don’t have a Last Whisper to throw on since you broke yours.”

“Just a few scuff marks,” Paul said, referencing the damage to the Excalibur.

“More like pot holes.”

“I always preferred a full crit build anyway.”

Megan snorted. “Can’t kill tanks with that.”

“I did well enough.”

“What’s your full crit build here?”

Paul shook his head. “Don’t have one. We’re scraping bottom and need to consolidate our own troops. I think you’ve got Metropolis buttoned up pretty good, but even if the Skarrons go turtle and don’t strike out at any more Dvapp worlds there’s not much we can do about it on the ground.”

“And navally?”

“I can poke and run, but that’s about it.”

“Isn’t that what ADCs do?”

“We have so got to bring that game back,” Paul commented, adjusting one of the star maps. “What do you think of risking a Kiritak expansion here?”

Megan cringed, seeing him point to one of the formerly Dvapp worlds the Skarrons had just evacuated. It wasn’t far from Metropolis, but bringing the little guys up to the front wasn’t what she liked doing…especially when they wouldn’t be able to defend them well. “A gamble.”

“Agreed, but if the Skarrons are going turtle then a nearby supply base is viable…not to mention badly needed.”

“I’d rather expand Metropolis.”

“I meant do both.”

Megan tilted her head while she looked at the star map and the planet that had once housed millions of Dvapp…all of which were now dead or evacuated. “You sure they’re not going to want it back?”

“They’re licking their wounds too, but the resources there are too valuable to pass over. Our mining technology is far superior to theirs, so in order to get them the materials they need to regrow we have to go after them.”

“Trade them the planet for materials?”

“Something like that, though I wasn’t planning on asking. We currently hold the planet anyway…or did. Right now there’s no one there.”

“Still risky. They’ll be exposed.”

“The entire front is exposed.”

“I know. I think this could work, but if it goes wrong it will go horribly wrong.”

“We can’t tolerate the long shipping lines,” Paul reminded her. “The rebuilding effort has to be local.”

“I know,” she repeated. “I just wish your ship wasn’t busted in case you need to go to ground again.”

“Well, it’s not that busted,” Paul wavered.

Megan raised an eyebrow. “You said the gravity drives had been damaged?”

“There’s still enough to take it into the atmosphere.”

“Ok, you are officially nuts.”

“It’s not that big of a deal if you go slow. The tricky part is in the atmospheric calculations…and this planet is low grav anyway.”

“Fine, you can still pull your stunts with a broken wheel, but you’re not going to be camping out there are you?”

“No, I’ll be roaming. Gotta keep the Skarrons on the defensive. If they’re holding on to these worlds then I bet they’re still gonna be trying to resupply them.”

“Or they could be going all local if they’re really turtling up.”

“Possible, but they don’t build that well. Last ditch option, I’d say, and I’d bet a million credits they’re going to try some more long flanking resupply runs over the coming years. I’d like to intercept those before they get here.”

“So while you roam the Kiritak mine and build and hope nobody comes in to shoot them? Can we at least get them a Sentinel?”

“Planned on that, plus a decent drone fleet.”

“Define ‘decent?’”

“Enough to hold out long enough for me or other reinforcements to arrive.”

“Is the relay intact?”

Paul pulled up another screen and did a quick check. “Yes.”

“Ok, we’ll try it. I’ll stay here and keep building up Metropolis, then put down a colony after the Kiritak start the resources flowing so we can avoid the trade lag. I’ll keep enough ships here to reinforce with, but stay close enough that I can call for you if needed.”

“No promises there, but I am going to drop a few more stealth relays in neutral systems so we can stay in closer contact. Actually, we need to start hitting up every system in the ADZ.”

“That’s a lot,” she reminded him, with there being 2,373 star systems within their current borders as measured by a 100 light year radius around Sol that made up the ADZ, with some deviations here and there, mainly around Protovic territory.

“I know,” he said, mimicking her.

“I also get the feeling that we just became responsible for carrying the Dvapp.”

“They fought well and bled the Skarrons dry, otherwise we’d have already lost the front, so it’s a debt I don’t feel bad about paying.”

“Agreed, but it’s one more item on our plate.”

“Good thing we’re used to eating a lot.”

Megan smiled. “True. Just keep your donut around for a while, ok?”

“Need to get it patched up anyway, so deal.”

“We don’t have a big enough slip here.”

“That’s why I said patched. I need it too badly to send it all the way back to Earth. She’s still fighting capable so we’re going to work out what repairs we can out here.”

“Scrappy…good. How soon you going to bring the Kiritak in?”

“Give it a year to see if the Skarrons really are going turtle, but I want them prepped to move when we give the word.”

“Going to need a good sized transport fleet for that.”

“Saber and Canderous will come through on that one.”

“Alright, I’ll make it work from this end. I just hope we don’t get ganked.”

“Same here…but we really don’t have any choice but to try.”

“I know,” she repeated, this time without any merriment.

2

February 19, 2555

Belar System (Bsidd Capitol)

Hassnve

The Cajdital fleet escorting the invoker into middle orbit was met with a swarm of Bsidd warships, countering numbers with numbers as they wisely targeted the escorts and not the fleet killer, for so long as they were in close proximity to the enemy cruisers the invoker was harmless to them else the Cajdital risked killing their own ships. However, there was nothing to prevent the invoker from moving up next to the numerous stations circling the planet and incinerating them with its wild, multi-colored energy arcs. One by one it was chewing apart both defense platforms and habitats, with the Bsidd fleet unable to do anything more than engage the enemy escorts and hope to whittle them down.

But as much whittling as they accomplished it was useless. Like they had across the rest of Bsidd territory, the Cajdital had outwitted and outnumbered them at every turn, and even now groups of enemy reinforcements were coming in to replace the escorts lost almost as if the enemy was playing with them by not showing their full hand up front.

The capitol was the only major planet left, with its defense force cobbled together from surviving fleets and the permanent defenders in order to make a last stand. They had no hope of surviving given the strength of the enemy, but without anything else to do they might as well make them pay as high a price as they could to wipe them out.

There were a few other planets that hadn’t fallen, all minor, with some Bsidd scattering to the unexplored regions of the galaxy to try and escape, but word was the Cajdital were pursuing at least some of them though it hardly mattered. They had nowhere to go even if they got away, but even a small chance of survival was more than the inhabitants of Hassnve had. They were doomed and knew it, with nothing more than regrets about what could have been had the Nestafar not betrayed the Alliance.

None the less the remaining jumpships left to the Bsidd were loading in low orbit. Where they could go even if they managed to get past the Cajdital was a curious question, but it didn’t matter for the 56 billion Bsidd on the planet. They couldn’t fit even a small fraction of that population inside, with those on the surface digging in and preparing to make their last stand, literally, by carving out subsurface hideaways and tunnels where they stood a better chance of engaging the Cajdital given their air and naval support couldn’t get to them.

Those jumpships, however, held one tiny hope for their race…almost an afterthought. There were a few surviving Alliance relays still operational and linked to Bsidd territory and recently they’d received a message on them, prompting the Bsidd to prepare to evacuate a few key personnel and equipment on the off chance that the communique had been legit, let alone feasible.

The loading was still taking place as the invoker broke through the middle orbit defensive ring and began trashing the Bsidd shipyards like a giant, angry energy cloud devouring everything in its path, with such destruction taking a long time to execute. While that was happening another group of jumpships emerged at the system’s star and released yet more warships…but these weren’t Cajdital.

Before long the ongoing brawl containing Bsidd blue plasma orbs and Cajdital green added a few white streaks as the Hycre fleet moved in and engaged, small in number as they were, but used their range advantage to contribute damage while taking none of their own. They didn’t touch the invoker or go anywhere close to it, focusing instead on the escort fleet and trying to help the doomed Bsidd make a few more kills before it was all over.

Their numbers were dropping fast, and before long it was going to turn into a total rout. That little bit of time that remained was going to be put to use as the remaining Bsidd queens were evacuated up to the jumpships along with their necessary minions as their troops and civilians bought them time with their lives. A few Hycre warships flew down and intercepted the roaming Cajdital vessels looking for targets of opportunity, with the rest sniping the enemy fleet while the Bsidd continued to get hammered.

The evacuation didn’t take long, for there weren’t that many Bsidd jumpships to fill. Nearly all of their previously massive fleet had been expended in the war and even now the jumpships were being filled up with transports, leaving the loyal warships behind to die providing them cover.

When the time came the Hycre redeployed into a protective wedge and fought the Bsidd clear of the planet, micro-jumping with them back to the star and leaving the capitol behind to die. They encountered another enemy reinforcement group coming in, with the Hycre jumping on it immediately and killing half of their ships, including two jumpships, while the Bsidd fled on the jumpline the Hycre had given them.

Once the last of their ships were out, the Hycre executed a fighting withdrawal back to their own jumpships and followed the Bsidd out, catching up to them at the next system and providing an escort across what was now Cajdital-dominated space to the closest intact Hycre world. There they were safe behind a much larger Hycre fleet, all equipped with cleansing beams and maulers, for a short stay. Eventually they began to transition from one Hycre world to another, moving with escort at all times as they gradually made their way across what had formerly been Calavari territory and into the ADZ.

By the time they arrived their capitol had long since been annihilated, leaving the small fleet of jumpships as the only cohesive remnant of their once great empire. They were led up into Delta Region to an Alliance World still in the making, with only two functioning Star Force cities on the border strips. The Bsidd were quickly given one of the regions on the high grav world to begin colonizing, with them immediately sending an ambassador to Earth to discuss the future of their race and their place within the Alliance they had previously abandoned.

Davis met the Bsidd in one of Atlantis’s sister cities, not sure what to expect. The Bsidd had insisted that they be allowed to speak to the Star Force leader, and given their previous status he’d been inclined to indulge them…but not on Atlantis. That was Star Force’s core and sanctuary, and no one else was going there unless they had special permission. Davis wanted to keep it that way, hence the short hop over to Mediterranea via Mantis where the gangly alien was waiting for him after having arrived on a Hycre jumpship carrying a Star Force transport from the Alliance World.

The inclusion of the Bsidd into the ADZ had been at the Hycre’s request. Star Force had written them off long ago, along with the Kvash and others. According to the Hycre the Kvash empire had already fallen, and now the Bsidd, but with their queens surviving the insect-like race could repopulate quickly, and given their formidable technology the Hycre suggested that they could be a valuable addition to the communal defense in the future.

Future was right, for at the moment the Bsidd had nothing aside from a handful of people and some key technological elements. Impressive as the latter were, Star Force had already pulled ahead of them in most areas, though there was always an element of design unique to each race that was sometimes valuable. The Bsidd had better tech than anyone else in the ADZ, save for maybe the Elarioni, and in time that could be an asset, but the Bsidd were still on Star Force’s black list after what they’d done to the Nestafar capitol and essentially abandoning the other races in the Alliance to fight the lizards on their own.

Davis wasn’t going to turn them away, but he wasn’t going to give them the status they probably wanted within the ADZ and expected this meeting to be more of an argument than anything productive.

And he wasn’t disappointed.

He met the tall, multi-limbed alien in a conference room with two Knights flanking him should it not play nice, and after two hours of ‘discussion’ had melted down into the Bsidd making demands for resources and inclusion in ADZ decision making committees the Star Force Director had exhausted his patience and finally laid it out plainly for the ambassador.

“You have no control here. Not in any way, shape, or form. The Alliance you were formerly part of has been dead for some time now, with a new one growing in its place. The Hycre, Protovic, and Star Force make the decisions here, for we carry the burden of the ADZ’s defense. You have nothing to contribute to that, hence you have no decision making privileges. Your past empire’s greatness no longer matters. You are what you are now…a handful of refugees seeking a new home. I will and have granted you that, but everything you get from this point on you’ll have to work for, and you’ll have to abide by our rules or you’ll lose your sovereignty…do I make myself clear?”

“You will not dictate to us, Human,” the Bsidd said stiffly.

“I am, actually, right now.”

“We are still the technologically superior, and the wiser. Your race is young and immature.”

Davis smiled, born of frustration rather than amusement. “You might want to have a look around before you start making assumptions like that. A great many things have changed, and you’re alive right now because we’ve carved out a sanctuary that we are defending with our technology. The Hycre rescued you using weapons that we gave them. We have succeeded, to date, where you have failed, so do not think that you are in a position of power here.”

“You will give us the resources we require to rebuild. The Hycre have guaranteed it!” the Bsidd said, almost in a yell.

“Not without compensation, and the Hycre have guaranteed you nothing other than foodstuffs and other basic necessities to keep you alive while you rebuild. We will not do it for you, nor provide you the resources in any way that differs from what we offer to the other races via our markets.”

“You will not subjugate us to minority status. We are a founder of the Alliance, you are not.”

“We are the founder of the new Alliance, you are not,” Davis countered. “And we alone dictate all territorial allotments within the ADZ, and the Protovic and Hycre back us on this.”

“The Protovic are minor, only the Hycre and Calavari are to be concerned.”

“The Calavari are now part of Star Force. I speak for them.”

The Bsidd looked taken aback…or as close as Davis could guess based on his thoughts, for his ‘facial’ expressions were nearly impossible to read.

“The Calavari would not submit to you.”

“They didn’t submit, they joined with us, as have many others.”

“We will not do so.”

“You don’t have to, but you will have to earn your place in the ADZ and rebuild your civilization from scratch. Use the resources in the region we gave you or trade for them with us or another faction.”

“We have nothing to trade and you know it!”

“You have technical knowledge that others lack. Start there,” Davis suggested.

“We will not give away our secrets, Human!”

“Trade, not give. It seems like I’m the only one that gives anything away nowadays.”

“You would be wise to treat us well, for once we regrow we will remember your actions.”

“Then remember that we took you in when you had nowhere else to go,” Davis said, standing up and causing the two Knights to shuffle, ready to move if needed. “It seems you’ve wasted time and resources coming here, for you expect us to cave to your whims and that is not going to happen. Go back to your people and begin rebuilding at whatever pace you can sustain. We will keep you alive with the necessary foodstuffs in the interim. You need not fear dying, but as for your empire’s glory, that’s on you to reestablish…not me.”

Davis pointed at the door and a Star Force personnel relations attendant and a trio of security officers came up and prodded the Bsidd towards it as the Director left the room via another entrance while the alien ranted in its native tongue. Davis stopped a few steps out into the hall after the door was shut behind them, rubbed his chin for a moment, then belatedly glanced up at the Knights.

“Dismissed,” he said, backtracking a few steps and heading the other way while they headed off to wherever they needed to be.

Davis had a thought, then rapidly developed it into a plan causing him to accelerate into a jog and race towards the nearest lift, which he took to the closest security station. He had them locate the highest ranking Archon within the city and get her to the spaceport asap…along with a medical team.

The ranger in question, following Davis’s order/suggestion, intercepted the Bsidd before he boarded the dropship to head back to orbit but did so in such a way that she froze him in place using her Ikrid and dulled his senses. She wasn’t skilled enough to erase memories, but she messed up his senses enough then released them back into normalcy that the Bsidd didn’t realize what had just happened and after a bit of disruption and confusion walked on into the dropship and headed back to his people without being any the wiser.

The ranger came back to Davis in the security station with a smile on her face. “Easy peasy.”

“Thank you,” he said as she handed him the small vial that contained the genetic sample she’d had the medics take off the Bsidd while he was disoriented.

“Anything else?”

“Always something else to do…but not for you.”

“Call if you need me,” she said, retreating out of the station and back to whatever she had been doing which, judging by the casual tank top and shorts she was wearing had been a training session.

Davis let her go and looked at the genetic sample in his hand, or rather the container, for the actual sample was microscopic and something the Bsidd wouldn’t notice missing. Their files on their race hadn’t included a full sample, and were so sketchy that a lot of the data was little more than rumor, one of which was how they reproduced. It was said that all Bsidd originated from a small number of queens, but unlike some other known races they weren’t directly birthed or hatched. They came from subqueens in various forms.

The exact details were lost, however, for the Bsidd didn’t share such secrets with outsiders. With analysis hopefully the medtechs would be able to shed some light on the truth of their reproductive systems, which was important if Davis was going to assimilate them. He’d been skeptical about their inclusion into the ADZ from the beginning when the Hycre had requested it, but this meeting made it clear that the Bsidd had a one track mind and if he let them develop, or redevelop, with their current disposition then they were only going to be trouble going forward…and the ADZ had enough of that with the ongoing civil war that now included 6 races.

He would have just broken them up by individuals and incorporated them into Axius, scattering them far and wide and essentially ending their civilization right from the beginning, but if they could only reproduce through queens that gave those queens a firm hold over their society, and anywhere they went they could start to rebuild their numbers and that wouldn’t work with the Axius maturia setup…and he didn’t want the Bsidd reproducing off the grid and causing havoc that way.

Which was why he needed to know exactly how they reproduced. If the Bsidd were going to be a problem then it was one he was going to deal with from the get go rather than let it grow. If Axius wasn’t feasible for the Bsidd then Star Force could incorporate them as a ward of the empire, but only if they had full control of their race. If the ‘minions’ couldn’t reproduce on their own and only the queens could, he couldn’t separate biology from culture the way he had with others and that lingering taint could cause problems, though it would fade over time.

He didn’t want to take that risk and hoped there would be a way to annex the Bsidd without them becoming more trouble than they were worth. If not…then he’d have to keep them contained and under his thumb while he tried alternative ways to influence them. That wasn’t something he wanted to do, especially given all the bad examples floating around the ADZ for them to pattern off of. He needed to isolate and teach their offspring in order to cut the cultural cord…but queens was something new.

He wasn’t sure how to deal with them and hoped his genetic experts would have some answers for him now that he had something more than rumor for them to analyze.

3

December 22, 2555

Solar System

Earth

Davis flew in a mantis across the landscape of Antarctica, now devoid of snow given that it was the summer. Most of what was below him, visible through the datapad that he was browsing on during the flight, was cityscape with large, almost mountain-sized buildings rather than the smaller versions seen in warmer climates. There were roads and rail lines crisscrossing everywhere, but most of the infrastructure was subsurface with the ‘ground’ being comprised of rooftops and other artificial constructions that didn’t collect and hold the native snow well.

During the winter the cityscape would be covered regularly, but for now the once white continent was just a chilly cityscape basking in partially cloudy skies.

The continent held a considerable population, in excess of 12 billion, with the rest of Earth being similarly choked with people, though Davis had seen to it through restructuring that the heavy population was no longer suffocating. The planet might be crowded, but there was still ease of movement given sufficient and proper infrastructure…not to mention huge buildings like those seen below that could pack in more population per square mile when they themselves were more than a mile high.

Extensive subsurface infrastructure actually made the buildings even taller from an interior standpoint, and Star Force was continuing to expand on those, digging down deeper and deeper into the crust to build more habitats and facilities. They were also continuing to expand the colonization of the oceans, which held both surface and subsurface cities, but eventually those would fill up too and Davis would be faced with either having to start shuffling off the native population in far greater numbers than he was already doing or begin rebuilding again with even larger infrastructure.

He hated tearing down functional structures in order to replace them with larger ones, but sometimes it was necessary. Earth’s current population of 153 billion was continuing to grow rapidly, even with the mass exodus traveling out to the stars. Some didn’t go far, for the Solar System had already passed the half trillion mark and made up approximately one quarter of the Human population in Star Force, making it by far the most valuable system in the ADZ.

Davis had kept it exclusively Human, with very few travel permits allowed for outsiders. Occasionally you would see a few ships passing through for trade purposes, but otherwise it was a closed system to the rest of the ADZ while the other Star Force systems were open and would always remain so. Davis preferred it that way, and while he liked having a Human-only zone part of the time it wasn’t by choice. Sol was as much of a liability as it was an asset, and he’d never been able to structure it as he’d liked. Chasing the population curve always kept him making adjustments, but never with a fresh start like he had in other systems.

Antarctica had been a fresh start because no one had been living here when Star Force took possession of the continent, but it was still facilitating the rest of the planet by being the evacuation point for all those looking to move out to the colonies. Davis was never going to restrict reproduction, such would be a major privacy invasion, which left him always feeling a little bit behind the curve with Earth, but like the Archons he rose to meet challenges.

And yet, while Earth was in continual population increase it wasn’t enough to fuel the expansion he wanted throughout the ADZ. Humanity was still only a tiny fraction of the overall population that now exceeded 900 trillion. Other races were growing faster than the Humans, based on their biology, and if it weren’t for the Kiritak Star Force would have been relegated to a shrinking minority unable to produce the natural resources necessary to wield the power that it now did in the ADZ.

The Kiritak/Kiritas now numbered over 70 trillion and were continuing to grow as fast as resources would allow, with those greater numbers then being deployed to various worlds to harvest more resources. They were the key to Star Force’s growth, but Davis needed more Humans to form the core of the organization.

The greater the population pool the better the chance of individuals testing out to become Archons. As it was Star Force was averaging 10-15 classes per year, which meant 1000 to 1500 new Archons with every calendar change. Out of a population of 900 trillion that was a pathetically small number, and going forward Davis knew that the Archons’ low numbers could become a liability if they started dying off in considerable numbers, for they were damn hard to replace.

But they were more than worth it. Even without psionics they were dominant on the battlefield and in a myriad of other applications. Trick of it was, only Humans could become Archons because only Humans had the potential for the psionics. He wasn’t going to explain that to the ADZ, because the source of the Archons’ powers was still a tightly guarded secret, but it was a sticking point with regards to the Star Force military because Davis knew that with Humanity’s limited reproduction rate they’d never grow to the size needed…at least not until far into the future, and the need for a much larger military was already on their doorstep.

The Calavari outnumbered the Humans 3 to 1 now, with their reproduction rate being about the same and their efforts tied up in defending their portion of the ADZ from the lizards. They were holding the line well and even taking back a handful of worlds from what had formerly been their territory, but their once impressive population figures were gone, and like the Humans it would take them a long time to get them back.

The Kiritas were an altogether different story. Their reproduction had to be continually kept in check else it’d scale out of proportion. They reproduced via eggs, which the females pumped out regularly. The males then had to fertilize them, and it was that fertilization rate that had to be regulated. If not, a pair of Kiritas could reproduce at a rate of 120/1 compared to Human reproduction.

Star Force was fortunate to have both the Kiritas nation as part of the empire and the Kiritak, which now outnumbered their semi-independent kin 7 to 1. There were many Kiritak trained and equipped as security forces, but their smaller physiology didn’t make them well suited to combat…at least not Star Force-style combat. If you were willing to lose huge swaths of the Kiritak in battle they could be a formidable force the same way the lizards were when they simply swarmed you with numbers.

But Star Force wouldn’t fight that way, meaning the Kiritak and the Kiritas military were defensive only, guarding the back door for anything that might slip through the mainline troops. Those were comprised almost entirely of Humans…hence the population rate problem.

Axius had been changing that, and now that it numbered better than 20 trillion and continued to rise limited only by the rate at which Star Force could build new cities Davis had a source of good troops that weren’t tied to Humanity. They weren’t mainline per se, but sort of a quasi-branch. Trouble was most of the Axius population wasn’t interested in fighting, limiting their available numbers. Their mixed race makeup made for some potent fighting combinations and the fact that they came almost exclusively from non-Human populations helped greatly, but it still wasn’t providing Star Force with the numbers it needed.

There were a number of races that were wards of the Empire that had better than Human population growth rates, and in time some of them might be able to assist in a military manner, but none that had a proven combat record similar to the Bsidd.

Their race was more suited to combat than the Kiritas, though less so than Humans or Calavari. The Bsidd came in several variants, much like the lizards, but most were taller than Humans and could cover ground rapidly on their bipedalish frames. The Bsidd had multiple appendages, with two main ones for walking but the others could be used as additional legs or arms as needed. They had no center of mass, for they looked like a pile of sticks and moved like it, but in combat they had proven themselves more than capable, though mostly through the use of swarm tactics and high tech walkers.

Davis knew from his work building Axius how various races had both advantages and disadvantages when faced with combat, and many races that had previously been deemed unuseful, such as the Irondel, had found a niche and were proving themselves valuable. Davis wasn’t sure, but his gut told him the Bsidd would be more than useful once integrated into a Star Force system, though the dynamics of that would be worked out by Archons and others with far more military savvy than he wielded.

A preliminary report on the tissue sample and an analysis of its genetic code had informed Davis that the Bsidd had the potential to reproduce even faster than the Kiritas, which could make them valuable allies indeed if Davis could bring them into the fold…which was why he was traveling to Antarctica, for Star Force didn’t have the necessary technology as of yet to do as in depth an analysis of the sample as needed.

The mantis eventually brought the Director to the foodstuff factory that sat atop the V’kit’no’sat pyramid, with him heading below and down to the main doors. Every time he visited here the sight of the green/black stone filled him with a sense of wonder and dread, reinforcing the fact that Sol’s high population was little more than a target rich environment should their real enemy come back, no matter how many Sentinels they spammed the system with.

He walked through the massive doors and found a nearby mongoose that he mounted and rode up into the higher levels until he came to the Zen’zat floors where he found one of his chief medtechs working on the Bsidd sample.

“Director,” Manfred Trell said in greeting, throwing a quick glance towards him as he continued to work a series of holographic controls that were floating midair.

“Show me what you’ve got,” Davis said, walking up beside his right shoulder.

“Just a moment, need to finish this,” the geneticist said, doing something with the displays that Davis couldn’t mentally or visually track. He was punching solid holographic buttons so fast and manipulating the jumbled image in a way that completely escaped Davis until the medtech zoomed out and a bit of structure returned that he recognized as the cell codes that Trell had been instructing him on via messages.

“There…now, I still have a lot to dig through, but how we proceed is going to largely depend on you. I was just getting some cataloging done while I waited. These…” he said, tapping and highlighting several orb-like structures within a Bsidd cell, “are the code modules I was telling you about. I’ve identified 17 so far and there may be more here, but only 2 are currently active…and by active I mean that they have a component that the others are missing.”

The medtech adjusted the view and brought up a side by side comparison, highlighting the surface region of one that looked like it had a chunk bitten out of it.

“I believe this area is a receptacle for a code key, both to unlock the modules as well as to deliver additional data…and by data I’m referring to genetic knowledge. It’s hard to say so soon, but I’m guessing it’s more than skills and actually has to do with temperament and potentially even memories or commands. If you want to coopt the Bsidd this is the kicker. With it the queens control the others.”

“Define control.”

“Predisposition. There’s no telepathic structures that we can determine. One of the code modules that’s dormant is actually for a queen, so we’ve got a copy of their genetics as well, minus their code key. They don’t appear to have any psionic tissue, nor chemical transfers…nothing obvious anyway. It’ll take a few months to sift through it all, even with these machines and a staff of 50.”

“Pull a staff of 500 if you need, this takes priority,” Davis said dismissively.

“If you wish. I can tell you that every egg a queen lays has the code modules for all the variants…that’s a guess, anyway, and that the code keys activate them. How many variants I’m not sure of at this point, because it seems the code modules interlink with one another. This one has two active to create its version, and without more samples it’s going to be some time before I can tell you about the other ones.”

“Focus on the keys. Are they required information?”

“You’re wondering if it’s just an ‘on’ switch? Possibly, with the extra influence added.”

“It’s important.”

Trell rubbed his chin. “I can only guess at this point, but biologically speaking everything this one has physically is coded within the module, not the key. How much of its intellect comes from the key…is something I can’t say as yet.”

“Are they born with the minds of adults?”

Trell tapped one of the holographic modules, enlarging it and bringing up some addition data that Davis couldn’t read given that it was the V’kit’no’sat medical shorthand symbols. “Possibly. If that’s the case the Bsidd could develop the old fashioned way without the keys…or it’s possible that the keys are necessary. I’m sorry, I just don’t know yet. There’s too much to go through without you giving me a direct line of inquiry.”

“Is it similar to the lizard problem?”

“No,” Trell said immediately. “Their genetic coding is hardwired in, so to speak. This is completely modular. I think the queens can customize keys based on the situation. The lizards operate off of a single societal drive program that we can’t strip away without something to replace it, and every simulation that I’ve ran has failed. I keep trying occasionally, but there’s no way to deprogram them that I can see.”

“Alright, with the Bsidd it seems like their programming is shipped in after the fact. If we block that shipment can they still function?”

“That’s your priority question?”

“Yes.”

“I would say maybe, at this point.”

“How long to find out?”

“Give me an hour, maybe two. Can’t guarantee anything, just have to follow my instincts as I sift through all this.”

“How many staff you need to make this go quickly?”

“Right now just me until I figure out what the tedious work is going to be.”

“Fair enough.”

“What else do you want me to look into?”

“How are the keys produced?”

“Oh, already know that,” Trell said, bringing up another hologram and physically dragging it across his primary view and over in front of Davis. He highlighted one module and zoomed in, pulling up pieces of what Davis didn’t know, but he suspected it was important.

“This is the queen’s genome. They have a special line connection running from the base of their brains down to their egg sack. The keys are produced in the brain and secreted down, bathing the eggs until they take.”

“How big are these eggs?”

“Microscopic at that point. They don’t begin growing in earnest until the keys are delivered.”

“And if they’re not delivered?”

“There’s a null line code that renders them inert. I suspect they’re expelled in the fluid if the keys don’t take.”

“How big do the eggs get before hatching?”

“Um…not sure, but I’d guess about yay big,” Trell said, holding his hands apart about the distance of a football. “They don’t stay within the queen for long, or, well they can, but based on the few rumors floating around I’ve deduced that they use an artificial birthing pod filled with nutrient fluid to grow the eggs outside the queen’s body.”

“So they can reproduce faster?”

“Way faster. Like factory line faster.”

“Growth rate?”

“This one matured within 4 years, physically speaking.”

“You said something about an immunity?”

“Yes, here…” Trell said, adjusting the holograms again and showing Davis something equally unintelligible. “It’s something they added, I think, because it stands out. Shoddy work, if you ask me.”

“Genetic engineering?”

“Pretty sure, and since I sent you that message I’ve determined it’s a toxin. One that would be lethal to many races…including the lizards.”

Davis’s face tightened. “They fought them with a chemical weapon that they made their own people immune to?”

“They tried, I think, but the immunity isn’t complete. The toxin won’t kill them, but I think it will still make them sick. Not sure, haven’t gotten that far on it yet. Been cherry-picking inroads to give you some options.”

“And the reason I need to be here in person?”

“These holograms won’t transition through our computers,” Trell said, altering them again into a much more detailed view, making Davis think he was looking at star charts at first, but with angles to the shards that made it look a bit creepy. “If you’re up to it I can give you a primer. If not I’m going to have a headache trying to translate all this for you. If you really want to find a way to strip the queens’ influence we’re going to have to have a back and forth regularly about how that might be possible and what you will or will not allow. Not that I’m going Dr. Evil on you, but with genetics there are always a lot of bad ideas available that we have to sort through…and if you can’t read the lingo you’re going to be out of the loop.”

“I cleared my schedule, so let’s get started with the basics,” Davis said, wasting no time jumping into the challenge. If there was a way he could strip the hive mentality out of the Bsidd he was going to go for it, both for their sakes and the power balance within the ADZ.

4

March 1, 2556

Orica System (Nestafar Territory)

Inner Zone

The Hycre jumpship came out of its interstellar braking maneuver with its sensors transitioning back into the readable range, immediately picking up several contacts near to the central stars in the trinary system. At first they expected the contacts to be Skarron warships, given that they were in the process of devouring the Nestafar empire in leaps and bounds. After the annihilation that the old Alliance had laid down in their capitol system, the Nestafar had begun rebuilding heavily as the Cajdital had taken away what opposition remained…up until the Skarrons had attacked.

The Hycre had kept tabs on the Nestafar, along with many other regions outside the ADZ, but such scouting trips were sparse and there hadn’t been one to Orica in the past 8 years. Then there had only been Nestafar there, so when new contacts that didn’t match Nestafar profiles were detected it was assumed, for a few seconds at least, that they were Skarron…but immediately that was dismissed as soon as the sensors began to get better resolution as the last of the momentum canceled out and the passive signals got some computer work to increase clarity.

The ships were larger than the Skarrons, but clearly not the wing-shaped Nestafar designs. They were, however, familiar enough that the Hycre computers spat out a match with little additional data required, let alone active sensors that would make the scout ship stand out to everyone even remotely close by.

What they were detecting were unescorted jumpships…Cajdital jumpships sitting in the null gravity gap between stars. Not an orbit, but the tug of war center of their gravitational pulls that effectively hid them from most of the rest of the system. The jumpline the Hycre had come in on happened to be lateral to the three point line, allowing the stellar radiation reflecting off their shields to make the contacts literally glow on passive scans given their immense size.

As the minutes passed no further signals were detected around the stars, so the scout ship moved around the larger of the pair to a jumpline that would take it out further into the system to Orica B, the system’s third star, where they began doing their survey of the 93 formerly inhabited planetoids. At last count only 18 had been repopulated by the Nestafar, and lightly so, but after finding the outer star devoid of any ships or tracking satellites the first planet they jumped to, a formerly barren one after the Alliance’s ‘cleansing,’ showed both orbital and surface activity.

There were Skarron ships in orbit and even from the distance that the Hycre ship was spying from they could pick out their larger walkers on the surface…along with several small cities. The Skarrons also had a handful of orbital facilities, but nothing Nestafar was remaining, at least from the mid orbit view of the scout ship.

Two more planets showed similar results, one with more infrastructure and one with barely any at all, but both with a Skarron presence. The fourth planet the scout ship visited was the Nestafar capitol world of Nestarraffa, and as soon as the Hycre ship came out of its microjump the orbital map lit up with thousands of contacts.

None of them were Nestafar, but there were Skarron and Cajdital ships seemingly parked in orbit next to each other…until the tiny flashes of weaponsfire began registering on sensors.

The Hycre ship kept its distance but didn’t move on, sticking around and recording the battle as the two sides hammered each other. The Skarron ships were larger and had plasma-resistant armor, while the Cajdital mostly cruiser-class fleet used primarily plasma weapons but had greater numbers by about a 3 to 1 margin…making for a very even fight.

But not just in orbit. As the scout ship stuck around it also pulled as detailed surface scans as it could manage, picking up reflections from the enemy ships’ own active scans and finding four Cajdital LZs on the ground with hundreds of Skarron walkers surrounding them. The Hycre were very interested in seeing how that was progressing, but other than their approximate placements they couldn’t get any useful information.

Judging by the positions of the battling fleets, which were grouped together in various clusters in specific places around orbit, the Hycre had some open lanes to approach through and, knowing that they could outmaneuver both enemy ship types, moved down into low orbit to get some better scans figuring that they’d already been spotted in the system anyway with all the active sensor beams flashing around the planet. But with both sides heavily engaging one another they probably weren’t going to care.

As the ship came down near to the upper atmosphere the resolution of the ground campaigns increased exponentially…showing that the Cajdital had landed clusters of cruisers looking like bees on a hive and were maintaining a free fire zone around them as they were setting up shield towers inside. Those outside corridors had some of the Skarron walkers on approach and exchanging plasma fire with the Cajdital cruisers…which weren’t all that much bigger.

Though the Cajdital landing clusters were intact there was no movement out from them…and there was a trail of broken ships littering the ground nearby, a testament to the anti-air fire the Skarron walkers were capable of throwing down, not to mention several discarded gravity grapples that had apparently yanked others out of the air. The Cajdital did have their LZs and they were presently intact, but they’d paid a heavy price to establish them and at the moment it looked like they weren’t able to push out at all, with more and more Skarron walkers slowly transitioning towards them to tighten the noose.

The Hycre stuck around a while, inspecting all four surface battles and cataloging as much of the Skarron infrastructure and troop counts as they could reasonably get before retreating to a higher orbit and jumping out to the next planetoid on their search list, finding Skarron/Cajdital conflicts on 6 different worlds and no sign of the Nestafar anywhere within the system.

That reconnaissance data would eventually be brought back to a Hycre world outside the ADZ, then transition through a series of couriers until it got to a world that was linked into the Star Force relay grid. Once there it made its way into the ADZ and eventually over to Dvapp space where Paul was poaching a few ships in orbit of Veernad with the Excalibur and adding a few more dings to its already damaged hull. He didn’t have many drones to work with, but with him in command and the Skarrons’ limited resources it had become obvious that they weren’t going to be able to kill the big ship so he was bleeding them as dry as he could knowing that a trip back to a shipyard for repairs was in the near future.

He didn’t get the intel from the Hycre until a day later once the Excalibur had pulled back to an anonymous position in the system that still had the Star Force relays in operation. Either the Skarrons didn’t know where they were or hadn’t bothered to destroy them, but the formerly Dvapp system was still on the grid allowing Paul to stay linked in while he singlehandedly poached ships with his small fleet of warships elsewhere hunting down convoys.

When he got the priority message packet he read through it intently, with one big piece of the current puzzle falling into place. The Skarrons had pulled most of their attempted reinforcements away from the ADZ in order to fight the lizards, and he knew well how much of a handful they were. He welcomed the distraction, which was already giving Star Force and the Protovic a chance to rebuild and press the pair of worlds the enemy held in their territory while Paul used what scraps he had to poke around Dvapp space.

Paul spent the next six hours reviewing battle data, both that occurring in orbit but also that on the ground…and he was keenly interested in seeing how the lizards handled the Skarron walkers.

The ultimate answer to that was, they weren’t. They were getting beat up on the ground and spamming cruisers to try and counter, and doing so effectively, but at great cost. It didn’t take him long to guess their theory, for by now he knew the lizards weren’t stupid, and they were using a strategy that Star Force never would.

They were sacrificing ships and troops in order to bleed the Skarrons dry of their missiles.

Most of the ground battles that were ongoing in Orica, or probably over by now given the time lag, were in the early stages, but two had progressed to the point where the lizards were actually winning, and they were doing so by using their cruisers to counter the walkers in hover mode, essentially making them walkers in and of themselves and using their single plasma streamers to great effect. Trouble was, the Skarron armor was resistant to plasma and it required a lot of chewing on to take them down.

But instead of developing a different style weapon to counter the armor, the lizards were just hammering them until they fell. It was costing them cruisers left and right, but they were making gains on the ground where the Skarrons hadn’t thrown too much resistance their way. That was one advantage the cruisers had over the walkers…they could move around much more quickly, but put 20 cruisers against 20 of the big walkers and the lizards lost badly, even when their missiles were depleted.

That left the lizards with a tough but winnable fight so long as they had the numbers to keep pouring into the engagement. Paul knew the Skarrons did as well, and wasn’t sure who would come out the victor. If neither received additional support he’d put his credits on the Skarrons, but knowing both enemies he knew they’d each have support coming their way.

He just wished they had a permanent recon post in the system, because he expected the battle for that highly valuable piece of real estate to be one stretching out a decade, at minimum, unless one side rolled insane numbers in.

But what else was in the report, or rather missing from it, was the Nestafar. Nothing had been heard of them in quite some time and Star Force had had no assets in their territory since the Elarioni pullout. The Hycre and a few other races had pulled scouting runs in that area and beyond, for some of the ADZ races still had contacts out there on worlds that the enemies had no interest in. None of them had reported sighting the Nestafar within the past 3 years and now their capitol system, though decimated earlier, was now completely lost.

He didn’t know if they were still fighting elsewhere, had evacuated, or were wiped out, but it seemed karma had kicked in for their backstabbing of the original Alliance and they wouldn’t be a concern for the ADZ going forward. Paul didn’t know that for a fact, but he could read the writing on the walls. Whatever had gone down they’d got their asses kicked, and their territory was in the hands of the Skarrons and, apparently, now the lizards as well.

Paul hoped that the lizards would also start pulling reinforcements off the ADZ border to fight the Skarrons, but knew Star Force had to keep reinforcing it or the lizards would find a way in. They were too devious to just go away, and he knew the ADZ couldn’t just turtle up on the border and hope to be ignored. They’d have to keep hitting them, with Greg and others continuing to do that in earnest razing worlds and maintaining a neutral buffer zone around the border that the lizards were constantly trying to reestablish themselves in.

Their pesky enemy knew how to creep well, something the Skarrons didn’t bother with. They went with more blunt force attacks, even if in small numbers, with the lizards adding sneakiness to that trait, for they also could drop the hammer when they chose. So far the ADZ had avoided that hammer multiple times, a lot of which was due to Kara preemptively hitting them in key areas, but aside from a few feel-out attacks the lizards hadn’t used their big toys to try and break open the front as of yet.

Paul wondered why that was, for their own scouting reports suggested they had a huge surplus of troops sitting back inside their deeper worlds. Maybe they were just being patient, or maybe they had some other plan in place. Regardless, Paul knew to never take them lightly. They would take easy targets if offered up to them, but he feared they were a more dangerous enemy than the Skarrons, despite the huge size of the other’s empire.

And they were dangerous because they were cunning and adaptive…but they also held to a consistency of tech and tactics that they made work rather than altering it to fit the current circumstances. Their ships were essentially the same as they were when they first attacked Star Force, save for small upgrades here and there. The one big change was the addition of a plasma streamer, though while still holding to the plasma theme of the majority of their weapons was an upgrade that they’d reverse-engineered from the Kvash who’d they’d managed to roll over without breaking much of a sweat.

That weapon upgrade alone, spread throughout their entire territory, gave them considerably more naval power, not to mention the occasional tweaks in their shield generators and plasma composition that the trailblazer was continuously following. While Star Force tech was now considerably more advanced, the lizards were doing well with what they had and maintaining a consistency across their territory that bespoke impressive organization and unity.

Paul had been studying them intently over time, even as his priority focused on the Skarron threat, and he was keenly interested in learning from this new challenge they were facing, for it would show more of their hand given the numbers and tech the Skarrons would bring to bear. If they didn’t find a way to counter them the Skarrons could slowly chew into their territory and push back towards their core worlds, for the trailblazer knew how hungry they were for new territory.

The reverse wasn’t true, for even if the lizards rolled over them in their current conflicts and conquered double the territory they current possessed that would only be a fraction of the Skarrons’ current empire, making them an altogether new type of enemy for the lizards to face.

And the more they fought each other the more resources they’d expend. Paul just hoped that wouldn’t backfire and bring more attention from both to the region and the ADZ. If it did they were pretty much screwed, but as far as the Skarrons were concerned the ADZ was an offensive campaign that they could deal with at their leisure and not a threat to them…and it wasn’t going to be, for aside from some raids Star Force wasn’t pushing closer to the galactic core.

The lizards were past that point, with both sides knowing what each other were about and going for the throat whenever they could. The only reason Star Force wasn’t hitting them harder was the size of their territory, making an ultimate victory far beyond their current scope…in theory, at least, for the Skarron war had already pushed them to their limits in terms of resources.

Take the Skarrons out of the picture and the war against the lizards would still be a defensive affair, for Paul knew the key to ultimate survival was the unlocking of the data in the pyramid and incorporating it into their empire. Once that occurred, fully, then they could roll the lizards…but then that would potentially send up a flag to the V’kit’no’sat that they couldn’t afford.

So no matter which way you sliced the strategic situation the ADZ was a sanctuary that Star Force would defend but couldn’t push out from in any meaningful way. That meant endless war, which was something that the Archons were prepared for given that it wasn’t much different than their endless training. For other races that wasn’t the same, and many that had been beaten by the lizards had made it too easy for them simply because they gave up trying.

And that ‘giving up trying’ was part of the reason why their surviving factions were sitting in the ADZ and not contributing to the fronts.

But Paul didn’t care about them any longer. Davis might still be working on them but the trailblazer wasn’t. Star Force and its allies were the key to the defense of the ADZ, and long term it would be Star Force alone given the advancement that he knew was coming. Building up their empire was his focus, and right now that meant protecting it and buying time so they could advance.

Hopefully this new Skarron/lizard war would finally buy them enough time to get a firm border defense in place, and with any luck they could sit back, eat popcorn, and watch the fireworks.

Unfortunately he knew that wasn’t going to happen, not with the lizards anyway, and there were still Skarron held worlds on and near the border that had to be reclaimed. The fight may have gone from impossible to doable, but it wasn’t over and it wasn’t easy…not yet anyway. Tennisonne had said it’d be 15-20 years before he’d get Liam’s armor ‘packets’ out to him, but when he did it’d change how Star Force’s naval division operated.

And even without the weapon upgrades that were coming in the near future, the secondary armor was going to make their ships so tanky that they’d be able to handle the swarm tactics of both the Skarrons and lizards. Until then it was buy time and build Sentinels…and hope that both of the big powers got so distracted with each other that they wouldn’t realize how fast Star Force was advancing and choose to take them out now, with overwhelming numbers, while they still had a chance.

5

May 31, 2556

Trenzalore System (Delta Region)

Christmas (Alliance World)

Raven-266 ran through the forest easily, ducking here and there as she made good time from her LZ to the Bsidd colony that was under construction along with the rest of the planet. The 8 territorial regions were empty and unassigned save for the one given to the Bsidd, but it barely had a single city built with most of their people living in their ships or in prefab structures on the surface provided to them by the Star Force markets.

Those were just getting under way themselves, with only a handful of operational colonies on the planet and not enough to service a full Alliance World as of yet, which was why the planet hadn’t been opened up for colonization to date, but the Bsidd had been a special case and coming in with extremely low numbers. That was changing, however, as the insect-like queens began pumping out eggs and growing new population by the thousands…stressing their limited resources to the limit in order to expand as quickly as possible.

The Bsidd didn’t know the striker was coming, nor would they if her mission was a success. She was approaching on foot in armor through the forest, knowing that the Bsidd didn’t have any detection nets set up as of yet. Most of the buildings in their tiny city were half built, with only the ‘royal’ section being amicably functional. That was her destination, but first she had to get inside undetected.

The Archon began picking up Bsidd minds before she could see them, adjusting her path to avoid the closest ones as she came to the forest edge where some of them were clear cutting the trees to make room for construction growth. Raven circled south to avoid them and came up on a partially built structure that had no sharp lines to it, being all curves and twists and the internal structural supports showing were no exception. The Bsidd didn’t care for the square, preferring more exotic designs that made navigating around inside their buildings like riding a twisty turny waterslide.

Raven found a blind spot along the perimeter and sprinted across the small clearing in full daylight, knowing that coming in night would have made her more visible. The Bsidd didn’t like really bright light, and the planet in question was considerably closer to the star than they would have preferred, making their night shifts more active than their day ones. Coming in midday gave her less eyes watching, and with a little psionic monitoring she was able to get across when no one was looking.

She stuck to the building exterior and moved laterally until she came to an opening and ducked under a thick support beam and entered a section under early construction. It wasn’t long before she came up on a group of workers, some of which stood twice as tall as her and others that were barely half her height. The small ones were scurrying about bringing parts and attaching bits here and there while the larger ones lifted the bigger pieces into place using multiple appendages to work the curvy lego bricks around.

That’s what they looked like to Raven anyway. Whatever they were building with was unlike anything Star Force used. Every piece that came in resembled a puzzle piece, with the Bsidd scurrying over the framework like ants assembling the building bit by bit at a good rate. It wasn’t hard to distract them from her presence given the focus they had on the task at hand, so as long as she didn’t get in their way she was able to walk right past them with a few Jedi mind tricks and work her way to the interior of the city to where the completed buildings were located.

Actually there were only three, all moderately large. One was what they thought was the queens’ lair and ‘capitol’ of the Bsidd colony. The other two were industrial, one for making materials and the other for making people. The latter was her destination and the striker moved to the closest entrance and slipped inside, bypassing a foot patrol of what she recognized as soldiers. They were taller than her but their torsos were almost nonexistent, with their mass made up of a head and a lots of arms, legs, and whatever else they had.

The two she passed each walked differently, apparently choosing which appendages to use to move about, but both were armed though not armored. She’d spotted a few other pairs out on patrol as well, which she assumed was standard protocol given that there were no threats here and the Bsidd couldn’t fight off a stiff breeze right now given how few of them there were.

It took a moment to work the door controls, then she was inside and maneuvering her way through twisty, curvy hallways that didn’t remain on the same elevation. There were ‘hills’ going up and down in no predictable fashion, with Raven having to navigate with the help of her psionics and memory as she scouted out the facility where the mind count jumped dramatically. There were literally thousands inside, all packed closely together, which she took to investigating carefully, having to backtrack numerous times to avoid running into someone roaming the halls, but for the most part the corridors were deserted. It was the chambers that were packed.

The first few she came to were barracks holding adults, apparently on sleep cycle while the others worked outside, but she eventually came to chambers with some level of activity and lesser minds…the first of a new generation of Bsidd maturing in colony fashion, with her avoiding those areas completely. There was no way she could distract that many minds, so she had to find other routes through the convoluted building, feeling very much like Solid Snake as she snuck her way around being careful not to be spotted so much as once.

She had the ability to erase memories, but had never tried on a Bsidd…let alone felt one of their minds before today, nor had many others. That unfamiliarity was a problem she was having to overcome on the go, but her experience with other races was paying off as she was able to find some similarities and build off of those, though distraction wasn’t difficult when the target in question used the same basic senses as you did, namely sight and sound.

Raven continued to explore the facility and add each twist and turn to her growing battlemap, giving her a means of backtracking easily enough and leaving herself waypoints to help orient herself. After two more steep climbs, then a corkscrew downhill, she came to a large chamber that had no minds in it at present, and with her Pefbar she could tell it was large even before she opened the hatch-like door, with the single segment pulling back inside the wall to allow her entrance.

But the chamber wasn’t empty, it was filled with maturation vats that contained eggs at various stages of growth ranging from microscopic to marble-sized. Nothing larger was here, and based off the information Davis had given her about Bsidd reproduction she knew their eggs had to get quite a bit larger before the birthing process, which wasn’t quite ‘hatching’ but a waking process as they came out of their gelatinous cocoons.

None of these were even close to that, which was why she wasn’t able to detect any minds. The entire room reminded her of the Kamino cloning facility, only more tightly packed with catwalks and other narrow passages separating the open air tanks full of sticky, stinky liquid that her helmet didn’t fully block the smell of. She was glad though, because that meant she wouldn’t have to actually break into any of the containers to steal some of the eggs.

Davis had said he needed unkeyed eggs, and that was going to be the difficult part. All of these currently growing were unviable, so she needed to find a vat that hadn’t been keyed yet, if one existed, or find the throwaways that didn’t take. Unfortunately the medtechs hadn’t given her some nifty scanner to be able to differentiate between the two, so she was just going to have to use her Archon ‘wisdom,’ as Davis had put it, to find what they needed…that or come back for another try later if she grabbed the wrong ones.

So Raven started looking for the microscopic tanks, inspecting as many as she could come across and unable to differentiate between them. They were all pools of goo, and short of just scooping up a sample and hoping for a hit she didn’t have any way to stack her odds…so she kept looking, with no one else in the huge chamber to spot her, though surveillance was always a threat, but she hadn’t noticed any visible monitoring devices.

No one had come after her either, so she felt that she was still operating under the radar and had time, so she made a thorough examination of the room and finally came on what she was looking for, though she hadn’t know it earlier. There were small pods full of a different kind of goo, sealed, and put in some sort of storage chamber and not growth pods.

And there were a lot of them, all carefully and respectfully stacked into individual slots on a honeycomb-like wall, and Raven had the distinct feeling that these were eggs from the queens that were waiting to be vatted. The info packet she’d got indicated that the queens couldn’t produce eggs nonstop, but did so in bunches. With only so many vats here to grow the maturing eggs in it only made sense that they’d store the excess so they’d have them available when other buildings finished construction and upped their growing capacity. If the Bsidd were eager to get as big a population as possible the queens would be pumping out eggs as fast as they could regardless of the number of vats they currently possessed.

And if these containers were full of microscopic eggs then there were truly a lot of them, for the clear canisters showed a milky white goo that she guessed was pure egg, though some type of stabilizer liquid might have been included. She didn’t know, but hoped that these eggs were still unkeyed since they were in storage. Knowing that this was her best bet she began looking for a way to open one of the sealed containers, having to use her Pefbar and Lachka to find and pick the ‘lock,’ for the opening mechanism wasn’t built for her hands.

A double seal released, then an even fouler smell caused Raven to choke a bit but she held it together long enough to pull a sampler out of her pack and sucked up a decent amount of the goo, but not enough that would be detected as missing, she hoped, then she resealed the container and put it back in place before quietly making her way out of the building and city, then back to the forest and her waiting dropship.

Davis had sent Trell with her to Christmas so he could analyze and handle whatever Raven brought him, and the Archon was pleased when he confirmed that she’d grabbed unkeyed eggs and more than 150,000 of them. That meant she wasn’t going to have to go back for a second run and her mission was completed.

Raven left the planet on the next available flight, as did Trell, but after that they split up with the Archon heading out on a combat mission and the medtech back to Sol but not to Earth. He went straight to Venus and the facility Davis had been building there for this project, should Trell be successful. The future of the Bsidd now rested on his shoulders, with him needing to fabricate a new key for the eggs and to do so without screwing up a batch of them. Not because he didn’t have enough, but because once they started to grow they were on their way to becoming people and he didn’t have the luxury of letting them mature before figuring out if he’d been successful or not because the failures would be totally unacceptable.

He and Davis had had many discussions on that front and had worked out a course of action for his ‘experiments’ that focused heavily on computer simulation. The geneticist had already done a lot of the groundwork previously, so he was ready to start his additional sims now that he had actual eggs to analyze instead of just the genetic blueprints for them. In theory that wouldn’t matter, for they should be structured the same, but reading genetics was not an easy thing to do and more often than not you needed context to understand it…which these eggs would hopefully give him.

He didn’t try keying any up at first, merely analyzing them with some portable equipment from the pyramid in addition to the facilities Star Force had built for him in one of the many cities on the planet’s inhospitable surface. It was still hot, dense, and full of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid, but inside the cities built to withstand that hostile environment he felt just as much at home as he did on Earth and dropped into his research without missing a beat.

He spent two weeks scanning and sorting through the data, comparing it to his expectations and making a few adjustments where they didn’t match up, then came the tricky part. He went about fabricating the key that he’d been working on designing for months. It had been pirate grown from the adult Bsidd sample he’d previously had, then with modifications made to erase the hive mind commands imbedded within it. Davis didn’t want him trying to add anything new, just releasing the genetic shackles on the Bsidd…without screwing anything up.

There were many keys to choose from, but he’d began with the one he was most familiar with…that being the variant that the diplomat had been. The Bsidd hadn’t been so kind as to share that bit of data with the Alliance but Trell was calling it a #4 and worked hard on it as a proof before even attempting to fabricate keys for the others.

With every possible safeguard in place and more than adequate simulation he crossed his mental fingers and added the fabricated keys to a group of 12 unkeyed eggs and introduced them into a Star Force version of the growing vats…with a much more aromatic liquid tailor made to suit their genetic requirements rather than trying to copy the Bsidd version. Figuring out that need had been easy compared to the keys, but waiting was in some ways harder as he monitored the growth of all 12 individuals after bombarding them with enough keys for them all to take.

With every day that passed he scanned and monitored their growth, looking for anomalies and gratefully finding none. Soon the eggs grew to the point where they were visible, then they continued to mature over the following weeks up into fruit-sized dimensions, developing mental signatures of their own and eventually ‘birthing’ by breaking free of their gel sacks and popping up from the oxygen-rich goo and having their respiratory systems kick in, which simultaneously deactivated the birthing organs that had sustained them during their development.

Those would be reabsorbed into their bodies over the following weeks, but the newly born Bsidd were now air breathers and needed to be treated as such, with specialized handlers taking them out of their vats and into a brand new maturia…one that was going to have to learn the ropes on the go, hence Davis had brought in the top people he had in the field, including several non-Humans from Axius that were egg-produced.

The twelve Bsidd ‘trailblazers’ were thoroughly examined, with Trell overly relieved that there were no anomalies present…physically speaking. Mentally and socially was another question that wouldn’t be answered for a long time, and until it was Trell wasn’t going to key up any more of their eggs. That meant he was going back to other assignments while keeping a waiting eye on this project, ready to return when more data had been collected, and hopefully, to talk with those Bsidd he’d just helped into the universe.

But even as he returned to Atlantis and let the maturia handlers do their thing he couldn’t shake the worry that he’d messed something up by deleting the pieces of the keys that held the queens’ commands. There was so much about the structure of life that even the V’kit’no’sat didn’t understand that he didn’t like meddling with such things, not because he didn’t like the challenge of it, but because if he screwed up then someone else was going to pay for his mistakes.

He was more suited to fixing problems and creating upgrades in people that already existed, not tinkering with the basic blueprints for those yet to develop…but in this case it needed to be done, and Davis had convinced him of that fact early on. He was trying to free the minds of the Bsidd that were locked into a highly influential hive mind on a genetic level, meaning that it didn’t control them per se, but it made it an uphill battle for them to develop ulterior thoughts to those prescribed given that the controlling influence was inside their heads rather than just environmental.

Freedom was every individual’s right, or should be, and this project was a big leap towards that for the Bsidd and for Star Force, who’d never tried anything like this before. He just hoped he’d got it right on the first try, and that worry would plague him for years to come until the twelve Star Force Bsidd completed the limited basic training program established for them and were incorporated into Axius. There they were quietly monitored, with the results of their interactions and socialization coming back to Trell and putting his worries to rest.

If there had been anything lost, it wasn’t detectable. The Bsidd were fully functional individuals and now free to live their lives as they chose…not to mention Star Force trained and now visible to others. Word of that would filter back to the other Bsidd eventually, but that was going to happen sooner or later anyway and was something Davis would deal with.

Trell now had the results he wanted and a plethora of data available to him…with the next phase of the project now on his shoulders once again. He needed to create the keys for the other variants, or at minimum just the one that would allow them to produce their own eggs, that being a queen.

6

June 19, 2572

Solar System

Venus

Nadei woke up, blinking her deep set eyes and pushing open the panels of her sleep cocoon as she fully regained consciousness. The silky coverings kept in the heat and blocked any cooling wind, though in her quarters there was none aside from thermal eddies from the cooling/heating strips in the walls. Still, she felt better with the wrappings covering her body and got a rush of cool air on her abdomen as she sat up and climbed out of the horizontal pod.

The Bsidd stretched her 18 appendages, some short, some long, some thick and some thin. All were useful for movement, but she preferred to walk erect as the Humans did, relying on her thickest ones for use as legs as she moved over to the shower to get ready for the coming day. She climbed into the squarish compartment and passed through the containment shield as the water started to fall. She didn’t linger, spending only a few minutes in the nearly scalding hot water before stepping out through the energy shield and having it whisk the moisture off her for the most part, leaving the steamy chamber behind as she pressed the cycling button that would reset it as she got dressed.

Nadei wore a body suit covering all but her appendages, including her neck, head, and most of her face, leaving only a strip where her eyes were and giving her a ninja-like visage. Once that main piece was on she slipped her gauntlets onto each of her appendages, covering them up save for an inch or so of exposed flesh at the points where they met the body suit. Her purplish skin was thick and hard, almost like a carapace, but it didn’t retain heat well and the Star Force colony always felt cold to her, hence the full body clothing.

Her gauntlets doubled as shoes/gloves, with the Bsidd having no hands or fingers. Several of her appendages ended in small nubs that, when used in concert, could grasp objects and press buttons, but using the Human-style controls was difficult. They had designed special ones for her physiology, but Nadei didn’t want to use them. She wanted to integrate as much as she could with the Humans, who were her only friends and acquaintances, and had raised her since hatching.

She knew there were many other races in Star Force, but the Humans had created it and were the leaders, not to mention responsible for her existence. Nadei knew of the other Bsidd on Christmas and how her egg had been stolen from them, and while she was curious to meet them some day she already knew a great deal about them and was following their growth…while being deeply disappointed by them. They were working against Star Force at every turn, despite all that they’d done to help them get established after granting them sanctuary. Nadei wanted to do better, but before she’d have a chance to do so she’d have to finish her basic training…and in order to do that she had to get through today’s workouts.

First off she headed out of her quarters and over to a climbing course, one that she was proud to say she could handle better than most of the Humans, though they always seemed to find someone who could beat her. She figured it was to keep her motivated and improving, though she didn’t like to get beat. Today it would be a solo workout, as most days were, with her putting in the repetitive requirements necessary to level up her scores and get her another inch closer to graduation.

After the climbing came running, then swimming and flying…with the swimming being the hardest. The flying was by anti-grav and had her moving about through another obstacle course using small thrusters to adjust her movements because the levitation was basic and only vertical…not lateral propulsion. That made it tricky, but still fun.

After that it was time for food and a quick nap, followed by simulator work and information downloads. She had a great deal to learn and the more she did the more she wanted to contribute to Star Force, though in what way she wasn’t yet certain. Nadei knew that, physiologically, she was a Bsidd queen and capable of reproducing others for Star Force, but she didn’t want to become an egg factory. She wanted to do something that mattered.

She’d been told that after graduation, if she made it that far, her path would be her own choice and she’d be able to leave the planet and go where she liked. Nadei looked forward to that day but didn’t plan on leaving Star Force. Where she would end up she didn’t know, for her scores were pretty even across the board, but she was definitely going to find a niche and make good on the investment that Star Force had made in her.

What Nadei didn’t know was that she wasn’t the only Bsidd queen that Star Force had hatched. There were 12, all coming out of the first batch but trained in isolation, not knowing of each other unlike the other Bsidd that came before and after. She didn’t know the others had been trained as a group, nor that any others like her existed, which was by design. Each of the queens needed to be evaluated and scrutinized heavily, for it was learned that the genetic keys that unlocked the egg cells and determined which variant of the Bsidd they would grow into also contained behavioral inclinations.

They weren’t restrictive as the hive mind programming was, which Nadei and the others no longer possessed, but traits of the queen were definitely passed onto their offspring and it was imperative that if Star Force was going to create a colony of Bsidd that they skew their initial presets towards a preferred mindset that they could then enhance through maturia training.

And it was a good thing they had separated them, for each of the 12 queens developed considerably different than the others. Some resisted the training, much like some Humans, with a lackadaisical attitude that was all around unmotivated. Others were highly motivated, but with the stated intent of joining the other Bsidd once they graduated. Four would ultimately stay with Star Force, Nadei included, but she was the only one who wanted to play an active part in it, with the other three joining Axius civilian life, two preferring to be denizens while the third started working her way up the business field.

Those that rejoined the Bsidd told them everything about what Star Force was doing, so far as they knew, which infuriated their queens. Not only was it confirming the previous theft of eggs, which they already knew/suspected by the handful of ‘free’ Bsidd living in Axius, but the genetic tampering set them into a rage of complaint…but that was all they could do. As Larissa had quoted to Davis, ‘all they could do was float and sputter,’ with their single regional territory only marginally developed and their population limited by their available resources.

They weren’t playing nice with others either, save for those that bowed down to their might and offered them tribute in exchange for favor, but those were few and far between. Within the ADZ the Bsidd were minor players and the focus lay on the seemingly endless civil war that was continuing to rage with the Scionate having lost half their territory but fervently holding onto the rest.

The Lacvamat had picked up many allies, but their military had been beaten down to such a state that there was little they could do to press the war, with the Scionate being equally eviscerated to the point where they couldn’t mount any counterattacks. Most of the fighting was being handled by their allies, in their name at least, but really it was the other races trying to grind old angsts and take a piece of the independent pie that Scionate and Lacvamat territories provided.

Some small bits of territory, a moon here or a continent there, were given to allies in exchange for military assistance, allowing them to gain a foothold outside of the Star Force-controlled Alliance Worlds, but more than that they were claiming bits and pieces of enemy territory for themselves, with half the worlds the Lacvamat had taken from the Scionate now belonging to neither.

Given that situation and the ever changing power structure within the ADZ the Bsidd were a mere afterthought. They had no military and only a pittance of population, with only the memories of the past and their current tech level gaining them any traction with the other races.

Upon graduation Nadei had her choice of where to go and what to do, as the others did, but before she was able to make that choice she had a visitor. She’d been told to pack for a trip then to report to the exit of the maturia for her first time, with a bit of nervousness hitting her as she walked out those doors and into the ‘real world.’ The Bsidd was both excited and unsure, waiting where she was told and watching the pedestrian traffic flows, seeing some a couple non-Humans in the mix, the first she’d ever encountered.

“Hello,” a voice said from behind her, with the Bsidd turning around and looking down on the smaller Human female that only rose to her chest height.

When Nadei focused on her and saw the white with brown stripe uniform she suddenly felt the smaller of the two, realizing that this wasn’t just a Human, but an Archon…and a padawan at that.

“Hello,” she mimicked, unable to form any other words. She spoke English well, though with an accent typical of the Bsidd’s vocal chords that gave it a bit of a twang.

“I’m your ride,” the Archon said. “Name’s Larissa-048.”

“You’re a…trailblazer?” Nadei asked, now in full fangirl mode.

“Yep. And I’ve got some things to show you before you decide where in Star Force you want to land.”

“Wherever I can help,” the Bsidd said candidly.

“Come on. Grab your duffle and we’ll talk on the way.”

“Where are we going?” Nadei asked, picking up the strap on her bag and hooking it over one of the pointy should joints on her left side and letting it drape down in between several appendages that wrapped around and held it snuggly up against her thin body.

“Bit of a tour of the ADZ,” Larissa said as they began walking, with the Bsidd’s ‘clicking’ footsteps tripling the Human’s as Nadei bent forward and walked on six to bring her head height down about even to Larissa’s so she could see her more closely.

“We’re leaving the planet?!”

“New to you, I know. Me, I travel a lot and there are some things you need to see.”

“What things?”

“Important things, but let’s start with what you think of Star Force and where you want to make yourself involved…”

“These images are live?” Nadei asked.

Larissa nodded, her usually loose demeanor tightened a bit as they orbited high over a world in Scionate territory where four races were battling on the surface in three separate theatres. Nadei was watching a holographic display in the command nexus onboard the warship that Larissa had been taking her around the ADZ on the past 2 months, with the images of ground engagements floating in air beside the pair.

“Hammid, Jeen, Gnar, and…”

“Zati,” Larissa finished when she couldn’t identify the fourth.

“I didn’t know they were involved in the war.”

“Recent addition.”

“Won’t they incur penalties?”

“Yes, but they don’t seem to care.”

“Why are they doing this? It seems so pointless…and who’s winning?”

“The Scionate faction is winning here, prior to the Zati arrival. Not sure yet how much that is going to swing things. As for why you’d have to ask them. Long term there is no end game for them, and I think they’re just focusing on the here and now trying to grab up any advantages they can get.”

“But if they can’t keep them?”

“We’ve told them as much, but so far they don’t seem to care.”

“Why haven’t you taken these worlds from them yet?”

“How would we do that?” Larissa asked in an instructing tone similar to the one she’d been using throughout the trip.

“Bring in a Star Force fleet and…”

“Fight them?”

“Maybe,” Nadei said, suddenly unsure.

“Then we would be wasting resources fighting our own that could better be put to use reclaiming worlds on the Skarron border. There’s still one in Dvapp territory that we haven’t reclaimed and dozens along the border that need to be taken in order to create a buffer zone similar to what we’ve established along the lizard front. Knowing that would you waste warships and ground troops here?”

“When you put it that way no…but it feels like something should be done about this.”

“Agreed, but what?”

“I don’t know,” Nadei said honestly.

“We have plans in place, for the long term, which is where you come in, actually.”

“Me?”

“Not as far as stopping this fighting, but in preventing a future one.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Bsidd would be here, in this fight, if they were strong enough. They’re not our ally, not now. Before they were when they had their own empire far from here, but now they have next to nothing and are seeking to replace what they’ve lost rather than assist us.”

“I know,” Nadei said apologetically.

“One problem with dealing with the Bsidd is their hive mind, making it difficult to deal with any individual when the group will is in effect. We removed that hive mind influence from you, before you were hatched, so you could make your own choices without it pushing you one way or another. The Bsidd out there are not your entire race, not now. They’re just a rogue faction, as far as Star Force is concerned, while you and the others are the real ones.”

“Because our minds are free?”

“And because we’re not willing to give up on your race. You know that other Bsidd are living in Axius?”

“Yes.”

“What you don’t know is that there are other queens, hatched the same time as you. 11 others in fact.”

Nadei’s eyes widened. “There are?”

“Yes. We kept you separate so we could observe you and your development and see if there would be any differences...and there were. Some of them have chosen to return to the other Bsidd, while some are going into Axius as civilians. You are the only one who wants to remain in Star Force.”

Nadei was taken aback. “They’re leaving?”

“It’s their choice.”

“But why? Why would they go back to those…traitors.”

“Traitors how?” Larissa asked, curious as to why she would use that term.

“Star Force saved them, saved us, and all they do is work against you.”

“Against us, you mean,” Larissa corrected. “You’re a part of Star Force and have always been. Stop thinking you’re one of them.”

Nadei bowed her head. “Thank you.”

“If we are going to bring back the Bsidd, as a race, we can’t let this happen to them,” the Archon said, pointing to the live holos of the fighting on the planet below. “And while we’ve removed the hive influence from your genetic code, there is still a lingering influence from the queen that spawned you. Negative characteristics that you and the others have as default. I believe that’s why the others want to return to the Bsidd colony. Those that are going to Axius have overcome that and are choosing the lifestyle they want, and good for them, but you’ve gone a step further. You’ve overcome that subtle influence and, based on everything you’ve told me, have a typical Star Force mindset, not because it was implanted into you, but because you find it to be best.”

“I do.”

“So what if we can take your mindset and put that as the default for the Bsidd. They would still be able to choose their own path, but the ones not strong enough of mind to make their own choices, the ones that just go with the flow, would go with your flow rather than that of the original, corrupt queens…who themselves were most likely influenced by those that spawned them and constricted by their hive mind programming.”

“You want me to produce eggs?” Nadei guessed, feeling a bit disappointed.

“You don’t like that idea?”

“I will do so gladly.”

“But…”

Nadei dropped a few inches in height. “I want to make a difference.”

Larissa smiled. “Do both.”

“What do you mean?”

“The characteristics that you will pass onto your offspring are variable. In order to pass on the good traits you have to possess them yourself. As you change during your life those traits will change, so we need you to be as Star Force as you can get in order to give your offspring the best start we can give them. That means you need to be an active part of Star Force, not an ‘egg factory,’” Larissa said, pulling the term from the Bsidd’s mind.

“How can I do both?”

“We only need you to get the ball rolling. A few eggs here and there, with no imposed programming. You’ll have to make a conscious choice to do that.”

“I’m not sure how.”

“We’ll help you figure it out, but it’s probably something that you won’t understand until you start a reproductive cycle.”

“I’ll miss my workouts,” she mildly complained.

Larissa laughed. “And that mentality right there is exactly what we need passed on.”

Nadei looked from the Archon to the holograms, now realizing the importance of the task being asked of her. To shape the Bsidd away from this needless destruction and chaos without having to lead them. She could just be herself, no responsibilities other than what she earned through merit, and make a difference where she chose. All they needed were a few eggs, and that was something she would try to do. She owed them that much and more.

But she still didn’t like the idea of going sessile and missing workouts.

“Tell me what I need to do.”

“First thing is to find your place in Star Force. You’ve had some time to think about it. Where are you leaning?”

“I want to be a builder. An engineer if possible.”

“That’s a lot more training ahead of you.”

“I know, but I want to try. I’m not afraid of a challenge…and with all the destruction going on, building just feels right.”

“Then that’s where you begin. Down the road we’ll tackle the egg laying thing, right now we need you becoming as strong and skilled as possible so you will have plenty of good habits to pass on.”

7

May 4, 2583

Zerus System (Alpha Region)

Char

Larissa sat in her office, feet up on the clear desk as she read a datapad containing Paul’s most recent report on the assault of Tarania…the last Skarron foothold within the ADZ, or it was, because now Star Force, with the help of the Dvapp and Hycre, had finally rid the planet of enemy troops. Paul indicated that there were still enemy ships insystem that had to be hunted down or forced out, but the planet was back in Dvapp hands and the incursion was, after so many decades, finally repulsed.

“About damn time,” she said aloud, tossing the datapad on her desk and sliding her feet off. She stood up and looked out the window behind her, running her fingers through her pink hair and staring down on the colony that was building rapidly below. Her office was tower top in the center of the city, sitting right below the primary shield generator in a huge spire that had been the first bit of infrastructure completed on the ugly moon.

It was low grav, dirty, but with a habitable atmosphere and moderately high temps. Larissa knew it was a fixer upper, with plans to start terraforming when they had the necessary resources and workers, the latter of which were beginning to pool back on Venus as they completed their basic training. There was already a Kiritak colony insystem, set up on the planet below that contained no atmosphere whatsoever, and was feeding Char the materials it needed to build the Star Force Bsidd infrastructure that Larissa was tasked with overseeing.

Already she had a few hundred thousand Bsidd here, but they were all young and inexperienced. Her core of Humans, a handful of Calavari, and a lot of Kiritak were in charge of building the colony and giving the Bsidd their secondary training in a hybridized work/training environment that the trailblazer was having to juggle. With Star Force’s empire continually growing faster than its Human population adequate leadership was hard to come by, but fortunately several other races were contributing experienced people to the project so it wasn’t entirely relying on Humans to keep it progressing forward.

It was operating on a thin budget, both in terms of resources and personnel. All the Bsidd in Star Force were essentially younglings, with none of their own to lead or train others. Until they elevated to the point where they could themselves become trainers and handlers the amount of Bsidd population they could grow was going to be limited, but like all good trailblazers Larissa was pushing the limits and cover the slack herself.

The number of eggs even a few queens were capable of producing was staggering, so Star Force was never going to be limited in that regard. All reproduction was controlled through the maturias, however, so there was no fear of a runaway birth rate such as with the Kiritas. Larissa could ‘produce’ as many as she liked and feed the maturias exact numbers of keyed eggs with whatever variant was needed. It was then up to the individual Bsidd to complete their training and choose the course they would take, either staying in Star Force or leaving…with a good number heading to Axius, which while part of Star Force was essentially free man’s land where they could disappear into civilian life and do whatever.

Those that chose to stay in Star Force were being shipped out to Zerus and deposited on Char. Rather than be incorporated into Star Force’s mainline organizations they were being crafted into a splinter division much like the Kiritak, but given their biology and sheer size, not to mention their variants, it was a splinter division that Larissa was going to shape into a full-fledged entity…including military capability.

That would put them on par with the Calavari, but before that happened Larissa had a lot of work to do.

Most of the Humans on Char were Clan Meteor, with Larissa having recruited them from her own ranks. They were going to be the transitional crew until permanent recruits could be obtained. Thing of it was, even a lot of her own Clansmen were mere rookies, some not even 70 years old. She was here to overcome that weakness and keep everyone in line and basically create the new Bsidd civilization from scratch, though there had been a lot of prep work done previously on Davis’s part. Now it was time for the padawan to make it all work…and to adapt as things progressed, making what alterations were necessary on the spot.

Still, having Dvapp territory reclaimed was a burden lifted from her mind. Protovic space had already been reclaimed and their allies were beginning to lick their wounds and regrow…while making a few raids across the border to keep the Skarron outposts from developing too much. The Voku were doing most of the leg work there, and admirably, while the lizards and Skarrons contributed more and more resources to battling each other in a war that no one could predict the outcome of. Whenever one seemed to have the upper hand the other would pour more troops in, and vice versa.

For the moment they were more or less ignoring the ADZ, but there were skirmishes happening constantly, especially on the lizard border. As they’d shown previously, they were more than capable of multitasking, and even though they were being held back by a wall of Sentinels that was growing with each year, Star Force didn’t have the number of troops necessary to really lock up the ADZ…which was where the Bsidd came into play.

Or hopefully would, for right now they were still in learning mode and small in number, unlike the original Bsidd who were growing quite rapidly now that they’d secured a decent resource base. They hadn’t taken up a part in the ongoing civil war, but were trying to gain as much of a foothold in the power struggle as they could and becoming a bigger and bigger thorn in Star Force’s side given that they felt the only way to return to their previous dominance was to play adversary and pick up allies that held similar anti-Star Force sentiments…with the ‘free’ Bsidd being a huge sticking point with them.

If Larissa had her way, it was going to go from ‘sticking point’ to full-on insanity producing angst, because Star Force, even stretched thin, had far more resources to throw her way than the Bsidd had, and as soon as she got enough second tier maturias up and running here they’d easily be able to out-populate the ‘originals’…after which the real work would begin.

But maturias didn’t work if you didn’t have experienced handlers, and to accommodate the massive numbers to come those handlers had to be mostly Bsidd…not to mention the engineers, soldiers, builders, medtechs, etc. Getting this first batch off on the right foot was key, and to do that Larissa had searched long and hard for as many skilled and experienced individuals from across Star Force to provide the leadership necessary.

Her top tech was actually a Kiritak, a position that normally would have gone to a Human, but the little guy was more than 200 years old and was as big of a gear head as anyone she’d ever met. Right now he was out in the southern construction zone tweaking the controls on the construction mechs to better suit the Bsidd physiology. Adaptations had already been made in the basic designs when they’d been built, but as the crews got some more experience with them problems arose, with Navvi jumping on them as they arose, pun intended, and making adjustments to fully customize them to Bsidd needs while updating the schematics that would be used to create new models in coming years.

Little things like that were crucial and consumed most of Larissa’s days. While the Bsidd spoke English and had been trained in maturias like everyone else, their mentality was different, as it was for all races. The Star Force cultural vibe was there, and allowed them to connect easy enough, but the Bsidd weren’t eager beavers like the Kiritak were. They were hard workers when given a task, but give them free time and they would pretty much stand in place doing nothing.

Larissa hoped that would go away with time and experience, but she also wondered if it didn’t have something to do with the hive mind programming being stripped out of them. There had been no detected problems noted in the files she’d been given and practically memorized by this point, but there was definitely a vain of laziness in them that seemed to come more from not knowing what to do next rather than not caring. In a maturia that wasn’t a big problem because you had tasks given to you nonstop, but curiosity and exploration were two big elements missing in most of the Bsidd, though as always there were exceptions where individuals were involved.

Larissa had been sorting through her Bsidd to find those oddballs and advance them up through the ranks as she threw them into various new situations and waited to see how they’d respond. Experience couldn’t be underrated here, and she was going to goose along their learning curve as much as possible because she needed visible examples for the future Bsidd coming her way to see. Looking at other races was one thing, but when it came from your own it was a much more effective way of communicating than making instructional vids.

And the trailblazer had been making a lot of those. All the Bsidd coming out of the maturias knew who she was, for she’d been lecturing them since birth via the recordings. Like Randy was the patron of the Kiritas and Kiritak, Larissa was becoming the same for the Bsidd. That’s actually how Davis had put it when he’d asked her to take on this never-ending assignment.

A beep from her desk caught her attention and broke her stat-laden haze as she was running recent figures through her head while looking out at the dwindling light of the nearly nighttime cityscape. With a glance she telekinetically pressed a few buttons and brought up a holographic itinerary, showing a number of recent assignments and one that had gone awry. There was a mining operation underway, more of a learning tool but useful in city construction none the less, and one of the digging machines had broke while active and caused a cave-in.

Larissa frowned, wondering if it was a pure accident or a misuse that had caused the incident. Didn’t matter at the moment as she ran for the door, needing to get down to the city substructure as quickly as possible…with only a short detour to the armory to grab her second skin.

When she got down to the tunnels there were hundreds of Bsidd standing around, all made up of two varieties, known to Star Force as gammas and epsilons, or ‘eppies’ for short. The gammas stood twice as tall as a Human and were heavy lifters, though still low mass themselves. The eppies were smaller and looked like bushes given their many appendages. Both were standing around and waiting for orders, with Larissa moving through them with a telepathic ‘out of my way’ warning sent ahead of the trailblazer.

When she got through them she saw others working to remove rubble in the low gravity, given that they were below the city’s IDF field, both with tech assistance and their appendages. She spotted the few non-Bsidd minds nearby and moved to them, twisting and turning to get through the crowd in the packed tunnel.

“What happened?” she asked the lead miner, who was sitting on the side of a mining walker with a bloody right arm.

“I think one of the drills missed and hit the shield generator.”

“That holds the rim rock?” Larissa asked, knowing that the tunnel she’d just come through had been braced and walled off, with the area just ahead of her being pure rock with a shield that held it in check to keep any chunks from falling down. Had they been digging through sheer rock that wouldn’t have been such a risk, but what they were moving through now was a mix of rock, gravel, and empty pockets of air that would shift and fall when breached…hence the need for the containment shield overhead.

That said, there were a number of shield generators in use for varying applications of the mining process, with the rim rock being the trailblazer’s best bet as to what could have caused the debris field she was seeing around her.

“Yeah,” the miner said. “Took it out with one hit then boom. I got hit by a small piece, but there are people trapped under the rubble.”

Larissa turned and looked at the mountain of dusty rocks and peered inside it, seeing several crumpled Bsidd underneath the rocks but detecting a few active minds…meaning there were still some alive.

“I count six still alive.”

“My fault,” the miner said. “They’re too green. I should have handled point myself.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” she said, touching his good shoulder with her armored hand. “But we can’t hold their hands forever. And if they can’t miss a big fat pylon then that’s hardly your fault.”

“I don’t know…but this shouldn’t have happened.”

“Sort it out later. Move rock now,” she said, leaving him behind and shoving her way through the Bsidd working to move the chunks away to a shield conveyor that was taking them off overhead down the wide tunnel. The Archon hopped up on top of one of the walkers and replaced the Bsidd at the controls, using an auxiliary panel with Human-style controls to reposition it to the side and start pulling out chunks near to where she felt the closest minds, playing a giant tetris game and trying to keep from creating a second collapse.

The shield generators were back up, but the material within the tunnel could still shift and fall on those buried underneath. Larissa worked as much as she could with the walker then pulled it back and got off, going into the rocks and activating the powered function of her armor and digging her way down to one of the trapped eppies. She wedged herself into a gap, kicking a small boulder out of the way near her right knee, and making herself a living arch to create an escape route.

“Crawl,” she ordered, with the tiny Bsidd, scared out of its mind, rushing into the light and getting free.

It took Larissa a moment to extract herself without getting pinned, then she went to work directing another walker in pulling a few large sections off another area. There they recovered a very mangled corpse of a gamma along with another that had three appendages smashed and pinned underneath the rock. They got those chunks removed and rushed it off, leaving Larissa and the other green miners to pull out the rest.

After they finished more than an hour later Larissa pulled the vid records from the walkers and saw what had happened, taking the visuals over to the miner in a nearby med bay as he was getting his broken arm attended to.

“Not your fault,” she said, showing him the recording. The mining walker was drilling into a wall segment near the shield pylon, then for no apparent reason the machine veered left and dove straight into it, tearing it apart and releasing the loose material above.

“I don’t understand why it did that,” the miner said, with the guilt weighing heavily on him, for these Bsidd were under his guidance and care.

“Look closer,” she said, tapping a small section of screen that showed a cockpit view. As it replayed again they both saw the Bsidd twitch suddenly, knocking several controls askew.

“What am I seeing?”

“Something rare in the Bsidd, the equivalent of a seizure.”

“What caused it?”

“Allergies. We’ve identified 2 compounds to date that have about a .03% chance of causing a reaction. We we’ve kept both out of this colony. I’m guessing we may have stumbled on a third. Sucks that we had to find it this way, but there was no way of knowing ahead of time. Just the bad luck monkey punching us hard in the head.”

“What compound?”

Larissa shook her head. “Don’t know yet, but finding it is top on my to-do list. We’ll put a hold on all mining activity until we find it.”

“Poor guy,” the miner said. “He probably feels terrible right now.”

“I’m on my way there now. I’ll explain it to him.”

“Thank you. It’ll be better coming from you, but he’s still gonna hate himself.”

“Heal fast. I’m going to need you as soon as I get this figured out.”

“I’ll be good to go tomorrow.”

Larissa nodded and left, leaving the medtechs to continue wrapping his arm up in healing bandages that stoked his cellular regeneration. The bone wouldn’t fully heal in a day, but the head miner didn’t need his arm to give commands and direct the others. While he preferred to do the delicate work himself, he’d hold back until his arm fully healed but wouldn’t take time off. The Bsidd had so much to learn that he couldn’t go awol. They desperately needed him to get back to work as soon as the trailblazer got this allergy figured out. Sitting around and waiting was contagious for the Bsidd, and with them being so young they didn’t need any bad examples to follow.

8

November 2, 2589

Hatten System (Occupied Scionate Territory)

Orril

Paul’s command ship braked into orbit above the mixed fleet of Lacvamat, Gnar, Nammet, and Hesquid that held possession over the planet with colonies of their own growing on its surface. The nearby planet of Rewqt held a similar grouping of Lacvamat-allied races with the Temassi and Brofat added to the mix of squatters claiming bits of the world as their own. There were also others picking over pieces of the system that the Scionate had not inhabited like a pack of rats scurrying over an uncovered plate of food, trying to get their hands on Star Force-free territory while it was up for grabs.

The same was happening elsewhere, in both Scionate and Lacvamat territory, with the bold enough races circumventing Star Force’s edicts and waging a war of conquest that was occurring simultaneously with a colonization boom. Those colonies had also become priority targets in the ever escalating civil war, with many of the planets under assault never having been inhabited by either the Scionate or the Lacvamat, but being technically under their possession.

Today that was going to change.

As the fully functional Excalibur dropped into mid orbit a slew of Protovic warships with their telltale X-shaped silhouettes came in its wake, followed by an equally large group of Hycre, including a pair of their rare battleships, that were escorting an even larger number of Calavari transports. The combined fleet pushed their way down into low orbit with the transports beginning to enter the atmosphere as a previously recorded message was sent out to the entire system, instructing the various races’ warships that they had exactly 3 hours to either leave the system or enter low stellar orbit to await a jumpship. Refusal to do so would mean the forcible confiscation of their ships.

A similar edict was sent to the surface colonies, instructing them that they were to being packing up and leaving and that the Calavari were coming down to help them do it, starting on Orril and then moving on to every other bit of infrastructure in the system. With the Calavari transports coming down into the atmosphere over several races’ colonies there was a hesitation in response and even the raising of some defenses until the Hycre ships began descending into the atmosphere along with them and pumping a few warning shots into the erected defense shields.

It took some considerable intimation on the part of the Big 3 but eventually the colonies on Orril reluctantly surrendered, seeing that they had no alternative. The ‘too busy to intervene’ status quo was apparently over, and though there wasn’t a huge amount of warships and transports arrayed against them, the tech and experience advantage was far more than the combined Lacvamat-allied force could hold out against if it actually came to a fight…plus the repercussions down the road if they dared to face off with the big boys were too chilling to chance.

The slew of whining chatter and diplomatic outrage that followed was not disappointing, but it didn’t matter in the least. The Hycre, Protovic, and Star Force were unified in their course of action and were sending a firm signal to the rest of those involved in the stupid war that it was time to either run or get the hammer dropped on your head.

But they weren’t going to get off easy for complying with the order to evacuate. Now that there were some available ships and troops that weren’t devoted to defending the fronts it was time to start dealing with inhouse affairs and clean up the ADZ. The Hatten System was the first of what would eventually be many systems reclaimed from the squatters, but it would not be returned to the Scionate. Rather Star Force was going to take possession of the formerly ‘independent’ system and create a slew of new Alliance Worlds with the regions going to races that had not been involved in the civil war.

That process would take years, with the Big 3 not getting to the second system on their list for another 4. Meanwhile the civil war continued at an increasing pace, not to colonize, which they’d more or less given up on, but to strike at their rivals and kill as many of them as they could. Some races sought to hold onto what they’d taken, even announcing they were finished fighting and only taking on defensive roles, but it didn’t matter to the Big 3. Slowly, system by system they reclaimed the worlds that had been taken from both the Scionate and Lacvamat.

But Star Force didn’t stop there. For the races that had thrown in and aided both sides there were stiff penalties, each tailored to the actions of the individual races, many of which involved losing regions on Alliance Worlds. Star Force took possession of their colonies, allowing all who wished to evacuate to do so, with those populations that stayed behind becoming Star Force wards and adding even more varied races to their growing empire. As they’d done numerous times before, most notably on Earth, they restructured the acquired colonies according to Star Force protocol, both in terms of infrastructure and society.

When it eventually came time to deal with the Scionate the Big 3 brought an overwhelming warfleet into their territory and forced them to abandon all but three systems, each of which would contain at least 1 Star Force or Alliance World, with them retaining their freedom but not without being watched. The Scionate did not relent easily and called the bluff, forcing a short lived conflict that involved the easy disabling of their defensive fleet. For the resistance they put up and the few Scionate lives that were lost in the brief fight, one of the three systems was forfeited, reducing Scionate territory down to only 2.

Like the other races the denizens had a choice…evacuate to the Scionate worlds or stay and live under Star Force rule. With their pride running high most of the Scionate eventually chose to leave, despite the overcrowding that was going to occur on their remaining worlds. That said, a few of the dissentious bloodlines made a separate pact with Star Force, evacuating all of their holdings and moving to what would be the new Star Force Scionate worlds.

The only reason the other Scionate were allowed to retain their independence was because they had been the defenders in the conflict. For the Lacvamat the penalties were much harsher and also enforced by Star Force, the Protovic, and the Hycre.

They lost all of their worlds and their independence. It was a stretch for Star Force to assimilate them all, but the Protovic helped out with transitional personnel and resources and the Hycre provided naval oversight at all times to ensure there were no further dissentions after the short war they had to fight to subdue the Lacvamat capitol. Both the Hycre and Protovic knew how far Star Force was attempting to stretch to digest the populations they were taking responsibility for, and they both helped cover up that fact and assist where they could to prevent dissentions should people realize how tenuous Star Force’s hold was.

Quietly the Protovic began taking on more and more responsibility on the Skarron front as Star Force’s resources, while still building up their fleet, were heavily devoted to the ADZ reorganization. Meanwhile the Hycre kept a close watch on the growing war between the lizards and the Skarrons as more and more systems became battlefields. The Skarrons had eventually won out to claim the Nestafar capitol, but the lizards were winning twice as many smaller systems with both races apparently being evenly matched.

Even as they battled the lizards probed the ADZ constantly, with skirmishes and full blown battles occurring in the neutral zone around Alpha, Zeta, and Delta Regions that Star Force maintained. The Skarrons were less ambitious, preferring to maintain their holdings rather than continually butt heads with the superior Voku when the bulk of their reinforcements were heading towards the lizard front.

It was a tense first decade, with the Big 3 gambling that they could pull off the ADZ seizure and maintain the front long enough for Star Force to catch its breath, but as the years passed thereafter the situational tension lessoned and Star Force’s grip on their new holdings increased. The new order had mixed reactions from the other races, some supporting, others condemning, while most were happy that their rivals were now out of the picture…but very unhappy that Star Force’s empire was continually expanding along with their powerbase, with many vocally wondering how long it would be before they were annexed as well.

When the Bsidd saw the actions the Big 3 were taking they were highly alarmed, not only because they had not been including in the decision making, but because it was being made crystal clear that all those races within the ADZ were answerable to them. The original Alliance had been a group of peers and their subjugates, now it was a restricted zone where individual races no long had sovereignty to conduct their own affairs. The races fighting each other had not attacked the Big 3, but none the less they were punished for their actions. That and the revocation of their independence was a clear sign that the Bsidd could no longer stay in the ADZ, with the queens beginning to look for places to relocate.

Using the network of contacts within the ADZ and the trade relations with those races outside it, the Bsidd began making inquiries and studying communal star charts outside of Epsilon and Gamma Regions, focusing on the areas opposite from the Cajdital threat and exerting their technological superiority to create relationships with lesser races, ironically offering up some of their tech as Star Force had suggested in exchange for resources and concessions. In a process that took better than 20 years the Bsidd eventually secured a planet in a two system race that needed a powerful benefactor to help protect it from rivals in the area.

The handful of warships the Bsidd possessed were more than sufficient for the task and the queens established a new colony there, growing it and securing their foothold as they continued to increase their population within the ADZ. Now with a distant second home they began funneling more and more of their people out beyond Epsilon Region and Star Force’s reach. They maintained their single region within the ADZ as a cover and didn’t make their final pullout until they were firmly established on their new homeworld.

When the time came they made no announcements, nor gave any forewarnings to their neighbors or business associates. One day they were there and the next they were packed up in their ships and gone, leaving a ghost town of structures behind that had been stripped of any sensitive tech.

Star Force knew where they had gone, giving that they monitored most traffic in the ADZ, but their leaving had been a surprise…and a blessing. They were one more thorn removed from the slowly settling ADZ community, though it was far from stable. The threat of outright war between rivals was now gone, squashed by the lesson the Scionate and Lacvamat had taught the others, so they resorted to other means of conflict that were not so obvious.

But the spacelanes were more or less secure, and that gave the ADZ another false sense of security. The ongoing war between the lizards and Skarrons was made public with reports going out as to the various changes in ownership of the worlds that had once belonged to many of them, but a lot of the factions saw it as a distant and unimportant backdrop to the inner workings of the ADZ. The Big 3 had proved they could keep the lizards and Skarrons beyond the fronts, leaving the ‘important’ internal power struggle as the main social impetus that drove events.

Star Force was seen as the ‘sheriff’ of the ADZ and not a major player by most of the races that knew they would only come down on you for violating terms of colonization, with many of them crafting their silent wars around those terms so as not to invoke their wrath. Even with the annexations that Star Force had made in the wake of the civil war they still held a small minority of the overall ADZ population, both in terms of individuals and worlds, so while they were a major overshadowing force, they weren’t seen as ‘competition’ from most of the races.

The Hycre and Protovic were likewise disconnected, with both having independent systems and their own empires to run. Neither were interested in expanding their powerbase in the ADZ, for if they wanted they could conquer systems on the fronts and expand their borders that way, which was happening occasionally as the fighting to establish and maintain neutral zones was ongoing. Some few ADZ races still had contacts outside the ‘safe’ zone with worlds that hadn’t yet been targeted by either the Skarrons or lizards, but most now kept to the interior and away from the fronts, consumed with the now sheltered community that was growing by leaps and bounds.

That growth was being fueled in two parts, one being the protection from invasion, whether external or internal, and the available resource base that the Star Force markets offered. As the populations grew and new Alliance regions were made available there was always a contest to gain influence and power, with a big advantage going to those races who were savvy businessmen, prolific industrialists, and had a high reproduction rate.

It also helped that Star Force usually had a place for the races’ excess population to go, virtually eliminating the problem of overpopulation because people would flee it through the transit grid before it became overly problematic. That put the burden on Star Force to continue expanding Axius and other branches of its empire and essentially giving the various races a set of ‘training wheels’ and allowing their empires to grow larger and stronger than they could have done on their own.

But that was all part of the plan, which Davis was continually working no matter whether events occurred in his favor or not. He was always there, behind the scenes or out in front of them guiding the ADZ and working with the Protovic and Hycre to maintain their good relations and firm leadership, which he knew was critical to keeping all the various races in some semblance of order. Should their triad crumble Star Force didn’t have the strength to hold everything together…and the Hycre and Protovic knew that without Star Force backing them with tech and infrastructure, most notably the Sentinels standing watch over most of their systems, they wouldn’t be able to survive either of the insanely large threats on their borders.

The silent partner in all of this was the Voku, which Davis had little contact with. They preferred to deal with the Archons, warrior to warrior, with Paul being their number one go to contact. He and their commander got along well and Davis didn’t try to impose himself there, but he was keenly interested in studying their newest ally and had asked Paul to dig up whatever he could on them.

They were maintaining their hold on Achkor but expanding no further, strengthening and growing the system as part of their empire and set well outside the ADZ. They didn’t care to involve themselves with the other races, only Star Force, and Davis knew the real silent partner wasn’t the Voku…it was the Zak’de’ron.

Davis didn’t have much info to work with, but he got the feeling that the dragons were using Star Force to achieve their own goals, whatever they might be. If not for the Voku involving themselves in the Skarron war it was possible that Star Force might be defending their core worlds with the rest of the ADZ smashed beyond repair. Not only had the Voku come to their aid, they’d come to their aid before they were truly needed, which meant the dragons were very aware of the course of events in this part of the galaxy and had tagged Star Force as important enough to be preserved.

And that fact chilled him to the bone, for it made the true threat resonate even more so. The V’kit’no’sat were still out there, and he knew they were the Zak’de’ron’s focal point. If they were involving themselves with Star Force then they knew something was coming, perhaps far into the future for right now Earth couldn’t stand up to even a small invasion force given their limited tech, but something was coming, he could feel it, and the dragons were like the wind sock turning with the first breeze of an approaching hurricane.

They wanted Star Force to be a player, and that meant the game was afoot…with the Skarrons and lizards being a mere sideshow.

And that thought truly scared him.

9

May 9, 2631

Zerus System (Alpha Region)

Char

“I still say it’s too soon,” Ben-30118 commented as he was walking with Larissa to the spaceport.

“It will always be too soon,” she countered, “but they’ve got to learn from practical experience and that means stretching them a bit. We can’t hold their appendages forever. Not enough hands anyway,” she joked, but the sarcasm was laced with a secondary meeting that the other Archon understood.

“We still need oversight.”

“And we have it.”

“Not nearly enough.”

“You’ll just have to keep a close eye on them, but don’t interfere unless there’s a problem.”

“I still have a bad feeling about this.”

“If there’s going to be a catastrophe better it be now than down the road when there are more of them.”

Ben laughed. “Nice of you to point out the doomsday scenario to make the less than appealing one look beneficial.”

“You’re welcome,” she said as they entered a sky bridge and began crossing between two of the very high towers in the Star Force Bsidd capitol city, leaving what had been her home for more than 50 years and heading into the adjacent building where they’d hop a lift that would take them down to the surface and to the small spaceport nearby. As they walked out into the clear tunnel the first rays of the morning sunlight were beginning to break over the horizon and filter in between distant spires and other shorter, but wider buildings that held the Bsidd population.

This city contained some 370+ million, but the entire planet now held a population of 3.4 billion and was growing as fast as the infrastructure would allow, which in turn was growing as more and more Bsidd became available to harvest resources and construct new facilities. The snowball was off and running, with Larissa’s on site control no longer being needed. She’d continue to monitor and adjust the Star Force Bsidd civilization as it grew, but she’d do it from afar and leave others like Ben in charge of the day to day duties on this planet and the second planet they were expanding to.

That was the source of the discussion, with the Bsidd being given instructions to colonize it and Larissa wanting them to use only local workers to do it. The Archons and others would monitor, but the Bsidd badly needed the experience given that most of them were less than 30 years old. Usually colony construction was reserved for experienced engineers at least 100 years old, but no Bsidd was going to get that experience and they needed them to start fielding their own personnel for the bigger tasks, hence the need to practice.

But they could only practice by doing the real thing, with this being the first real test for the newbie Bsidd engineers and construction crews. Before long there would be too many of them to monitor with Humans anyway, and Star Force needed trained and vetted Bsidd to build the future growth of their race around. Larissa was convinced her top people could handle it, despite their youth, but there was only one way to find out.

Her leaving aided the ‘greater responsibility’ mojo beginning to go down within the Bsidd, but as it happened it was totally unrelated. Her time here had been well spent, but she wasn’t going to remain a permanent part of the Bsidd. She was an Archon and trailblazer, with there being plenty of other things for her to do. She’d gotten the Bsidd civilization up and running, tailored it to Star Force fashion, and done so without putting a drain on offworld resources. Now the Bsidd were producing more than they used and even exporting a bit, with most of the resources going into expanding their infrastructure and accommodating an increased population…one that would continue to grow to insane levels, they hoped, but in a controlled fashion.

The Bsidd here, now, were going to be the skeleton on which that larger mass was going to align itself, and it was high time the training wheels started to come off. They needed to know what they were doing and confident in their own abilities before the mass of younglings were thrown their way to lead and train. Already the maturias were mostly run by Bsidd, with Human handlers occupying the highest ranks and ensuring everything went smoothly. That would continue, but the more and more maturias that came online would be staffed by other Bsidd, as would most positions within their civilization.

The Humans would always be there as a safety mechanism to ensure the Bsidd grew properly, and to offer advice, but now was the time to start pulling back and letting them earn their way forward, with her symbolically leaving only reinforcing that times were changing. Larissa looked out to her left at the city that stretched to the edge of her vision. It was typical Star Force but built with the Bsidd physiology in mind. The interiors were larger, but the original convoluted designs had been replaced with the straight grid-like patterns that Humans favored.

The exterior was also so gridded, making it instantly recognizable as a Star Force city. Half a century ago this planet had been barren, now it was filling up with similar cities spreading across its surface…yet to Larissa it had taken forever to get built, given the intense handling that had been required to goose along the construction as quickly as possible. She’d taken several trips off planet to attend to other matters in the ADZ, never for long and always returning here before things had a chance to go wrong, but now she wasn’t worried. The Bsidd had done well and she was convinced they’d continue to do so as long as they had a little nudge now and then.

Overhead a few strands of flying traffic crossed between the buildings, with others moving below the sky bridge in a lackadaisical but orderly flow. Most of the transit was subsurface, but there was plenty of activity in the air to make sightseeing a never-ending activity. Up until now she’d never looked at it that way, but now that she was leaving Larissa took a moment to gaze out the skybridge and really see the city for the first time without wondering about one project or another. She’d already mentally disconnected, with this walk allowing her a brief moment of tourism as she returned to ‘normal’ Archon duties.

“Something wrong?” Ben asked as she slowed.

“No, just doing a bit of perspective transition. These buildings are a lot taller than they seem.”

“How so?”

“I’ve always measured them by floors, but Bsidd floors are larger than Human ones.”

“And you’re realizing this now?” Ben commented with a chuckle.

“Guess it just never sunk in. My mind’s always been on other things and I’ve never just looked at the city before.”

“Getting nostalgic?”

“No, just disconnecting my mind from the collective.”

“Back to being a rogue?”

“Yep,” she said with a smile, increasing her pace back to normal as she carried a duffle over her left shoulder…the only personal belongings she would need, for Archons traveled and lived light. An Archon packrat was truly an oxymoron.

“You are going to read my reports, I assume?”

“Rogues keep aware of their surroundings.”

“Just disconnected from them?”

“You really shouldn’t have to ask,” she said, glancing at him.

“I don’t know. I’m the one stuck with playing administrator now,” he said jokingly. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a good combat mission.”

“I’m not heading for combat, not yet anyway.”

“I think that counts.”

“No,” Larissa said with a smirk, “it’s way harder.”

“I’d say I could imagine…but I can’t. Having all those psionics alone.”

“Yeah, I’ve got some catching up to do.”

“Where do you figure you’ll end up after training?”

“Not a clue,” she said as they came to the end of the skybridge and entered the neighboring building, heading for the nearest lift. “Rogues go where needed when needed. In the meantime we play videogames and eat donuts.”

“And manage to run a Clan at the same time?”

“Archons can multitask,” she reminded him. “If you haven’t learned that by now I need to replace you before I leave.”

“You do a bit more than the rest of us,” he said, ignoring her jab. “And don’t say it’s because you’re older.”

“Better?”

“No, just realizing you have to have a lot of really good help and that I’m going to have to carry for you here.”

Larissa raised an eyebrow. “More truth in that than you know.”

Both Archons moved over close to the wall as a group of Bsidd betas crossed paths with them. The ‘soldier’ variants no longer held that role, with them being assigned to many different tasks that they qualified for. The same was true of the other variants, and while some types tended to choose similar assignments there was a hodgepodge nature to the Star Force Bsidd civilization that made it totally unrecognizable from the original one. Individuals chose where they wanted to go and do, rather than being born into a role.

Larissa dragged her duffle along the wall until they got past the knot of heavy traffic, then moved back out on Ben’s left as they headed on through the enormous building, eventually coming to a lift terminal and grabbing one of the waiting elevator cars and descending down the spire to a subsurface nexus that connected directly with the trams that ran underground, one line of which ran to the spaceport Larissa would be leaving from.

The two Archons continued to chitchat on the way over, covering some business matters and some personal. Ben had been her right hand on the planet for the past 27 years and was going to be her replacement leading the Bsidd, with him taking the training wheels off bit by bit as she directed from afar, meaning the two were still going to be in regular contact but probably not seeing each other again for years to come.

That was another aspect of Archon life. You were always around people but those faces were constantly changing. Every Archon was a rogue, or had to be able to be given the situation, but given that they were trained to be masters of all areas it was good to rotate around and keep things fresh, although long term assignments like the one she was just finishing were necessary from time to time. Randy’s logs had helped her a lot in the beginning, and she’d filed her own for use by the others if/when they had to go through a similar assignment.

They all shared information, knowledge, skills, and even now psionics where they were able, but in the end each Archon had their own path to walk and needed to be enough of a free spirit to embrace that…which was why Larissa was already able to start mentally walking away from Char even before she’d made it to the spaceport.

When she finally boarded the dropship she dropped her duffle into the passenger seat beside her, feeling the heavy weight of her armor bundle inside bounce a bit on the cushions, and sat down blowing out a deep breath that felt like she’d been holding it for the past 5 decades. Other than a few tweaks here and there the Bsidd were no longer her responsibility. They were growing into their own and becoming part of Star Force…and a self-sufficient part, capable of contributing rather than needing attention given to them.

True, they were still a long way from being on the level of the Calavari, but the ball was rolling in that direction and Larissa had no doubt they’d get there eventually. It was just a matter of getting the necessary experience, and she didn’t need to be there for that. Her task was done and now she was back to just being Larissa, one person with one life rather than having billions to worry about.

A little tingle of energy shot through her as the dropship lifted off, which surprised her. She was actually excited to leave where she had expected it to just be a normal trip. Larissa had left before and never felt this way, and with a decent amount of self-analysis during the flight up to orbit she realized it was because of the disconnect occurring and how, despite the need for it, she really didn’t care for administrative duties.

The trailblazer didn’t regret the Bsidd assignment, nor hold any ill will against them or Davis, for it had been at his request she’d taken it on. No, it wasn’t that. She was just ready to move on and get back to being, like Ben had been discussing with her, a rogue and ready to jump at whatever problem showed up next.

Fortunately most of the big problems were relegated to the past. The interior of the ADZ was more or less quiet, though there was always something going on. The big problems were outside their borders and battling each other in what had once been Nestafar territory, with the conflict spreading out as more and more of the lizard and Skarron expansions ran into one another. The ADZ was soon to become encompassed by both, with talks ongoing with the Voku about how to possibly counter that.

Given the 3D nature of the starmap they lived on there wasn’t a specific line that could be drawn against the enemy, and the lizards tended to hold more systems above the galactic middle line than below, giving the ADZ with many borders where they and the Skarrons didn’t yet threaten. Star Force didn’t want to get to the point where the ADZ was swallowed up on all sides, so they were working with the Voku for extremely long term contingencies, given that they were already fighting the Skarrons in their own territory and it wasn’t impossible that the lizards might work their way down to them as well someday.

But for the moment the two big powers were so consumed with countering each other they weren’t paying a lot of attention to the ADZ, and probably because they’d taken up a defensive mindset rather than an aggressive expansion. Star Force, the Protovic, and the Hycre weren’t taking Skarron worlds from them, so they probably saw the pesky ADZ as something they could deal with later at their leisure.

For the lizards there was a few of their worlds coming into Star Force possession, but not enough to truly matter. On that front Star Force was mainly being defensive and not threatening the lizards in any major way, leaving them a threat they could deal with later as well…though they were never completely left alone. There was still continuous fighting going on, but the bulk of the lizard fleet was headed elsewhere, leaving only their second line for Star Force and the Hycre to contend with.

It wasn’t a golden age by far, but compared to what they had been facing the ADZ was doing well and more or less stable. Larissa knew that was only temporary, but it was giving everyone a much needed respite to catch their breath and rebuild, with the fronts being flooded with Sentinels and the new Ma'kri patrol ships, though those were still more or less a secret that Star Force was keeping from public knowledge.

But the ADZ was huge, and most of the ‘border’ was unsecured. Most of it lay in areas where the lizards or Skarrons hadn’t been pressing them, and huge swaths of Epsilon, Gamma, and Delta Regions were Star Force territory on map only, with many more outposts and colonies needing to be built to get a firm grip on the spherical region they’d laid claim to. In those ‘wild’ regions there were other races that weren’t part of the ADZ Alliance that had to be dealt with, either left alone or fought when they took actions against their neighbors.

Freeing of slaves or hunting down pirates had become a common practice for some of the other Archons, with them slowly weeding the wild areas and making them more civilized…not to mention scouting out the areas beyond the ADZ, including their every growing line of bread crumbs headed in the direction of the galactic Rim.

There was a lot going on and Larissa didn’t know where she’d end up eventually, but as the dropship rendezvoused with a transport in orbit she had no doubts about where the next few years would take her, barring an emergency. The cargo ship would be taking her to a nearby system where she’d get on the ADZ transit grid and make her way back to Earth rather than tying up a warship with the unnecessary trip. Once she got back to her first home she’d be joining the other 54 trailblazers and a host of second gen in the long running advanced training group that had already spawned several mages.

Larissa was only a level 58 padawan and was still missing a few psionics whose triggers had been unlocked since her last brief visit. She intended to stay with the group permanently and make up for lost time, as well as reconnect with her brothers and sisters who’d she’d been apart from for what seemed like forever.

She and the other trailblazers might be rogues, but they still preferred operating as a team…and when they got together good things always happened, often in unexpected ways, and it was high time Larissa got back to pure training and see what she and the others could accomplish together.

That, and she was just sick of falling so far behind in her levels.

10

February 2, 2633

Solar System

Earth

It was late, but Davis was finishing up some planning files for a theoretical program to be implemented in the Lacvamat colonies that he was going to shoot off to the trailblazers for some feedback tomorrow at the latest, so he was spending an extra hour or so watching the stars come out through his panoramic office windows when an update icon flashed on a holographic display to his left.

It was the 19th update in the past 10 minutes, but it was flagged with a selective tag that Davis had put on it earlier, reminding himself that he wanted to see it as soon as it came in. The Director paused the planning and set it aside for a moment as he read through the Bsidd population statistics.

Another 1.3% increase in the past 6 weeks, as far as egg hatchings were concerned. Included in the batch of statistics were the graduation rates from the maturias and the number of personnel attaining ranks in the various disciplines within their society…including a breakdown as to which were which variants. More and more they were mixing as a talent pool formed, still very inexperienced but now at the point where Star Force could really ramp up their population numbers to the amount he needed.

That didn’t happen overnight, nor without the proper infrastructure in place, but ever since Larissa had given him the green light he’d been pumping resources and construction crews into Char to flash build more colonies than they’d previously had…all with the intent of utilizing the Bsidd’s population growth potential to add some additional stability to the ADZ, among other things.

The original Bsidd leaving had been welcome news, but the rest of the races were growing at such a rate that Star Force’s hold on their percentage of the ADZ’s population was mainly due to the Kiritas/Kiritak. Davis was stoking Human growth as much as he could, with a great imbalance still existing on Earth, which had too many, and the rest of the Human colonies outside of Sol that had too few to fuel the expansive growth that he wanted.

That he needed. Star Force was large, far larger than he’d ever imagined it becoming back when he’d begun the organization in what seemed like an altogether different world, but it was still tiny compared to the major players out there, and the more reports he got from the lizard/Skarron war the more he realized just how outclassed they were in terms of resources and population. Star Force needed to get larger, and Human reproduction rates weren’t enough.

He was still continuing to surge Kiritak expansion, but their small size made them ill-suited to some tasks. On the contrary, the different variants of Bsidd made them skilled in just about everything, relatively speaking. That was judging them based on their race’s default attributes and not the skills of the individuals, which Star Force based its entire structure on, but he knew there was a great deal more potential in the Bsidd than the Kiritak, though he doubted the larger race would ever outwork the energetic little guys to whom Star Force owed a lot.

Davis didn’t want to replace them, at all, but he wanted to add to them and with the Bsidd he could add a number of different aspects to Star Force…but only if their population grew to similar levels. Right now it was only a few billion, but as the new facilities came online Char was going to be seeing a population boom like no other. Even now there was an army of more than 150 million Star Force engineers and construction workers on the planet and a never-ending flow of cargo ships coming in and out of the system delivering the raw materials they required for the sudden and massive expansion.

He knew that such growth was dangerous, which was why he was monitoring every little fluctuation in the numbers as they filtered in through the relay network. As he skimmed through the report the recent batch looked to be right on with what he expected, including the construction rates which were still staying ahead of projections. Cargo shipments were growing a surplus of foodstuffs and other materials on planet which he intended to add to, having had prefab warehouses built across two large plains on the planet.

Those were increasing as the need arose and were now easily visible from orbit as a flat sheet of artificial construct standing in stark contrast to the harsh landscape. The various colonies stood out as small dots, underscoring the size of the warehouse facilities and the scope of the project that Davis was rushing along. So far everything was proceeding as planned, but he intended to keep it that way by overseeing it from afar rather than relying on his staff. He trusted them and their skills, but something of this size he needed to handle himself just to be safe.

Once he saw that everything was in order he set the update aside and returned to his planning for the Lacvamat. They’d not taken to annexation well, and even the younglings that had been born and raised in maturias didn’t acclimate as they should after graduation. There was something significantly lacking in the structure of their new society and Davis was brainstorming what that was and how to make adjustments.

Part of the problem was that the Lacvamat were flyers and that most of Star Force was made up of groundpounders. They weren’t the only flying race, for Star Force had several as wards, but those had been adapted to Human-style colonies in a hybridized form that the Lacvamat just weren’t taking to. They were becoming very stagnant, more so than other civilian aspects of races. It was always assumed that there would be slackers, just as a byproduct of individual choice, but the percentages were sky high in the Lacvamat. So much so that Star Force was pretty much having to babysit them with very few in terms of their overall population actually working to assist in their own survival.

Davis had spent considerable time researching other flying races and trying to get inside their heads…literally in some cases, and had thought he had a solution that involved a mix of infrastructure changes as well as a societal restructuring that involved the creation of what he was loosely calling ‘flocks,’ something that he’d tried to discourage in other races. It seemed the Lacvamat needed a group mentality, at least in some small part, to provide them motivation to act and Davis was intent on giving it to them in a Star Force fashion.

Like the Clans, he knew that beneficial competition was the answer, but he had to craft it in such a way to stoke their energy without inducing resentment and the kind of blind hatred that had seen the former Lacvamat tear into the Scionate. It was a delicate balancing act, but again something that wasn’t new to Davis. The competitive aspects he wanted the Archons to tweak, as well as troubleshoot the rest and maybe come up with some additional or better ideas.

He was feeling the need to sleep dragging on him, but got the gist of his ideas down and did a little streamlining before going ahead and sending it off through the relay network to all 100 of the trailblazers, knowing they’d vet and discuss it amongst themselves and send back something to him in a few months. With that task done he left the rest of the incoming updates till tomorrow morning to deal with.

Davis took a casual glance out his window, seeing the nighttime lights of the city and the normal traffic flows in the sky. Yawning out of reflex he realized he was a bit more tired than he thought and put aside any thoughts of doing anything other than going straight to bed once he got back to his quarters, else he’d regret it when he got up for his morning workout.

He headed for the spiral staircase and worked his way down through his staff control level, which was always active with rotating crews, and informed them that he was going dark…meaning that he’d be off comm until further notice. With a few last instructions he was off on a casual walk through the city and lift system back towards his waiting bed.

Davis was nearly to his quarters when a security officer came running up to him in the hallway, brushing past two other people and nearly knocking them over in the process. The Director sensed him coming before he got to him, as well as his mental state, and turned to face the slightly taller man.

“What is it?”

“Unidentified ships have entered the system. A lot of them.”

A spike of fear shot through Davis’s body, but he didn’t let it show as he turned around and headed back to his office, accelerating up into a run with the security officer rushing ahead and playing blocker, clearing his path when necessary.

“Earpiece,” Davis said on the run.

The security officer took his out and tossed it to Davis, who telekinetically plucked it out of the air and inserted it into his left ear, then went through the rerouting process so it would register his ID, after which he contacted defense command.

“Talk to me,” he said to the Archon on the other end while still running through the moderately crowded hallways en route to the nearest lift terminal.

“Director, we have at present 126 ships of unknown origin in stellar orbit. Their hull configurations do not match any known profiles and as of yet there has been no attempt at communication.

“Not V’kit’no’sat?”

“Not unless their tech got a whole lot crappier, no,” the striker said.

Davis felt a huge relief flow through him in a wave of goosebumps, but he still kept running. “Why kind of ships?”

“Warships…and another two just came out of the braking maneuvers. They’re about half the size of our jumpships, but we don’t have close enough eyes on them to determine what type of weaponry.”

“Where do we stand?”

“Defense fleets are moving to contain or engage, and the trailblazers are being notified. I think this warrants interrupting their training.”

“Let’s hope not. Civilian traffic?”

“Rerouting. They came in on an odd jumpline, so there’s not much in the immediate vicinity.”

“Which?”

“Westley.”

Davis frowned. That star system was on the other side of a thin nebula that Star Force always routed around. Their shields were strong enough now to go through if needed, but there was no sense in taking the chance other than in emergency situations…and that suggested that whoever this was didn’t have accurate star maps of the region, not to mention strong enough shields to survive the trip, making Davis wonder exactly how advanced they were.

“Define crappy.”

“None of the really sweet toys we know the V’kit’no’sat swear by. Right now my best guess is plasma variant weapons with some others thrown in. Maybe some missile racks. I’m looking at the updating sensor feeds now.”

“They’re staying put?”

“For the time being, yes.”

“I’m heading back to my office, set up a tactical feed there with holo.”

“We’ll keep you in the loop, but if there is a fight to be had it’s going to be a quick one.”

“Copy that,” Davis said, deactivating the earpiece and pulling it out as they rode the lift through the city. “Thank you,” he said, giving it back to the security officer. “I can find my way back from here.”

The man nodded and waited out the rest of the transit in the car beside him, then stayed inside when the doors opened and Davis ran out. The Director worked his way back towards his office, blowing through the various security checkpoints and hitting his staircase without bothering to confer with his staff, knowing they’d have everything he needed to know sent up to his desktop.

When he got back up on his office floor there was a lifesize hologram standing next to his desk, which he immediately recognized as Roger-009. Davis triggered and stepped onto his own holopad, with the trailblazer now able to see him from his end.

“No change as yet, aside from more ships coming in. Count now up to 138. They’re staggered pretty wide. Either that’s a conscious choice or their navigation systems suck.”

“Confirm they’re not V’kit’no’sat.”

“Not a chance,” Roger dismissed. “But I have no idea who they are…whoa.”

“What?” Davis asked, just before seeing a new contact on the system map floating beside him enter stellar orbit. It decelerated just as the others had, but it was easily 10 times their size.

“Some type of carrier or command ship. Big sucker,” the trailblazer commented offhand, though Davis could see it wasn’t as large as a Melee-class.

“Maybe it will talk,” Davis wondered/suggested.

“I’ve got a repetitive inquiry going in every known language. If that doesn’t work we’re going to go up and knock on their door. I don’t see any repositioning for a second jump, so I doubt they’re just passing through.”

“Combat formation?”

Roger’s left eye half closed. “A little, but they’re not looking like they’re here to fight…or they’re really stupid and they don’t know what they’re up against. They’re not moving to match our incoming ship trajectories.”

“Sensor lag?”

“No, I meant those already in stellar orbit,” he said as a few more smaller unidentified ships came out of braking maneuvers.

“Best guess?”

“They took a wrong turn somewhere.”

Davis laughed humorlessly. “A single ship I could understand, but a fleet of that size doesn’t go roaming about through the ADZ without knowing where they are. Our maps are widely available.”

“Maybe they don’t like closed systems and wanted a peek at what we’ve got.”

“Came a long way to get it,” Davis mewed.

“Unless they’ve got a lot more coming there’s no real threat here…unless they have something sneaky planned.”

“Such as?”

“Drop a bioweapon into the atmosphere or slingshot around the sun to go back in time and steal some Humpback whales.”

Davis cracked a smile. “Not a direct threat, but they’re obviously here for something.”

Roger’s head twitched. “Got a relayed hail through one of the closest drones. Coding is weird, but compatible with ADZ comm protocols.”

“Put through a copy when you get a chance.”

“They’re using a laser transmission, tight beam to one drone in particular. Shields were blocking it until we made adjustments. This is going to take a few minutes, it’s not audio or holo.”

“Please tell me it’s not a computer virus.”

“They’re not hacking our systems,” Roger said defiantly, knowing full well how much time and care had gone into crafting their drone control systems. Communications research in the pyramid database had been stamped with the number 1 priority, with it being well ahead of the other prototypes Star Force had constructed based on that data.

Davis waited patiently while the army of analysts worked through the signal, then Roger raised an eyebrow and hit a few buttons, sending something to Davis that popped up in holo beside him, though all he saw was statistics.

“What is this?”

“Comm protocols. They’re telling us how to interface with their systems.”

“How long to make the adjustments?”

“Not…long,” the Archon said as a repetitive message popped up on his screen, being transmitted continuously from all of their ships but using a form of signal transmission that Star Force couldn’t previously recognize. “Well, looks like they’ve been transmitting since they entered the system after all.”

“Why didn’t we pick it up earlier?”

“Stellar interference. The filters assumed it was garbage…and it’s written in English.”

“Care to share?” Davis asked.

Roger’s hologram looked up at him almost in apology, then sent a copy to him. Davis saw it was a very brief introduction, identifying who they were and the fact that they were here to negotiate with Star Force concerning the mutual threat of the Li'vorkrachnika. It took Davis several moments to recognize the name, with it being what the lizards referred to themselves as. The Alliance always called them the Cajdital and this was the first time he’d ever seen the official title in use.

They were here as representatives of another Alliance that was engaged with the lizards, and from the position data given in a popup map it indicated that they were located well rimward of the ADZ, farther than Star Force had scouted to date, but the biggest thing that stood out to Davis was the name of the race that the ships belonged to, for it was familiar to him. He’d read about them in the very first data packet he’d gotten from the original Alliance.

Like the others he’d written them off as long dead, but it seemed the intel he’d gotten had been a bit more on the assumption side than the factual, for the H’kar were literally standing on their doorstep and wanting to talk about their mutual enemy.

“Roger, I’ll let you handle this. I’ll just eavesdrop.”

STAR FORCE Facebook Page

STAR FORCE Wiki

Table of Contents

- Star Force: Backdoor
- Star Force: Bloodlust
- Star Force: Internecine
- Star Force: Liberation