Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (61-64)
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: Initiation Star Force: Hamoriti Star Force: Marauders Star Force: Newbslayer
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

1

January 2, 2690

Macalania System (Tether)

Shiva

Orval woke up to his alarm, a soft tone beside his head in bed that gradually got louder until he finally woke or it elevated to ear piercing levels. He reached over and tagged the off button, then rolled out of his narrow bunk and stood up, stretching in the overly warm quarters. His muscles were tight after the last round of workouts, so he threw in some real stretches before he hit the lights and began to get ready for the day.

That meant shaving, showering, and heading over to the nearby cafeteria for some breakfast bars that would give him some extra energy without weighing him down when he hit the track for his morning run, further loosening up his body. After an easy 8 miles he accelerated and worked the last 2, then stopped by the equipment room where he rinsed off and changed into a skin-tight swimming suit that extended from elbows to knees. On top of it he picked out a breath mask then headed over to the underwater course rather than one of the standard training pools.

The difference was the course was more tunnel and terrain than a rectangular pool, with Orval slipping his mask on, checking the air reserves, then tagging the start pedestal and diving in. Once underwater there were light beacons everywhere to guide him and a narrow bubble tunnel at the top that contained air should his mask fail, but otherwise it was a totally submerged playground.

After about 20 seconds of swimming he came to a fork in the road, so to speak, with three possible paths to follow. He took the middle one and continued on his course, swimming through various obstacles and through small tubes that required him to move in all directions. It was an agility course, forcing him to maneuver in multiple ways, and halfway through his ‘run’ he was passed up by another swimmer.

Orval let her go, seeing that she was swimming with jets and he’d never keep pace with her. Trying to minimize the disruption he slid aside while still moving forward and let her pass him in the narrow tube, with her chest brushing against his arm as she likewise twisted to give him room on the pass. It was tight, but both swimmers were on the clock and didn’t want to be slowed down. These courses were usually underused, so occasional run-ins like this were tolerated and both swimmers got back to their pacing, with Orval seeing her using all four gauntlets as he clawed at the water with his bare hands and feet.

That meant she was probably working on skills rather than fitness, for each gauntlet was its own little jet engine. She had two on her ankles and two on her wrists, giving her considerable maneuvering capability. Orval’s had to come from his own body, making his course run a workout. While commandos and aquatics were different branches of Star Force, swimming scores were part of his levels rank and they were one of his weaker areas that he was trying to focus on during this new assignment.

It was guard duty, boring as could be, but within Star Force that meant an opportunity for virtually uninterrupted training. His assignment didn’t have him standing guard over any particular facility, but rather stationed on planet for response to potential hostiles or unknown circumstances…which meant he was going to be left alone to train his heart out, for Shiva was in the middle of nowhere.

The ice world was currently the furthest tip of Star Force’s ‘tether’ territory, which was what the long string of breadcrumb outposts leading out towards the rim was called by those who knew it existed. Orval had been looking for a training assignment for a while and when this one had opened up he immediately put in for reassignment. His commando ranking of level 254 gave him the priority pick, not that there was a lot of demand for the slot. Some people liked exploration outposts, but most preferred to remain in the ADZ or on combat missions, leaving only a small pool of individuals to compete with for these far out there slots.

Star Force usually filled them with low level personnel, but in their wisdom they required some ‘senior’ slots along with what were usually filled by newbs. Orval’s presence here wasn’t superfluous, for if the small colony came under attack he and the others would be their only line of defense, hence the need for at least some seasoned personnel in the mix, but the whole point of creating the tether worlds was to quietly establish a presence heading out towards the rim and not to attract a lot of attention.

Some of the colonies were more public, but this one was meant to be secret…in so much that it was in a system that nobody wanted. The only habitable planet was Shiva, and it was covered pole to pole with ice and snow fields. Nothing living had been found on the planet, making it a prime spot for Star Force to establish their own Hoth base and put down another foothold that would eventually grow into a breadcrumb that would then be leapfrogged even further out by another expansion.

As it was, Shiva was the furthest out with the majority of their cargo fleet taking more than a year to reach the ADZ. Some ships were faster than that, but the system was some 3,490 lightyears from Sol and in the nearer edge of the gap between the Orion and Perseus galactic arms. That ‘gap’ still had star systems, but the density of them diminished in various spots making for a pseudo-geographical border. The denser regions in between the two arms acted like land bridges with the most traffic and civilizations present, according to the Nexus information.

Technically they were within the Nexus domain now, but all that really meant was they were in the neighborhood. The nearest Nexus world was some 680 lightyears away, leaving the local region in what would be considered ‘fly over’ territory. The jumplines between systems out here were longer, with fewer options, and that kept less advanced races from moving through the area or colonizing it. Furthermore the lack of habitable worlds was significant, with only a few well outfitted races/factions cherry-picking the available ones and leaving the rest untouched.

That was why Star Force had chosen to reach their tether out through this region in order to get to the Perseus Arm. They were nowhere close to that, but this was the first good step out into the ocean of emptiness between the two, and the less attention drawn the better. There were plans to establish other branches within the tether, but those would be constructed later off the main route, which Shiva was on and had been the tip of for some 14 years.

Other colonies would have been much further along after a similar period of time, but Shiva had been visited by only a single convoy and exploration team that had done well to set up operations. Yet given the insanely long supply routes virtually everything had to be built locally and the other nearby links in the tether chain weren’t in a position to offer up exports just yet either.

That said, scouting teams were already searching for where to establish the next link in the chain while Shiva grew to a prerequisite level of infrastructure…a tenuous hold, but the Archons knew that so long as they could maintain anonymity they could stretch the chain out fast and far, while letting outposts like this develop into colonies at their own pace instead of waiting for them to become full blown civilizations.

So as it was, Orval was one of some 72,000 people on the planet that were busy digging new tunnels down through the usually 2 mile thick ice and into the sandy crust of the planet. The mining probes had to go down even further to get to the actual rock layer, and then even further to get to the limited geothermal heat the Mars-sized planet produced. That’s where the bulk of their mining operations were taking place, with both crust harvesting and magma siphoning being utilized, though the latter had only come online in the past 6 months.

But that’s not where he and the bulk of the colony was located. They were up in the ice layer, with a few spires poking up through to the open air…which for a world this small was extremely thick. The CO2 levels were a bit high, but tolerable if you could stand the cold. The atmosphere was habitable, meaning you could walk up top without any breathing gear, but with temperatures never getting above the melting point aside on some freaky occasions Shiva definitely earned its nickname of Hoth, save for there wasn’t a lick of wind on the planet…nor wampas.

Orval spent his days inside, only rarely going up on the surface in armor just to get a feel for the planet. Today wasn’t going to be one of those days, for he was in strict training mode and volume protocol…which had him doing virtually nonstop training at lower intensity levels. If a problem arose he’d drop what he was doing and deal with it, but ever since he’d arrived on Shiva he hadn’t known of a single ship to pass through the system aside from their own. Star Force had chosen their location for this little breadcrumb extremely well.

And the commando enjoyed the anonymity, for while the interior of the colony looked the same as any other Star Force city this one felt different. He knew that was because of their distance from the rest of Star Force and how exposed they were out here, but it also had something to do with the fact that they were in the middle of nowhere. This was definitely a frontier outpost, but it felt like as much of an exploration mission as a foothold grab. That technically didn’t involve him since he was just here as a military babysitter, but it definitely felt like they weren’t in Kansas anymore.

And no matter what the internal temperature of the city was, he always felt cold. The water he was swimming through was mildly warm, but when he finished his course and came to the finish/start area on the opposite end he pulled himself up into the air and felt a mostly psychological chill. He pulled his mask off and took a few normal breaths, letting the small cell recharge fully pulling oxygen from the air to replenish what he’d burnt off during the swim. It did the same when underwater, but at the moment there was no need to be breathing the supply when he was taking a momentary rest.

The room temperature was fine, but just knowing he was on an ice world made him subconsciously aware that he was wet and his mind told him that wasn’t a good thing, so after a few minutes he jumped back into the water, starting the timer for a reverse swim down a separate group of tunnels and feeling ‘safe’ back in the water as his skin was no longer chilling.

When he finished up his swimming workout he walked through the chilly air over to the equipment room and got dressed in a casual uniform before heading back to the cafeteria for a larger second breakfast. Getting that food down him was necessary but he knew he’d need a bit of time to digest it, so as usual he went to one of the targeting ranges where he wouldn’t need to move around too much. His focus right now was straight up fitness, but taking breaks with skill work kept him from having to wait between workouts and he’d found it better that if once his mind got going in the morning he never stopped till he went to bed, in order to keep the low level fatigue from nudging him into nap mode.

On the way to the targeting ranges he hopped into a skybridge that connected two of the surface towers, with him feeling absolutely chilly the moment he stepped out into the clear tunnel. Aside from the footpath the circular tube he was walking through didn’t appear to be there at all and gave him an awe-inspiring view of the surface ice sheets. They weren’t smooth, but rather ragged and sometimes spikey giving the illusions of topography when in reality there wasn’t a bit of rock, dirt, or sand anywhere near the surface.

But ice was hard enough, especially at these temperatures. The twin suns in the sky didn’t produce enough combined heat to melt more than just a tiny layer on the surface, giving numerous gleaming mirrors to reflect the light into his eyes as he walked across. Fortunately there was recent snow on the ground which cut down on the blinding light, but in many places where there were vertical faces the mix of yellow and blue light bounced off and gave the surrounding landscape the look of being decorated with Christmas lights from afar.

Most of the reflections were a mix of sunlight, but get one sun shadowed and the other not and the colors would become evident, making it hard to look at sometimes with Orval’s eyes yearning for something nongleaming to lock onto…which they did when a speck of dullness caught his attention below him to the right. It was moving across the surface on its metallic biped legs, with the mech following a faint path of footprints in the snow as it moved about doing what the commando didn’t know.

Feeling considerably chilly just by looking at all the ice, he walked across the long straight bridge until he entered the nearby building and his eyes readjusted to normal light levels, then he headed down to the range which was built just below the ice layer and picked up a sniper rifle in the nearby equipment room. It was one of the new sammies, which had replaced the well-established lachars, but for the purpose of target shooting the intensity was dialed down so he wouldn’t melt the targets. That said, if he accidentally shot someone it would still do damage akin to sticking your hand in an open flame.

Stepping out into the gunnery circle he started the automated practice program and began tracking targets within a 30 degree cone ahead of him. He couldn’t brace the rifle on anything other than his arms, which made the really long shots difficult. That said, the sniper weapon was capable of shooting further than the range, so he wasn’t going to have to get super steady to hit the furthest targets…in theory.

His sniper skills weren’t quite that good, but like any proper commando he was up to the challenge. Besides, this was just an ‘extra’ challenge to kill time while his food digested, so he didn’t put much mental effort into it. Relaxing, he fired off round after round, lightly goosing his accuracy without picking any of the robust targeting drills. This was one of the perks he had for getting a ground assignment, and even if he wasn’t going to go all in on it today he was definitely going to avail himself of the range.

In recent years he’d been fighting lizards, which meant he’d spent a considerable amount of time onboard jumpships. All Star Force ships had training facilities on them, but they were nothing compared to what planetside facilities contained. Basic sanctums had shooting ranges, but nothing as large as this. Nor did they have underwater swimming courses. At best they’d have 2 or 3 pools for lap swimming and that was it. The volume of a ship, even one as large as a jumpship, had its limitations…and over the years Star Force had come up with an insane number of training chambers and drills that could be built.

This training facility was a tier 2, the second highest of all and he’d been told that was deliberate given how far away they were from any other facilities. That meant that even thought Orval was out in the middle of nowhere he had one of the best locations to train in. The tier 2 facility was even good enough for the Archons on Shiva to use, for there hadn’t been a separate sanctum built for them yet. That virtually never happened, underscoring just how impressive this training facility was.

Orval knew fighting the lizards was important, but after so many years of doing so he’d seen his skills begin to plateau and that wasn’t a good thing. There was word coming down through the ranks of a major crusade in the planning stages, and when/if that actually happened he wanted to be ready…not burnt out and stagnant. That’s why he’d taken this assignment, to get his combat mojo recharged and to grab another few levels of advancement before it was time to do whatever the Archons were planning.

But he also didn’t like sitting back and doing nothing to help out, so this assignment was about damn near perfect. He wouldn’t have to do anything if there was no trouble, but he was here just in case something happened and that was an important function, especially considering all the low level commandos that he was surrounded with. For a few of them this was their first field assignment, and learning to train without the trials as motivation was a big hurdle that he was trying to help them overcome…along with a lot of other things.

They were capable, as all commandos were, but amongst the lot of them there was very little combat experience. That’s where he and a handful of others came in, for if they did come under attack it would be up to them to lead the defense and carry the rookies through it, making use of their limited skills while counteracting their lack of experience with his own.

Orval didn’t think that was going to happen, but someone had to be here just in case it did and that counted as doing something, for if he wasn’t assigned here then someone else would be. Right now that person was out there fighting, so his holding this position contributed and allowed him to train like he needed to…and that more than made up for the ever-present phantom chill that hounded him.

2

March 18, 2692

Jafat System (lizard territory)

Ulmed

With the Star Force fleet largely engaged over the inner planet of Irad, the lesser defense force around Ulmed was met with a handful of warships that preceded two large jumpships. With the lizard ships tied up in a battle that they were easily going to lose the massive transports began moving down near to the atmosphere with their defensive weaponry swatting a pair of enemy cruisers that tried to take poaching shots at them.

By the time they settled into as low of an orbit as they could half the lizard fleet was destroyed with the others soon to follow, so the defense shields on the jumpships were lowered and the four aquatics battleships were released. Their smooth hulls looked quite alien to space, but they were airtight and had gravity drives sufficient to lift themselves out of the water and to fly through atmosphere…and those same drives also allowed them to descend from orbit, with the large ships dropping below the jumpships and into the upper atmosphere where they began to bleed off orbital speed.

That friction slowly built into fireballs against the defense shields covering each of the ships that were decelerating from orbital speeds using their underpowered gravity drives. Slowly the turbulence around the meteors faded and their hulls reappeared, with them continuing to bleed off lateral speed. Two were deep blue colored with their telltale ridges running fore to aft with the thinner ‘wings’ spreading out on either side but the other two, while identical in shape, were colored aqua blue almost to the point of being neon.

All four ships came down together until they were halfway down to the surface of the mostly water-covered world, then they split apart so that they reached the ocean waves at different locations around where the lizards had established their primary aquatics colony. According to intelligence reports this world was the second one colonized in the system and as such hadn’t seen as much development as Irad, but the lizards had already begun building within the water in addition to on the small tracts of land. Those water-based troops had to be eliminated before Star Force could lay claim to the system, hence the inclusion of the rarely used aquatics division in this assault.

Four battleships for an assault against an entire world was light on the extreme but if the lizards had only one, or even a handful of fortified locations, it would be more than enough to break through their defenses…which were known to be formidable. Star Force and the lizards had tangled aquatically on a few worlds, but the largest conflict had been the initial one on Atlantica, during which both sides had learned much about their opponents. That said, Star Force’s aquatics division had been wholly revamped since then, and the two previous assaults that had taken place hadn’t left any lizard survivors to inform the others how they’d been defeated.

When the battleships hit the surface they came down gently, sinking into the water with their defense shields covering the hulls in a thin, protective layer that the enemy’s weapons would be hard pressed to penetrate. Of the four ships one of the dark blue ones came down directly over the location of the lizard colony, and as it pushed its hull into the water a swarm of missiles came up at it, hammering the shield.

That was part of the plan, for the ship was acting as a distraction and continued to descend down through the deep water until it reached weapons range, then a shield column extended down to the top of the base, which was made up of numerous domes built on the seafloor that covered all directions for miles. The tiny tendril of energy pushed through the water and contacted its lizard counterpart covering the largest central dome where Star Force knew they were building aquatics warships.

Those were in the water nearby, but not directly over the base for they had been out on patrol and not in position to defend against an overhead assault. Their firepower was significant, but it didn’t match the number of missiles coming up from below. The two combined would be enough to get through the battleship’s shields, so it only had a short window of opportunity before it would have to withdraw and recharge…but it wouldn’t need long to do damage.

The shield column made contact with the dome shield and immediately a blue streak flew down the vacuum and hit the opposing energy barrier, missing the sidewalls of the column by half a meter of clearance, else the mauler blast would have breached them instead of the lizards’ shield. The first blast destabilized a patch of the dome’s defensive layer, with the second punching through and allowing the shield column to dip down another few meters and touch the hull of the dome. The lizard shield reformed around and inside of it, for it was being emitted from within the base rather than a lateral generator.

The problem with that was the Star Force shield column, acting like a giant straw, wouldn’t allow lizard shield energy to flow into the breach from the surrounding areas to help counter weaknesses and breaches, leaving only a small patch inside that was recharging from direct transmission from the emitter. That was sufficient to reseal the shield over the light crater in the hull, but when the aquatic’s warship switched weaponry and the Ta’lin’yi firecracker beam came down with the white/gold pinpricks slamming into the shield patch, it punched through with only a slight hesitation.

Suddenly the base of the shield column broke contact, blowing apart along with that section of the dome as the talon cannon hit the matter of the hull and did what it did best. A shockwave rippled out through the water all the way back up to the battleship as another shield column tracked down into the now damaged and unshielded dome to deliver another huge punch, with a likewise impressive explosion when it contacted and sent an immediate talon blast down.

The battleship sat there and reached out into the lizard infrastructure, attacking it with impunity as the missile swarms continued to mount and drain shield strength. It wasn’t until they’d racked up sufficient energy loss and the lizard warships were nearing weapons range did the Star Force vessel begin sniping down the incoming missiles with its own intercepts. The tiny glowing ‘fish’ spit out of several holes in the hull and swam towards the missiles, knocking out several with a single hit and ‘popping’ the water around them out into short-lived voids.

That disruption not only allowed the secondary explosion to hit more of the clumped missiles but it knocked others askew and slowed their approach, with only a few making it through the counterattack to hit now that the ship was defending itself, which allowed the shield to begin to recharge a bit as more missiles from the nearby warships began shooting in laterally and a slew of hammerheads motored in as fast as they could, intent on ramming the sides of the Star Force battleship with their full array of plasma nubs.

Holding off on any return fire the battleship continued shooting out intercepts to lengthen the duration of its stay while it broke through dome after dome below. Some were air domes, others were water ones. Either way they were taking heavy damage and attracting a lot of attention while the other three battleships settled into the water at their more distant positions and began releasing the onboard craft and infantry that this one was holding onto as it played bait, soon to retreat to the atmosphere to recharge its shields and reposition to another location to continue the assault.

Davrel Stinson flexed a bit in the cockpit of his aquatic mech, still in the hold of the other Human battleship as he waited for the go order. Right now his body was strapped into the control harness similar to that in a neo, but his movements were not translated directly into this mech for his body didn’t match its configuration. The harness he was in was essentially a full body controller for the live videogame he was about to play.

It wasn’t a drone, as he was situated inside it, but the various arm, finger, leg, and even toe movements controlled a variety of functions in the mech…with him very eager to get the new prototype mental interface. Word was it was still experiencing glitches, but once they got it hammered out he could forgo the tricky harness that took such a long time to master. The up side was that aquatic mechs didn’t move as quickly as their ground-pounding cousins, but now with a heavy dose of Elarioni influence they no longer had the option of just walking around on the seafloor or motoring along as clinging brawlers.

Right now his mech was in transit mode, meaning its various arms and other protrusions were tucked into the hull in a little bit of a homage to Voku transforming tech. When Davrel finally got the go order he followed another mech out into the ocean water, passing through the shield that separated the bay from the exterior and feeling a bit more resistance as he passed through, for the ocean water was more compacted at this depth.

The mech looked like a finless dolphin, stretching out long with a narrow silhouette that allowed it to move through the water far faster than previous designs. Davrel had been one of the first aquatics regulars and stuck with the military ever since, hence he was one of the few capable of piloting these mechs that weren’t Archons given the intricate design interface that most of his peers hadn’t been able to pass the qualies on.

As soon as he was out into the ocean he directed towards one of the lizard destroyers nearby. It wasn’t on the seafloor, nor would his mech be. Now the mechs were full-fledged anti-ship weapons covered in armor more dense than what the battleships carried. It was rich in corovon, and therefore very expensive to produce, but it gave them extreme tankiness against the lizard weapons…so much so that he sped his mech towards the six distant warships with little worry. He was going after the largest one and knew the others wouldn’t be able to do much more than tickle him throughout the process.

A slew of missiles came his way as he got close, with the other mechs heading to different locations leaving Davrel on his own. His mech didn’t have any intercepts, for they wouldn’t fit in its tiny hull that was about twice the size of a thor, so he just let them hit the shields and explode, with the wall of water that he was pushing ahead of him helping to dampen the blows as he closed on the destroyer.

Before they could be stripped off his mech entirely he triggered a transformation with a combination of thumb button press and right leg extension. The smooth hull of the elongated mech bunched up, pulling its tail up and into the hull that then plumped out into what was more recognizable as a mech body…but one without legs, for he was well above the seafloor and didn’t need them.

Four arms did emerge, and as he got close to the destroyer he rammed into the side of it and latched on, extending ‘growths’ out from them that wrapped around the hull like the vines from a plant and allowed him to hold on despite the destroyer being covered by its own thin shield that soon snapped under the pressure. The Vel’koz-class mech then opened a port on its ‘head’ and pressed it up against the hull, firing through a short shield column a very thin mauler stream rather than a blast, with it cutting into the hull like a laser and blowing out a seam as Davrel moved the mech around a bit as it clung to the ship.

He rotated it around enough to cut out a badly shaped circular plug, then cut the beam out and loosened his grip on the ship with the backside of his mech getting hit with a few more missiles as one of their corvettes approached. The aquatic mechwarrior knew he still had some time so he pulled back one of the arms, retracting it into a stubby protrusion that he then pointed into the breach, ramming the ‘shoulder’ of the mech into it.

Once that connection was made he used a very tricky interface to control and ‘see’ the arm as it jutted out and, with a lot of sheer physical force, punched its way into the destroyer’s interior and began ripping it apart like the inside of a blender.

Then came the difficult part, for one of the big design advantages of this mech was its multi-tasking capability…which was quite a strain on a pilot who wasn’t used to seeing behind his back. As the corvette came in it extended its two large claws, which it obviously intended to latch onto the Star Force mech with and pull it off, or maybe to snip away the arms holding it to the hull. Either way the sheer crushing power they were capable of would do damage to his mech, though his armor and skeleton strength would keep it from being a one pinch kill.

Using an elbow bump he triggered the extension of another arm from the mech, this one much thicker and claw-like of its own. Davrel knew it was much more nimble, with the lizard corvette basically being a battering ram with two big scissors attached, so as it came within touching range he reached out with his own pincher and grabbed the port one on the enemy ship while gripping tighter with the three arms wrapped around the destroyer’s hull. Using the raw leverage power built into his mech he caught and halted the corvette’s momentum, then swung the ship around slowly until it banged against the side of the destroyer.

Davrel pushed it back, letting go his grip, then easing his hold on the destroyer enough to twist the ‘head’ of his mech around and point the mauler orifice towards the lizards’ version of a crawdad. A short shield column sprang out and briefly linked the two ships with a waterless corridor that the mech used to fire a full sized mauler blast through rather than the tiny cutting beam…all the while Davrel continued to lash his whip-like arm around inside the destroyer, further wrecking its interior.

That single mauler hit blew off the starboard arm of the corvette and left a huge chunk of its hull exposed to the ocean. Davrel reestablished the shield column again and hit it twice more before the enemy ship was out of the fight and quite literally in pieces, some of which floated up, others down in a drifting debris cloud.

Meanwhile Davrel’s cockpit was pinging with a collision warning as a hammerhead swung around and was headed directly towards him, apparently not caring about damaging the destroyer in the process. Watching the approach rate carefully the mechwarrior continued to wreck the inside of the bigger ship’s hull, then suddenly retracted the arm and disconnected from the ship. Waiting till the last moment, he used the tiny gravity drive inside to shoot him down through the water and avoided the plasma nub-covered head of the lizard ship by a few meters, expertly ducking beneath it.

A massive explosion of vaporized water and hull pushed him down even further as the hammerhead couldn’t slow in time and, failing to hit the Star Force mech, hit off center on the destroyer as it tried to veer off. Davrel immediately reversed course and reached out with his arms, which he was controlling with both of his and his legs to get the quartet to function in sync enough to grab the tree trunk of the hammerhead’s T-shaped design. A quick mauler kiss there followed by some ripping and tearing took out that ship, allowing him to move freely and get back to the destroyer that was limping off.

As soon as he got clear for a moment a wave of missiles hit him from the light destroyer nearby that finally took down his shields. The rest of the explosions barely scratched the hull as he veered off and headed towards the ship, knowing he could come back to the destroyer later. As soon as he made the course correction the lizard ship began extending its defensive ‘bush’ of thin tendrils covered with berry-like plasma nubs.

Davrel knew there was no way to get through them in order to grab onto the hull, and while he could have just pushed through he didn’t want to take the damage so he triggered the third of 4 transformations the Vel’koz was capable of. This one tucked the arms back in then pushed various segments of the body out like blocky pylons while the internal components rearranged, including his cockpit pod that was shuffled around near to the exterior but with at least a thin armor plate protecting it as the big gun within the mech assembled itself from various components.

The defensive bush around the light destroyer wouldn’t allow for a shield column to attach normally, but there were enough small holes in it for it to fire missiles out of, making for an odd turtle-like tactic that not only protected it but allowed it to become an offensive position, though more or less fixed to one spot for the bush couldn’t be dragged along with it at any respectable speed.

Fortunately the big gun didn’t require a shield column, and thanks to a little sharing on the part of the Elarioni only a handful of years ago Davrel had a Yor’vok that didn’t move the water out of the way as it fired, but rather simply vaporized it when the beam leapt out towards the light destroyer as the mech emptied its capacitor charge.

The silver beam quickly disappeared inside the vaporized water and Davrel’s targeting sensors became partially obscured along with his vision as the ultra-condense laser-like weapon burnt through the water, the tendrils surrounding the lizard ship, and then the hull plates in the equivalent of one big Kamehameha.

Once it finished its discharge Davrel transformed the mech back into phase 2, then headed off to get the wounded destroyer after seeing that the annoying bush was no longer sprouting missiles. Meanwhile the capacitor began recharging very slowly, with it taking upwards of half an hour to refill if he wasn’t using any of his other weapon systems. It was a big hit upgrade to the mech, which the Archons referred to as an ‘ult’ which, like a lot of their naming system, came from things he wasn’t familiar with and they didn’t always bother to explain. He guessed it was short for ‘ultimate’ weapon and he couldn’t disagree with the results…especially when he used it on land with no water in the way to diminish the beam.

The other light corvette that had been pacing the destroyer veered off, putting as much distance between itself and Davrel after seeing what had happened to the other ships. Usually the lizards fought it out, but apparently not this one. He would have let it go and finished off the destroyer, but there were infantry in the water as well and that ship could do them a whole lot of harm so he ignored the big target and switched back into phase one, swimming his mech after it before it got away, then he’d circle back and finish off the destroyer, which for good measure spat a few missiles Davrel’s way as he swam off after the corvette.

3

Jeimae swam through the interior of the battleship, racing towards the waiting room where the other Elarioni were just about to depart the ship. She’d had a defective shield and had to quickly swap it out for a new one in the equipment room, leaving her just enough time to swim through the corridors of the water-filled ship to meet up with the 22 others in this compartment. She bumped up against one of them, offering a distracted apology just before the outer door irised open and the Star Force aquatic infantry scurried out.

With her being the furthest back she exited last, transitioning through the force field covering the entrance and into the chillier ocean outside, following in the wake of the others as they moved down towards the wreckage of lizard infrastructure below. Her tail flicked rapidly, propelling her along with the jets located along either hip in her flexible armor as a slew of tiny green dots below marked the positions of the lizard infantry and their plasma rods.

Almost as soon as the dozens of lights began to grow into hundreds as the Elarioni were spotted the armored infantry fanned out in a spiral, making like a living tornado that fell down on the enemy troops. Jeimae swam quickly, her shield compacted and attached to her left arm. Her normally free flowing hair was pulled back into a tight helmet that transitioned into scale-like armor that wrapped around her entire body, making her unafraid of the plasma nubs below, knowing that she could take several hits before penetration…not that that was going to be an issue.

She and the other Star Force Elarioni were swimming so fast the lizards were practically frozen in place when they finally met. Jeimae was a few seconds delayed, but swooped down then made a tight arc, pulling into a lateral motion and jabbing her right arm into the nearest one of the four-legged monstrosities. They might be able to breath underwater, but they certainly didn’t belong in it.

The pylon on her arm extended on mental impulse, with a blue nub glowing to life just before impact. Her own plasma weapon hit the lizard in the side of its exposed head, discharging into its skin and eating all the way through to blow out the far side, killing it instantly as she swam by.

A quick redirect to the left brought her up against another lizard in the tightly packed swarm that was hovering a few dozen meters over their seafloor buildings. Jeimae popped out her shield, with the physical construction changing from a rod into a fully elongated oval nearly the size of her body. The water drag against it was significant, but the lizard’s jab with his plasma rod caught on it as planned, with her swimming herself and the shield into the enemy before reaching around the side with her arm and jabbing it with her own weapon.

A quick tap to the chest was all it took, then she retracted her shield in flash and swam a few more meters before popping it back out again and repeating the process. Her speed and agility within the water was beyond anything the lizards could manage, and the same went for their Human compatriots that were fighting not far away. Given that they breathed air they had their own aquatics warships, hard armor, and different tactics, but they were all on the same team…the Elarioni were just better, and should have been, given that the water was their natural environment.

That was why the Elarioni were being deployed against the heaviest infantry while the Humans were sent to take out key facilities that had less massed resistance, for their mobility was centered on jet propulsion and straight line trajectories. They couldn’t truly swim, and more often than not required arrowheads to be effective against lizard swarms. The little craft could move quickly and ram the enemy, racking up a lot of kills in a short amount of time, but the Human infantry being deployed were mostly in their armor and not the small craft, given that they intended to enter the buildings and clean them out.

They did have one advantage, and that was their armor. The Elarioni needed their speed and flexibility and weren’t about to give it up for the hard carapaces that the air breathers wore, but those defenses, which included an energy shield that the Elarioni lacked, allowed them to take many hits before penetration. She knew the Humans were more than a match for an equal, or even double number of lizards, but they weren’t in the Elarioni’s league…not even close.

Their addition to Star Force had taken a primitive aquatics division and amped it up to respectable levels in terms of infantry, and even made some decent addition to their ships that were respectable to begin with, but there was simply no getting around the fact that the Humans couldn’t swim worth crap, so whenever there was combat involved they played support and the Elarioni were the hunters.

Today was no exception and as Jeimae used her physical shield to knock a lizard’s legionnaire energy shield aside and slip through the small gap her agility and speed made it clear why they were superior. With a quick retraction of her own shield she swam inside the turtled-up formation of some 9 lizards and punched/blasted them from inches away as she slithered around and between them, demonstrating her flexibility and skill.

She took one hit to her tail armor before swimming out of the corpse ball and looking for the next closest target. A light telepathic prompting brought her attention to several of her sisters that had swam lower and were down near the buildings. They were being pursued by some type of craft that she’d never seen before, but it nearly matched their speed and was firing small projectiles at them.

Jeimae swam down after it immediately, as did several other Elarioni, bypassing lizards attempting to block or jab them as if they were little more than stationary objects. The lizard craft was about the length of five of them and was elongated like a fat sea snake, with the little projectiles firing out the front end only. Her fellow Elarioni were dodging about half of them as they shot by on their own little propulsion units while taking the hits from the others against their shields.

Those explosions were not small, and she knew their shields wouldn’t last against those weapons for long. The others sensed it as well and swam hard for the target, coming up alongside and behind it as they pulsed their armor jets for even more straight line speed. Jeimae got to the side of the dark craft along with one of her sisters on the other side and found nothing to hold onto, so she was forced to keep swimming fast beside it as she jabbed her right-arm mounted plasma gauntlet into the hull.

A tiny explosion of steam shot bubbles back and slightly up as the momentum dragged them away from the hit. When they cleared she saw a tiny divot in the craft and swung her arm again as more Elarioni caught up and they too began whacking at the craft with their weapons. It took Jeimae 8 hits before she made a small hole in the armor, then she slipped her fingers onto the edge and held on so she would no longer have to swim. With that finger hold she extended her gauntlet out into a short pike and jabbed it inside, seeing the glowing end disappear from view just as one of her sisters ahead got hit by one of the projectiles.

Grimacing with anger Jeimae jabbed and pumped blast after blast into whatever was inside, trying to sting the craft to death along with the others. It took far longer than it should have, but eventually the thing stopped firing and its speed slowed but the Elarioni didn’t stop there. They kept tearing at it until one of them got the cockpit open and killed the tightly packed pilot inside, insuring that the odd craft was truly dead in the water.

Jeimae pulled her arm out of the interior, for it had been fully buried inside trying to reach for more parts to trash, and swam clear looking for her next target. The battlemap inside her helmet gave her positions for the surrounding troops that she couldn’t all see, as well as priority and secondary targets. There were still a lot of lizards nearby, but she was more interested in finding any more of these new craft.

And there were several popping up on the battlemap as they rose up from buildings on the surface. Nearby one of her wounded sisters swam slowly with escort back up towards the huge battleship more than a kilometer away towards the west. A quick word and she knew she’d made it back, for her escort wasn’t going to let her get ambushed, nor would the rest of them. Once she was clear Jeimae swam down and killed three more lizards, with one of them actually giving her a bit of trouble with its own shield, causing her to take an extra six seconds before she made the kill.

That one was more skilled than the others, but it had only been delaying the inevitable. Even if Jeimae hadn’t had armor she and the others would have come out victorious simply for their superior swimming skills, but one thing they’d learned since their voluntary transfer to Star Force was that having the extra defense allowed you to fight more aggressively than normal in situations like this, and that was something she definitely liked. Especially so when there were Humans or other lesser warriors in the water fighting alongside her.

There weren’t any in the immediate vicinity, but there were two of those new enemy craft. Swimming off towards the nearest one she saw her sisters nearby giving it a wide berth, then the warning highlight on her battlemap caught her attention and she too stayed back, but still close enough that she’d be able to move in and help if/when they decided to attack it…which they had to. It was keeping them away from a larger infantry formation and peppering the shields of those closest. They couldn’t sustain that damage and the little weapons appeared too fast to dodge with certainty.

She waited in a holding pattern, swimming in a shallow circle while deciding whether or not to head off towards some of the scattered infantry nearby and help clean up when she spotted one of the Human arrowhead formations headed towards them. Jeimae smiled inside her helmet, realizing that they’d been holding off until they got the reinforcements. The Elarioni were dominant infantry, but going up against armored craft wasn’t in their skillset…nor did they have the right weapons.

She glanced up, seeing the shadow of a lizard aquatics cruiser exchanging fire with her battleship, shooting off swarms of missiles/torpedoes while the shield columns from the Star Force vessel flashed with light, making it look like a one sided battle. Her battlemap tagged the drones from the battleship and she saw that they were busy with a growing lizard fleet closing on the big ship, which was probably why the Humans were responding instead.

Jeimae and the infantry were low enough not to be effected by the war up top, but that could change in an instant if one of those ships moved down. Its missiles and especially the larger torpedoes wouldn’t be able to target them individually, but an area of effect detonation could cause them serious problems. At the moment the big ships seemed consumed with the battleship, and rightly so, leaving the infantry below to fight it out above the seafloor infrastructure on their own.

Three of the Human arrowheads shot through the water faster than even she could swim with her armor boost jets, with the trio breaking up prior to arrival at the first craft. Two went wide to go after other targets with Jeimae getting an attack prompt. As soon as it flashed on her battlemap she swam in a half circle and sprinted ahead, putting as much tail flip into her momentum as her adrenaline could produce.

When she was halfway to the target she saw the arrowhead take a hit from one of the small projectile just prior to the V-shaped personal craft ramming the lizard vessel. In the past the Humans had only stun weapons on the craft, but tech upgrades and some gentle head slapping by the Elarioni had them redesigned with a corrosive gel canister weapon system, so as the arrowhead grazed and bounced off the hull of the craft a line of material was painted onto it that flared into a bright green flame 2.7 seconds later.

That flame ate into the hull for a couple of heartbeats then went out, making it safe for the infantry to approach and touch. Jeimae wasn’t the first there, with her seeing two others swim up alongside the twisting lizard craft as it chased after the arrowhead and latch on with their armored fingers before taking their gauntlets and pushing them through the breach in the armor the gel had made.

She got up to it just in time to add a few shots of her own before the propulsion unit on the thing went out, then it was just a matter of time before they got the cockpit open and killed the pilot, which now seemed to be the ultimate objective being shared over the comm channels that periodically popped up with chatter. The Elarioni were professional enough to know not to spam the channels, leaving whatever was being said as important information that Jeimae listened to rather than toned out, regardless of how busy she was fighting.

With the lizard craft neutralized and the other one nearby suffering a similar fate the Elarioni moved on towards the nearest high priority target in the lizard infrastructure and the swarm of infantry guarding it, with Jeimae and the others swimming hard and then boosting forward with their hip jets. The living missiles shot directly into the swarm then curved around at sharp, impossible angles, not attacking any of the lizards at first and just throwing them into a frenzy before each finally chose a target and went in for the kill.

As the other Elarioni caught up the chaotic mess quickly became a kill zone, with the lizards no match for the fin-tailed infantry. They were the masters of the oceans for a reason and it was becoming quickly apparent as to why.

Once the swarm of enemy infantry was turned into a floating corpse field they moved down on the priority target and broke their way in through the available hatches before calling for support. The Elarioni held the entrances until Human infantry arrived and they let the more heavily armored troops take the lead, given that the tighter confines didn’t allow the Elarioni as much of an agility advantage.

That said, a few stayed with the Humans as they entered the facility while Jeimae and the others swam back up to a higher level and raced across the submerged cityscape with the battle between the Star Force battleship and the lizard fleet still ongoing overhead. The battlemap had another location for her and her sisters to go and secure, with multiple units, both friendly and enemy, moving about everywhere Jeimae looked.

This was no small-scale engagement, and the mix of adrenaline and fear inside the Elarioni made her feel more alive than she’d ever been before. Trusting in her skill and training, she swam on with her sisters, confident that if they kept their wits about them they’d win out and rid this planet of the lizards…but right now it was clear that a single misstep could get her killed. She was superior to the lizards, but that didn’t make her safe.

With one final glance at the huge ships overhead battling it out and the rain of debris slowly sinking all around her, Jeimae swam in information with four other Elarioni as they were just getting within vision range of the next lizard infantry group already engaged with a Human assault force. It looked to be more or less an even fight…but that wasn’t going to last for long.

4

March 19, 2692

Jafat System (lizard territory)

Ulmed

Trevor-52118 twisted aside, dodging the thrust of a lizard plasma rod towards his face. His movement was slower than it would have been on land, but he managed to get enough of a head start that the glowing green bulb of plasma missed his faceplate by an inch. As it passed he reached out with his right hand and grabbed the rod just below the tip, locking it in place so he could then spin the opposite direction, pressing his armored back against the exposed shoulder of the lizard and whacking it in the back of the neck with his left elbow.

That momentary blow was enough to stun it in place sufficient for Trevor to get spun completely around so he could jab his right gauntlet into its back and fire off his own plasma nub. When physical contact was made with the thin armor vest it wore the shield bubble containing the plasma breached and the superheated krypton burnt through the armor and into the lizard under enough pressure to carve out a hollow inside the enemy infantry while causing a flurry of bubbles to shoot up around the impact point where the water leaked in through the crude seam.

That made for a 1-hit kill, with Trevor leaving the isolated lizard where it floated in the hallway as it died over the next few seconds, stunned from the pain and destruction of its internal organs but taking some time for the blood loss to render its brain inoperable. The Archon moved on through the facility, not having expected to find this one here but patrolling none the less with his Ikrid stretched out to look for more ahead and through the walls.

His troops were back near the main entrance, with Elarioni skirmishers outside watching the other exits. The majority of the fighting was over, but there were handfuls of lizards moving about with considerable skill at evasion. Out in the open water they were vulnerable, but moving within the buildings or hopping from one dome to another across the seafloor they were being evasive and trying to stay ahead of the sweeper teams. The one he’d just killed had tried to ambush him as he swam by one of the rooms, coming down from above given that the hallways connected via both sides and from above and below.

Trevor had known he was coming at him and had been prepared, but he hadn’t expected such a forceful jab that had covered more distance than expected. The lizard hadn’t had sight on him, but had known exactly where to jut towards coming around the blind corner. It could have been luck, but based on the actions of a few others he was starting to think they were getting some kind of intel from security monitors. Each of the lizards had an earpiece comm, but there was no way to know if they were getting active intel or not.

The Archon arched his back and rolled over, forcing his line of movement down into a floor doorway as his armor’s jets trolled him along at a slow pace. Once inside the room he saw that it was another large hangar filled with workstations. These were industrial ones, similar to the others they’d been seeing in other domes, but the configurations were slightly altered. Techs would sort out exactly what it all did later, but Trevor got the feeling these were prefabricated domes specifically set up for mass production. The lizard colony wasn’t that old, so it made sense for these to be standard package for a startup.

Stretching out his Ikrid into spotlight mode he ignored the area behind and around him and used the wide beam to search the area section by section, eventually finding no minds present. He swam around a bit to have a further look at what was here, but with no enemy troops in the chamber there was no reason to stick around. He spotted another circular entryway on the floor and swam down, entering a horizontal hallway and swimming on until he came to a dead end.

There he found cutting gear and exposed bedrock, with this looking to be as deep as this dome’s structure went. Apparently they’d just begun cutting out the entryway when the attack arrived for the mostly handheld equipment was strewn over the floor as if it had just been dropped and left to float down to the ground.

Trevor backtracked to a different junction and moved on, with his battlemap logging and updating the structural map as he went, showing him and others where he had been as well as the blank areas that had yet to be searched. His connection to the grid was in and out, for the signals would only pass so far through the infrastructure, so it wasn’t surprising when a dot suddenly popped up ahead of him along with a whole new section of map filling in as one of his Elarioni swam towards him.

“Any trouble?” he asked over the comm, with the computerized translation happening in realtime. The difference between Human and Elarioni vocal cords didn’t allow either one to mimic the other’s language so they either had to talk through translation or the backup hand signals they’d learned in case of equipment failure. The same was true of a few other races, most notably the Hycre, but the Elarioni were the only ones in Star Force who could not speak English…excluding a number of varied individuals within Axius.

“No casualties. 17 targets neutralized,” Kameena said within her own helmet. The mixture of high pitched warbles sounded like the aquatic version of R2D2, but Trevor didn’t hear them, only the synthesized voice…which ironically was still the Disney version from ‘The Little Mermaid,’ though Trevor and most others never caught the inside joke for they were too young to be familiar with the source material.

Trevor reached out a finger and pointed to a scorch mark on her tail armor. “How’d you get that?”

“I never said they went down without a fight.”

“Ambush?”

“They were near to triggering a large explosive. I had to act quickly before a section of the dome was destroyed. One of them got a hit in on me before I killed him.”

“Define ‘large,’” Trevor said, concerned.

“Look,” Kameena said, picturing it in her mind so the Archon ranger could easily see it. The pair had worked together for so long they’d established this type of shorthand, knowing that it’d be quicker than verbal explanation. Also, the Elarioni’s subconscious, primitive telepathy acted as a booster to let Trevor access her thoughts more easily than other races, given his limited skills in that department.

“They didn’t put that together from scratch. There’s got to be an armory or production facility nearby.”

“My thoughts as well, but I have not encountered any such placements within this dome and the search is nearly complete.”

Trevor thought quickly, floating mid hallway in front of the Elarioni who, in battle armor, didn’t glow with bioluminescence…a look that made her appear as formidable as the Archon knew her and the others to be. Many of the Elarioni were on the pacifistic side, or more accurately the ‘gentle’ side as far as their personalities, but there was a whole slew of them that were both active and eager to fight…and a lot of those had crossed over from the independent Elarioni to join Star Force for just that purpose.

“Come with me,” the Archon said, activating his jets to shoot him down the hallway towards the few unmapped sections of the dome. Kameena flicked her armored tail rhythmically beside him, not needing her booster jets to keep up. Her arms were tucked in closer to her sides and her whole body undulated, making her look like a metallic snake as she paced him unquestioningly.

Trevor led them into new hallways, skipping the few rooms adjacent to them when he scanned them with Ikrid. He was looking for something in particular and it wasn’t going to be in a room if he guessed right.

The pair came across another floor doorway…save that it and most of the others had no doors…and they swam down to another hallway that ran parallel some 10 meters lower, at the end of which he picked up a few lizard minds.

“Contacts.”

“Permission?” the Elarioni asked.

“Careful,” he said, with her sprinting ahead of him with a wicked tail kick. Trevor increased the speed of his jets a bit, but there was no catching her as she zoomed down the long hallway. There were tiny, dim lights built into the walls but suddenly there were additional green orbs lighting up in the distance just before Kameena got to them.

Careful with his aim, Trevor sent a Fornax blast low and sniped it past his friend, hitting a lizard a bit further down. The Archon didn’t even bother to pop out his gauntlet’s weapon, for by the time he arrived the Elarioni had already killed all 8 lizards that were guarding a vertical hallway that led down into the bedrock.

“More down there,” Trevor said, sensing hundreds of them within his limited range. “I think they wanted to collapse the dome to conceal them.”

“To what end?”

“Not sure, but I think we’ll get our answer down there.”

“Ready,” she said, twisting over and facing straight down.

“Not alone. There are a lot down there and I’m scanning first. Who knows what they might have waiting for us.”

“Your caution is admirable,” she said, with Trevor knowing that it was sarcasm. He tried to connect to the battlemap to send a signal but after three tries the only contact he could get was her.

“Go whistle up some support, I can’t get through.”

Without a word she spun about and swam by him so close he could have swore she’d touched him…but knowing her she’d done it on purpose just for the near miss.

With her petite form disappearing with distance Trevor swam down a meter and grabbed hold of the rim of the vertical shaft, keeping his body out of view but leaving his head where he could look down. There were no lights below, so all he could see with was his Pefbar. It didn’t reach very far, and the minds he was sensing were below it, meaning he’d just have to wait on this one. In order to take this planet they had to root out all lizard installations, and whatever was down there probably was something that could sustain a resistance group if allowed to go unnoticed.

It was a good thing Kameena had got to those explosives when she did…and not just because it would have brought a chunk of the dome down on top of them.

Two hours later Trevor swam up from the seafloor, having completed the destruction of the lizard growth pods that had contained thousands of new problems at varying stages of development. Back in the open ocean again he felt very tiny, especially with the giant markers on his HUD indicating the no go zone further to the south. Between that and him was his destination, a Star Force destroyer that had been dropped from orbit along with several other smaller aquatics warships.

The battleships were still nearby, with two visible in the distance. He wasn’t going to swim back all the way to them, plus he needed a more mobile vessel to move around the area in hence he was about to board the destroyer. Unlike the whale-inspired battleship design the destroyer had flat hulls and mathematically crisp angles ending in a blunt, but knife-like nose that the rest of the ship fanned out behind.

Trevor headed towards it like a tiny missile, his jets propelling him at speeds he could never have swam with only his arms and legs, no matter what size of fins he might have. The distance across the submerged city, now partly rubble beneath him, was disconcerting for while he was moving it looked like he wasn’t, with the destroyer floating midway between surface and seafloor appearing to be getting no closer.

But that was just a reality of aquatics, with Trevor reminding himself to be patient as the distance was gradually diminishing and the image of the destroyer slowly grew larger in front of him…but not before the giant no-go zone beyond suddenly was hit with an object from above. The Archon had seen it coming down on his battlemap before it hit the waves, but it was no less an impressive sight.

Moving slowly so to diminish disruptive currents from its bulk moving the water out of the way, the aquatics MCV easily outmassed all four battleships combined and made for an almost perfect rectangular footprint as it slowly eased down into the water. Trevor kept jetting forward as it sank in, feeling the small shock wave hit him just prior to him reaching the destroyer. Its shields were down and the one of the entry ports glowed with ringing lights to help direct him to it. Swimming like a missile to target he hit the bullseye head first, passing through the energy shield and into the conditioned water inside.

The pressure was lower, but he could only feel that through the lessening of resistance to his movement. The temperature and molecular content he couldn’t detect with his armor covering him, but the Elarioni inside most definitely could. Two of them were waiting for him inside the waterlock, neither of which wore armor. They were ship’s crew and glowed with bioluminescence on various parts of their naked bodies, but it was their eyes that stood out the most for they were glowing a Thrawn-esk gold.

“I need an air recharge,” he said, using his armor’s external speakers.

“Follow me,” one of them said, with his helmet doing the translating. The second Elarioni swam out of the way and let the clumsy armored Human jet past, then followed him with her tri-finned tail only lightly flapping to provide propulsion. That third fin was part of the reason why they were so mobile, with all three able to bend and twist into various configurations. Working out armor to accommodate that had been a headache for the techs, but now that they had it was more than worth the effort, with every additional upgrade making the Elarioni even more lethal in combat.

But inside the destroyer they were in their natural form and comprised the entire crew. All Star Force aquatics facilities and ships were now split into two varieties, internal air or water. This was a water destroyer, just like two of the battleships were water craft as well, but despite the Elarioni being far superior in terms of water movement and combat they still were commanded by the Archons and had a mixed relationship with them, for while the Humans were slower and all around newbs in the water they were also gifted strategists and came equipped with psionics that the Elarioni couldn’t match.

The differences between the two were so great that combining crews or infantry teams would have been detrimental so the binary design had been established, though every ship had facilities to accommodate the other that Trevor needed to replenish his oxygen supply which was now at 23%. It had been continually replenishing from oxygen in the seawater and some internal cycling, but the rate at which he’d been breathing it in had been greater than the resupply.

Knowing from experience it was better to be conservative with his air than reckless, he needed to top off before continuing with the oversight of the lizard colony security and beginning stages of reclamation. That and he knew he was going to have to pee before too long and he couldn’t just take his armor off mid ocean, especially with the pressure this far down.

Trevor swam through the Elarioni-designed corridors that kept a touch of overall Star Force motif to the infrastructure until he was led to a small area of the ship that was just a single room, but with adjacent water compartments that could be converted to air if necessary. It was located at the top of a corridor so no Elarioni could accidentally fall inside, and on top of that it was covered by a sealed door that the crewmember retracted so the Archon could enter.

His head pushed up through an energy field separating the air from water and he got his arms over the edge of the small pool and pulled himself up…feeling his own weight again as he got a knee underneath his torso and stood up. That was one of the challenges with aquatic field work, for even if he had been swimming around by hand and leg the entire time the neutral buoyancy would wreak havoc with an Archon’s training state. As it was, his legs were just beginning to remember their normal weight after floating around more or less effortlessly for many hours.

He walked aside and out of view of the small pool, finding several facets to the room that was much akin to a set of personal quarters/equipment room. There were foodstuffs without water, for the ship’s ‘atmosphere’ was drinkable, ambrosia, uniforms and armor replacements…and most importantly, after his oxygen resupply station, a restroom.

Trevor deactivated the safety interlock within his armor and had it begin peeling apart along the chest, then down the seams of the arms and legs, allowing him to step out of the single-piece suit while leaving the spread out monstrosity in place like a scarecrow. He didn’t bother bundling it up for he was going to be getting back inside it within minutes, but he did walk over and pull an oxygen line from the recharger and connect it to the suit before heading into the restroom to relieve his bladder.

He grabbed a few foodstuff ration bars to chew on and a cup from the storage compartment, then walked over and dipped it through the energy field and filled it up with water before sitting down next to the pool and having a snack. Some people thought that drinking water that Elarioni were swimming around in was gross, but he’d gotten used to it. Like on an air ship the ‘atmosphere’ was continually cycled and cleaned, making the water nearly pure. Plus the Elarioni didn’t produce any toxins as far as Humans were concerned, so he didn’t mind. Actually the water had a microscopic sweetness to it, though he’d been told that was just his imagination.

Trevor kept his break short and redonned his armor, now with an air supply back up to 100%, and jumped back into the pool letting his momentum carry him all the way down into the water. No Elarioni were waiting for him, which was proper given that he was a fellow member of Star Force and not a foreign guest who had to be watched at all times.

Getting his head oriented as to which way was which on the destroyer, he swam off through the corridors towards the bridge where he was going to get to work patrolling the extraneous facilities situated around the main lizard colony…which from now on was Star Force property, at least until the MCV got around to dismantling it all.

5

March 23, 2692

Jafat System (lizard territory)

Irad

Arvak sprinted across the dry, sandy ground of the wash and up to the tree line on the far side, tucking his arms in as the Bsidd pushed through the brush and under the forest canopy. He didn’t stop or look back, but kept running as fast as he could manage with a countdown indicator on his helmet prompting his speed. In less than 3 minutes he had to be in position and he still had a lot of ground to cover.

The trees weren’t helping, for they were more like bushes and had branches coming out of their trunks at all levels. With his armor protecting him from scrapes, thorns, and other concerns Arvak blew through the thinnest sections on as much of a straight line as he could but every now and then he’d hit branches that wouldn’t bend and he’d get stuck, with his 8 arms often getting tangled up and holding him back.

That was why he was tucking them in now as the theta variant pushed his way across terrain. He was approximately Archon-sized and the fastest of all the Bsidd varieties, making for good scouts and skirmishers, though today he was tasked as a sniper and had to get into position before the heavy infantry met up with the lizard army pushing their way.

This was the fourth day of ground battles on Irad in what looked to be at least a multi-month campaign. While the nearby planet of Ulmed was lightly inhabited this world was not. It was full of lizard colonies that the navy was still pounding on from orbit to break through their defense shields, but even when they did that there had to be ground ops to go in and clean up.

Arvak’s group hadn’t gotten any of those assignments yet, rather they were assaulting facilities outside the defense shields. Right now he was in mountainous, irregular terrain where the lizards had burrowed underground to build a series of bases, how many Star Force didn’t yet know, but they were virtually impervious to orbital bombardment. A Calavari unit had been sent into the region to establish a foothold and firebase, then through them the Bsidd were moving forward and flushing out every bit of lizard infrastructure they could find.

That had eventually resulted in the lizards coming aboveground and mounting a series of counterattacks, with the one about to go down being the largest yet. Arvak had been sent with a number of other scouts racing ahead to grab some valuable points of high ground that looked down on the dry riverbed that he’d just ran across, knowing that the lizards would have to pass through it and into the open briefly. If not they’d hold up short of it and give the Bsidd troops maneuvering options…which it didn’t appear was going to happen.

On his battlemap there were numerous reports of enemy movement through the trees, which was protecting them against air attacks, though there were reports of wisps starting to come up out of the ground in several nearby and previously unscouted locations, suggesting that they were going to buy the ground troops enough time to get to the Bsidd and potentially overrun the two forward staging bases they’d established.

Arvak didn’t intend to let that happen, so he ran on as fast as his two main legs could carry him and only popped out his other ‘arms’ for additional propulsion when he was going up inclines. Eventually he got to the rocky hillside that overlooked a portion of the dry riverbed from about 600 meters away and began scaling it where he could. There were no paths up so he just took his best guess and climbed through the overhanging vines and loose vegetation, finding rock where he could and leveraging himself up using various grip points on his appendages in lieu of the fingers his race didn’t have.

With only a handful of seconds left on his countdown he found a ledge that gave him a narrow slice of riverbed in view and decided that was going to have to be good enough, kneeling down and pulling his sniper rifle off his back. He synced it up with his battlemap and used the spotter data from others to align his targets, focusing on three points of the riverbank. Two of them were obscured from his position, but the third was not.

As he swung his sights around to cover that area he saw other icons imposed on his HUD indicating his fellow snipers. Some were in position already while others were still moving, with their ID tags making it clear that they were friendlies even if he couldn’t visually spot them. In contrast there were box-like warning markings indicating the approximate position of the enemy troops and within a few seconds the green-skinned lizards began pouring out of the forest and crossing the riverbed by the hundreds.

The bulk of the Bsidd army wasn’t close enough to engage them there, leaving it up to the snipers to thin the enemy down as much as they could. Taking to his task, Arvak and the other snipers in position began unleashing solid sammy beams down from elevation and onto the riverbed. Each was tinted blue, as most Star Force energy weapons were that could be modified as such, and lasted .62 seconds in duration. That gave the snipers enough kill power to take down even the mauler variants with one shot, punching straight through their armored vest, thick skin, and dense musculature to poke out the far side of their bodies and melt some sand behind them.

It also gave Arvak some sweeping capability, with him deliberately drifting his aim as he fired to catch two or three lizards with one hit, inflicting a cleansing beam-like gash across their bodies or even severing their heads completely off if the angle and beam path matched up with their necks. To be honest he wasn’t trying for any of that, he just needed to do damage to as many as he could before they crossed into cover again and there were so many it was hard not to hit them. With that in mind, wounding five or six with a quicker flick of his sights was preferable to a solid, clean kill on only one.

Most of the lizards he was seeing were standard variety, for the maulers didn’t work against Star Force troops given their armor. The lizards’ forearm blades were vicious against exposed lifeforms, and should the Bsidd have been engaging them hand to hand without armor they would have been a serious threat in groups, but their blades only tickled the purple/black battlecasts they were wearing.

The flexible, stretchable armor was unique to the Bsidd to accommodate their varying sizes and movement ranges during fitting, then it would harden into a form unique to that Bsidd on the portions of its body that didn’t move much. New armor suits were kept in gelatinous state, similar to a wet suit, so that when Arvak or another needed a new one they’d put it on then go through a minute long series of movement drills allowing the armor to adjust to the individual’s body before hardening where appropriate. After that it was more or less standard armor akin to what the other Star Force races wore.

His set was for thetas and wouldn’t work for any of the other Bsidd variants, but it would work for all thetas, meaning they didn’t have to get individual fittings and everyone could use stock units. He knew the Archons that were leading the Bsidd army had their armor personally molded to their bodies during fabrication. That was a perk of their superhard armor, and applicable due to the fact that there were so few of them. Star Force would never have been able to do the same with the Bsidd and their rapidly growing numbers.

Arvak kept popping out blue sammy beams along with a few others from nearby targeting the same patch of dry river that was quickly becoming wet with lizard blood. His shots only fell on a small section of it, with others having better angles and disappearing behind trees as they shot across his sights, but they were felling a good number of targets. It didn’t seem that way given how many were crossing the river, but every dozen that he mowed down was a dozen less for the infantry to deal with a few minutes from now.

Arvak had expected the river crossing to be quick, but as he stood his position and continued firing more and more lizards kept coming out of the forest in a long wave that seemed as if it would never end. Knowing that he had to keep focused and firing nonstop, else let a lizard past that he otherwise could have killed, Arvak forced himself to not think about the numbers but as he stayed within his mental sniper targeting zone his stomach clenched up with apprehension…for he’d never seen enemy numbers like this before, not even in training sims. They were literally everywhere, and armor advantage or not, the Bsidd could easily get overrun if they didn’t play this smart.

And even then he wasn’t sure how many would be too many to take down.

Tvey was waiting in formation with the other Bsidd betas as they jogged through the forest behind one of the mechs breaking a path through the tree branches. He was mid left in a row of four and six rows behind the pair of silver-clad Archons leading his group that stretched back in a line nearly 500 meters long, and there were other lines moving forward nearby like snakes through the thick trees. He knew from his battlemap that the enemy was close, and when they got to them they were going to be fighting the tree branches as much as the lizards, given their enemy’s smaller size.

Tvey stood taller than the Archons and even a bit taller than a Calavari, though he massed considerably less. His body resembled the trees around him, with numerous appendages sprouting out from a nonlinear central body, all of which was covered in armor that gave him some sense of security, knowing that both the shields and the hardened plates would protect him from numerous plasma blasts before they got through to his skin. It was the lack of movement in the trees that worried him.

As he ran forward, stepping over occasional limbs that the mech had snapped off, he got deployment orders on his HUD from the Archons and suddenly the long line began to split apart. Tvey went left along with a group of three others and headed to a random position in the forest, coming up on the waypoint then holding position with the others as he read the orders coming across in text.

The four Bsidd all activated their six appendages that held plasma rods, or more accurately were plasma gauntlets, for in lieu of any actual hands they were just a pole covering the ends of their appendages for approximately half a meter in length. The ‘lightsabers’ as they were commonly referred to operated the same as the plasma nubs that the aquatics division used, in that they held a contained amount of the destructive, superheated gas within a shield until physical contact was made. When it occurred the plasma would be released then replenished, giving them a melee weapon in addition to the gun-type weapons that Tvey and the others wore on additional appendages.

The orders that came across were to cut branches and create a kill zone for them to operate out of before the lizards got here, and the beta gladly lit up his six blue limbends and got to burning through the horizontal sticks. The smaller ones were clipped instantaneously, but the larger ones took several hits to get through, with a slight pause in between being required for the plasma to reform within its containment shield.

He and the other three hacked out as much room as they could around several trunks, then picked up the branches and piled them in three spots, pushing them down into a thick enough wad that they thought the enemy couldn’t crawl through. That would constrict their approaches but still give the Bsidd multiple options to reposition elsewhere if needed. All around them other small groups were doing the same thing, with the mech walking back and forth and plowing down roads along with breaking down some entire trees and positioning them as barricades using its six arms that did have hands…something the Bsidd pilots had to learn to use with a lot of practice.

Tvey heard/saw it crunching away a ways ahead of him then saw the explosion nearby as it vaporized a tree trunk or two with a mauler blast…but it wasn’t aiming at the trees, rather the first of the lizards swarming around it. That mauler impact was followed by several others and an assortment of additional weapons, not only from the mech but from the surrounding Bsidd infantry.

Tvey hacked away a few more limbs then cleared them, with his other three fireteam members doing likewise as they set themselves and looked ahead, their plasma rods glowing ready and their pair of gauntlet rifles sticking out between the six blue lightsabers as they heard rocket impacts against the mech, indicating that the lizards were coming with more than just their standard plasma rifles.

Then suddenly they were upon them, with dozens appearing amongst the trees and running straight at the Bsidd, bypassing other groups nearby heading straight for Tvey. They started popping green plasma orbs a moment later as more of the lizards swarmed the other positions, but there were so many targets nearby that he couldn’t monitor them or even the mech, suddenly taking shield impacts and seeing the lizards stop just short of their little kill zone.

Tvey and the others fired back with their rifles, popping blue plasma streaks that were far more lethal than the lizard versions. The type of weapon dated back to Star Force’s origins, and rather than replace it with orbs or another weapon system the Star Force techs had simply kept tweaking the design to its now extremely efficient and powerful concentration of plasma. One hit was all Tvey and the others needed, which was good, for it looked like they were going to exhaust their full ammo supplies if they lived long enough to use them all.

Frustrated with the lizards sticking in the trees to snipe from, the Bsidd next to Tvey ran forward, hacking a few more branches before wrapping some of his free appendages around a pair of lizards and throwing them back towards Tvey and the others.

A down thrust plasma rod hit one in the head, burning through its skull while Tvey shot the other at pointblank range before jumping over to one of the brush piles and circling around it, executing a backdoor on some of the other lizards massing up just beyond and filing into firing lines that would allow them to pepper the Bsidd with enough plasma hits to get through their defenses.

Tvey stabbed three of them with his plasma rods but didn’t bother shooting the others. Instead he pushed into the group with his rifles and other appendages forming a wireframe snowplow, hooking the ends to keep them contained, then rammed them forward into the kill zone depositing some 8 or 9 of them into view of the others while his back took numerous plasma strikes.

He didn’t stop his momentum, pushing through then stepping on and over the group until he got behind the others and into a bit of cover as they stepped forward and slaughtered the lizards. Tvey brought his rifles up as he turned around and fired off a few shots between them, seeing more and more enemy infantry moving through the trees towards them and the others, so many that they seemed to be a living tidal wave coming forward to wrap around their legs.

Superior as they were, Tvey began to fear for their lives until he caught a glimpse of silver streaking through the forest nearby and lizards dropping all around it.

They had Archons with them, and so long as they said to fight Tvey and the others would, knowing that they wouldn’t be left here to die. If a retreat was needed the Archons would order it, but up until that happened it was slaughtering time.

With that thought banishing his fear, Tvey went left and started another backdoor run around a brush pile, finding plenty of lizards nearby to grab and shove into their kill zone.

6

Krissy ducked her skeet under a wisp to avoid three others coming in so close she was sure they meant to ram her. The sky was dotted with clusters of them, all of which were trying to either shoot the Star Force fighters down or keep them distracted and away from the ground troops that were in need of air support. Reports were they were holding their own, but as typical the lizards were spamming them with insane numbers that her scattergun was fated for.

Getting to them was difficult, but she was almost through the wisp formations and dipping down to tree level to get under this one. A few more threw down green plasma orbs around her, two of which hit her right side engine but the shields covering it held and she accelerated hard to try and lose her pursuit. Other skeets were scattered around, far too few to take down all the wisps in time, so she and a number of them were tasked with getting through while the others went for kills.

She wasn’t near any of the others and that isolation drew a lot of attention to her, for as soon as she zipped away from the group peppering her from above two more formations angled in on her and forced the Star Force regular to bank up and away from the forest, allowing them to come at her from all sides and not seeming to care about friendly fire.

Her shields were dipping lower and lower and it was just a matter of time before these gnats stung her to death. She wasn’t going to let that happen and would pull up and head for orbit if need be, for there was no way the wisps could keep pace when she entered super pursuit mode, though that required a clear line ahead and a bit of prep. Unfortunately Krissy couldn’t use that speed here because it was straight line and she was having to maneuver like crazy to even get close to the ground battle ahead.

The moment of choice was nearly on her, when she would have to choose to head out of the mess of fighters or keep on pushing forward. Problem was the armor on her skeet was thin in order to afford her the movement capability that was more desperately needed. It would take some plasma hits and keep her flying, but it wasn’t tank armor by any stretch of the imagination. The fighter’s shields were its primary defense and they were slowly being whittled away.

A signal from another nearby skeet also pushing its way through the mess of wisps prompter her to turn hard left and head for the source of the brief comm signal. The lizard fighters around her changed course to follow and soon she saw the tiny dot that was the other skeet highlighted on her HUD ahead, with her dipping down slightly for what was going to be a passby. She readied her scattergun and waited for the skeet to wink past, taking a few more hits as she flew a straight line towards the rendezvous.

When the two fighters nearly rammed each other they both opened fire on the other side, targeting the wisps directly following their twin. The plasma scattergun fired off numerous little potent packets of plasma in a cone rather than at a specific target, catching numerous wisps as both pilots held in on the trigger and fanned the area ahead for a couple of seconds before banking hard and coming back around towards the center point.

The unshielded wisps took hits, some going down to crash in the forest below and others moving off with damage, unable to keep pace with the maneuvering skeets that now linked up in paired mode and aggressively attacked the wisps swirling around them. Whenever one of the enemy fighters would align on a skeet the other would hit or scare it off, and between the two of them they took down some 14 fighters before returning to their primary objective with more wisps moving in to fill the void of those they’d just shot down.

Krissy and the other pilot stayed together but with enough space to allow each to maneuver in a wavy line as they dodged some of the incoming fire. Plasma traveling through air diminished more rapidly than through a vacuum, which meant shorter effective range and the lizard wisps exclusively used plasma. The skeets had longer range weapons that they could use to skillfully poach them, but right now that wasn’t the point…getting to the ground troops was.

That meant punching through and trying not to get hit as much as the wisps would like. Those that were further away were firing ahead of the skeets, hoping they’d fly into the bands of plasma rain and it was those that the Star Force pilots were weaving around, for it was almost impossible to dodge a single plasma shot. While they didn’t fire at lightspeed, nor close to it, they were not slow through the air and aside from a slight twitch of the flight controls there wasn’t much you could do against a well-aimed shot.

The trick was in getting the wisps to make bad shots, but to get to the mission point as quickly as possible you needed to fly a direct line…which was predictable as hell. That was the conundrum Krissy faced, but now with two skeets together the enemy had twice the number of targets to shoot at and that actually diminished the number of hits her fighter was taking.

That convinced Krissy to risk it and she continued forward, with the other pilot eventually comming with a strategy and telling her to go low to the riverbed. She agreed and the other skeet flew directly overtop of hers, with their silhouettes matching up from top view, then Krissy dove down as the other skeet went aggressive and tried to draw as much attention to him as possible.

She took her skeet back down to the forest and angle/braked hard to turn her momentum into the twisty line of the river, flying so low that there were trees to either side of her as she skimmed the dry wash. There were no lizards here, but a couple of kilometers ahead there were, crossing into the open en mass and just begging to get hit.

The wisp pilots knew that too and some came after her with a vengeance, but she ignored them and stuck to the river bed pulling some Mario Kart worthy skid turns to keep from careening into the tree walls as numerous plasma blasts rained down around her and kicked up dust plumes from where they hit dirt and rocks.

Krissy’s course kept whipping back and forth, then suddenly there was a sea of green heads and she hit the brakes, using her gravity drives to slow her forward momentum down to a slow flyby as she tilted the scattergun firing angle down and unleashed her blue rain onto the riverbed.

Burnt flesh flew everywhere like confetti and dozens of lizards fell per heartbeat as she made her way up the river with the overhead plasma blasts still coming down and hitting the lizard troops with the misses. Apparently they felt it was worth the tradeoff if they could kill her, and they were probably right mathematically speaking, but shooting your own troops to kill a target was colder than cold and just one more reason why these dishonorable bastards had to die.

Krissy pushed through the river for more than half a mile before the stream of lizard infantry ended. When it did she pulled up, intent on making a loop and dogfighting for a handful of seconds before heading back down for another pass for the disruption she’d made in the troop flow was already disappearing as more came out of the forest to cross, erasing the gaps she’d made in their fleshy flood of slowly moving bodies.

When she got back to decent altitude she had to linger longer than she’d liked, for her shields were near to breaching. Going evasive she avoided fire long enough for them to start ticking up a bit with recharge, then she engaged and killed three more wisps before heading back down for another pass just in time to see the other pilot strafing a section of forest nearby. Krissy didn’t know what that was about and was going to shoot the targets out in the open, but there were three more skeets headed their way and they were dragging a lot of wisps with them…meaning her time here was going to be short, for she couldn’t sustain much more plasma fire, no matter how bad of shots the lizard pilots were at speed.

Knowing that, Krissy ignored the incoming fire and dove back down to make one more pass, intending to bug out as soon as she’d completed it. Her topside shields got hammered as she flew through a few meters over the riverbed, but the carnage her scattergun was unleashing more than made up for it. When the other side of the flood came into view she was just about to make for the sky when a request for fire support came in from an Archon on the ground.

Krissy shot off across the empty riverbed and weaved between the tree walls, seeing if the lizards would still follow her…which they did, but two or three wisps peeled off as she got further away from the ground troops. Biting her lip, she decided to do something stupid and pulled up just enough to get over the treetops and turned back, heading for the location for the air support request that was a few kilometers away. She’d be damned if she left an Archon hanging, and was going to risk some hull damage to give him some help…then she’d bug out.

With a plasma hit to her tail that flashed a 7% warning for that section of shield Krissy got mad and flicked her skeet up through as tight of a backwards loop as she could, with the wisp following her through it given the craft’s nimble nature. What it couldn’t cover was the hover twist she put her skeet through, spinning it around and flying backwards long enough to fire two small mauler blasts, one of which hit the wisp and blew apart half its hull.

That enemy fighter dropped to the forest as Krissy accelerated forward and nulled out her backwards momentum, redirecting in a way that caused the other wisps to loop around to pursue her…and that gave her a moment’s reprieve from their hounding fire.

A slight turn to the right brought her into line with the waypoint marker indicating where the Archon wanted the incoming air support. She asked for a confirmation with a simple button press rather than the tedious nature of comming that particular Archon. In the seconds that had elapsed something on the ground might have changed, but she got the confirmation almost immediately and set herself, for it was a single point in the forest and a flyby wasn’t going to be good enough. If the Archon wanted it pounded, then she was going to level it.

Krissy flew across the treetops, now seeing flashes of light from down inside the forest but unable to make out who was who for more than a fleeting moment here and there. Trusting in the waypoint she hit the brakes hard and flipped up on her nose as she gained a little bit of altitude, pointing the long tail of the T-shaped craft towards the sky as she came into a hover over the location and fired every weapon that she had down into the forest.

Both mauler cannons obliterated the trees below when they hit, throwing out wooden shrapnel like bombs as her scattergun shredded the leaves and branches. Her long range sammie she fired off as well, hoping for a little more damage. Each weapon had its own cycle time, so she just held in the triggers for all of them and cringed against the plasma damage she was taking from the wisps, for as long as she held still those dumbass pilots didn’t have any trouble hitting her.

Her shield indicator flashed red, then several spots on her hull armor lit up with damage warnings. Biting her lip again she waved her firing line back and forth a bit, then stopped firing and punched the acceleration of her gravity drive as fast as she dared, shooting her fighter straight up tail-first. As she gained altitude she spun it around her center axis so she faced forward, just in time to see a flash of hull as she clipped one of the wisps.

A huge gash formed in the schematic representing her fighter that ran nearly half the length of her port side, having punched through the armor and hit numerous internal systems…but all three engines were still there and had partial power, though her sammy and scattergun were completely dead.

That didn’t matter now, for she was just clawing for distance skyward as several wisps followed her up and more at altitude angled down towards her. Getting her skeet reset from the deviation that the collision had caused, Krissy continued to accelerate, but without her shields super pursuit mode wasn’t possible anyway, let alone with the power drain for at least one of her six redundant generators had to have been disabled in the collision.

All showed operational on her display, which meant that a connecting line must have been severed. Either way that generator or two was out of order and she didn’t have time to do a diagnostic to see what was out. All she had time to do was climb and glance at the displays before angling 30 degrees to the east and continuing to accelerate slowly, trying to put some distance between her and the thickest regions of wisps.

Some continued to follow her, at a distance, but they weren’t behind, rather ahead and lateral giving them opportunities for intercept unless she could get clear and up to speed…which didn’t look likely. The more momentum she built the faster she would go, but without her shields cutting the wind her aerodynamics were limited. That combined with the power drain was going to make this dicey.

She wasn’t going to call for help though, because that meant a skeet or two would have to leave the ground troops hanging and she wasn’t going to have that. If necessary she could crash land and get picked up later, knowing that her pilot’s cocoon would make it very hard for the lizards to kill her even if they finished off her skeet.

Still mentally cursing herself for running into one of them, she test fired the maulers to make sure they were actually still functional. Both fired off normally and their recharge rate was diminished but present, so she could fight a bit if she had to…and it looked like that was going to be necessary.

Krissy counted 13 wisps in total that had broken off from various formations and were chasing her. They weren’t all together, nor would they reach her at the same time, with her seeing that she was in fact going to have to deal with at least 6 of them if she stayed on her present course, and the moment she went evasive the others would then have a chance to catch up from the lead she’d built on them.

She had about 10 more seconds to make a decision before the first wisp got within firing range and Krissy realized she didn’t have a choice. She waited a few more heartbeats then spun the skeet around, facing back and to port she hit the brakes and brought herself even closer to the nearest wisp. She wished she had her scattergun, for even a few small hits would be enough to hurt the shieldless enemy, but she’d have to make do with her maulers. They required more skill to hit with, but Krissy wasn’t lacking in that department.

The wisp did go evasive, however, making her first five shots miss, but as she turned her skeet to follow its line of flight she caught a hit with the sixth, then punched what acceleration she had to move away from it as two more came in. A heartbeat later her shields began to reform at low strength but she didn’t wait to try and let them rebuild, knowing that she had to make these kills quick while there were only one or two wisps nearby. Wait and let them bunch up and she’d be down before she had time to properly cuss them out.

Moving into an aggressive evasion pattern that had her cutting back on her flight path as often as she could, she set herself to the task of using her superior skill to overcome the disadvantage…or at least take a few more of the bastards down before she was out of the fight.

An hour and a half later one of the Star Force surface bases saw a smoking skeet approach from the west and set down in the middle of one of the open landing pads as if there was nothing at all wrong or unusual about it. There were no calls for emergency assistance or any alarm in the pilots voice as she signaled for pad allotment, but once seeing the state of her ship the deck chief got an emergency crew of techs rushing out to the skeet to deal with any potential mechanical explosions that might result from the damage and endanger the surrounding ships/personnel…as well as to see to the pilot.

But when Krissy landed she popped the armored hatch and slid down the angled side of the skeet, for its port landing leg had never deployed. Her light combat suit protected her leg and elbow from the heat on the hull as she dropped to the ground and casually walked off, satisfied and relieved that she hadn’t been stuck in the forest.

The pilot waved off the medtech in the emergency team and let them deal with her wreck of a skeet as she headed indoors to find out the status of the ongoing battles and how long it would take to get her a replacement fighter.

7

Niken-401229 fired his plasma pistol twice, hitting a couple of lizards that were heading towards a Bsidd that was carrying another wounded one back out of the battle, dropping both as he ran in a wide arc around several trees then headed back into the fray once they were clear. So far he’d had 19 casualties, all non-fatal and successfully evacuated from the heaviest fighting. Beyond that he didn’t know what had happened to them, but the troops still in the field under his and Jayce’s command were all still alive and fighting, though near to the breaking point.

The lizards were throwing so many infantry and them and the other Star Force units nearby that they’d had to relocate 8 times to keep from tripping over the bodies. Each time the lizards kept pursuing them with an unending wave of standard variants moving through the trees like they were ants and constantly trying to flank their grouping and cut off the evacuation routes that Niken was using to get his seriously injured out.

The rest of his troops had injuries, and he would have been surprised if any more than a handful were fighting with their shields up. His were currently recharging at 18% and had gone down more times than he could count, but he was quicker than the Bsidd and could run away from a lot of fire coming in on him. They didn’t have that luxury and were resorting to picking up and piling the lizard corpses to provide some barricades to fight behind when there weren’t enough trees or time to fell them.

In fact Jayce had recently ordered them to stop doing that in order to conserve ammo. Already a lot of the Bsidd had empty rifles and were resorting to hand to hand with their plasma rods. If they used those to cut more branches they’d run out of power quicker, and already as Niken ran back in towards his troops he saw Bsidd with only 3 or 4 glowing appendages when there should have been six, telling him that they were close to having to fight this out weaponless.

He only had 19 rounds left himself, and as he got back to the nearest group of Bsidd he cut right and flanked the lizards shooting at them, blowing through half those rounds in a matter of seconds but taking that point of danger off their mental map. The lizards had been trying for hours to get around to the back of them and force the Bsidd into a situation where they would have to fight it out. Niken had been able to keep pulling his injured out before they could get hammered to death, but only because they kept a route of retreat intact and still the lizards were determined to flank and cut them off.

The only reason the Archons hadn’t ordered a full retreat was because the end of the lizard wave had been reported some kilometers away, meaning that this endless battle was coming to a conclusion in their favor if they could just hold out a bit longer…and even if he did order a full retreat they’d have to fight their way back, for the lizards were hell bent on killing them and were just as fast as the Bsidd through forest, if not faster.

That meant they were kind of stuck, but if they needed to retreat he could have made it happen in an orderly fashion. The skies overhead were still cluttered with wisps, though many of them were now junk piles in the forest. Given that present air cover he wondered if there wasn’t a second wave of infantry coming behind this one, but right now there was none reported so he was going to fight this out here and now without losing any more ground. They’d already retreated several additional kilometers away from their targets, and if this was the end of the major resistance they needed to get to them with what troops were able sooner rather than later, and it looked like flying dropships in wasn’t going to be an option.

Weaving his way between trees Niken ran toward the next bit of trouble he saw, sniping down three lizards as he passed, then he was back into the heavy flow of incoming amongst knotted up groups of Bsidd acting as lethal islands amongst the flood and dropping lizard bodies everywhere, now almost exclusively through hand to hand combat.

A few more shots and Niken was out of ammo as well, but knowing that they only had to kill a few thousand more he pulled up a rare command in his HUD and triggered his armor rack to release from his back. He caught it in his right hand as it slid off and whipped it around in front of him, reattaching the dead pistol next to his other depleted weapons and grabbing the two short cylinders off it that he carried for good measure.

Dropping the weapon rack into a bush he carried a cylinder in each hand and ran on, now lighter and more agile than before but with a silver-armored body that was showing numerous melted spots from plasma damage. His shields took another hit as the lizards saw and focused their fire on him, and Niken knew that as long as they did so his troops would have a little more breathing room to work with.

The Archon ran towards the thickest group of the lizards as they continued to run forward in tightly packed lines through the trees, bottling up near the Bsidd as their forwardmost infantry were cut down by plasma rods or knocked through the air by physical blows. Some of the Bsidd were picking up the enemies as they shot into their armor and hurling them like rocks back towards the others and bowling them over, for without their rifles they were having trouble keeping the lizards from grouping up in too large of numbers and pumping plasma into their already beaten and often broken armor, with many of the Bsidd visually bleeding out through burn marks.

Niken jumped as high as he could after pushing his way through the scattering of lizards in the front, then did a half flip in the air that brought his feet around over his head and into a lateral battering ram that smashed one of the lizards back into the others as the Archon fell to the ground amongst them, opening a small space for him to stand up in. As he did the cylinders extended out with a button press and formed two stun swords, one in each hand, that he whipped around before they were even charged and knocked several lizards in their small heads.

The next few started dropping to the ground with even small hits as the Archon ran through the horde. He knew they weren’t dead, and while he could pick up the lizard plasma rifles and use them against their makers the Bsidd couldn’t for their lack of fingers. They were the kill power and he needed to be the distraction…and right now he could take more lizards out of the fight with a stun sword than he could with one of their rifles, for even the slightest brush of the blade at full power would knock one out, even if he only caught them in the wrist.

Niken began downing them at 5 or 6 times the firing rate of one of their rifles on one side, but with two swords he was mowing them down on both wings as he ran, cutting a huge swath out of the horde and drawing a lot of attention his way, causing some of the lizards up front who weren’t totally engaged to turn back and throw their plasma fire at him when they could, though they were having trouble doing so without shooting each other.

Enough lizards were close enough to get off at least one shot before he poked or whacked them unconscious, with his shields going down not long after he jumped into the fray. Though he didn’t have time to notice, a group of Bsidd followed him in through the path of unconscious bodies, jumping into those around them and letting others trailing them poke and jab most of the unconscious ones with their plasma rods as they passed over them.

Before he knew it Jayce was in front of him, having beaten his way through from the other side and signaled to him with a simple telepathic touch. Niken retracted his left stun sword into its hilt and tossed it to the other acolyte, whom he saw had been reduced to using a lizard rifle. Jayce fired one more pointblank shot into a lizard’s chest, then he caught the sword out of the air and opened it up in a roundhouse twirl that ended with the tip cracking a lizard’s neck from the physical impact.

Switching to a two-handed grip Niken added more power and precision to his blows and the pair of acolytes drifted their way through the lizards, making sure not to get tripped up by those they were downing and to keep moving fast enough that they were hard to target. Green plasma was flying everywhere and more than once Niken felt a heat bloom on an arm or leg but nothing bad enough to slow him down. He was a blur of motion, caught up in sighting, moving towards, and making contact with the closest lizard…then he’d turn and repeat while mentally keeping track of where Jayce was beside him.

The lizards having two Archons to shoot at helped spread out the damage they were taking, prolonging their ability to fight, but by the time Niken got to jabbing one of the rare maulers that lunged at him swinging its forearm blades his stun sword had ran out of power. The poke merely knocked the lizard off course and dropped it beside the Archon, who then twirled the sword around and smacked it in the head as hard as he could, rendering it unconscious through blunt impact.

He would have grabbed a lizard rifle if he had time, but there were so many enemies around him he had to keep dodging and hitting them with the sword to keep them from lining up easy shots on him. The weapon, while unpowered, was still a heavy metal rod and that could do plenty of damage on its own, so Niken kept swinging and keeping close to Jayce until a blur of purple armor jumped into his view and grabbed three lizards up simultaneously…then sent them flying back through the air like they were mere toys.

Two glowing plasma rods jabbed into the nearest others, then Niken had more Bsidd swarm around him and run over the lizards in what amounted to a stampede of purple armor and too many limbs to count. Taking a moment the Archon spotted a lizard rifle and telekinetically pulled on it, moving it a half meter across the ground as he ran forward and reached down to pick it up in hand, discarding the dead stun sword.

He fell in with the Bsidd and ran amongst them, weaving his way between them as they ran and fought their way through the lizards, many of whom were now turning to run before they literally got stomped on. Niken shot targets of opportunity but kept trying to make his way to the front, hopping over one Bsidd that was down on the ground but still standing on one knee. He was hit, bad, but wasn’t dead…so Niken flashed a ‘recover’ marker onto his position via his helmet controls as he ran by. There was no time to stop and deal with him in person, for there were more enemies around to kill.

Then suddenly they were at the wall of them, lizards stacked together shoulder to shoulder and firing through the gaps in the trees directly into the Bsidd. Several of Niken’s troops went down, and he fired a pair of shots into the line, dropping a piece of it as suddenly he got a ‘no-go’ warning flashed on his HUD. The other Bsidd stopped immediately, taking partial cover behind trees and baiting the lizards to come to them, but the Archon kept shooting and running forward until he noticed a new group of dots on the battlemap.

He fired three more times then ducked behind a tree as a plasma blast hit his helmet, failing to penetrate the silver armor but melting a small rivulet of it off. It ran down an inch over his visor and resolidified, sticking in place as his view filled with tree bark. Looking to his right he saw and telekinetically pulled another lizard rifle to him, dragging it across the ground as it was too heavy for him to fully lift, then grabbed it in his other hand, dual wielding as he turned around the far side of the thick tree trunk and opened fire again.

He checked up after five shots when two yellow-armored blurs appeared in the air behind the lizard line, falling in amongst them and throwing the enemy into havoc. Several more jump/lunged from their flanking position, then Niken ran out of cover towards the brawl and fired on the lizards that the Scionate had pushed out towards him.

Firing off the green plasma blasts into the nearest ones, he saw the ambush group mow down the others with blue streaks seeming to come out of their mouths, though their helmets were fully sealed just as his was. In addition to shooting they were jumping on and knocking down the lizards, stunning some of them with the ‘gloves’ that their armor contained and just physically beating others down with their impacts.

When the Bsidd saw the Scionate hit the lizards they came out of cover and rushed forward, picking apart the survivors along with Niken until they pushed through the group and saw clear forest on the other side…the end of the lizard wave, finally.

But there were many more lizards nearby and across the battlefield, so the Archon kept on the move even as others took a breather. In the breaks he had he consulted the battlemap as he ran, heading towards where there was still fighting with several Scionate catching up to and pacing him as an escort. He hadn’t known there were any of the rare units even engaged in this fight, let alone close to his position, but he didn’t have time to ask where they’d come from. He was just glad they were here.

Jumping over corpse after corpse Niken’s luck eventually ran out and his fatigue + speed saw his foot catch on one, dumping him to the ground where he rolled into a tree, banging his head. He shook it off quickly and got back to his feet, never minding the looks from the Scionate around him who’d stopped alongside. He was beyond exhausted and knew the Bsidd were the same, so he didn’t feel any shame, he just needed to get moving again so he could kill the remaining lizards before they took the slackening battle as an opportunity to hit some of his vulnerable troops.

When he got to another group of lizards fighting hand to hand with a trio of Bsidd the Scionate didn’t wait for orders and sprinted ahead, jumping some 10 meters through the air to land on their targets and crush them into the ground. One shot the one he’d landed on, but the others bounced off them, knocking others down and keeping them from firing on the wounded Bsidd as they poked and picked up the lizards with no glowing appendages among them.

Niken followed up and shot the lizards that some of the Scionate had knocked down and between the three races they finished off the enemies in that spot quickly. With a glance at the Bsidd he signaled for them to stay put and ran off with the Scionate following, headed towards more little lingering engagements.

It would be another 13 minutes before his unit was fully disengaged, then he was busy organizing what armed Bsidd he had left into kill parties to go around and finish off any surviving lizards, whether they be stunned or wounded, when he got a comm call from an Archon in another unit a few kilometers off.

“Still here,” he answered.

“The road ahead is clear. Proceed to the base entrances with what able troops you have, I’ll meet you there with mine,” the ranger said.

“Sorry, Roy. Aside from the Scionate I’ve got nothing to offer. Right now a stiff breeze would kill half my Bsidd.”

“What Scionate?”

“Hold a moment,” he said, looking at one of them nearby him. “Where did you come from?”

“Aerial drop. Trailblazer Jason’s orders.”

“Are you ready for some more action?”

“Always,” the Scionate said with an energetic growl.

“Take your men and proceed to these coordinates,” Niken said, giving him a waypoint that would link up with the other Star Force troops getting ready to assault the subsurface base. He’d expected to be among them, but the lizards had thrown far more infantry at his unit than they’d expected. “They’re going to need all the help they can get. And thanks.”

“No debt,” he said before turning and running off with the rest of his armored kitties going with him. The phrase had become popular amongst the Scionate, for it meant that there was no error on Niken’s part that had made the rescue necessary, nor did Star Force troops typically owe each other. They were all family on the battlefield and didn’t keep score, something that had been hard for the Scionate to come to grips with after all Star Force had done training them and rebuilding their society.

Now that they had the opportunity to return the gratitude, ‘no debt’ was a way of them saying they’d owed you anyway, and was a version of saying ‘you’re welcome’ or ‘don’t mention it.’

Niken looked around visually, then on his battlemap trying to get a feel for where all his troops were. He spotted the injured, marked with a special icon until they were recovered, and headed to one nearby. He got to it to find one of the bigger Bsidd kneeling on the ground with both knees and missing one of its appendages…which was lying beside it next to several lizard corpses, having been melted off his body with pinpoint or just unlucky plasma hits.

“You with me?” Niken asked, running up beside him and placing an armored hand on its head.

“I am…here,” the Bsidd answered in obvious pain and shock.

“When we get you back to a medical facility they’ll regrow it, so just hang tight until I can get you out of here. I don’t know about dropships yet, so we may have to go overland. Can you walk?”

The Bsidd stood up, as if finally having an order to follow allowed it to focus past the pain.

“Good. Come with me,” he said, stepping ahead of him and leading the Bsidd towards one of the medtechs that had been brought in within the past few minutes now that the lizard threat was over. He’d come by speeder, rather than aerial drop, and a few more were also on their way according to the battlemap, coming through the trees along with some other small vehicles while the fighters continued their game of cat and mouse overhead.

So long as one of them didn’t crash down on top of them, Niken figured he and the others were going to be alright…and checking his battlemap totals he saw that as of yet there were no Bsidd fatalities listed. Numerous casualties, but no fatalities, and that let the Archon release a very slow, relieved breath knowing that his decision to stay and fight it out hadn’t cost him any of his men. Those like the Bsidd with him had been badly wounded, but they’d recover so long as the medtechs did their job.

To that end he picked up the pace a little, comming one of them to head his direction, fearing that this Bsidd might bleed out, for his wound hadn’t cauterized completely and he was leaking a steady trail of purple/black blood from the severed limb.

8

Jason-025 input the deployment order for the Scionate detachment into the HUD on his helmet a moment before he hit the power on the jump pack to slow his descent. He’d just leapt out of a dropship at extreme high altitude in order to get in over the wisp cloud surrounding one of their mountain strongholds and had some time to kill as he fell so he’d dug into the battlemap to monitor the other assaults taking place on Irad.

He hadn’t expected to need to issue any orders, but when he saw the extraordinary amount of resistance the Bsidd were going up against he knew they were near the tipping point and had located a reserve unit on standby and sent the order while adjusting his fall to miss the enemy fighters as he passed through their swirling formations. There were skeets on the edges, poking some of them down, but directly over the stronghold there were only wisps that were sniping the ground troops when they could, but the terrain was hiding both sides’ units well and leaving the fighter cover primary to keep Star Force air assets at bay.

The ground teams had already took out the perimeter defense stations, but the twists and turns of the nearly vertical canyons made the approach a maze of ambush points. The Calavari and Humans assaulting the base were being patient and not overworking the problem, but the lizards pretty much had them tied up and unable to advance…hence the need for a bit of a push. Jason had been holding back, waiting to see which combat zones were having the most trouble before deploying himself, though had he waited a bit longer he would have gone to the Bsidd.

Falling through the air didn’t give him the option of redeploying so he’d sent the Scionate instead, but now he had to forget the bigger strategic picture and focus on not getting shot down. To that end he reached out his mind to the pair of lizard fighters angling towards him now that he was slowing down and veering to the south. When he could feel them he locked onto their minds and froze their bodies, with both wisps flying on their previous courses with no additional input to the controls.

Both were flying towards the ground and remained so, with Jason adjusting his fall a bit to stay well wide of them. The wisps flashed by some 900 meters away and continued to descend until they got out of the trailblazer’s Ikrid range. One pulled up and avoided crashing into the ground, but the other wasn’t so lucky. It came down into a lizard-filled section of forest and took out a few of them on impact, with the Star Force front better than a mile away.

Jason continued his fall, now too far ahead of the other wisps for them to get within firing range in time. With his landing options diminishing with altitude, he spied a few shards of plasma headed his way from a tower just poking up above the treetops. It was anti-air fire and he immediately got clipped with two hits, but like the fighters he was able to reach out, locate, and cripple the minds at the firing controls, shutting the turret down temporarily and allowing him to come down safely into the treetops nearby.

Jason braked hard, but let his excess momentum tear him through the canopy. He deactivated his shields so not to drain them further with the physical impacts, letting his armor take the hits and scrapes as he slowed to a slight hop that barely had his footprints pressing into the ground when he finally got to the surface.

Shutting the jump pack off he ran through the trees over to the defense tower, finding and crippling the minds around him to clear a path rather than fighting it out. He got to the entrance and opened the door with the guards falling unconscious by his mere presence. The same effect occurred to those inside, with none of the lizards able to even fire at shot at him as he connected to and rendered each one unresponsive by literally putting them to sleep.

Jason worked his way up the tower until he got to the technological guts of the turret, then he found a sweet spot and pulled an explosive out of his pack and set it inside on a timer before heading down and out back into the forest, dropping more lizards unconscious around him. He got 300 meters away before he heard the boom that rendered the anti-air tower unuseable, then a few steps later he came up on the edge of one of the many ravines in the area.

Below there were more lizards hidden in various places with bits of infrastructure here and there. He’d seen some of what they had waiting for them from orbital scans, but now that he was here on the ground Jason could see a lot more laterally that they’d been hiding in the walls and under the trees. It looked like a Halo multiplayer map, there were so many cover points and trails running through the ravine, not to mention stairways built inside the rocky walls for the lizards to use to get up and down, forcing the attackers to hack their way up the ravine or get air support to pick them up.

The air support wasn’t an option, so it was either go by foot or jump pack, and get close enough to one of those anti-air towers with the jump packs and you were going to be toast. From his vantage point he could see several smaller versions dotting the ravine as they stuck out from high points on the walls or on the edges up top, making this and probably a lot of other locations around the base killing zones.

Star Force liked a challenge, but the longer the lizards held this base the less troops he’d have to hit other targets so Jason was going to start clearing the roadblocks ahead his troops’ advance…or at least reducing them, for there was a lot to get to and only so many explosives in his pack, not to mention far too many lizards for him to take out with the limited ammo he had.

But he had psionics, not to mention his physical strength and a forest canopy that more or less put the wisp air cover out of the game. He’d have to be careful not to hang out anywhere in the open or predictably hold to a single location beneath the trees that they could target, but this looked like it was going to be an all-ground affair and that was something he could handle solo so long as he didn’t get too many enemy firing lines on him simultaneously. If he could buy time between bouts for his shields to recharge he could stay out here kicking ass indefinitely.

Leaning against a thick tree at the top of the ravine he was about to make for one of the anti-air protrusions a quarter mile down the eastern edge when a familiar sound stopped him from moving. He looked around suspiciously, then a few moments later one of the lizards’ tanks moved through the ravine, hovering over the trees and trails. Fixed emplacements Jason could handle, but with that kind of mobile firepower and no fighters to take it out he’d be a sitting duck above the tree line.

Jason lost sight of it again as it moved to the left and behind a rocky outcropping two meters ahead of him, so he ran to the left and meandered along the choppy ravine edge until he had a good vantage point. Given that there were none of his troops nearby he had a second option and fixed a beacon onto the tank virtually using the tracking software in his helmet. A pointed polygon appeared over top of it along with concentric circles emanating out from the anti-vehicle ‘shade.’

Those circles moved with it as it progressed up the ravine at a snail’s pace on patrol. Jason knew he was within the outermost of those circles but he had to keep a line of sight on the tank in order for this to work. Opening up his comm for unstealthed transmission he sent a continuous signal to orbit, knowing that the lizards might be able to backtrack it to his location. That wasn’t important right now given that they’d just seen him drop from the sky and blow up a turret…what was important was that his luck held up, and the clear sky was going to help.

A firing button appeared on his HUD and Jason dropped as low to the ground as he could, tree hugging with his left should as he kept his eyes on the tank as it continued to creep left and would be out of view in less than 30 seconds. Taking a deep breath he looked at the button, closed his right eye, then blinked three times with his left. That ‘pressed’ the button with the necessary safety interlocks, resulting in a beam of insanely white light coming down from the sky within an instant and drowning out the tank and everything else in the ravine as his visor tried to adjust to the brightness.

It didn’t fully work and Jason was left stunned as he was forcefully knocked back by the concussion wave. His hands dug into the dirt to try to slow and ground him as the trees cracked and burnt all around him. It took a moment for his eyes to start to clear, then a lesser blowback pulled him forward a few inches and brought debris with it, covering him in bits of leaf and limbs, half of which were charred and smoking.

Jason held his eyes shut, knowing that was the best way to get them to process out the excess light. Had he not been wearing a helmet the glare from the cleansing beam would have blinded him for well over a minute, but thanks to his visor it only took a few seconds before he could see the glowing indicators on his HUD, then a handful more before the ravine started to come back into distinction. A couple of kill tags were updated where nearby turret emplacements in the walls had been knocked offline, and in one case Jason saw a tree trunk impaling it, but most of the emplacements below him were still intact…though the lizards manning them were not.

He couldn’t take a headcount, but nearly all of the minds he had previously been sensing below were now gone around the blast radius. He searched for the tank and saw it flipped over and lying against the nearer ravine wall…half of it missing and apparently scattered elsewhere amongst the tree mash. A deep hole had been blow out in the center of it all, some 30 meters away from where the tank had been. Firing from orbit wasn’t the most precise thing, and sniping tanks was almost impossible even with the cleansing beams, but this one had gotten close enough to do the job with the plasma wave resulting from the beam colliding with the air and dirt. And fortunately it hadn’t hit near Jason.

He knew the odds of it missing that badly were low, but it wasn’t something he was going to repeat often. Doing so was something he could have ordered prior to the attack to just lay waste to everything in the ravines, but the lizards knew Star Force had that capability and had constructed this base and its defenses mostly underground. There was no way to get at all of it with orbital bombardment and the downside was the mess he now saw below him. Fighting in that burning mash of trees would be difficult for him, but even more so for a unit of troops.

No, he wasn’t going to spam the area with cleansing beams and then expect his troops to fight through the rubble. Better to use the forest to their advantage, but in this case he needed the tank gone, and gone now it was.

Standing up and walking to the edge of the ravine he tapped his jump pack controls and slid off the side. The angle was steep, but the vegetation covering it had mostly been stripped off in the fiery concussion wave. His feet hit knobby rocks and patches of loose dirt, making his descent awkward but manageable. When he was halfway down he planted a foot on a stable-looking rock and jumped to the left, launching himself with an anti-grav push into one of the side niches that had a topside overhang and that he hadn’t seen from above.

He missed low, but got a handhold on the rim and pulled himself up into the little porch, seeing the body of a lizard with a head wound…as well as the patch of blood on the nearby wall where it had bounced off. There was a small doorway that led inside the ravine wall and Jason could feel minds inside. Pulling out his plasma rifle he headed in and began cleaning out the narrow corridors and stairs, first mentally disabling the lizards then coming up on them and killing them with single shots to conserve ammunition.

Jason moved between three different hidden emplacements before he ran out of tunnel. To get to the others he had to move across trails that no longer existed around the blast radius, and some of the automated turrets were up high and fixed to sheer rock…probably with power cables running through drilled holes. There was no physical access to them for enemy troops to take over and utilize, so Jason had to take those down from the outside or disable the controllers wherever they were hiding nearby.

If Jason were setting these up he’d have relays in place to allow remote control from far distances, so he didn’t bother looking for a nearby bunker and headed out across and under the remains of the trees that had been burnt and bent over, yet not totally destroyed, until he got underneath one of the turrets…with it firing rifle-sized plasma blasts down towards him the moment he came out from under one of the tree mashes.

This was where the tank would have been a particularly bad neighbor to have, but since it was now gone Jason took a few plasma blasts by not dodging, rather he dropped down onto his ankles and did his best impression of a Jedi jump as he activated his jump pack. His trajectory moved him at an angle, bringing him up to a narrow ledge that he managed to get a foot onto. The jump pack held him up long enough to get steadied as he continued to get hit with plasma blasts and the misses blowing out tiny bits of rock shrapnel all around him.

Repeating the process he jumped again, this time getting up to the height of the turret and taking one shot directly in the faceplate. His diminishing shields held up and Jason grabbed hold of one of the multiple barrels sticking out from the boxy turret. He held on and dangled from it underneath, squeezing his mechanical hand as tightly as the mental controls in his armor would allow and locking it in place so his muscles wouldn’t have to. He nearly slid off anyway, but the mechanical grip put a little bit of a dent in the barrel, allowing for some additional grip as he pulled out his plasma pistol from his lower back and pumped multiple rounds into the turret, breaking through the armored casing and exposing the inside.

He took another shot to his shoulder, but most of the barrels couldn’t target him in so close. Tucking his pistol away he reached up and got a hand on the hole he’d just made, gripping the interior before letting go of the barrel. He reached in with the second hand, feet dangling below him over the ravine below, and pried open the turret enough for him to half climb inside. He was going to shoot the vital components but accidentally pulled one out when he was just trying to get a grip.

He nearly fell, but his left hand held firm as he tossed the power conduit out beneath him with it dropping like a rope for a few meters. Jason climbed up and into the turret as much as he could, then ripped out more and more of the guts until he was sure that he’d fatally wounded the turret…and given its placement the lizards wouldn’t be making repairs any time soon.

The Archon grabbed the power conduit and slid down the makeshift rope before letting go at the end and falling down to the ravine wall some 20 meters below and braking with his jump pack before kicking of the angled sidewall and drifting himself out enough to land in the flat bottom.

“One down,” he said, looking ahead at the next one in the green vegetation outside the blast radius, “a million to go.”

9

March 24, 2692

Jafat System (lizard territory)

Irad

Provchad shot one lizard in the chest as it and several others were rushing the Calavari, then he reached down with his lower left hand and grabbed its corpse as it fell, still firing his rifle at the others swarming around him and his brothers. He flung the lizard back into the flow, knocking down several before jumping ahead to land on the body and the small island it made amongst the rest. From there he proceeded to punch, grab, and kick every lizard within arms range, making himself a decoy and taking a lot of plasma hits while the others stayed put as gunners and picked off the nearest targets.

Provchad knew he couldn’t stay out amongst them forever, but his shields were strong and his arms even stronger, though he was kicking as many of the short, scrawny enemies as he was hitting them. Unfortunately that left his upper body as an easy target and his helmet was more often than not the source of the plasma hits, each of which momentarily blinded him as the superheated glowing gas washed over his faceplate.

With the distraction provided, the other Calavari held their position and began creeping forward, firing as they went, and followed Provchad forward until they got to a pass in a small hillside that the lizards were flowing through. Once there two others came forward and relieved him, allowing the Calavari to retreat behind the others and start recharging his shields while they punched and kicked those coming through the gap while pulling and tossing a few further in where the others shot them down.

Provchad inspected his armor, seeing a lot of small divots in the orange plates as a tiny shimmer covered his body when the shield matrix reformed at low strength. Pulling a pack of ammo out of his backpack he began to reload his weapons when he visually spotted something running along the top of the hillside underneath the trees. There hadn’t been any lizards up there and he thought the rocky walls were too steep for them to easily climb, but given the firing angle they had Provchad flicked a pistol up to target the blur before it could fire down on them.

He pulled back when he saw a large black/gold mass running at a speed the lizards could never match, but kept his attention up there trying to make out what he was seeing. It was a Human, obviously, and by the size he’d say a Knight but it wasn’t wearing Knight armor, which was typically bright white. It also didn’t have a shield.

Provchad checked his battlemap to see who/what it was, finding an ID tag but before he had time to check an explosion knocked him down to a knee as the two Calavari at the front were thrown through the air as a det pack went off in their face. With no time to lose Provchad took his ammo and stuffed it back in his pack, then ran up behind the others ready to fight more lizards whether or not his shields were recharged.

Behind the det pack explosion the infantry flooded in through the gap again and Provchad found himself back in a firing line, mowing down as many as they could but with too many tiny bodies running at them for the Star Force troops to shoot them all. The lizards came right up to the big Calavari in their orange armor and fired their plasma weapons into their larger hulks at pointblank range, whittling down their shield strength with every hit.

Suddenly the black blur dropped down directly into the gap in the hillside and every lizard within 10 meters of it fell to the ground. When Provchad saw that he knew that the Human had to be an Archon, for no weapon had been used to take the lizards down, but rather their infamous psionics. As the Calavari continued to shoot the ones in between the Archon and their line he saw the black/gold two-armed ally shoot those lizards on the ground as they were helpless to do anything other than twitch.

Suddenly two more black blurs dropped down from the hillside and fell into the lizards near Provchad, punching them away from where they landed with bright lights on their fists. When they hit they had the distinctive sound of plasma, but the Calavari had never seen such weapons before. They glowed white rather than Star Force standard blue, but he was sure it was a plasma weapon of some kind.

With one holding the choke point with his psionics the oversized Archons helped the Calavari clean out the rest of the lizards on this side then ran towards their twin, disappearing through the gap to the other side and going after the lizards there.

Provchad knew better than to follow, for his shields were down again, so he moved over to the two Calavari that had been hit by the det pack as the others slowly advanced to hold the choke point against any more enemies coming through. When he got over to one he saw a huge hole in his armor that ran from upper right arm down across the chest plate to his left hip. Orange blood was flowing everywhere, but another goo-like substance was eeking out from around the edges of the armor and slowly stopping the blood loss like an instant bandage.

Provchad tapped on the Calavari’s helmet, trying to see if he was still conscious, and got a slight hand wave in response. He didn’t know how bad the wound really was, but he was alive for the moment. Knowing that he couldn’t walk on his own, Provchad grabbed a pistol while putting his rifle back onto his rack, then used his three free hands to lift his badly wounded brother up into a carry position up over his right shoulder.

With his weapon ready to respond if anyone tried to jump them, Provchad began walking the wounded one back the way they’d advanced, hoping to get him to safety before he bled out or got jumped by any roaming lizards, for there were so many corpses littering the ground there was no way to be sure that they were all completely dead. If they weren’t, Provchad was going to finish them with his pistol.

Setting a repeated ‘wounded ally’ signal on the battlemap, he walked his passenger off, knowing that someone could up to take him eventually, then Provchad would return to the front lines.

Darius punched the lizard jumping for his neck with his left fist, knocking it back without delivering a plasma blast. That setting only had a limited number of shots and he didn’t want to waste one now so he kept to traditional hand to hand and broke bone with blunt force rather than burning the lizards with plasma. The other two Arc Knights with him were using plasma, both in the form of pistols, as the trio fought their way through the pool of lizards that had collected on the other side of the hillside.

The Calavari had followed them through, fortunately, for there were too many here for even them to take down head on and they didn’t have time to be coy about this. They had less than 20 minutes to push this line up to a convergence point with another assault group before a reinforcement of lizard tanks beat them to the riverbank. They needed to get across in order to take down a turret tower that was keeping nearby units well away from a firebase that the lizards were literally spewing out of.

Star Force had a mech star moving up the river to try and get close enough to the turret to take it out through the cover of the forest, but they were pinned in close and half submerged in water walking single file in order to make it through the narrow gap in this ravine bottom. That would put them in a bad position if those tanks got to them and it was up to Darius to make sure they never got that far.

He wanted to run ahead and take the tanks on without the Calavari, but there was way too many enemy infantry out and about to contend with while they were assaulting the tanks. They were going to be a handful as it was, and they couldn’t have dozens of plasma blasts hitting them per second when they went after them.

So they needed the Calavari there to deal with the infantry and cover them while they took to the tanks…but the lizards had the Calavari essentially pinned down, meaning the Arc Knights had to move the line up and they didn’t have time to be careful about it. In typical Knight tradition they ran straight into the heart of the enemy and took it to them like a punch to the face.

Their armor was more advanced than standard Knight equipment, but they weren’t carrying any physical shields due to them needing to move fast through the forest and the big barriers weren’t designed for that. Each of them had an assortment of firearms and swords with them, plus their glove augments, which contained both plasma and stun options, but for right now Darius was going to use his natural strength to save ammo as long as he could.

To that end he punched two more back before telekinetically picking up a pair of lizard plasma pistols and dual wielded them as he ran forward shooting and knocking down more infantry, not caring how many hits he took. He had to disrupt the lizards in order for the Calavari to follow up and shoot them down, and to do that the best he needed to be in the middle of them.

Once he got far enough inside the pool of enemies waiting to go through the hillside gap he summoned up his mental strength and emitted as large a Fornax field as he could, dropping well over 100 of the lizards to the ground like an invisible blast had hit them from above. The plasma blasts coming towards him stopped for a moment, then as he held them down shooting the nearest ones around him the lizards outside the radius of the fallen ones saw him and took aim, resuming the plasma barrage on him and ratcheting it up now that he didn’t have a shield of lizards around him blocking far-ranging shots.

Knowing he couldn’t take that much plasma and survive for long he released the Fornax field and the lizards began standing up, some of them right into the path of plasma and taking the friendly fire while the other two Arc Knights pushed through other areas of the assembly pool, one of which had brandished a plasma sword for the occasion. Darius hadn’t used his, for he knew it didn’t hold that many charges, but the extendable blade would be wrapped in plasma that would partially discharge on physical contact akin to a pistol blast. With skill, one could deliver far more plasma strikes with a sword than a firearm and that’s exactly what the Arc Knight had in mind.

He tore through the lizards around him, poking, slashing and kicking them aside in a flurry of movement that even a Jedi would have been hard pressed to match, for the 7 foot tall Human didn’t suffer the typical ‘big guy’ slowness that the Calavari were clearly demonstrating, though some of them were upwards of 8 foot tall.

No, the Knights were fast and the Arc Knights even faster, akin to Archon speed and faster than many of them. Personally trained by the original badass himself, the Black Knight, the Arc Knights suffered nothing in movement when compared to the lizards and were able to outmaneuver and outfight the tiny infantry with ease…there were just so many of them and they had a deadline to meet.

Realizing that the other Arc Knight was right, Darius pulled out his own plasma sword from his back rack and triggered the blade extension. The stubby cylinder sprang out a meter and a half long blade that was bathed in plasma with a second button press, held close and contained by patches of smart shield that would only release with a prerequisite amount of physical pressure. That amount was high enough that a mere brush wouldn’t trigger a ‘shot’ but with the sheer power the Knights had in their arms, let alone before the powered armor enhancements, there was no chance of the blades not discharging when they meant them to.

Darius whipped his sword around and hit two lizards with it in sequence, discharging a couple of shots into the first then hitting the second with the tip. That half of the blade lost its glow for a split second then returned to pure white a moment later. The Arc Knight didn’t try to count the hits, but he knew that if he went hard at the swarm of lizards he’d expend its charge within a minute…but right now that’s what had to be done in order to get to the tanks in time.

Sending a Fornax wave out behind him to diminish the shots into his back, he dashed forward swinging and hacking the glowing blade around and dropping bodies in his wake. The blade didn’t sever limbs like a lightsaber, but it was capable of delivering multiple plasma hits per swing if he wiped the blade across a target…which was more than enough to kill them in a heartbeat.

Darius didn’t look back, fighting his way forward and throwing in a few punches on the way, trusting the Calavari to follow him up and knowing the other two Arc Knights would be doing the same. Sooner than he expected the sword went out, leaving him with a metal rod that he continued to hit lizards with, though he had to amp up the strength of his blows to do enough damage that the lizards stayed down when hit.

Nearly to the far side of the pool he retracted the blade and stuck the hilt back on his rack as he telekinetically grabbed two more lizard rifles and fought his way forward with them and a mix of psionics, eventually getting to the other side and a trail that a scattering of additional lizards were running down to join the others.

He held position there, shooting them and those behind him while the other Arc Knights and Calavari fought their way up to him. Darius didn’t have time to look, but the sea of trees behind him where the lizards had been gathering was quickly turning into a corpse-filled park so thick that the Calavari were actually having to pick up and throw bodies aside to make paths for them to walk through.

Darius waited for the other Arc Knights to catch up to him, then he tossed the lizard weapons aside and grabbed new ones, not knowing what their charge level was, and followed the pair as they passed him on the run. Moving faster than the Calavari could, the threesome fought their way up the trail dropping bodies as they went and rushing towards the rendezvous point, with Darius seeing that the other Calavari unit was closer than them and already engaging infantry near to the waypoint on his battlemap.

That was good, for there were no Arc Knights with them and they’d need both Calavari groups to keep the enemy infantry busy when they hit the tanks, for the region around the turret was heavily defended.

10

March 29, 2692

Jafat System (lizard territory)

Irad

Jason jumped up to the edge of the hole that they’d blown into the roof of the lizard subsurface facility, grabbing the edge and hanging with his feet dangling. He pulled himself up and got an elbow on the edge then slowly wiggled his mass up over the tipping point and crawled along the dirty roof plate. It was melted in some places, jagged in others, but less than a meter away there was a wall of hardened dirt that he began scaling on all fours until he reached the top and could finally stand up.

He breathed a sigh of relief, now that the key facility had been taken and secured. This assault was over, but there were several others ongoing across the planet and many more to come. Taking a planet was not an easy task, especially one with this many enemies…but beyond that they had been dug in more than normal and it had been a very long past six days.

He’d cycled out twice for sleep, with his troops doing so more often than that, but they hadn’t let the lizards rest, keeping someone banging on the door nonstop as they fought their way through the ravines and down into the base. Now that he was topside again his battlemap began to update with information from other battlefronts and space, with him immediately noticing the arrivals in orbit.

There were no less than 8 full Voku conglomerates up there, ahead of schedule. They weren’t here to fight, but to use this system as a springboard for launching attacks into the surrounding area. He’d expected them to wait until Star Force had actually taken possession of the system, but apparently they were eager to get to work expanding their own empire.

The Jafat System was the furthest out into what had formerly been Calavari territory that Star Force had ventured short of a raid. This one they were keeping and would undoubtedly draw a strong reaction…which they were expecting. Irad itself hadn’t been Calavari, but rather belonged to a weak race known as the Bvdan, which were now extinct. The lizards had wiped them out long ago then only recently began heavily colonizing and fortifying this world, probably expecting an attack at some point from orbit, which this subsurface base and others would mostly have been immune to.

That was one thing about the lizards, no matter how cookie cutter their civilization was they always got around to adapting to what was beating them. They’d lost here and were going to lose in the other battles across the planet, but they’d set up their defenses in a way that had made it very difficult for Jason’s troops to root them out. If it hadn’t been for some very wise plays by his people they would have had massive casualties rather than the mere handful he saw tallied on his HUD.

The trailblazer had brought them up first thing along with similar reports from the other engagements. Most were injury reports, but amongst there were a scattering of fatalities. Jason cringed with each one he saw. The vast majority of the galaxy would have seen these reports as an impossibly dominate victory, but to him each individual lost was a defeat. Star Force didn’t assault any world where they expected to lose troops and did their best in defensive engagements to minimize losses, so losing even one meant they’d screwed up somehow…or the lizards had pulled some more trickery out of their butts.

13 deaths…to date. He’d lost 4 of those in this fight, a Calavari, two Scionate, and a commando. The Scionate had gotten overzealous and done something stupid, with Jason kicking himself for sending them in so green…but the others had fought well despite their youth, and if those two hadn’t gone off mission they’d probably still be alive. Jason didn’t like losing them, but he had to remind himself that he couldn’t babysit everyone and if they acted stupidly then there wasn’t much he could do to stop it from coming back to bite them.

What most people in the ADZ knew of the lizards came from these battle reports, for most of them had never seen them in person and those who had were dying off, replaced by younger generations. When landslide victory numbers like this were eventually relayed back to them they thought the lizards were numerically dominant pushovers…but that was not the case. The only reason Star Force had been able to take this base in the way it had was because they were damn good at what they did, but it had the side effect of making the enemy look weak when they were not.

The Calavari he’d lost had been caught up in an ambush and took so much armor damage that he’d been barely able to walk, but he and his unit had come out of it alive and were heading to the rear when a wisp was shot down overhead and fell to the ground. A proximity warning had been quickly issued from orbit, predicting the fall trajectory and the Calavari had managed to get out of the way just in time…save for the one who could barely move.

That was just pure bad luck, and he’d deserved better than that. To win out against an ambush then to die while in the clear was just plain wrong, but then again the galaxy was full of wrongs and try as they would Star Force couldn’t stop all of them. Two other Calavari had been hit with shrapnel from that fighter crash, but their armor had protected them enough to survive the spear-like impacts.

The commando had died in circumstances he hadn’t yet discovered, but it had been in a huge firefight. He’d review that later with those who had been on the ground at the time plus the vid logs once they compiled them all. He knew they had to learn from their mistakes, or their enemies’ ingenuity, in order to prevent deaths like this from occurring again, and Jason would be spending a lot of his future downtime reviewing everything that had taken place on this planet in detail.

That was the beauty of the battlemap and its recorders, which lifted the fog of war in the post analysis and helped to keep the realtime fighting coordinated and sane. If an enemy ever figured a way to compromise their low level communications it would hurt Star Force badly, which was why all their troops had trained to fight with jamming shutting it down and even to fight with a compromised system utilizing various checks and non-electronic hand signals.

But when the battlemap was working it gave them a huge advantage that the lizards didn’t have. The battlemap, their armor and shields, the advanced weaponry…each was a piece in the ever growing puzzle that allowed Star Force to fight and live to see tomorrow, with Jason never willing to tolerate the concept of ‘acceptable losses.’

A lizard might go into combat mere months after it was born, working off of genetic knowledge and its default strength, but in order for a Star Force soldier to get to the frontlines they had to put decades of training and trials in, making each one of them a veteran before they fired a single live plasma blast in battle. And not a veteran as in being on a warfront, but in knowing how to dominate it, when to attack and when to retreat. There were no newbs in Star Force’s assault groups, and because of everything they did in prep and tech, along with battlefield leadership from the Archons, almost everyone Jason had brought into this fight was walking out of it.

But it was the handful that weren’t that weighed on him.

He didn’t want to accept dumb luck, because that meant he couldn’t find a way to protect against it later. When the enemy came to your doorstep to fight, you didn’t have a choice of circumstances and had to work with what was present, but when you were the attacker you did have a choice, and every time someone died Jason wondered if he should have ordered the assault or not, for he was pressing his troops against some very dangerous enemies who had the advantage of terrain and prep time. On the whole he’d been correct about this base assault, but no mission was a complete success unless everyone on his team walked away from it afterwards.

Now that he was back in the open and could receive transmissions from afar an incoming comm icon lit up on his HUD which he activated with a telepathic thought.

“Jason, the Voku have arrived and will be staying insystem for several weeks prior to deployment. They’re asking if you want any assistance on the ground,” Admiral Petry said from the command ship in orbit.

“We’ve got things under control.”

“I think they’re eager to fight rather than questioning the eventual outcome.”

“Explain it to them, and if they are bored assemble them into hot drop response units so I can call them down when needed.”

“Will do. How much longer are you staying down there?”

“We’re finished underground so send a dropship. I need to recharge before the next assault.”

“On its way.”

“Thanks,” Jason said, walking along the burnt grass atop the base around the point where a cleansing beam had punched through the ground to give them a backdoor entrance. A little further off there were broken trees followed by whole forest, through which the mechs had cut several roads to get to makeshift spaceports situated wherever they could find some bits of flat terrain.

The trailblazer walked through the forest until he came to one of those roads then slowly made his way along the side of it. There wasn’t much traffic, but a passing speeder slowed and offered to give him a lift but he waved it off. The driver nodded and zipped on ahead, taking the pair of wounded commandos with him back to the modular medical station they’d brought in from orbit so they could treat nearly all injuries on the surface rather than have them wait to get back onboard a ship in orbit.

But that wasn’t why he’d waved the speeder off. He wasn’t exhausted but needed the break just to clear his thoughts and settle his mood, which was accomplished best when he had some low level activity to do, which made walking preferable to sitting at the moment. He pulled one of the last senzu beans out of its slot within the interior of his helmet and telekinetically steered it around his cheekbone to his mouth where he bit off a tiny slice.

That he swallowed while returning the rest of the bean to its holding spot, not wanting an overdose right now that taking the whole thing would have resulted in. Jason was feeling a bit deplenished and just wanted to top off. He also felt like pulling his helmet off and getting some fresh air on his head, but knew better than to do so in what was still enemy territory. One little lucky plasma shot by a roaming lizard to the head and he’d be dead…and after over 600 years of training he wasn’t going to risk squandering it all for a bit of fresh air.

So he just walked and let the responsibilities for the troops below his feet rest with someone else for the time being. There was no more fighting going on in the base, for they’d cleared it all out, but there were housekeeping duties that required an army of techs that he’d ordered to start coming down a little over half an hour ago. After a few minutes of walking a larger speed passed him carrying the first of them, with his troops staying in and around the base to guard them just in case they’d missed a lizard or two.

With them mostly off his mind Jason tried to relax and let the combat emotions flow out of him…which had become easy after so many years of training and fighting. Rarely did anything spook him enough that he couldn’t transit back and forth between emotional modes within a handful of seconds, but the deaths of his men were always something that stuck with him. Even though they were gone he still couldn’t accept it, for accepting it would be condoning it and that could never be allowed to happen.

So what he did instead was accept the anger but let his body relax. There would be more fighting to come and they’d need him there, in one fashion or another, so it was necessary that he was awake and alert, and right now he was pushing 48 hours of activity. Inas aside, that was pushing it for Jason considering how much ambrosia he’d been pumping through his body. The physical combat was less intense than his normal training, but his psionic usage combined with the ever present need to be alert, both for his sake and others, had taken its toll on him.

He wasn’t near the dropping point, nor anywhere close to it, but he was close to getting his mind hazy and his reflexes sluggish and that was something he couldn’t tolerate. He’d head back up to the command ship, take care of some duties there and begin organizing the next big assault while his troops likewise began transferring back up to orbit or some of the secure bases they’d established on the planet for a brief rest and recovery.

Meanwhile other battles were ongoing and Jason would pick through those from the command ship briefly, but what he needed right now the most was rest, meaning it was time for a crash nap then some light training to get his mojo back in order before a good long sleep.

But right now he was just walking along the crudely cut out road and hopping over an occasional limb that had fallen out into the clearing or over the small puddles that mech footprints had created with a recent rain. With each step he took he seemed to process out more of the stress flowing through him and by the time he reached the end of the road and the edge of the makeshift clearing that had dropships coming down like an orderly flock of birds he feeling good enough that he was tempted to redeploy out to one of the ongoing battles.

He knew he had to stay ahead of the fatigue rather than fight it head on, so he stuck with the plan and found the dropship that the Admiral had sent for him as the techs unloaded from the others nearby. With them came loads of equipment and some fresh troops that would start relieving the ones below. All of the techs wore light armor, despite their dislike for it, and would continue to do so until this area was completely safed. Couldn’t afford to lose one of them either with sloppiness.

More speeders zipped off down the road, taking them over to one of several base entrances where they would begin itemizing the contents for decommission and removal. They weren’t going to take the time to destroy and remove the entire base given that it was built underground, but they were going to gut it, do some patchwork repairs, then seal it up for either future use or reclamation…which would see the lizard structures broken down piece by piece and replaced with Star Force ones without caving in the ground over your head.

That would be long into the future, for most of the techs would be busy building Star Force structures on the surface and tearing apart the lizard bases that orbital bombardment had wrecked while safing others like this that were below ground. Star Force was keeping this system and building up this planet into a fortress world…or so was the plan, and that wasn’t something that happened overnight.

This was the beginning of the big push into lizard territory, not merely for raids to ‘mow the grass’ but to start taking back systems by the dozens and call the enemy’s bluff. Jason knew it wasn’t a true bluff and they’d be in for a big counterattack at some point but now was the time to do it before they grew any stronger. They were committing so many resources to Skarron space he wasn’t sure what kind of a hit the lizard would or could throw at them, but he doubted they’d just be left alone. The design of this planet’s infrastructure told him that the lizards were gearing up to defend against Star Force and he doubted that they wouldn’t have another surprise or two waiting for them.

Jason still had numerous sites on this planet to take, plus the waterworld that was reporting continuous small-scale fighting. It would be a while before both were securely in Star Force hands, then even longer for them to get truly secure, though a few Sentinels were already on their way here from the ADZ. Those combined with the fleets heading this way, of which the Voku were only one, would be able to hold this system while Star Force built it up along with a few other guests.

Once they had it secured they’d begin funneling all resupply through the system and branch out as they began the long crusade towards the Pagalis System, sweeping up the systems in between and along the Zeta Region border as they began returning the Calavari to their former worlds.

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1

March 2, 1203559 BC

Prenthor System

Qitor

“How much time do we have?”

“The Oracle estimates no more than 3 days, and should we pass that line there will be little for us to do to stop it. We must have your machines now.”

The Trinx shook its headtails in dismay. “You may well have doomed us all.”

“Can you not get them here in time? Your colony is less than 2 lightyears away.”

“I have brought them with me, and more are on their way, but if greater numbers are required they may not arrive in time.”

The Sety twisted its branch-like neck and adjusted its breath mask when it slipped ajar. “How many have you brought?”

“I have brought all that I could. Let us hope it is enough,” the biped said as he and the wooden quadruped stepped into a secure lift that would take them to the provisional command center 90 kilometers away from the excavation site. “70,000 are on their way now.”

“To where? They cannot come within close proximity…”

“To the rendezvous point, I am no fool. You and your clumsy people have claimed that title.”

“The Oracle had not deciphered our language in time to give a proper warning. There was no way for us to know.”

“If you had waited for The Nine this would not have occurred.”

“We are allies, not blood brothers…and this was our find.”

“And yet here we are.”

“I do not deny that the Sety cracked the case, but had any of you been here I do not believe circumstances would have been any different. It is at this moment irrelevant. If we do not sedate and reseal we are as good as dead.”

“That I have been made well aware, and not just because of your clumsy attempts prior to my arrival,” the Trinx said as the doors on the lift opened and the pair walked into the medium-sized circular room that held the other expedition leaders from The Nine. They were an old alliance that kept mostly to themselves unless great danger befell one of the others, then all would rally without question and come to the besieged’s aid…as they were now, though the threat was not only to them but the whole of the galaxy.

“Finally,” the Bpret said, shifting from a biped form and into a quadruped as it walked a few steps towards the arriving pair, with its almost clear gelatinous form causing the holograms behind it to bend as the light passed through the tall creature, the largest of the group. “Did you bring them?”

“They are on the ships heading across the surface now,” the Trinx said, stepping around the shapeshifter to get a look at the master holo in clarity. “Have you produced sufficient chemical?”

“We are not producing it, the Oracle is,” another of The Nine said, this one a cyborg. “We are merely supplying the rare materials. It has been costly, but the Oracle has assured us that we have enough, it is the delivery mechanism that we are lacking.”

“Your people were killed on approach?” the Trinx asked, looking at the hologram of the huge excavation site buried deep below the planet’s surface. A vertical shaft ran straight down to it with a series of spiral infrastructure platforms meandering down the chasm like a staircase, on top of which a large number of icons were emblazoned.

“We don’t know,” the Sety answered. “When they pass within range their minds betray them. They drop the canisters and stand still as statues. The people we sent to assist them suffered the same fate.”

“What range?”

“It was 2.3 kilometers at the outset, but it has grown to 2.8 at present. The more the creature wakes the greater the field.”

“What type of field are we talking about? Latku stun or verisas?”

“Neither,” another of The Nine said. “We have sensed a massive telepathic aura around the god. We think it is taking control of their minds rather than emitting a biological stun. That is why we need your machines.”

“Psionic?” the Trinx asked in disbelief. “Why was I not told this before?”

“We were not sure. We are still not sure, but recently have made several deductions.”

“The Yisv only arrived two days ago,” the Sety said defensively.

“Why haven’t you simply launched a missile?”

“Do you think we haven’t tried? Any fast moving objects are intercepted. The Oracle says it’s a primitive defense mechanism,” the Sety half argued. He was filled with a mixture of shame and fear, but the Trinx’s criticism wasn’t helping and only wasting time. “The slow moving attempts we made were equally blocked with some form of point defense, but the Oracle assures us that with sufficient numbers it can be overcome.”

“Is there enough chemical to survive those losses?”

“Unknown,” the cyborg answered. “We have encased them in protective shells that must be opened manually upon arrival. Our remote signals are not penetrating to the surface of the creature. There is a jamming field that is likewise expanding.”

“The Oracle says it is a shield, but one that physical matter can pass through. If it wakes up any further that shield will become a barrier that we will not be able to breach short of weaponsfire on a level that the Oracle assures us will be enough to fully awaken the creature, so we must sedate it now or we will lose our only chance of redeeming this mistake. You must send your machines with the canisters immediately, there is no more time for talk.”

“You are putting a lot of faith in this Oracle.”

“Should we not?” the Sety questioned. “The Ancients left it here to safeguard against a breach and to teach others how to continue to subdue the beast. I see no reason not to trust the program at its word.”

“I know a bit more about software than you do,” the Trinx scoffed, for their entire army was made up of drone warriors. They could be ordered to act remotely, but they could also follow scripts that in this case would be necessary if there was a jamming field around the body.

“We also concur with the Oracle,” the cyborg agreed, trumping the software experience tenfold.

“Very well, I just hope it will be enough.”

“You must order your machines not to return fire,” another of The Nine cautioned. “Any attack will hasten the awakening.”

“So noted,” the Trinx acknowledged. “Where do we stand on repairs to the containment shell?”

“78% complete,” the cyborg answered.

“Will that be enough if we deliver the sedative now?”

“We have no choice but to deliver it now,” the Sety argued.

The Trinx held up warning finger towards the walking tree. “I need to know if we’re going to have to fight multiple runs to continue sedating the creature or if this will be a single endeavor.”

“A partially successful sedative attack will delay the awakening,” the smallest of The Nine said, walking around the rim of the hologram where the 13 inch tall triped perched. “A full dose should return it to slumber sufficient for the shell to keep it subdued long enough for full repairs to be made. So even if we fail, so long as we get some sedative to it we will extend our timeframe.”

The Trinx nodded his thanks for a pithy answer. “Very well, I will throw everything we have at them. Let us hope it is enough to at least delay this catastrophe until more of our forces arrive.”

Deep inside the chasm the Sety had excavated down to the shell, there was an aperture that allowed access to the inner shell, and it was there that the rendezvous point was. That gap between the two was a mix of empty space and the machinery that made up the containment device that kept the massive creature dormant, for it was so powerful that the Ancients had not been able to destroy it. They had managed to subdue it with a chemical, but any attempts to kill it once sedated only canceled the effect, waking it up again to the demise of any around.

Not finding a way to kill the creature, they had chosen to imprison it here and built the shell to both maintain the sedation through a continuous dosage as well as to inform anyone who found it of the dangers and how to keep the creature dormant. The Sety had uncovered the Ancient artifact and entered in exploration, encountering the Oracle who had tried to prevent them from access. Thinking it was merely a test the Sety had broken through the walls preventing them from reaching the huge internal region that the inner shell protected.

There was no door there that they could find, so the Sety had cut through a section of the 60 kilometer wide ‘egg’ and entered, crossing over to the centerpiece only to be rebuffed and ill from the attempt. A few died shortly thereafter but all made it out, after which they began to study what was inside from afar and set up an observation post at the breach point, keeping themselves far from the creature at the center that at first appeared to be a massive stone.

Whatever was making them sick had occurred within a hundred meters of it, but now the landscape around the creature in the center was littered with a living forest of mostly Sety, but a few other races were there as well from those who later had sent teams in only to have them get caught up in the paralytic psionic field that was continually expanding outward.

The Yisv were monitoring its size and strength with their own psionics, and were the only race within The Nine that possessed that ability. They were situated far from the field, knowing not to risk closure, for the intensity was so massive that a mere brush with it could kill them on contact. They knew little about it, but the Oracle had been forthcoming with a great deal of knowledge…yet most of it was far beyond their understanding.

What the program was clear about was the timetable, for the longer they delayed the quicker the creature would wake up, for the damage the Sety had done when cracking the inner shell had diminished the ability of the facility to continually sedate the monster. Once sedated again by a massive dose, the Oracle would be able to use the raw materials that were being provided to it to fully repair the shell, as the Ancients had designed the program to be able to do, and keep the unkillable threat contained even in their absence.

What had happened to the Ancients was a mystery that not even the Oracle knew, but their relics were highly valued amongst The Nine and others. They took the warning from them at face value, for an enemy too powerful for the Ancients to defeat was one that they could not begin to handle themselves. So it was with little skepticism that The Nine followed the instructions of the Oracle to the letter, though while it was able to answer questions and offer warnings, it did not have a method of delivery for the chemical beyond the slow continual dispersion that was now inadequate, leaving it up to The Nine to come through in that regard.

Had they acted sooner they could have walked right up to the side of the living mountain and applied the chemical, but the Sety had wasted so much time floundering around that the Ancients’ bane had woken sufficiently to begin throwing up subconscious defenses…and the limited weaponsfire the Sety had applied before the Oracle warned them off had only hastened the reawakening.

The reprogramming of the Trinx troops hadn’t taken long to accomplish, so the bipedal machines standing approximately 3 meters in height entered the inner shell through the shrinking breach point as the Oracle’s army of tiny technomites gradually rebuilt the machinery that the Sety had unwittingly damaged. The Trinx ‘vassals’ each carried in their arms a container of orbs, which were akin to a squishy seed about the size of a melon, and marched them out onto the large plain around the creature, not in a column, but in a wide line on the counsel of the Oracle.

When they reached the invisible barrier they passed through it, subsequently losing their telemetry link back to the Trinx controllers and leaving them to operate entirely on their own internal programming now.

A bit closer the tiny specs of the vassals came under attack from various points on the mountainside of the sleeping creature. Reacting to the movement small deformations appeared and sprouted sporadic nubs that charged up with energy and began emitting a few lightning strikes out at the vassals, hitting two or three with each attack. The machines literally disintegrated with the hits, dropping the canisters that hadn’t been blown apart with them, who fell like baskets of apples, spilling the seeds across the synthetic ground.

The rest of the vassals marched onward, taking hits but advancing their line continually until they finally reached the side of the creature. There they opened the baskets and began picking out individual seeds to hurl at the beast, breaking their soft shells and spilling the semi-liquid onto the creature’s rock-hard skin. Somehow the substance that the Oracle had produced soaked into and was almost consumed by the rock, disappearing entirely after lingering a handful of seconds.

More and more of the vassals were cut down hurling the seeds at the creature, whose return fire was diminishing in response, but after a lengthy fight the vassals were all destroyed leaving their baskets half full and mostly spilled over the floor surrounding the monster.

The Sety in the control room got a brief message from another of its race in the Oracle chamber, relying the wisdom from the Ancient program. The tree-like quadruped disconnected the private comm and looked at the other 8 leaders. “It wasn’t enough, the creature is still waking. We have slowed it, but nearly all the chemical is still lying on the floor and now out of our range until we can get more vassals here.”

“How much time do we have?” the cyborg asked.

“The Oracle says no more than 4 days.”

The Trinx shook its head again in dismay. “We cannot have more here before then, not in the number we need.”

“What do we do?” the Yisv asked, having studied the warnings from the Oracle in detail. It had been insistent that their only hope came from immediate action, else the waking creature would scale beyond their ability to contain.

“The Sety have killed us all,” the Trinx said, realizing that it was lost.

“No,” the cyborg said before the panicked bickering could begin. “There is another way.”

“What have we not considered?” the Sety asked, desperate for even the slightest glimmer of hope.

The cyborg reached a thick finger up and tapped the side of its head, then ran out of the room knowing that every second he delayed the creature would grow stronger. They had to stop this thing now, no matter what the sacrifice.

Those thoughts were transmitted out to the other Chamra on the planet instantaneously, with them understanding and agreeing without argument or dissent. All of them, no matter where they were, began heading towards the shell and gathering around the inner breach point. They didn’t bother to enlighten the others of The Nine about what they were doing for there was no point and no time, they had to get the sedatives deployed immediately, for even when the Oracle got the repairs completed the creature could not be in an agitated state, else it would overwhelm the machinery in the shell.

The Chamra leader met the others and waited for them all to arrive, then as a group they took off running towards the spilt chemical seeds, moving far faster than the bigger vassals had traveled but not fast enough to trigger the physical defense barrier that had stopped any missile attempts. When the cyborgs hit the psionic field their brains were compromised, immediately stunned into a trance…but their technological components were not and acted as a counterbalance, running security checks on all impulses and weeding out the interference. It was labor intensive calculations, but it allowed the Chamra to continue functioning on a low level as they ran by the Sety statues that were gradually starving to death where they stood.

There was no time to save them, and as the cyborgs came closer to the creature a few lightning arcs emerged, not so many as before, but enough to begin killing them by the handful as those that were not immediately hit were starting to get to the spilt chemical seeds. They picked them up individually and ran forward, smashing chemical packets against the side of the creature then retreating to pick up more. Moving with an enhanced speed that was typical of cyborgs, they rushed to deliver as many chemical seeds as possible before they were cut down.

The other 8 leaders watched from the control room as thousands of Chamra sacrificed themselves to deliver the last of the chemical…coming up just short before all of them were killed, but the Yisv quickly confirmed that the psionic field had shrunk, and if it was as low as it was when the Sety first breached the shell then the sickness should have replaced it.

Desperate to finish the task the Sety, Trinx, Yisv, and every other race of The Nine pulled all personnel on site and sent them into the shell, with many taking sick the moment they got near the creature. Many dropped to the ground within a few seconds, with the Yisv being completely compromised and catatonic, but some stronger willed individuals in the other races persisted long enough to get to the seeds and smash a few more, though often it took two weakened individuals combining their strength to break one open.

Most of the individuals in that assault lived through the next hour then died over the coming days, but the Oracle was quick to inform them when sufficient chemical had been applied and the suicidal charge was recalled. Those Sety that had been turned into living statues did not make it out, dying from the sickness within minutes, but their bodies were dragged out all the same and the Oracle oversaw the final stages of the repairs, finally resealing the monster to its fully dormant state.

Of the leaders of The Nine on planet, none survived, for they had gone in the final wave as well to maximize their window of opportunity, but those who were left alive in the aftermath reported what had happened and relayed the warnings of the Oracle to their distant leadership while continuing to ply it with questions. Coming to grasp the horror they had narrowly avoided The Nine immediately took up custody of the planet and quarantined it under heavy guard to ensure that no one could intentionally or accidentally breach the shell again.

The galaxy had been spared a fateful blow, and The Nine intended to protect the work of the Ancients indefinitely, no matter what the future costs, for they would be nil if the creature was ever to wake again.

2

May 3, 2723

Haphchap System (lizard territory)

Unnamed planet

Four Li’vorkrachnika rushed down one of their angled tunnels, descending lower into the bedrock as the three standard variants escorted a larger ‘tech’ that had approximately the same body type but was reserved for dealing with scientific matters. It had been grown along with a few others when the highly dense corovon deposit that they’d located deep underground had been found to be housed within an artificial construct of unknown origin.

The tech variants had been analyzing it and given the go ahead to begin cannibalizing a section of the outer hull, for while it wasn’t the source of the majority of the corovon readings it still held an unusually high concentration of the valuable element. As it was, there were three different breaches in the hull that were being expanded upon as an army of lizards were surveying the interior, learning and collecting whatever bits of technology they could get their hands on.

Another team had been delving deeper trying to get to the source of the insanely high corovon readings, which required breaking through a secondary internal hull. A defense program had been hindering their progress for months, but finally they’d been able to shut it down via some well-placed explosives and burn their way through the inner hull to get their first look at the corovon deposit.

It wasn’t as large as the interior, rather just a ‘small’ object laying inside the 10 kilometer-wide empty internal cavern. Whatever it was wasn’t pure corovon, that was obvious by the dirty blue coloration, but it was giving off such high readings that even a tiny piece of the mile long object would be invaluable to their operations on the planet…let alone what the entire mass would do for the lizard empire as a whole once they got to the point of sending out exports.

But apparently there had been some sort of chemical contamination, for the workers on the collection efforts had begun reporting illnesses as they tried in vain to chip off even a small portion of what appeared to be a massive statue. The high levels of corovon were obviously responsible for that and it would take some time to break it down into transportable chunks for processing, but if there was a contaminate in or around the object the tech lizard was going to be the one to ascertain what it was.

To that end it was carrying an array of gear strapped to its body on top of the envirosuit it wore. The three standard variants wore no protection, nor did the others still working in the massive artifact, but if this one was to leave for further analysis of any samples collected it couldn’t risk bringing the contamination out in its own body so protocol dictated that it err on the side of caution.

When they came out of the descending tunnels they passed through the original breach point in the artifact and were met with reports of additional illness, though it had escalated to onsite incapacitation rather than the mobile and conscious patients that had been examined previously by standard variant medics. If this was a disease locked away for who knew how long then it could very well wreak havoc with the Li’vorkrachnika population on the planet.

Before it went any further the tech relayed an order to seal the shafts at the surface. If they couldn’t contain this then they’d die here rather than risk spreading it to the others, but if they were going to die he’d need to gather information to send to the others up top so they could devise a cure or countermeasure because this corovon find was by far the largest ever recorded, and even if it meant the deaths of billions of his kin it would be worth it to the empire once harvested.

Knowing what his duty was, the tech variant hurried forward with its assistants/escorts through the outer ring of compartments until they got to the inner breach site and found a mass of their kin waiting there. They were stopped immediately, then the tech variant was allowed to pass to the front of the crowd where he was pointed towards the sea of tiny dots ahead that were the other Li’vorkrachnika that had been affected.

A standard variant passed him a magnifying scope and the tech placed it over his left eye, allowing him to see in more detail those who had fallen ill…except they hadn’t fallen. They were standing perfectly still, every last one of them.

A perplexed expression crossed the tech’s face, then the others pointed out the approximate boundary of the affected region, citing that when they’d sent another team in they’d become affected almost immediately. The tech turned his attention to that location and saw the 18 Li’vorkrachnika there, all standing still like statues.

He took a moment to think through the possibilities, in a way that only his scientifically engineered mind could, then told the standard variants to stay put while he investigated, given that he was the only one with a body suit. So he began the long, multiple kilometer trek alone and by foot, not using any of the vehicles nearby and taking atmospheric readings every step of the way…yet finding nothing out of the ordinary.

The tech variant was pondering what could possibly be going on that would cause the ill to stand erect rather than fall as he got within 200 meters of the most recently effected, then suddenly his mind started to blur and he stumbled forward a few more steps before his momentum stopped. He moved his scanner so he could get a better view of it, but it was his eyes that were beginning to go out rather than the position of his head or the device.

Before he realized what was going on the majority of his brain locked up into a kind of active stasis, with ‘holding’ input signals going out to every part of his body, fixing it rigidly in place and maintaining his last stance, adding the tech variant to the growing number of statues around the object.

Three days later the ‘freezing field’ had extended out to the breach in the inner hull, with many of the bodies trapped inside it having fallen to the ground from exhaustion or death from the illness that had first afflicted them. New ones had been added to them around the edges as Li’vorkrachnika were sent in wearing biomonitors so they could try and ascertain how they were being affected and by what, but their readings were inconclusive right up until a tremor tripled through the artifact and toppled half of the remaining living statues to the ground.

Pushed back beyond the entryway, there were no free Li’vorkrachnika to witness the twitch of movement in the object, but had they been there they wouldn’t have known what to make of it anyway. The large stone statue bent slightly, and that motion was enough to cause a chain reaction within it, clearing out more of the lingering sedative and partially awakening the beast from its artificially induced slumber.

With the surrounding array no longer capable of keeping it sedate, the enormous hexaped pushed its left rear leg out, scraping it along the floor and gouging out a deep furrow on the pedestal that held it in the center of the array. With every movement that followed the pedestal broke and tore as if it was merely loose dirt being moved aside until the creature finally rose up on all six legs, each more than 300 meters wide, and released a roar that coincided with a telekinetic wave that hit and ripped apart everything around it.

The pedestal crumbled further beneath its feet, sinking it down some 30 more meters, but the array above the creature didn’t fare nearly as well and was almost instantaneously disabled from the invisible impact, leaving only that part beneath the false ground to continue transmitting the restraint psionic that worked in conjunction with the chemical to keep the living mountain incapacitated.

As the thing woke further it released more psionic energy in a series of angry tantrums, slowly breaking apart its cage as the lizards in the outer ring of the artifact ran up their tunnels towards the surface…only to be blocked by the quarantine and locked inside to their imminent deaths.

2 months later…

“Easy helm, let’s not get too close,” Gosfu said, watching their scout ship’s position on the system map relative to the large Li’vorkrachnika warfleet they’d run across.

“Easing off, though we’re well within sensor tolerance.”

“Best to be overly cautious where stealth is concerned,” the Trinx commander said, watching the ships as they repositioned from jumppoint to jumppoint across the orbital arc of the main star. To date the Li’vorkrachnika had only assaulted his homeworld once, in pathetic fashion, but since then their scout fleet had been given orders to survey the surrounding region that the reptilian race had encroached upon.

They were spreading out far and wide, as opposed to the Trinx who inhabited only one system and chose to keep it that way. This primitive race was no real threat to them, but their other neighbors were not so secure and succumbing rapidly as this juggernaut continued to roll forward. The Trinx were not interested in fighting other people’s wars, but they did want to keep appraised of what was going on around them.

Ever since the territory around the Trinx homeworld had been overrun and the Li’vorkrachnika’s attempt to conquer them had failed without prompting a counterattack, their empire had been more or less quiet in this region, slowly building up their worlds and producing more ships to send off in small groups to the ever moving fronts. So when this convoy had crossed their paths it took Gosfu’s attention, in so much that he was curious about where exactly it was headed.

He wasn’t worried about it being sent to attack them, for such a fleet, while overpowering to others, was no match for even a handful of Trinx ships. His scout ship alone could destroy more than a quarter of them, so his curiosity was based not in self-preservation but in adding to the Trinx situational awareness. As far as they knew there was no one else in the region worthy of this level of Li’vorkrachnika attention, nor were there any primary shipping lanes passing through it.

“Stay well clear until the last one jumps, then take us with them at a discrete distance.”

“We’re following?” the helmsman asked, his headtails flipping aside as his face spun around.

“A hunch,” the commander explained.

“As you will. How far do you plan on following them?”

“Until my curiosity is sated.”

“How discrete would you like?”

“Calculate their jump vector and speed, then mimic out of sensor range. Their redeployment speed is pitiful. We can reacquire on the far end.”

“What are you expecting to find?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m curious.”

The Trinx scout ship dogged the Li’vorkrachnika through six additional jumps before they finally arrived in the Haphchap System, a location known to be under their control but otherwise uninteresting. The last intelligence data they had on it was the existence of a small startup colony like hundreds of others were being seeded throughout the region, but upon deceleration into the system they discovered a great deal more.

The warfleet they had been following was only a small fraction of the total number of ships present in the system, all of whom were located in orbit around a single planet.

“What’s going on here?” Gosfu wondered aloud, looking at the thousands of warships in orbit as they approached, following the last bits of the convoy as it moved in to join them…then as they got within proximity of the planet the sensor panel lit up with a preprogrammed alarm that shot a mixture of adrenaline, shock, and horror throughout the Trinx crew.

The sensor officer literally knocked herself out of her seat as she reflexively jerked back from the screen, landing on her butt and turning to face the commander. “Hamoriti,” she whispered.

“Recheck all systems,” he said immediately, hoping like hell this was a mistake. “Bring us out of stealth mode and give me full sensor scan…and get us closer. I don’t care about that fleet. We have to confirm this one way or another.”

The Trinx scout ship, about the length of three Li’vorkrachnika cruisers, dropped its camouflage shields and accelerated towards the planet, bypassing the last of the convoy and flying straight down to upper low orbit. They all knew they had to keep their distance, for the stories they learned as children taught them as much, but they needed to get within better sensor range to confirm the psionic signature they were picking up from afar.

The scout ship decelerated in the blink of an eye, with the orbital fleet moving slowly to chase it and the commander not caring. His eyes were on the holographic displays before him as they were updating and centering on a surface location that had several hundred Li’vorkrachnika cruisers surrounding a mass even larger than one of them. They were firing on it from multiple angles with weapons that were not plasma-based, which was totally foreign to their design motif, but they had to or their ships would be caught up in the paralysis field if they didn’t use long range ordinance.

That thought barely registered to the commander as he stared at the blue, six-legged mass not believing it was really here. This planet was not one of the seven, and there were only 7 Hamoriti the Ancients had trapped. One of them sat below his homeworld, with the Trinx as its self-appointed guardian and keeper. The others in The Nine were doing likewise with four more. The remaining two were beyond their reach, sitting buried beneath planets in enemy territory where they could not presently reach.

This planet was far from either of those locations. Furthermore, this Hamoriti didn’t match the descriptions of the others. Each was unique and this monster was something altogether new.

“How can this be?” the helmsman asked, not even caring about the proximity reports as several Li’vorkrachnika ships were closing to weapons range.

Gosfu ignored the question, but he was thinking the same thing as he watched one of the cruisers down on the planet get hit with a beam of pure blue fire emitting from the Hamoriti’s head. It passed through the ship like it wasn’t even there, puffing out a huge explosion when the material vaporized, leaving only bits and pieces to fall to the ground afterward.

The other Li’vorkrachnika ships continued firing some form of physical slugs at the mass that exploded on contact, but Gosfu knew how futile that was. The Hamoriti ate corovon, with their bodies being the most potent armor the galaxy had ever known…but what he didn’t understand was why this one hadn’t killed all the enemy ships attacking it. After the single blue beam it did nothing for a long time, then seeming to summon up a great effort, it released another beam that hit a second cruiser.

This wasn’t right, for a Hamoriti should have been capable of destroying all of them on a whim.

“Is there an Ancient facility on the planet?” he finally asked, knowing what this meant for the galaxy if his eyes weren’t truly deceiving him.

“There’s a subsurface structure similar to the one on Vikod, but I can’t confirm make from this distance.”

Gosfu lowered his head, trying to quiet his nerves. “Take us into the atmosphere and do a close scan of both the creature and the cavern.”

All the bridge crew turned from the live images being displayed and stared at him, knowing that such a thing was a death sentence.

“There is something not right here,” he explained, wondering if this was the right course of action or not. “It is fighting the Li’vorkrachnika but only tentatively, almost as if it is weak. If it is not destroying them quickly, then we should be able to get in and out with the information we need.”

Gosfu looked up at them, pleading in his eyes. “We have to know if there is an Ancient shell down there.”

“We’re dead anyway,” the helmsman said, turning back to his controls with a flurry of headtails spinning about. “Might as well know the particulars.”

“No!” one of the other crewers yelled as he stood up. “Go near that thing and we’re dead! You know we will be. This is suicide!”

Gosfu jabbed a finger at the image of the Li’vorkrachnika ships surrounding the creature, though the vast majority of their fleet was still in orbit, some of which were even now shooting on the scout ship with their primitive plasma weapons. “They’re not dead. Not yet. And if we have a window of opportunity I am not going to waste it!” he yelled ever louder than the other had. “We have to give our people as much information as we can. If this one is weak, or a cousin to the others, or what I don’t care, but if there’s even the smallest chance of surviving it we need information and I’m not going to waste this. Do you understand me? We cannot waste this!”

The other Trinx shook its head adamantly, not listening to the logic and consumed by the fear instilled in them since birth. “No, no we can’t!”

“Helm, get us moving,” Gosfu ordered, feeling the same fear but not letting it totally consume him. “Get every bit of data we can on one pass. We’re not going to risk two,” he said, pointing at the vocal crewmember before the next scream of protest came. “And you will be silent…or removed.”

Two others nearby walked up next to the Trinx and stared at it, not saying a word, then it finally buckled and sat down, holding its head in its hands and muttering to itself how they were all going to die.

3

August 24, 2723

Paquat System

Vikod (Trinx homeworld)

Nesfa walked with a trio of Regents, each a longtime guardian tasked with defending and monitoring the sleeping beast hidden beneath the surface of their capitol. There were other inhabited planets in the system, but Vikod was the most densely populated and heaviest defended of them all to insure that no one could gain access to the Ancient shell. The native population knew it was there but only a handful actually had access to it and this was the first time that Nesfa had gone in person to the location.

The artifact was buried deep within the planet, with the Trinx learning that was by design to supply it with continuous geothermal power in case its own power reserves ever failed, as well as to continually recharge them as time passed. The shell also gathered resources from the surrounding rock layers that were partially molten, which had made the facility difficult to access initially when the Trinx took possession of this planet, but their technology had advanced so far in the millennia that had passed that the conduit they’d built down to reach it was in no danger of breaching.

The main shaft didn’t lead directly to the artifact, but rather to a small city they’d built adjacent to it. There they kept a permanent staff ensuring that any minute twitch from either the machinery or the beast would be measured and an alarm sounded, but in all the recorded history of the Trinx guarding this Hamoriti there had not been one such occurrence. The Ancients had constructed their prisons well, and so long as the Trinx kept outsiders from interfering it was believed that the beast could be kept safely sedated for all of time.

As the Prefect walked through the monitoring facility he got reports of no activity from this shell. That shouldn’t have surprised him, but he half-expected this one to be waking up too. He didn’t know why, because they were completely disconnected from one another and spread out across different star systems with no interlinking communication functions, but never in recorded history had anything like this happened aside from the initial incident with the Sety’s Hamoriti. They’d barely been able to contain it then, and it hadn’t so much as twitched.

Now there was one free of its prison and doing battle with the Li’vorkrachnika that had awoken it…but it shouldn’t have even existed. Everything the Oracle had told them indicated that there were 7 Hamoriti. The only possible explanation was that one of the two that The Nine didn’t have guardianship over had been moved, but even that wasn’t possible. The descriptions of all of them were vivid in the Prefect’s memory, and the newly discovered one was unlike any of the others.

Nesfa didn’t know what was going on, and fearing the doomsday warned against he was going to the only source of knowledge on the Hamoriti that The Nine had ever had. That being the Oracles.

The quartet walked through guard station after guard station, with a formidable amount of weaponry set up should any outsider make it this far underground in the unlikely circumstance that someone got by their surface defenses. A direct attack had been unlikely, but what had worried the Trinx more was an infiltrator sneaking past and gaining access to the artifact, with these weapons emplacements, troops, and sealed doors intending to deny them even sight of the Ancient prison.

There were a number of procedures to pass through, time locks and such that prevented any quick access, with Nesfa waiting patiently while the Regents handled all that was required. Once the last measure had been passed the doors behind them closed, obscuring the final defensive emplacements from view, before the much smaller opposite single hatch pulled open revealing one of the actual entrances on the shell’s surface. Initially they had been nearly impossible to find, but after the Sety had unwittingly damaged theirs when trying to cut their way in the Trinx had made sure not to make that mistake again and had spent many centuries looking for a proper way inside before finally finding one.

Two of the Regents stayed in the defense cupola while Nesfa and the other walked inside, transitioning off of Trinx infrastructure to the floor built by the Ancients so long ago. In all this time no one had learned what had happened to them, and the Oracles only possessed knowledge regarding the Hamoriti and their imprisonment. They had not tried to directly access the Ancient computer systems for fear of unwittingly releasing the creature, so it was possible that the Oracles knew more than they said. Nesfa wasn’t going to risk unleashing this monster, but he was going to try and get whatever shreds of an answer he could out of this one.

A short hallway led to a series of maintenance shafts that spurred off a central command area, with other redundant structures spread around the gap between shells. The Oracle could be accessed at any of them and many other smaller stations, and as the pair of Trinx approached its hologram appeared in the center of the chamber and ‘flew’ towards them, speaking in the native Trinx language that it had deciphered long ago.

“Greetings, Regent and guest,” the tri-tipped icon said aloud, with all three spurs spinning around their focal point and looking like an eviscerated pyramid. “This facility’s status remains unchanged since your last visit.”

“I am Prefect of the Trinx,” Nesfa identified himself, “and I have questions.”

“You may ask.”

“How many Hamoriti are there?”

“Seven. All were neutralized and imprisoned in separate facilities,” it said, flashing up a slice of the galactic map beneath it with seven pinpricks pulsing with a pink glow. “This one is known as Rigall and is unique from the others. They are called…”

“Only seven?” Nesfa repeated, cutting off the long spiel that they’d heard many times before.

“Correct in number, but not significance. A single Hamoriti is powerful enough to decimate the galaxy if unchecked.”

“We have discovered another, and it has been released from its shell. How is this possible?”

“Location please,” the Oracle said, creating a solid holographic control board in front of Nesfa for him to manipulate the map with.

The Trinx set its two-fingered hands onto the energy-based floating panels and worked the Ancient coordinate system, first identifying the local region and scaling the map down to it, then manually picking out the correct system by sight rather than imputing the long numerical code.

“There is no facility located in this system, nor is it a possession of the Ancients.”

“Mere months ago a Hamoriti was released from a prison built akin to this one, though of smaller size. The Hamoriti is also smaller and of a shape unlike the seven you have shown us.”

“There are no other Hamoriti beyond the seven.”

Nesfa glanced at the Regent, who took the data device he was carrying and walked it over to a station in the command center. It had taken a very long time to be able to build a device that could interact directly with the Ancient technology, but the Oracle program had been designed to be intuitive regarding new races and had accepted data in many other forms previously, but at a slow and often tedious pace.

The device the Regent plugged in delivered the full intelligence packet within a tenth of a second and the Oracle updated the map accordingly.

“This is indeed a Hamoriti. Like the others it is of unique composition and therefore I have no records of it or its abilities, but I can deduce a fair amount given the recordings you have made of it.”

“How can there be an 8th that you didn’t know about?” Nesfa asked. “We could have safeguarded it easily if we’d only known of its existence!”

“I have no data regarding this Hamoriti. Speculation indicates that either the seven Hamoriti imprisoned were able to reproduce another in secret before their capture or that there were other Hamoriti not accounted for when these facilities were created.”

“This one was contained within an Ancient shell. How could you not know of it?”

“Confirmed. The prisoner structure that previously held this Hamoriti is of Ancient design, but specifications are not identical. Speculation suggests that this prison facility was built in a time period after the original 7 and that this program was not updated with such knowledge.”

“Is this new one weaker than the others?”

“Speculation again, but no. Not in terms of ability strength, however if this one is younger than the others it may not have the battle experience to fully utilize its strengths. The more you fight it however, the quicker it will learn.”

“Why is it so much smaller?”

“Size of Hamoriti is due to developmental choice. They can grow to any given size, but if nutrients are scarce such size will require weaker bodily structures. If this is a younger Hamoriti it may not yet have gathered the necessary elements to achieve greater size.”

“But it is weaker because of its smaller size? How could it not be?”

“Capabilities of Hamoriti are judged by external observation. The truth behind their inner workings are unknown. The combat data you have provided is minimal. No such judgements as to capabilities can be made, and as prudence dictates we do not risk understatement.”

“Is there a way we can recapture this one? And if we can, can you show us how to build or repair the existing shell?”

“Doubtful and no. If the damage to the other shell is not critical the Oracle, if it has one, should be able to make repairs if provided with the necessary raw materials. Based off the data you have supplied, I estimate a 6% probability of the Oracle maintaining sufficient machinery to execute such repairs.”

“Speculate on the odds of us being able to destroy it if it is young and weaker than the others.”

“None. Your technology is inferior to that of the Ancients. If they could have destroyed it they would not have imprisoned it.”

“Could it be weaker from the imprisonment itself?” Nesfa asked, grasping at straws.

“The Hamoriti will not have an army of minions, but the creature itself will not be weakened. The prison facilities are constructed to supply it with necessary nutrients, else any such withering effect will cause a reflexive awakening. No amount of sedative will counteract this. Assuming this undocumented prison functions under the same principles, this Hamoriti will have emerged at the full strength that it was captured at.”

“What can we do then?”

“Maintain the dormancy of the Hamoriti here. The undocumented Hamoriti is beyond your control.”

“We have to do something,” Nesfa insisted.

“Unless the Ancients can be located, or another race with equal or greater power, all you can hope to do is delay the Hamoriti’s expansion. You cannot stop it.”

18 days later a massive Trinx fleet arrived in the Haphchap System and moved to the planet that was ground zero for the Hamoriti’s emergence. There they found a much smaller Li’vorkrachnika fleet in middle orbit and the scattered remains of the rest showing up in pieces on the surface. Not wasting any time the Trinx attacked and destroyed the Li’vorkrachnika, securing the system against further outside influence and establishing a loose blockade/monitoring spherical formation around the planet.

On the surface the Hamoriti had moved off from the much more shallower shell and the crude conduit that the Li’vorkrachnika had dug down to it. That hallow had been expanded upon when the Hamoriti had came up, but it was still within 1000 kilometers of the Hamoriti’s present location and it being deemed too dangerous to attempt an insertion. The Trinx doubted enough would be left of the shredded Ancient facility, but given they had no hope of victory they were going to press every lead they had.

While they waited for the Hamoriti to move further off around the curvature of the planet before attempting an orbital insertion, they monitored closely what was happening, seeing several large holes in the path the creature had taken. Presently it was walking across the forested landscape leaving lake-sized footprints in a trail easily visible from orbit. The large holes, however, had burrowed down into the bedrock and were now covered at the base by formerly molten rock that had resolidified.

Though it wasn’t doing so now, the Trinx knew from the Oracle that the Hamoriti had the ability to externally digest rock in its molten state, essentially soaking in the various elements they required while leaving the excess material outside its body. Each of the big holes in the ground were burrowing points where it had been going after something it sensed below the surface, possibly corovon or other raw materials that it required.

As such, any potential physical restraints on the beast would likewise melt off when it activated this ability, with it also possessing the means to disrupt any energy based alternatives. The Hamoriti were mountain-sized juggernauts that you couldn’t stop no matter how hard you tried…and they contained biological anti-grav, meaning they could fly across terrain if needed, and even through space.

The Trinx knew that they couldn’t keep the Hamoriti on planet or even in the system if it wanted to leave, so their mission here was to observe and then attack any minions it produced before they could snowball out of control. Those minions were biological technology that the Hamoriti produced, and even now there were a few sites along the Hamoriti’s trail that were showing positive contacts on the Trinx sensors.

They were defensive growths, essentially a turret covering seeds that would begin harvesting surrounding resources and producing the mobile minions. If they were allowed to continue unchecked they’d become a huge problem even if the Hamoriti didn’t spawn any more. The problem was they were still within the firing radius of the Hamoriti, and unless it got very sloppy it wouldn’t move off until they’d developed further.

That meant the Trinx had a choice to make. Sit and watch while their long held nightmare’s forces took root and began to multiply…or go in to eliminate them and hope to weather the Hamoriti’s firepower long enough to accomplish their mission, at which point the monster would begin spawning new seeds again, starting an endless war that they could never win.

If for no other reason than to buy time they made the strike, sending a portion of their fleet into extreme weapons range where they began firing down on the planet from low orbit with pinpoint accurate energy beams, hitting and vaporizing the growing biomatter in all the various locations simultaneously as patches on the Hamoriti began to form on its ‘skin’ and charge with energy. As they did the Trinx, knowing they were going to have to sacrifice themselves to take out their targets, held position and continued firing with their helmsmen ready to make an emergency jump out the moment they had the word that the targets had been destroyed.

But they weren’t even close to achieving that when the spherical burst came, rushing out so fast from the Hamoriti that the atmosphere around it literally caught on fire. The binary pulse came first with an invisible field that almost instantaneously reached out and rendered all the ships inert, disrupting their internal mechanisms in an almost magical fashion and leaving the ships falling from orbit when the physical disruptions hit them, dragging the burning atmosphere behind it.

The Trinx ships were destroyed within a second, but what was left of the biological seeds on the surface partially survived, though the forest they were in did not. Now visually exposed amongst the instantaneous char, they rode out the hurricane of atmospheric restabilization as another group of Trinx ships made microjumps down into the plume of atmosphere bulging up into lower orbit.

Their shields nearly collapsed under the physical strain as they braked into firing position, then as the Hamoriti took a moment to recharge they continued the orbital bombardment that their fellow ships had started, barely finishing in time before the second blast wave came. Better than half of them managed to jump out in time, with the rest succumbing to the disabling wave and being left helpless as the next fire plume visibly reached up to devour them.

The Trinx had accomplished their mission, but at a cost. Then, as if in spite to their sacrificial actions, the Hamoriti was seen spawning another seed at its current location. First forming as a tiny pinprick of a lump on its body, then dropping off onto the ground where it dug roots into the charred soil and began to grow like a plant on the devastated landscape.

The Trinx had bought some time, though not much, and they’d have to do the same thing again and again else let the Hamoriti’s minions grow to consume the planet, then transition out into the galaxy.

4

September 22, 2723

Prenthor System (Sety capitol)

Qitor

“We have to have your assistance,” Nesfa said, pounding his angular fist on the railing before him in the council chamber. “You know the strength of the Hamoriti as well as any of us, and if we are to have a chance of accomplishing anything it is in this moment, when the beast is at its weakest. My people are dying to preserve this window of opportunity and I will not let you or the others waste it through speculation or diplomacy.”

“It is not that simple,” Ivvit said, being the only other representative from The Nine that had been able to make the trip to Prenthor before the Trinx arrived. “We must develop a plan of action before we start sending troops. I will not sacrifice my people against the Hamoriti to buy time unless that time is of value. We have no known means of defeating them, and according to the Oracles we also do not have the ability to return them to their confinement…so I ask you, what choice do we have besides dying now and dying later?”

“I do not know,” Nesfa answered the cyborg honestly, “but I do know, what we all know, is that the Hamoriti’s minions will grow and spread. They are formidable enough without the Hamoriti’s presence and they will begin claiming worlds on their own. I do not suggest assaulting the beast, but in containing the minions before they grow and spread out of control.”

“The Hamoriti can build up the minions around it, then leave to do the same elsewhere,” one of the six Sety in the chamber pointed out. “In order to strike at the minions to prevent their growth we must strike near the Hamoriti, and we cannot do that without massive casualties.”

“I know that,” Nesfa growled, frustrated. “But I also know that if we devise a way to combat the Hamoriti down the road that we will look back on this moment in regret if we did not deal with the threat when it was at its weakest. I will not allow this to become a lost opportunity. My people are presently dying to preserve it, and while I do not expect us to devise a solution overnight, we must have your help to contain the spread before it truly begins.”

“To what end?” Ivvit reiterated. “Even the Ancients could not kill them.”

“Despite what the Oracles say, this one is smaller and must be lesser in some degree. We need to learn about it before the minions spread out of control.”

“How?” another of the Sety asked, standing on a pedestal and looking like a leafless tree rooted in place with its 4 legs twisted about one another forming a pseudo trunk.

“With blood,” Nesfa said, his mind going dark at the sacrifices that would be required. “We attack with multiple weapons and defenses, each time trying to adapt and provoke different responses. As we die we will learn the capabilities and limitations of this Hamoriti…and with luck we will find a weakness to exploit.”

“So you are suggesting we assault it?” Ivvit pointed out.

“Not now,” Nesfa said, becoming irritated with the lack of insight he was getting from the Sety and Chamra. “We must focus on the minions while we devise tests to probe the Hamoriti. When those have been constructed we attack, die, and learn in our failure. I see no other way to proceed, and waiting only allows the Hamoriti’s minions to grow in number.”

“We have responsibilities within Nexus territory to see to,” Mafrin said, reluctantly having to disagree with his Trinx peer. “The Sety may have a larger military than yours, but ours is not as free to redeploy. We are 92% tethered to current assignments. Even if I agreed with your assessment we do not have the strength to aid you, not in the numbers required. At best a single fleet could be mustered, but I will not send them to their deaths just to buy us a few years.”

Nesfa threw his arms up in the air in frustrated defeat. “Then we just let the Hamoriti consume the galaxy.”

“I conferred with our Oracle, and it indicates that it will take a very long time for the Hamoriti to assert the kind of territorial domination that the Ancients faced. Even though we have not caught up to their technological level, we are not helpless. If we are to study the Hamoriti then let us do it from afar. The Li’vorkrachnika have already gone into combat with it. Let them continue to do so and we will watch. Sacrificing our troops before we have a plan of action is wasteful.”

“And how long did the Oracle predict it would take before the minions grew too strong for you to defeat, absent the Hamoriti?”

Mafrin stared back at the Trinx, wondering if he’d had a nearly identical conversation with their Oracle. “Concerning the Nexus alone, conservatively 300 years, though with this Hamoriti being a new one the estimates were labeled as being largely speculation rather than data-derived.”

“Have you been able to examine the shell?” Ivvit interjected.

Nesfa turned his attention to him, trying to let his anger with the Sety dissipate. “The Hamoriti moved off far enough that we were able to slip a small team inside. They confirmed it was Ancient technology and got a few generic schematics from the placement of the rubble before the minions within repelled them. They were not able to recover or locate the Oracle. Nearly the entire shell was destroyed by the Hamoriti as it left.”

“I still do not understand how there could be another Hamoriti,” one of the other Sety commented. “It makes no sense for the Ancients to build the Oracles with knowledge of the others and not include this one.”

“I agree, but it is here none the less,” Nesfa said, wondering if the others in The Nine would be equally obtuse to the situation when they arrived. He’d hoped to be returning with at least a Sety fleet by now, but these idiots appeared not to be able to grasp the obvious.

“Our task all these millennia has been to prevent the release of those imprisoned,” Mafrin stated evenly, “knowing that if even one were to escape captivity that the galaxy would be doomed. We have not failed in our duty, yet by events we do not understand a Hamoriti has been released. While it is unknown to us the simple fact is that our only hope was in containment. The Li’vorkrachnika unwittingly released it, much as we did here so long ago. I do not see that there is anything we can do at this point.”

“Short of locating the Ancients,” Ivvit threw out.

“They are most likely dead after all this time,” Nesfa said, once again pointing out the obvious.

“Then we need to find who killed him and ask their assistance.”

The Trinx glared at the cyborg. “Unless you have discovered something new, such thoughts are merely academic games.”

“The Oracles have made it clear that we cannot defeat the Hamoriti, and the fact that the Ancients could not find a way to destroy them either only underscores the fact that we cannot handle this. Thus we must consider alternate possibilities, no matter how remote.”

“Agreed, but what do you intend to do in the meantime?”

“If we had a viable strategy I would send every Chamra against it immediately, but given that we do not the logical path ahead is to conserve resources rather than to spend them without merit.”

“We do not wholly agree,” Mafrin differed. “The Sety may not have the strength to fight the Hamoriti, but we do have the strength to focus on lesser threats to the Nexus. Those must be priority. However, to let the minions spread to a second star system would be folly. The Hamoriti can only be in one place at one time, and we know this is the weakness that allowed the Ancients to dismantle their stranglehold on the galaxy. We will not waste our troops going up against it directly, but if we can strike at the minions and hinder their growth I feel we must, as Nesfa has said, to buy us time. I do not feel that we will find a solution, but we must try nonetheless.”

The Trinx shook its head adamantly, headtails flying back and forth behind it. “There are enough resources in that system to grow an army of minions that we will be hard pressed to counter. If we give the Hamoriti free reign it can fortify even a single planet to such levels that it will take all of The Nine’s combined might to cleanse it again if the Hamoriti leaves. We must work inside the system, and the mathematically prudent method is to sacrifice a few troops continuously to knock down the minions in their infancy.”

“If we had an objective to achieve and required a delay, then I would reluctantly agree,” Ivvit said. “But we have no objective. We will continue to lose troops until we are defenseless, then the Hamoriti will continue as it is now. If we can find a way to contain or destroy it, then we are obligated to do so. If we cannot, perhaps it is best to run, staying ahead of the expansion while looking for such a way, if it exists. If not, then our focus should be on survival.”

“While the galaxy slowly burns?” Nesfa asked angrily.

“If we cannot stop it, then we should at least try and survive it.”

“Nesfa is correct in that we must contain the spread of the minions for the time being,” Mafrin said, crackling with movement as he pointed an arm towards the Trinx. “We know from the Oracles how to fight them, and the damage they will cause if they are allowed to escalate. Containing the Hamoriti is impossible, but we can fight the minions and I believe that we must…even if only to give our people time to evacuate.”

“Evacuate to where?” Nesfa asked. “As dangerous as the Hamoriti is, it will not be able to spread quickly. But put that aside, there is a bigger problem we have to face. Where did this Hamoriti come from? The Oracles spoke of their reproduction as an unknown factor. Never did they witness or come to understand the origins of the Hamoriti. We now have one that appears to be younger, though we can’t be sure of that or much else at this point. Where did it come from if the 7 were imprisoned? They could not have reproduced it, at least not after their sedation.”

“Valid questions but I fail to see their consequence. If another Hamoriti were to emerge we would be equally helpless to defeat it.”

Nesfa pounded his two knuckle fist on the railing again. “How can you be this blind? Have you not been guarding a Hamoriti here as we have done? Have you not studied it intently? If this Hamoriti is younger then by studying it and feeding data to the Oracles they can compare it to the others and potentially gain insights that they do not currently possess. What the Ancients knew of this one they did not update the Oracles with, and that knowledge may be critical to finding a way to deal with this one.”

The cyborg twitched with understanding. “The Ancients used all of their power to contain the seven, and in doing so their civilization was nearly destroyed in the process. Yet they combated and contained another Hamoriti presumably afterwards, suggesting they either regained their strength or the task was easier with this one?”

“Exactly, and given that their civilization is now gone I would not bet on them having rebuilt their full strength.”

“That is warrantless speculation,” Ivvit cautioned.

“Speculation it may be, but this is an opportunity to gain additional data on the Hamoriti above and beyond what the Oracles presently possess. They have shown an ability to process new data, and how the Ancients wrote code that could do so is beyond me, but we should utilize this ability while we possess it. And the only way to do so is to attack the Hamoriti directly to trigger selected responses for analysis.”

“Costly lessons,” another voice said as a fog-like cloud moved through one of the three access doors. The Yisv’s ‘body’ took on more cohesion as it approached one of the empty podiums, eventually forming into the frail bipeds that they were in their solid state.

“You arrived quicker than expected,” Mafrin commented.

“Current events warrant expediency. Am I right in hearing that the Trinx want to attack the Hamoriti directly? The Oracles have told us repeatedly that it is suicide and I question the sanity of those suggesting it, for you are not ignorant. If the Ancients could not destroy them then neither can we, regardless of what we might learn. Such curiosity is not worth the lives of our people.”

“I concur,” Ivvit echoed.

“Those lives will be lost in time,” Nesfa reminded Sefib. “Better that their deaths serve a purpose in the here and now, regardless of whether or not the information proves to be strategically useful.”

“What of those who released them? Your packet said they were engaging the Hamoriti initially and were not overwhelmed.”

Nesfa shook his head again. “They are primitives that utilize plasma weapons. Why the Hamoriti didn’t strike them all down simultaneously is in question, but it may be that they simply weren’t a great enough threat to warrant the energy expenditure…or it could be weakened after its sedation. If that is the case it may not be fully recovered as of yet and our hesitancy to act may be costing us a moment of opportunity.”

“As we pointed out,” Mafrin added for the benefit of Sefib, “there is no point in acting if we do not know how to act. And according to the Oracles there is nothing that we can do to stop this one.”

“Despite its smaller size?”

“All the Oracles insisted that the size did not matter,” Nesfa said before Mafrin could answer, “but there has to be a difference. The capabilities of each of the 7 have been well documented, and even if this one was too strong for the Ancients to destroy it may well be weaker than the others and that is something we need to know. The Oracles are acting on speculation, not data, and we need to give it to them.”

“A fleeting hope,” Sefib said dismissively.

“What would your counsel be?” the Trinx asked.

“We have none. The Oracles said that if a Hamoriti awoke it would be the death of us all. I fail to see how we can overcome that, unless their assertions are incorrect. I don’t believe anyone is arguing that point?”

“Then why come here?”

“Because such a defeat will not occur swiftly. The galaxy is quite large and the Hamoriti is only one. Its minions may well grow to consume all, but it will be them that we fight, not the Hamoriti. We may be able to survive if we are savvy, and a joint effort by The Nine is more likely to succeed than independent ones.”

“While you ponder survival the Hamoriti grows in strength,” Nesfa pointed out. “I do not care about long term plans at this point, only in stopping the spread before it begins. Already the Trinx have devoted our full strength to this end, what will the Yisv contribute?”

“How will attacking the Hamoriti accomplish this?”

“I recommend attacks for study, not containment. To that end we must, and are, striking at the minions as the Hamoriti spawns them.”

“And how has it responded?”

“We lose ships with each raid, but the Hamoriti is forced to start over again.”

“Ah, now I see. You seek to freeze the moment before it escalates in the hope of finding a path ahead before the opportunity is lost to us.”

“Indeed.”

“If the inevitable is to come,” Ivvit argued, “then let it come and us face it. We will not spend our people’s lives to gain pointless time. If the Oracles say that we cannot destroy or sedate the Hamoriti, then we should not foolishly argue that point. The Hamoriti have returned to the galaxy whether we like it or not, now we must deal with the consequences of someone else’s error. We did not fail, but this doomsday has occurred none the less. The Oracles have a vast amount of information regarding the war the Ancients fought against the minions and in that lies the best hope for our survival, not in trying to deny that what is happening cannot be undone.”

“We will not go near nor contend with the god,” Sefib said softly, “but we are willing to fight its minions elsewhere. We must eventually, and we would choose to do so sooner rather than later in the hopes of shaping the landscape to our advantage going forward…or perhaps I should say to lessen our disadvantage going forward.”

“We are in agreement,” Ivvit said.

“The Sety will contribute what ships we can to the containment effort,” Mafrin said, speaking directly to Nesfa. “They will not be used against the Hamoriti itself, nor within its radius, but as the minions spread they will kill them when they are able. We will dispatch the fleet as soon as it can be gathered.”

“I would criticize the token gesture, but at this point every ship counts.”

“We have other responsibilities to attend to,” the Sety pointed out.

“They nor anything else matters at this point,” Nesfa said with a cool anger. “Whatever victories you win will be washed away in time. Let the rest of the galaxy fall into chaos while we fight to contain the Hamoriti. If by some miracle we succeed we can put it back together later. If we do not find a way to succeed, nothing else will matter.”

5

November 2, 2723

Prenthor System (Sety capitol)

Qitor

Nesfa walked out of another planning meeting with The Nine, utterly dejected at the lack of understanding the others were showing. They were going to allow the Hamoriti to claim the planet his people were dying to continually purge of minions, then try to intercept and destroy them when they attempted to leave. If the Hamoriti came after them they’d withdraw and concede it whatever location it went to, then move back to hit the minions it had abandoned.

It made a certain amount of sense at first glance, but Nesfa had studied the warnings and wisdom of the Oracle all his life and he knew the others in The Nine had done likewise, so there was no excuse for their lapse of judgement. Giving the minions a chance to spread, even on a single planet, was foolhardy. They didn’t need the Hamoriti to dominate once they reached certain numbers, and the sheer number of troops The Nine would have to commit to eliminate them would far outweigh what they’d spend in continuous suicide runs to prevent the minions from getting their foothold.

The Trinx had argued that point endlessly, with the rest of The Nine unwilling to accept his proposal and suggesting that if any attempt should be made in that regard that the Trinx should use their vassals in the form of warships to do the raiding rather than sacrificing ship crews.

The problem with that was the Trinx didn’t have any warship vassals, and while he’d ordered them to begin designing and producing them before he’d left for this summit there was no way they’d be ready in time, nor would the Trinx be able to build them fast enough to keep the minions suppressed. They had to have the support of The Nine or this wasn’t going to work…yet they wouldn’t give it to him.

He knew what he was asking was a tall order in blood, but nothing else mattered at this point. Let the Hamoriti get established and the timeline would escalate beyond their control quickly. The Ancients might have been able to succeed with The Nine’s current plan, but the Trinx and their allies were not on par with that mysterious race. No one disputed that, yet they would not take the one course of action that could forestall the coming disaster.

Nesfa was committed to keeping the minions suppressed with or without The Nine, realizing the duty he and his people had to keep this threat contained, but in doing so he was going to strip his military bare, then The Nine wouldn’t follow up and it will all have been for naught. They’ll have acquit their duty, but it won’t have mattered. The Hamoriti would spread its influence over the local region and slowly begin taking control of the galaxy.

Nesfa left the planning meeting and headed back to his ship, intending to stay on the Sety world no longer. While there was considerable more planning to do, it was planning for a course of action that the Trinx would not support. If the others wouldn’t do what was necessary they would, for as long as they could sustain the effort.

He knew that wasn’t going to be enough, so the Prefect had to find some other way to do what needed to be done.

“If we have to engage them,” Mafrin said, looking at a holographic star chart with the other seven members of The Nine, “it is best to do so after their seed ships have landed. The Oracle says there is a cannibalization process that occurs offering a window of opportunity during which the defenses will be minimal. Wait too long and they convert over into the fortifications we all know will be very hard to remove.”

“You want us to let them land?” Ivvit asked rudely.

“Those seed ships will be very hard to take out in space. That carapace is extremely formidable, but it will crack open when expanding on the surface. Time it right and we’ll poach it with a few well placed shots. Fight it in space or after it’s implanted itself and we face a hard and costly fight.”

“Letting them get to the surface is folly.” Maxep said, with the triped standing on a pedestal so to get to equal height with the others. “When they arrive insystem we must strike them immediately. If we let this become a ground fight we will lose badly. Even if we can destroy the seed ships once they land, the spore clouds will contaminate the planet and force us to keep hunting minions indefinitely. We cannot become tied to territory. Mobility is the entire purpose of the evacuations.”

“Their naval forces are equally robust,” Mafrin pointed out. “And if they wish they can send a ship directly into the atmosphere to distribute spores. It is doubtful we will ever be able to stop that from occurring. We cannot win this war, so stop thinking like we can. We need to do the most damage possible as the Hamoriti’s forces spread, and the best way to do that is to hit the seed ships when they’re vulnerable during their transition period.”

“Mafrin is correct,” Sefib said, her body undulating between solid and cloud, a sign of frustration. “We cannot let ourselves be drawn into even fights. We must hit them when and where they are weak, then flee retaining the majority, if not all of our forces. If we are goaded into a frontal engagement the Hamoriti will achieve through attrition what we seek to deny it…and easy victory.”

“When its minions can grow faster than we can build ships, I’m forced to concur,” another quadruped member of The Nine said, this one without arms and looking more like a horse. “We must pick our fights wisely and slow the spread. We cannot become fixed on holding any location. It must be a fighting retreat.”

“The best way to slow their advance is to deny them systems,” Ivvit reiterated. “We must have some hard battles to deny them entry, otherwise their numbers will scale too quickly and the evacuations will be compromised.”

“The Trinx are the closest,” Sefib pointed out. “And I do not believe they are going to evacuate, fearing the release of a second Hamoriti. They may very well fight until they are exterminated rather than give ground. If that comes to pass will we aid them or not?”

“The larger question in play is do the Hamoriti know of each other’s locations? Does this one know there are others imprisoned and where they are?”

“How could it know?” Mafrin asked.

“The Oracles have said that the Hamoriti may have collected information from the minds of those that came within range of its psionics,” Sefib added. “If we engage it we could be leading it directly to the others.”

“Or perhaps the Trinx have already done so,” Ivvit agreed.

Mafrin exchanged glances with the others. “Why have I never heard of this ability?”

“It is speculation on the Oracle’s part,” Sefib explained. “The Ancients never knew for sure.”

“Let’s assume it is true. Will the Hamoriti come directly here and the other locations, or spread out geographically around its current location?”

“There is nothing in the Ancients’ files that covers this eventuality,” Ivvit said. “They imprisoned the Hamoriti, so there’s no way of telling if one would care about the others or not. They always occupied different regions.”

“As to the evacuations,” Mafrin said, his fears amplifying with this new revelation. “We have to have compartmentalization as to the destination locations so the minions will not be able to follow. The troops we send into combat must not know where they are beyond a designated rendezvous point.”

“Agreed,” Praxma said, with the tanky biped speaking in almost mechanical tones.

“The Trinx vassals would be ideal to conceal this,” Ivvit noted.

“Yes they would be,” the Sety agreed. “But I do not believe there will be any of them available off their homeworld if Nesfa speaks the truth about their intentions.”

“I truly hope he does not,” Sefib said, unsure if the Trinx had been adamant out of certainty or stubbornness that might evaporate with time.

On the trip back to Vikod Nesfa racked his brain trying to find an alternative solution. He knew they had a limited opportunity to keep this disaster from becoming fatal, but no matter what he considered there was simply no way around the fact that a lot of people and resources were going to have to be expended in order to keep the Hamoriti’s minions suppressed.

The Nine had to see reason or else they were all doomed. The hopes that the Ancients could be found again were nothing more than reckless dreams, and the chance of finding another race that could at least contain a Hamoriti was likewise a waste of time, though possibly there was one out there somewhere. Problem was they had no time to look, and just for the sake of argument say that they did find one tomorrow…what were the odds of them even caring to fight a war far from their own borders?

No, if this containment was going to happen it had to be done now, before the spread began. Nesfa knew he had some time to work up a plan, for his people were paying for it in blood, but he feared the analysis teams he’d set to the task before leaving for the summit would likewise have nothing to offer.

It wasn’t until his ship had made the decel into their capitol system did a possible solution finally strike him. It was reckless, but at this point if they didn’t stop the minions from spreading nothing else mattered anyway. During the short trip in to the planet Nesfa thought through the various ways he could approach it, then went straight to his various ‘think tanks’ and had them begin chewing on the proposed plan.

Within a day they had a viable course of action laid out, with several contingencies in place should Nesfa need them. Knowing that time was of the essence the Prefect left the system again, this time taking with him a small warfleet from the local defense force. Most of their navy was in the Haphchap System surrounding the Hamoriti, but the 16 ships he brought with him in escort should be enough to make their point.

Jumping out immediately, Nesfa headed to the largest known Li’vorkrachnika world on their starcharts.

By the time Nesfa’s fleet reached one of their former enemy’s core worlds his linguists had finished writing the active translation program necessary for the Trinx to communicate directly with the representative he would be negotiating with. Their first meeting had gone amicably enough, with them only having to destroy a few hundred ships before the Li’vorkrachnika finally decided to let them talk. That talking had occurred over text transmissions using crude translations based off of a common language that both races spoke…one coming from a neighboring race that the Li’vorkrachnika had recently destroyed.

An agreement on the scale of what Nesfa was proposing was not something that could be handled locally, so arrangements had been made for his fleet’s passage to one of their core worlds where he would speak directly with someone that had the necessary authority. When the Trinx fleet arrived at the location it became clear that the Li’vorkrachnika were more numerous than their intelligence reports had indicated, for the system was filled with millions of ships and four ring-like constructs circling a pair of planets.

The technology they used was primitive in the extreme, but they were much more savvy than he’d anticipated with the implementation of it. As his fleet was recognized and given clearance to a rendezvous point in orbit around one of the planets, his people determined that the rings were in fact shipyards, and judging by the schematics they were capable of producing an insanely large number of ships.

That made Nesfa feel better about their chances, but it also underscored that even with the Trinx’s technological advantage his small fleet was vulnerable here. His ship commanders assured him that they could fight their way out if necessary, but there could be no direct engagements that would result in anything other than their deaths, primitive tech or not.

Once they arrived at the rendezvous point they were given instructions to meet with the representative onboard one of the Li’vorkrachnika stations. Nesfa’s fleet surrounded the station, then sent a heavily armed boarding craft full of guards and vassals to take the Prefect over to the meeting location. They set down inside a large hangar bay with the robotic bipeds filing out and creating a defensive perimeter around the ship, followed by some living Trinx troops, then the Prefect.

The air smelled badly, but it was breathable so he tried to push the foulness from his mind. He wasn’t here because he liked the Li’vorkrachnika, but because he and the galaxy needed them.

“I am Prefect Nesfa,” he said, softly, allowing the headband he wore to translate his words into the Li’vorkrachnika’s native language, with it likewise translating back anything that was spoken in it. He looked out at the sea of short, green reptilians, most of whom carried their primitive plasma weapons, but none had stepped forward to greet him. “Where is your Templar?”

“I am here,” a strangely soft voice said, with the more rigid translation occurring half a second delayed in Nesfa’s ear. A thicker and slightly taller version of their race moved out from the crowd towards him and the vassals, but brought no escorts with it, so long as you didn’t count the thousands in the bay.

“Have you reviewed the information I gave you?”

“Not completely. Your arrival was quicker than we anticipated. We have seen enough, however, to augment our own data on the creature. We recognize the threat it poses and our inability to counter it alone. For this purpose we are open to negotiation.”

“What I require of you is simple. In order to keep the Hamoriti from spreading its minions we must strike at the seeds as soon as they are produced. Such a task is a suicide mission that my people are currently undertaking, but without assistance we cannot keep up the necessary pace indefinitely. Our ships and population will expire in time, then the Hamoriti will be free to begin reclaiming the region around it, and in time the galaxy.”

“Your race,” Nesfa said pointedly, “while technologically inferior, operates on a turnover rate of both personnel and ships that can keep the Hamoriti’s minions suppressed indefinitely. We will search for a way to destroy the creature, if such a thing is possible, but I require you to make strikes against its minions continuously, no matter the resources required, for all of time if necessary. The Hamoriti cannot be allowed to gain a foothold, no matter what the cost.”

“Your information indicates that these ‘minions’ are too advanced for our technology to harm in any appreciable way. How do you suggest that we kill them?”

“With numbers and some help from us. We will be producing weapon patches that we will apply to the hulls of some of your ships to augment your firepower. These ships will most certainly be lost in the attacks, and we cannot produce enough patches for all of your vessels, but it will be enough to get the job done.”

“And in exchange for our never ending sacrifice you will gift us with what?”

“Technology upgrades. Small ones over the course of time, but beginning with a replacement for your plasma weapons. It is known as a Vichsam, and while primitive by our standards it will offer greater range and damage compared to your current plasma weapons while operating off of the same power requirements.”

“Will you also be producing these for us, or instructing us how to build them for ourselves.”

“All our resources will be going towards containing the Hamoriti. We will give you the knowledge necessary to construct the technology yourself.”

“We will need a demonstration of the weapon and the ability to analyze its functionality in order to determine the level of upgrade it offers us. We will also need a fixed timetable for future payments of technology. If we are to continuously engage this creature we will require continuous payment.”

“In principle we are in agreement,” Nesfa said, looking into the pure black eyes of the reptile that stood erect with its tail curled around its thick right leg.

“Furthermore, if we can come to terms on payment, we will also require security guarantees for the systems we devote to building the forces you require. We have many enemies, and they must not be allowed to strike at these worlds and disrupt the flow, for we may or may not be able to compensate from other locations. We will draw what is necessary for the time being, but new worlds will have to be acquired and constructed by us under your protection…and that protection must never expire.”

“If such systems are local, that is an acceptable addition.”

“How soon would these strikes be instigated?”

“We can have the first of the weapons patches available within 4 months, and we will modify your ships on site when they arrive. Do note that until your vessels begin carrying Vichsam more will be required to neutralize the minion seeds utilizing plasma alone.”

“What numbers do you estimate will be needed?”

“That depends on the Hamoriti. Right now we estimate no less than 200 of your warships per day and the addition of ground troops if needed.”

“We can draw that number from our existing fleets for a time, but in order to provide a steady flow of ships we will need additional raw materials in order to construct the designated supply worlds quickly enough.”

“I can offer assistance in acquiring materials from those sites, but not from Trinx stockpiles.”

“We are in principle agreement then, but must demand one additional caveat before we begin negotiating payment terms. Your guarantee not to interfere in our expansion. We will respect your worlds, but will be unchained from assaulting any others, regardless of your associations with them.”

Nesfa smiled ironically. “If you try to assault any of our associates, I wish you luck. You will suffer a quick death.”

“But you must agree not to interfere even if we should try.”

“Agreed. The threat of the Hamoriti trumps all other concerns. Proceed as you like so long as you hold to the agreement without fail. Even a slight pause will allow the minion seeds to gain a foothold, and that cannot be allowed to happen.”

“We will supply all that are necessary without fail, so long as you continue to deliver the technology upgrades as promised.”

“Let us begin working through that timetable then,” Nesfa said, pulling out a palm-sized holographic generator and setting it on the floor where it created a virtual workstation between the two of them. The Trinx tapped on one of the solid holograms, bringing up a timeline matrix that they would begin to fill in. He wasn’t going to give them any advanced tech, but there was plenty of valuable improvements he could offer short of that. How much the Li’vorkrachnika would demand was a question mark, but he intended to broker a limited deal and not let them gouge tech out of him.

Containing the Hamoriti was worth any amount, but he wasn’t a reckless negotiator and would haggle until they reached an amicable agreement no matter how long it took. His fleets would buy them enough time for that, now that they had a viable plan for which to sacrifice and stall for.

6

March 18, 2724

Haphchap System (Hamoriti location)

Unnamed planet

The Sety fleet was mostly stationed in middle orbit around the star, with a handful of ships scattered elsewhere within the system for observational reasons, but none anywhere near the surface of the planet. The closest was in a high elliptical orbit so it could stay in position over the Hamoriti and observe the continuing Trinx suicide runs in to eliminate the minion seeds within a few hours of their spawning. Each time they did nearly all their ships were lost, and the Sety were not about to contribute to such sacrifice when all it did was buy them a few more days.

The Hamoriti didn’t seem to care about the situation and merely continued with its seed laying attempts, further trashing the surface with its weaponized tsunamis each time the Trinx ships came down low enough to shoot the minions. They were waiting, however, until the Hamoriti moved off from those it dropped beneath its mass, for they couldn’t be targeted well from orbit. Some side shots were possible, but knowing how many ships would be lost the Trinx were not making any attacks that they weren’t fairly sure they could pull off in one strike.

The Hamoriti didn’t stay parked over a single position to shield them. Instead it kept moving, sinking into the surface periodically to feed on the rock beneath. The surface soil had been stripped down with multiple tsunamis, with hillsides having been shaved off and bare rock exposed, for each time one of the massive blasts leapt out from the creature a cascade of damage would touch everything around the Hamoriti, but for the ground at least it appeared to be spread out whereas anything in the atmosphere was literally vaporized on contact.

On closer inspection of the surveillance data the Sety were gathering from afar, it seemed the tsunamis were hemispherical rather than truly omni-directional. None the less, the sheer amount of power the Hamoriti had to be generating to affect an area with a radius in excess of 1000 miles was beyond fathoming. What would occur on one of the Nexus worlds from such a blast would be nothing short of utter devastation, even if surface structures ate up and spread out the damage as the topography here appeared to be doing.

There had to be a limit to what the Hamoriti was capable of emitting, and while the original 7’s limitations had been explored and documented the Oracles had no data on this one. While the Trinx were wrong in their approach, they had been correct about the need to gather intel, so as long as they were making their strategically pointless suicide runs there might as well be someone here to document it.

The Trinx fleet, hundreds of thousands strong, sat in orbit around a nearby planet and continually fed ships over to the danger zone as needed, but they didn’t leave them parked nearby just in case the Hamoriti took flight. It might be slow in terms of starship standards, but two of the other Hamoriti had pinpoint weapons that were able to reach much farther than the tsunami. It wasn’t known yet if this one did or not, for its skin/hull defied inspection, but there was no point in risking the majority of the fleet by keeping them so close.

The Sety were here to take the opportunity to strike at the minions if the Hamoriti left the planet, or to strike at the minions if they tried to leave the planet. So far they hadn’t been allowed to develop even close to that level, but if/when the Trinx finally failed to prevent their growth the Sety were going to diminish their numbers as much as they could short of sacrificing themselves. They needed to preserve their warfleet, small as it was here, and had been ordered only to engage when they had the advantage.

And to stay the hell away from the Hamoriti no matter what the circumstances.

The other members of The Nine were gathering their fleets in the neighboring systems, not risking to bring them directly here and relying on the Sety to stay in contact with them. If there was a move by the Hamoriti or the minions they would respond to it, hopefully heading off any minion seed ships and getting to the destination systems ahead of them. If the Hamoriti moved, then they could come in to the present system and see what damage they could do to the minions here

But without the Sety or Trinx insystem there was no way for them to know what was occurring, for they were so twitchy about being near the beast that they wouldn’t even send a ship to drop a probe in the area.

Each race of The Nine was comprised of widely varying civilizations, but all were presently developing plans for evacuating their populations and heading off far into the galaxy, intent to stay ahead of the Hamoriti spread rather than to stay and watch their people get annihilated. That was why they were willing to fight the minion spread, to buy time for evacuation ships to be built and scouts to be sent out searching for uninhabited worlds to use as waypoints. Every year they could delay the Hamoriti, the greater the chance of preserving their populations, but sacrificing their ships as the Trinx were doing was counterproductive.

The Sety were not expecting any other fleets to arrive, so when hundreds of jumpships began braking into the system they did not know what was going on. As soon as they identified them as Li’vorkrachnika they immediately began to deploy into strike groups to go after them and kill the meddlesome idiots who’d released the Hamoriti in the first place.

Before the Sety warships, each shaped like a globe with root-like tendrils growing out from it by the dozens, could get into firing range the handful of Trinx vessels waiting near the star signaled them to fall back, heading into the enemy fleet themselves and pacing alongside them as escorts. The Sety fleet commander didn’t know what was going on, then an explanation came from the Trinx indicating that they had invited them here to help fight the Hamoriti.

A short but fiery exchange occurred between both fleet commanders, for the Li’vorkrachnika were an enemy of the Nexus and the Trinx themselves had wiped out what was left of their fleet that had awakened the Hamoriti. Furthermore the Trinx hadn’t informed The Nine of this plan of theirs, but the Sety eventually decided to just sit back and watch, as they’d been sent to do, while sending a courier ship out to get to a system within range of one of the Nexus receivers so it could transmit the news back to Qitor.

With the Sety successfully backed off, the Trinx ships escorted the fleet of jumpships to the nearby planet where their own fleet waited, then the Li’vorkrachnika began undocking their cruisers and spamming orbit with them. The jumpships then left, heading back to wherever they’d come from to pick up more cruisers and ferry them here. Those that they left behind numbered in excess of 10,000, but were all equipped with their primitive plasma weapons as no upgrade patches were available yet.

That didn’t matter, for the minion seeds had to be destroyed. The Li’vorkrachnika fleet commander conferred with the Trinx and was remarkably agreeable in terms of letting them make strategy. He knew his ships were going to be sacrificed, and seemed only to care about them being able to accomplish the task as efficiently as possible. There was no concern for his crews evident in their conversations, only a focus on accomplishing the mission…which was something the Trinx responded to well.

The first attack the Li’vorkrachnika were involved in came two days later, with the Trinx continuing to carry the burden until then. At first there was only a single Li’vorkrachnika cruiser sent down to the planet, and it was allowed to enter the atmosphere and move about. No tsunami followed, so it crept closer and closer, trying to prompt a reaction, but none came. Eventually it came to one of the minion seeds that the Hamoriti had moved on from and came under fire from the seed itself, getting hit and destroyed within 30 seconds, but not before landing some plasma blasts and one well aimed streamer onto the target.

It damaged the growing minion structure, lightly, but it was enough for the fleet commanders to analyze to determine how many ships would be needed.

Next they sent in 8 cruisers, again not drawing a tsunami from the Hamoriti that was some 200 miles off. They attacked the seed and badly damaged it before 4 of the ships were destroyed, then inexplicable the other four turned and began firing on each other. It took a while for the Li’vorkrachnika ships to kill themselves, for the minion seed stopped firing as they did so, returning its internal energy to healing and growth as the remaining enemy ships no longer were shooting at it.

That put this Hamoriti’s psionic control range at 200 miles minimum. Another data point that the Trinx hadn’t been able to collect. Committed to the mission as they were, they weren’t going to send their own ships and men to their deaths in such an experiment. They would fight and die and learn from the defeat, but the Trinx weren’t going to meekly walk up to the Hamoriti so they could be killed. However, they didn’t care what happened to the Li’vorkrachnika, and oddly neither did they, so the Trinx began using their allies in a lot more extreme experiments than they’d previously considered.

A small Trinx fleet was sent in to clean up, hitting the damaged minion seed along with three others the Hamoriti had dropped. When they started firing on them from orbit with their brilliant green energy beams the tsunami followed, knocking those beams out as the ships were disabled by the precursor wave, then the shieldless ships were torn apart in the blast that followed.

Once the atmospheric bubble resettled onto the planet, an analysis of the surface indicated that the minion seeds had been destroyed, perhaps not entirely by the Trinx, but whatever had been left undamaged had probably been incinerated by the tsunami itself. The minions were resistant to it, in a way that the Ancients had never fully understood, but they were not completely immune.

With this minion seed set destroyed, the Trinx and Li’vorkrachnika returned to planning their next test.

A month later, when the upgrade patches gave the Li’vorkrachnika ships a variety of combat options, including orbital strike range, they began almost exclusively to carry the burden of destroying the minion seeds while the Trinx kept their fleet nearby in reserve, with their commander coordinating every attack and the Li’vorkrachnika complying without complaint. On more than one occasion they actually suggested additional caveats, finding ways to probe the minions and the Hamoriti that even the Trinx had not thought of, proving their reputation for adaptability was not over exaggerated.

Eventually a few small, prototype warship vassals arrived and one was sent in as a test. When inserted individually they drew no tsunami, for it seemed the Hamoriti didn’t want the energy expenditure or it felt the minion seeds could defend themselves. That wasn’t the case, for the first one the vassal encountered it destroyed. When it traveled to the next the Hamoriti released the equivalent of biological drones that pursued it and eventually took it down, preserving the other minion seeds that the Li’vorkrachnika were then sent in to destroy.

A tsunami hit and destroyed them, prompting a second wave to clean up what was left, who were likewise destroyed, resetting the doomsday clock to 0:00 with the Hamoriti continuing its trek across the planet and dropping more minion seeds as it went.

The vassal test hadn’t been to see if it could destroy the minion seeds, but rather if the Hamoriti had a way in which to disable it. There were no crew onboard that it could affect psionically, and even though communications with the vassal were severed during the combat, ostensibly by some type of jamming field the Hamoriti threw up, the internal programming followed procedure and fought how it had been taught to, meaning that the Trinx now had a way to get up close to the Hamoriti if need be, whereas all crewed ships that came anywhere close to it ran the risk of becoming unwilling thralls.

And if they managed to get up real close to it, the freezing aura would disable them automatically without any directed effort on the part of the Hamoriti. The vassals being immune to both gave the Trinx a valuable option, for what they weren’t sure just yet, but if they were ever to discover a way to attack the beast itself, then getting within touching range could very well be the delivery mechanism required.

The Ancients had accomplished similar attacks, all of which ultimately failed. They’d even detonated huge explosives beneath the creatures, leaving broken continents and intact Hamoriti. However they managed it, the beasts were able to absorb energy, with some analysis from the Oracles suggesting that they even fed upon it, which was why later in the war the Ancients didn’t even bother firing on the Hamoriti and focused all of their efforts on the minions until they were wiped out, then they moved to sedate their targets rather than try to futilely damage them again.

More days passed, with most seeing at least one sacrificial attack by the Li’vorkrachnika as the Trinx fleet strength began to increase again, both in terms of manned ships and a growing fleet of vassals with progressively larger ships as the prototypes were scrutinized and the next phase of development continued. Rather than building a handful of ships to test the Trinx were building hundreds of them before moving on to newer designs, getting both scientific and tactical usefulness out of them.

The Hamoriti continued its seed laying without pause, leaving more than a third of the planet dotted with craters before it finally had enough. A year and a half after it first awoke and after yet another successful minion destruction on part of the Li’vorkrachnika, the Hamoriti sank down onto its huge legs, pulling them into its body and locking them in place while tucking its neck and head down into the nook next to the front pair, forming a rough egg-like shape. Using its biologically created anti-grav it rose up off the surface and very slowly headed out of the atmosphere.

Both the Sety and the Trinx fleets immediately began to redeploy, with the Li’vorkrachnika waiting for orders before they did so as well. All three fleets moved aside and kept well clear of the now living starship as it came up into orbit and transitioned around the planet to the stellar jumpline, where it accelerated in a slow lurch up to minimal microjump speeds and headed for the star.

At first they’d thought it was transitioning to one of the other planets in the system, but once it took off on the stellar jumpline the Sety cleared out of the star’s lowest orbits, wanting to be nowhere near the thing for fear of it unleashing some unknown weapon against them. They did drop a few probes in their wake and observed closely as the Hamoriti arrived at the star, then moved around it until it came to the jumpline that it wanted.

With a not so subtle lurch the creature executed an interstellar jump, heading out of the system at a speed far less than either the Sety or the Trinx were capable of, but still faster than the primitive Li’vorkrachnika ships.

With it passing out of monitoring range the Sety calculated its path and speed, then transmitted that information to the fleets of The Nine waiting in nearby star systems, giving them a heads up as to where it was going and where they should not be five days from now.

7

December 9, 2725

Kilma System (lizard territory)

Nesmi

A trio of maulers were packed into a kirby full of standard variants lizards, all of whom were equipped with the new vichsam rifles, but they were unarmed, so to speak. They were pure brawlers, with two long blades extending from their arms that were presently pulled back inside bone sheaths. In fact, the standard variants in the kirby with them were specifically here to escort the maulers and get them to their target, for the fleshy minions the Hamoriti produced responded well to the blades.

The kirby was flying along with 129 others across the war torn landscape of the lizard planet, with virtually every colony in the southern hemisphere having been at least damaged. Several had been obliterated completely in the first days after the Hamoriti had arrived and released its enormous cascading weapon, destroying everything within radius. Fortunately it had only detonated three such attacks before burrowing underground and digging deep into the core of the planet.

That had given the lizards and the Trinx some time without having to deal with minions, but as they monitored the movement of the creature in the molten core, or rather the Trinx did, they saw it eventually come back up into the crust in another location. There it began spawning minions below ground and out of range of the orbital bombardment that had been picking them off with regularity for the past 2 years.

Immediately the Trinx had responded by burrowing holes down into the crust at nearby locations. They lost a handful of ships initially when the Hamoriti reached out from below and took control of them, but realizing their mistake they sent vassal warships in to destroy their own kin, then had those ships continue with the coring efforts. Their smaller size meant less weaponry, which delayed the process considerably giving the Hamoriti’s minions time to grow and spread below ground as it moved around carving out tunnels and hollows in the bedrock.

Once they had access points the Trinx send down an army of vassals, ferried by some hastily modified cargo ships to remove the need for living pilots. Programming both the ships and the vassals as best they could, the Trinx sent them down to the holes in the crust they’d bored and waited. The jamming field from the Hamoriti crept up again, keeping the Trinx blind as to what was happening as the robotic soldiers deployed into the underground caverns to hunt down and destroy the minions hand to hand.

Up until recently no one had known how effective they had been, but then the Hamoriti had dropped its jamming as it decided to move down through the core and over to the opposite side of the planet where it again began burrowing into the crust. That put it outside the mental control range of the first set of subsurface minions that were still engaging the few vassals that remained, prompting the Trinx to order the lizard troops from the planet down into the tunnels to fight hand to hand along with another batch of vassals they sent down to augment their limited fighting capability.

As with every superior opponent, the lizard way to beating them was to spam them with numbers and this reinforcement group was no exception. They were headed to a small minion facility situated below ground, and even though it wasn’t a seed structure it was a factory that was growing something of importance and had to be destroyed. All the maulers knew was that there were enemy troops there that they had to engage, and they were eager to get their blades into the enemy flesh.

When the kirby eventually landed, the bay door opened up on the starboard side and the standard variants poured out into the nearly dark cavern. Daylight was not visible, for they had flown down into the crust and were well away from the coring point now. The only light available came from the kirbies and the standard bearers, which were standard variant lizards carrying light poles. That gave the others just enough to see by, in addition to the bright pink vichsam flares.

Those were visible ahead through a sea of bodies, with the trio of maulers hopping out of the kirby a few seconds before it lifted off and left the small landing area as more of the lizard transports came down and delivered additional troops in a never ending flow that would sooner or later overwhelm the minions. How much blood it would require didn’t matter, they would get the job done so long as each of them did at least a little bit of damage to the enemy.

And with their forearm blades the maulers would be doing more than a little.

The trio held together, knowing they had a better chance of taking down one of the minion soldiers in concert than solo, and followed the standard variants as they fought their way forward, blocking return fire with their bodies. That enemy weaponsfire couldn’t be seen, for it didn’t produce any light. How the other lizards were being killed the maulers didn’t know, but all they could see was the pink of the vichsam and the yellow of the light rods marking the progression of various groups forward down the nearly half mile-wide tunnel that the Hamoriti had previously carved out.

That left an enormous about of ‘land’ area, with varied terrain rather than a smooth cut, for it seemed the beast had melted its way through the rock and its massive footprints had made craters in the molten material before it finished solidifying. Several of those craters were where the minion structures were located, while others had been carved into the sidewalls by the minions themselves.

These three maulers and the others the kirbies were unloading were headed for one of the wall niches. They were almost there by the time they reached the front lines, with the last two standard variants proceeding them being dropped by high pierced ‘zips’ that ripped right through their armored vests and detonated inside them, blowing the two bipeds apart into a fleshy shrapnel spray.

The maulers didn’t hesitate, sprinting forward and looking for an enemy to kill. They didn’t have to go far, for there were several just ahead behind a carpet of lizard bodies. The headless, four-legged walkers were three times taller than the maulers and appeared to be living tanks, each of which had an orifice between their front legs that was shooting out something that couldn’t be seen well in the dark, but everywhere one hit a lizard would blow apart.

The minions were bleeding, that much was easy to see because the blood was bioluminescent. Each time one of the little pink energy packets hit the flesh of the creatures it would only do a pinprick of damage, but the trickle of blood showing put a glowing target on the enemy for the lizards to shoot at.

Or in the case of the maulers, to lunge for.

Already there were a few visible hacking away at two of the minions, so this trio ran over the bodies of their fellow lizards and jumped onto the legs of the closest one, extending their forearm blades in midair and sinking them into the enemy on contact. They slid in surprisingly well, but seemed to make no noticeable change to the minion’s movements, as if while they were doing damage it was inconsequential.

That didn’t matter to the maulers, who pulled out their blades and rammed them back in again, piercing hole after hole that saw rivers of neon gray goo seep out. It didn’t flow like a liquid, but dripped in globs that covered the maulers’ blades, making them appear like lightsabers as they continued stabbing away at the enemy without any regard for their own survival.

Suddenly the mauler on the left blew apart from an unseen weapon impact as the minion beside the one they were attacking turned and removed one of the gnats from its fellow living tank. The thick, hard biological armor on the maulers didn’t appear to even slow the enemy weapons down, but the minions were vulnerable to the blades and that was all that mattered. There would be more maulers to replace these three, so all the remaining two focused on was causing more damage, with each blade thrust doing the equivalent of 50+ vichsam shots.

For whatever reason the minions were more resistant to energy fire than physical force, hence the lizards pushing mauler units against them. The standard variants had done their job to get this trio to the minions without them getting sniped down first, despite most of the standards dying in the process, with the other few remaining drawing fire that would have gone to the maulers.

The second one got hit by another side shot, with each minion apparently not being able to shoot near its own legs. That was a weakness that they were covering for with overlapping fire, but if the lizards could isolate a minion then the maulers would own it.

That wasn’t for this one to worry about, for all it was doing and thinking was jab, withdraw, and jab again. Covered with the glowing blood it continued to do so until the minion’s leg finally gave out and it tipped over…but it caught itself from falling and moved into a tripod stance, with the limp leg hanging loosely between the other three.

The mauler sensed this and jumped from that leg to one of the sturdy ones, but before he could sink his blades in his chest was hit by a tiny, blurry energy packet that looked like little more than a wisp of wind, but it passed through and into his chest, causing little damage. Somewhere after entry that bit of energy altered into a vicious explosion, popping the mauler from the inside out and throwing one of its now severed arms out to the side where the forearm blade actually stuck into another minion’s torso like a piece of shrapnel.

That minion ignored it and kept on firing, even as more mauler trios were being escorted up into hacking range and tearing away at its legs.

Back on the wider plains of the tunnel metallic counterparts to the minions moved about along with the lizards, with the small, fleshy troops trying not to get stepped on by the bipedal giants. Most stood 4 meters tall and had two large arms with weapons mounted in the forearms, but they didn’t move like mechs or tanks. They moved like biologicals, the product of more than a million years of refinement in hardware and software, capable of operating without remote control but at the moment having that luxury since the Hamoriti’s jamming field was not within range.

The tank minions were no match for a vassal one on one, with their gix being stopped by intricate energy matrix that the Ancients had left behind instructions for with the Oracles. The Trinx version wasn’t as powerful, but it reduced the normally penetrative energy packets cold, and with only a small hit to shield strength. That gave them incredible longevity against the minions, though when the shields did finally go down the armor beneath them would breach after three consecutive hits in the same place.

The fourth would get through, then pop inside and wreck the interior of the vassals. Some would continue to operate while others would be taken out of the fight with one penetration. Regardless, the vassals were killing dozens, if not hundreds of minions each. Trouble was there were only a handful of them with this Li’vorkrachnika army, with the majority of the vassals being taken to the other side of the planet to engage the minions within range of the Hamoriti’s telepathy, to which they were immune.

Never the less, the few vassals were soaking up an inordinate amount of weaponsfire, allowing many more of the tiny infantry to get to their targets while also firing on and killing some of the tank minions themselves. They couldn’t one shot a minion, but came close with their klixon cannons. They were also a bit of tech left behind by the Ancients, and were an energy weapon that took on physical properties, applying kinetic damage on impact. That allowed a very high shot count without having to rely on ammunition rounds that would require replacement after limited engagements.

It took two or three hits square on the rounded body of the minions to take them down, and with a klixon in each arm with a cycling rate of .73 seconds the vassals could literally mow down the minions if given a chance. The problem was that, like the Li’vorkrachnika, the minions operated in a swarm mentality. So far the fighting hadn’t gotten out of hand, due to the limited number of minions being produced and the previous vassals having trimmed their numbers handily, but they were savaging the Li’vorkrachnika who, to no end, kept throwing more bodies at them in order to do even the slightest bits of damage.

Eventually one of the infantry pushes got a det pack to a minion, blowing a leg off and killing six maulers that were nearby in the process. That minion didn’t go down, rather moving to a tripod stance like so many of the others, but the nearest vassal turned and pumped two fairly long shots into the now stationary target. It didn’t explode, but rather got the innards scrambled by the entry wounds that failed to penetrate through and blow out the other side.

Gutted, but with the fleshy debris contained within, the minion’s legs went slack and it fell to the ground, one less biological turret for the allied infantry to deal with.

The Trinx controller who had altered the automated attack program to hit the wounded minion made a note that the Li’vorkrachnika needed to attach their explosives directly to the main body of the minions and not the legs, then he sent the message to his commander and continued to tweak the ongoing battle on his display where needed from orbit.

That suggestion was immediately considered by the fleet controllers and found to be sound, so they sent it over to the Li’vorkrachnika commander who likewise sent the information to the troops en route to the subsurface battles. Soon the new tactic made its way to the front as the uninformed troops died out and the new ones came in to replace them. The Trinx watched as their primitive allies adapted quickly, with the explosive satchels being given to the mauler variants who then ran underneath the minions and used their excessive musculature to jump up and jab their forearm blades into the underbelly, fixing them in place.

With the explosives pinned between the mauler’s and the minion’s bodies, it detonated the pack while holding it tight to the enemy flesh. The explosion ripped the mauler apart in a poof of green and tore through the underside of the minion, pushing it up a meter into the air from the concussion wave and landing it back on its legs that remained stiff for half a second as a waterfall of neon gray innards fell to the ground beneath it just ahead of the collapsing corpse.

The Li’vorkrachnika had just found their own one hit kill.

Slowly, with a mix of tactics and horrific sacrifice the Trinx’s primitive ally and the vassals pushed through the minion defenders and into the craters where their growing infrastructure was located. Each of their buildings was also biological, so when all of the defenders had been eliminated the vassals ordered the Li’vorkrachnika to pull back as they moved in and started pulverizing the buildings one at a time until there was nothing left but glowing, fleshy paste.

According to the Oracles there were certain structures that could spawn new ones, while others could regenerate themselves so long as key sections remained intact. With that being programmed into the vassals each of the robotic warriors continually scanned the biological debris and targeted those clusters, popping them like bonus points in a video game, until there were none left to regrow from.

One crater after another the vassals visited and wiped out, all the while the Li’vorkrachnika were spreading out searching for more enemies and occasionally stumbling across a fixed weapons platform, whether it be a freestanding turret or weapons mounted onto some of the structures. Those they either took out with det packs or one of the vassals would come around and eliminate the threat for them.

In the cases where no det packs were available or a vassal wasn’t nearby, the standard variants and maulers would rush the defensive emplacements, nicking them to death with bits of damage and often having to climb over their own dead to do it.

The Trinx controllers were surprised at the ferocity of their new ally, for up until now they’d only witnessed their navy in action. While a bit disturbing, it was also a welcome sight for how effectively they took down their targets. Committed as they were to victory, the Trinx appreciated having an ally that was equally so and unafraid to make necessary sacrifices.

And when you were as primitive as the Li’vorkrachnika were, you couldn’t make any gains without sacrifice. These bloodthirsty savages reveled in it, with no thoughts aside from winning the battle. They could always produce more troops to replace those that were lost, and given the minions vulnerability to physical weapons the Li’vorkrachnika were actually proving to be useful on their own merits even without vassal support.

That was good, for the Trinx could not stop the Hamoriti from spreading its minions underground on its own. They didn’t have nearly enough vassals for that, but they did have enough to augment their ally’s forces in the areas where the Hamoriti was not located, even if they couldn’t prevent the beast from seeding more directly around it.

Naval bombardment was highly preferred to this type of subsurface ground warfare, but with the Li’vorkrachnika willing to do whatever was required of them it looked like there might still be a way to halt the Hamoriti’s advance…though the cost involved was increasing rapidly.

8

May 21, 2729

Kilma System (Hamoriti location)

Nesmi

Situated high above the planet were six remote probes in orbit, each positioned so as to give the Chamra sight on the entirety of the surface simultaneously. The probes were passive sensors, very detailed but designed to operate in secrecy and equipped with camouflage systems to keep their existence from the Hamoriti, though whether or not the measures would be functional against the monster was anyone’s guess.

A Trinx and Sety fleet were both situated in various orbits around the planet, most up high and well outside what they knew the Hamoriti’s range to be, but the cyborgs were not so reckless. After several years of ‘containment’ on the part of the Trinx and their Li’vorkrachnika allies the cyborgs had decided to risk sending a single ship into the system to allow them to monitor events as they took place. That ship now sat near the system’s star, getting direct feeds from the probes so it wouldn’t have to risk sitting in orbit.

Thus far the Hamoriti had spent most of its time below ground, which had prompted the Trinx and Sety to move their fleets in closer. So far as the cyborgs could tell, the Sety hadn’t fired a single shot since they arrived. Their small fleet simply sat, watched, and waited for an opportunity to strike the minions when they weren’t protected by the Hamoriti itself. So far that hadn’t occurred, for all of the minions currently on the planet were subsurface and the Sety weren’t about to set foot on the planet, knowing how the Hamoriti could move around at will.

The Trinx were down there, with their vassals at least, and were aiding the Li’vorkrachnika as they shipped in millions of troops from other star systems to use as disposable weapons to hunt down and destroy the minions. The cyborgs had to admit that thus far the strategy was working, but there were at present seven different engagements taking place beneath the planet’s surface as the Hamoriti kept spawning minions in new locations. The strike teams had found some of them rather late, with them having grown to significant numbers, but they’d managed to successfully beat them down each time to date.

How long that could last no one knew, but the Trinx were adamant that they had to fight in the here and now before things had a chance to escalate further. The cyborgs didn’t disagree, they just saw no endgame, and as such weren’t going to throw away their people’s lives so casually as the Trinx were.

Their ally’s sacrifices paled in comparison to what the Li’vorkrachnika were doing. The primitive barbarians deserved some measure of respect for the way they accomplished what should not have been possible even with the minor tech upgrades the Trinx had given them. They did not fight like most civilizations would, and in this rare case it seemed that they were more effective for it. Every infantry unit they sent down beneath ground was destroyed, but they kept sending them, hurting the enemy and whittling them down until they finally made the kill. And given the size of their empire and their reputed growth rates, they could keep supplying these suicide armies indefinitely.

There had been a large squabble between the Trinx and the other members of The Nine over their choice of allies and the means they were employing, as well as the price being paid to garner their aid. The Sety especially were adamant that they not give the Li’vorkrachnika tech upgrades, seeing that given the size to which the primitive race had already grown, even small additions could have a snowball effect and come back to hurt them later on. Technically the Nexus was already at war with the Li’vorkrachnika, though while they were a large threat in number they were still a minor one as far as power was concerned.

But if the Trinx gave them even a piece of their own technological capability they’d become an enemy that the Nexus would be hard pressed to deal with even if it turned its full attention toward them.

The success of the Li’vorkrachnika in helping the Trinx keep the Hamoriti from spreading its minions had made several members of The Nine hesitant to complain further, but the Sety were adamant that they could not jeopardize the future in exchange for this stalemate. Technological superiority was not something that came easily, and the weapon upgrades the Trinx had given them were the equivalent of more than a millennium of research.

That was small for a race that had been around in prominence for over a million years, and in truth many races jumped the learning curve by acquiring tech from others, either through diplomacy, trade, or conquest, but the way the Li’vorkrachnika operated was so dangerously aggressive that arming them was a mistake that the Sety did not want to make, though the Trinx were beyond their control and would not alter their course of action.

The cyborg ship had been sent to the Hamoriti location to monitor exactly what was occurring, rather than relying on either Sety or Trinx reports. It was breaking with their ‘stay clear of the Hamoriti’ protocols, but by using the probes it was deemed an acceptable risk, for even if they were destroyed the ship itself would be outside the psionic range of the beast…though exactly what the safe distance was no one knew for certain.

Tracking the Hamoriti subsurface was difficult, even from low orbit, for scanning through solid rock was nearly impossible. The Sety and Trinx were both bombarding the planet with active sensors of a type that the probes could pick up the reflections from, hence they were also able to get a point position on the beast, though nothing more. That was due to the composition of the Hamoriti and it being somewhat more dense than the rock itself, for the energy beams being used were so nonreactive to matter they could only pick up huge variations.

Ships in orbit were invisible to them, for they didn’t produce a reflection unless they had shields up. The inner core of the planet also gave back a small variation, due to the increasing density of the molten material under such heavy pressure, but the Hamoriti’s bulk was so highly concentrated with corovon that it offered enough of a ‘ping’ on the sensors for the cyborgs to see where it was at all times.

Seeing what it was doing, however, was beyond them unless it came up into the crust and other more detailed sensors came into workable range.

It was those that had been failing the Trinx as of late, for the more rock between them and the target the less effective they were. Either the Hamoriti knew this or it was just getting lucky, for the more recent minion spawn points were deep enough to go unnoticed until they branched out through tunnels they dug themselves, heading closer to the surface. Events like this suggested that the Trinx’s hold on the Hamoriti’s progress was coming to an end sooner or later, but they stubbornly kept fighting the minions back with the never ending supply of Li’vorkrachnika available to them and, for the moment at least, seemed to be proving the Chamra and the rest of The Nine wrong.

Monitoring the activity on and in the planet was routine and boring, for the most part, but when the Hamoriti’s location began to drift towards the surface again the cyborg crew began taking notice, as did the Sety and Trinx fleets, for once it came within a few miles of the atmosphere they began moving out of planetary orbit. The Sety fleet retreated to another planet, with the bulk of the Trinx going with them and leaving only a small response task force behind.

The Li’vorkrachnika ships headed out too, pacing the main Trinx fleet that they were seemingly glued to, for they kept well away from the Sety at all times. The two races hadn’t fought before, but the Li’vorkrachnika knew the Sety were part of the Nexus and chose to give them plenty of space.

On the surface there wasn’t much left of what had once been a Li’vorkrachnika world. A few colonies had been partially rebuilt to serve as firebases for the incoming armies to cycle through as they headed below ground, but what had originally been on the surface had been eventually destroyed by the Hamoriti in one form or another, with the beast literally leaving its footprints everywhere across the planet.

When it finally reached the surface it broke through like a volcano erupting, ramming the rock out of the way and bringing a magma plume out behind it that shot out like a geyser and rained down on the surrounding area. In time that would cool and harden over, but the Hamoriti didn’t stick around for that to happen, rather, it headed straight for orbit.

That sent alarms off in all four races’ ships and they scrambled to reposition, tracking its trajectory and seeing that it was once against headed for the star. The cyborg ship quickly made a microjump out to one of the other planets, not wanting to be anywhere near low stellar orbit when it arrived. The ship dropped a probe in its wake, then sat back and watched from afar as the Hamoriti braked against the star and began to drift down into a low orbit, traveling around to what jumpline no one knew.

The fleets would have to reposition there again, and the cyborg ship would go with them, but there were still minions here that had to be eradicated, meaning that the Hamoriti had just won its first victory in that it was making The Nine fight in two locations simultaneously…or at least it would when it arrived at its next system.

Dropping into an extremely low orbit, the Hamoriti angled down near to the highly volatile stellar ‘atmosphere’ and the sensor readings began to diminish. A few moments later they lost all contact with the Hamoriti.

It hadn’t jumped out, that much the cyborgs knew and they reviewed recent telemetry to make sure. They conferred with the Trinx, who had sent ships in to the star behind the Hamoriti, and they too had lost contact with it, stating that the beast had gone too far down for them to be able to track, into the outermost layer of the star itself.

The first thought anyone had was that the Hamoriti was trying to hide its jumpline, circling around to a different position where it could sneak out unnoticed, so the Trinx deployed ships all around the star in a detection grid. They waited, but nothing came out, which had them wondering if it had somehow beaten them around to the backside and jumped away unnoticed, which would be a disaster. Without knowing where it had gone they couldn’t get to the minions in time to knock them down before they multiplied to dangerous levels.

The immediate talk was to get the rest of The Nine in the surrounding systems to start scouting and find it as quickly as possible, but after several hours of research on the star, for no one knew if the Hamoriti had left for sure or not, the cyborgs picked up on a tiny anomaly that they shared with the other two races.

There was a minor deviation in the stellar output, so small to easily go unnoticed, but with the right computerized screening it became reliably detectable, not so much in a solid position trace but a general area where there was less stellar output than there should be by a fraction of a percent. That would have been negligible, but the reduction didn’t fluctuate.

Their only conclusion could be that the Hamoriti had gone into the star itself and was creating a dead spot beneath the surface that ‘dimmed’ the surrounding area slightly.

The Sety immediately shot that theory down, for the Oracles had never said anything about the Hamoriti being able to travel inside stars. Coring into a planet was one thing, but burrowing into a star was quite another. It was certainly debatable whether or not a Hamoriti could survive it, or how long it could survive in there, but none of the others had ever done so as far as the Ancient records were concerned, so the Sety believed that it was either hiding in the atmosphere where they couldn’t see or it had indeed skirted surveillance and jumped out of the system.

The Trinx were unsure either way and suggested sending the scout order/request out anyway, citing that there was no time to figure out what had happened and that they had to pursue every possibility.

So the order went out, transmitted via interstellar comms that all three races had built into them. Those signals would then be picked up in nearby systems and retransmitted to others outside broadcast range, with each ship acting as a relay in regions where there was no such existing infrastructure.

Six days went by, with the cyborg ship returning to stellar orbit and monitoring the star’s output more closely, trying to determine what their ghost anomaly truly was. If the Hamoriti had made a jump, it might not even have reached its destination system yet, let alone have been found and reported. The comm signals still had a significant delay, so it could be weeks before it was found again under the best of circumstances.

But if it had months of anonymity to work with, the containment the Trinx had worked so hard to maintain would be all but impossible to regain. Then again, if the Li’vorkrachnika were willing to up their contribution the cyborgs weren’t going to write off the possibility completely. The more minions there were the greater their defensive ability became through overlapping cover, but it was still possible that, with enough numbers, they could be overwhelmed.

The math wasn’t good when you let the minions progress into phase 3, which saw the growth of much larger units. If it got that far the Li’vorkrachnika would be almost useless as far as their infantry was concerned, and only a series of major upgrades to their technology would bring them back into the fold, for their ability to fight came from being able to damage the enemy with each suicide wave. Reduce that damage down to a mere scratch and the primitives became virtually useless.

No matter how you looked at it, the present situation had gotten a lot worse.

But halfway through that sixth day the speculation ended as the Hamoriti rose back out from inside the star. The cyborg ship scrambled to get further away, making an immediate microjump, but the Hamoriti wasn’t nearby and didn’t care about the insignificant ship. It’s normally blue bulk was now glowing cherry red, like an ember pulled out of a fire, and it didn’t diminish with time as the Hamoriti gained more and more distance from the star, then made a microjump of its own.

It didn’t travel back to the planet, nor to any of the other planets. Where it went was…nowhere.

The Trinx and Sety fleets pursued it from a great distance, unsure of where it was going or if there was a hidden planet out there that for some reason they couldn’t detect. The odds of that were nil, but the Hamoriti was obviously traveling out away from the star for a reason and at a speed nowhere near sufficient to cross to another star.

In fact the Hamoriti began slowing after it got out past the orbit of the 3rd planet, with the star now being a small orb in the sky that paled in the distance compared to the red glow from the Hamoriti. When it eventually came to a stop, pulling on the star itself to slow down rather than braking against a destination gravity well, it held position for less than a minute, but long enough for the ships trailing it to realize that the creature had grown larger by approximately 20%.

As they began to theorize how that was possible and why the Oracles had never mentioned anything about stellar diving, a massive energy wave was emitted from the Hamoriti that traveled across the entire star system within a handful of seconds. Every sensor array that wasn’t shielded from line of sight was overloaded and knocked offline, blinding the fleets to what was happening to the Hamoriti and wrecking half of the internal systems within the Li’vorkrachnika ships.

When the cyborg ship finally rotated around to bring a few of its intact sensor arrays into alignment with the Hamoriti’s last known position they reacquired it, seeing that it was no longer glowing and had shrunken back down to its original size.

And it was moving again, heading into the star and subsequently making another microjump back to the planet. As it headed down to the surface it made a slight detour, traveling over to the position where the Li’vorkrachnika fleet now sat mostly helpless. The Trinx ships moved off, with only part of their sensors having been knocked out of order, but most of the more primitive ships were dead in the water.

Those that could still move did so, or tried. Only a handful were able to make microjumps out, and those were the ones who had been fortunate enough to be in the silhouette of others when the energy discharge came. They maneuvered around their incapacitated brethren and ran like hell as the Hamoriti moved right up into their fleet and emitted a tsunami discharge that, even without the added destructive power of the atmosphere, shredded every ship caught in the blast wave.

With that bit of cleanup done, the Hamoriti headed down into the atmosphere and sunk back into the planet’s surface, leaving the The Nine with no answers as to what had just happened.

9

May 23, 2729

Paquat System

Vikod (Trinx homeworld)

The Trinx Regent was standing inside the Ancient shell, plying the Oracle with further questions in a seemingly vain attempt to find some missed bit of information that the program held. Every question asked led to previously acquired answers, but the Regent refused to believe that the Ancients would have constructed an 8th prison and not have included it in the database. There had to be something else here to explain this, but after years of trying he and the others had not been able to discern anything new.

But the Regent kept trying anyway, for monitoring this Hamoriti was an endlessly boring job, though a vital one, given the stakes. A single misstep could see this Hamoriti released, and it was far larger than the one currently out in the galaxy. That one couldn’t be recaptured or killed, so it was unimaginable how much more dangerous this one would be if it escaped sedation…or perhaps it would be no different, for what did power levels matter when neither one could be defeated.

“Replay the events from timestamp 284 in the Descran System,” he told the Oracle, who complied with a slew of holograms that it began narrating.

“Minion incursion began with four seed ships dropping from orbit. Uncontested they set up…” the Oracle said, cutting off its sentence briefly before a loud, chilling sound rattled off in a 1.6 second duration that included 56 rapid fire beats. “Containment breach.”

The Regent froze, unable to think or move, but it wasn’t from the Hamoriti’s psionics. The shock of those two words stunned him into silence.

“Hamoriti internal activity spike detected, stimuli unknown. Automatic sedative increase…insufficient. Waking imminent. Recommend emergency sedation procedure, Regent.”

The Trinx shook itself from its haze and ran through the gap between shells, heading for the inner barrier and activating his wristbound comm. “Bring the vassals online immediately. Full emergency protocols and don’t wait for confirmation. Hit it as fast as you can.”

“Activating now, but we can’t identify the source.”

“I’m going to visually inspect the Hamoriti. If I’m compromised continue with full sedation measures until you run out of chemical. We cannot let this one escape.”

No further words were necessary on either end, with the Regent and others having trained for this day all of their lives, as had their forbearers. He didn’t know what was going on, but the Trinx knew they had to respond immediately. Any delay would allow the Hamoriti to wake further.

“Oracle, open the inner door,” he said to the air, with a hologram appearing beside him in the hallways as he ran through them.

“Opening. My internal sensors are clear. There is nothing within the chamber to have prompted this reaction. If you get too close to the Hamoriti you will succumb to its effects.”

“If there is an error in your sensors we have to know. My life is inconsequential compared to the deaths that will occur if Rigall is released,” he said, referring to the Ancient name given to this Hamoriti.

“I assure you, the chamber is clear,” the Oracle repeated. “Your machines are activating now.”

The Regent ran fast, faster than he’d ever run before, and arrived at the open doorway through the inner shell, stopping a few steps inside as the monster came into view. Its long tail was curled around its body just as it had been the last time he’d seen it, identical in position to every surveillance recording captured over the past million years. Whatever activity the Oracle’s sensors were detecting was purely internal at this point. The mountain of corovon-laced flesh hadn’t moved.

Situated several kilometers ahead were a sea of vassals moving about like ants around the base of the creature. They’d been put there long ago and were carrying no standard weapons, only containers of the chemical that they were now spraying on the Hamoriti from arm-launchers. Some were drenching the ‘skin’ at ground level with liquid streams while others were launching packets to impact higher up. All of the chemical goo absorbed on contact, but the Regent knew that if too much was applied to any one location the excess would slide off and fall to the floor, hence the need to spread it out.

The trouble was, the Hamoriti was huge and it took time for the chemical to cycle through its internal systems. The more active it became the faster it would circulate, but at its present state it would take minutes at the minimum for it to permeate throughout its body. On top of that there was no knowing what the stimuli was that was waking it, and without their being able to shut it down the chemical alone would not be enough.

“Status?” the Regent asked the hologram of the Oracle.

“Waking is continuing, but at a reduced ra…” the Regent heard, then suddenly there was a chorus of voices around him and he found himself laying on the ground staring up into several faces with the Oracle’s hologram hovering directly over him.

“He is regaining consciousness,” it said matter-of-factly.

“What…” he said, sitting up and looking around at the junior members of the monitoring team and one other Regent that had suddenly popped up all around him. “Status?”

“The Hamoriti is returning to slumber,” the other Regent answered. “The emergency procedures worked, but we have very little chemical remaining. If another instance occurs soon we will not be able to stop it.”

The Trinx tried to stand up but found his body unwilling to cooperate. He was stiff and feeling ill, with a massive headache pounding all the way down his headtails. His fellow Regent extended a hand over him and he took it, being pulled up to his feet painfully.

“You were caught in the freezing effect. Are you ill?”

“Yes, but not incapacitated. Oracle, have you determined the source of the breach?”

“None has been recorded. Method of stimuli remains unknown.”

“Check the recorders in the vassals.”

“We already have,” the other Regent said. “You’ve been frozen for two days.”

“How is that possible? I should have regained control of my body as soon as the Hamoriti’s effective radius diminished.”

“It only now did. The field expanded all the way out to the monitoring facility before receding. The Oracle says enough chemical has been applied, but it will take several more hours before the Hamoriti is fully dormant once again.”

“I do not understand,” the Regent said, looking at the Oracle’s hologram that had moved up above all of their heads. “The aura is not supposed to extend that far.”

“The Hamoriti’s passive aura does not. It awakened enough to put a small measure of conscious effort into the defense mechanism, then held the effort as it began returning to slumber. A delayed impulse, to be sure, and one that we have not recorded before. My analysis is ongoing and will continue through to full sedation.”

The Regent spun around, looking at the Hamoriti where the vassals were still surrounding it as tiny dots in the distance. The tail curl was still there, but it had changed position slightly.

“It moved?”

“For a period of 4 seconds, yes,” the Oracle confirmed. “A momentary stretch as it woke. Fortunately your emergency protocol was applied in time to prevent any further subconscious movement, else the motion would have added to the waking effect. Though the stimuli has not been detected, its effects are measureable. It occurred in a single moment, with a massive uptick in activity that began to spool on its own until the chemical surge took hold.”

“Are we producing more chemical?”

“We are now that the facility is no longer within the aura,” the other Regent explained.

“My replacement capabilities are operating at 100%,” the Oracle added. “Internal storage will be at full within 129 days, unless external materials are made available.”

“Do you have enough currently to maintain the sedation?”

“Remaining reserves are sufficient.”

“It’s almost over,” his peer said, placing a hand on his shaky shoulder. “We made it, barely.”

“Not until we know the source of the breach,” the Trinx said, swiping away a bit of blood on his lips, coming from somewhere in his mouth.

When the other Regent saw that he flicked a wrist in a gesture to his subordinates and two of them came forward. “I’ll stay until this is fully resolved. You have to get treatment now. Take him.”

“Find the breach,” he said as the pair of Trinx helped him walk on shaky legs with a support on each arm. “Nothing is safe until we do.”

Nesfa sat in his cubicle atop the command tower reading through the most recent batch of reports from the Hamoriti site, his dread growing by the day as the minion incursions subsurface were steadily increasing. His troops were hunting them down admirably, but the Hamoriti was growing more devious in its placement and putting them further and further underground, delaying the time of detection and often requiring the coring of new tunnels to get down to them.

The Li’vorkrachnika were still holding up their end of the agreement, devoting as many ground troops as necessary to suppress the minions and dying by the millions in order to accomplish it. That was their task, but Nesfa feared it was going to end up not being enough. By going underground the Hamoriti made it much harder to get at the minions, meaning that they were having to fight full battles against them, though the tradeoff was the Hamoriti itself wasn’t involved in those. Even its tsunami blast had its limits, and detonating it underground would surely destroy any minions it sought to protect, not to mention wouldn’t travel very far.

But it seemed to Nesfa that the Hamoriti, stalemated as it was, was slowly beginning to get the upper hand on them. The Trinx and Li’vorkrachnika were upping the pressure accordingly, but without assistance from The Nine he wasn’t sure how long they could maintain the current form of containment. If the Hamoriti didn’t change tactics again they had a chance, but Nesfa seriously doubted it would be so accommodating.

They really needed the Yisv down in those tunnels, for their close engagement skills would far surpass even the vassals against the minions, or so his analysis teams had told him. But no, the Yisv refused to come anywhere near the system the Hamoriti was currently in. Perhaps if it moved yet again they would offer to help clean up here, but that would still leave them losing ground and having to divide their forces up further. He needed the Yisv on the front lines, but their fear was holding them back, even with several years’ worth of information from the current battles to give them a feel for where they could safely insert themselves without having to go up against the Hamoriti itself.

But no, they and the others were basically conceding the spread of the minions. Vowed to reduce and slow their growth once it happened, but only to buy time for their races to pack up and run. The stupid fools. The Ancients had said if the Hamoriti were to get loose the entire galaxy would be in jeopardy. There was no safe place to run to, and even if they could make a jump to a nearby galaxy spur there was no guarantee that the Hamoriti couldn’t follow.

He appreciated the desire to survive, at least a bit longer, but he and the rest of the Trinx knew that the key to their continual survival was in stopping the minions from spreading in the first place, which was why his race was devoting their full resources to building vassals and feeding the Li’vorkrachnika the raw supplies they’d requested to help them build new worlds specifically for the production of ships and soldiers to devote to this fight.

For all they’d done, and proved they could do, the Trinx felt betrayed to still be the only race with the sense to do what was necessary. When would the others wake up and see what had to be done before it was too late?

The recent stirrings by the Hamoriti here had caused everything Nesfa was basing his containment efforts on to be questioned. How the beast had begun to wake up was still unknown, and worse yet the Oracle was unable to provide any data to corroborate with, for in all the history of this shell there had never been even the remotest glitch in the sedation. Had this been a technological malfunction he would have felt better, but both the Oracle and his own techs had confirmed that the shell was operating perfectly. What had awakened it was a mystery that was near to driving Nesfa mad, for it seemed like everything they had worked so hard for was being undercut, whether by The Nine or fate itself.

A message prompt pinged a priority alert and the Prefect pulled up the new file immediately, seeing that it was another status report from the Hamoriti site…though he wasn’t due to receive a transmission for several more days. Immediately fearing more bad news, the Prefect opened up the holographic document and began to read through it with his hearts beat increasing on reflex.

It had been routed to him immediately upon reception on Vikod, and his analysts hadn’t even gotten a chance to chew on it yet, but the Prefect knew instantly that the system-wide energy burst the Hamoriti had unleashed and used to disable the Li’vorkrachnika fleet was the cause of the disturbance here. Why the Oracles hadn’t been aware of this ability he didn’t know, and he was going to follow up on that immediately with another visit to the shell for a personal discussion with the Ancient program.

It was clear to him what had happened. The Hamoriti had sent out a call for help, or some other form of location ping, almost assuredly needing to soak up some kind of resource from the star in order to power a spherical emission potent enough to stretch across star systems. The power needed for that sort of thing was off the charts, for while a star produced an immense amount of stellar output every second, enough to fry an unshielded ship that got too close, when the same output was spread out across lightyears it was reduced down to a tiny pinprick of light.

The Hamoriti had to create something similar, and though he didn’t understand the dynamics of it the one here had received that call and begun to wake up.

As bad as that was, at least now they knew what they were dealing with. Assuming minimum range, Vikod was the only other Hamoriti location within transmission distance, but there was no way to know for sure how far that signal had reached. He doubted it could get all the way out to the others, but he immediately sent a communique to inquire as to the status of the other Hamoriti before finishing reading the report. That message was immediately sent out through an interstellar comm network linking the Trinx to The Nine, but it would take days to get a response and Nesfa needed information sooner rather than later.

If another Hamoriti had begun to awaken he didn’t know if they would be able to suppress it, for only this shell had vassals loaded with chemical as a backup plan in case the facility’s own measures failed. The others had their own systems in place, for The Nine had been too prudent to take chances after the near disaster with the Sety, but Nesfa’s people had only barely kept Rigall contained, so he feared for the others.

His gut told him the Hamoriti’s signal couldn’t travel that far, but with the way his luck was going he couldn’t count on anything. And what made him worry most was the possibility that there was a 9th shell out there somewhere within transmission range, one that wouldn’t have guardians in place with backup measures. They still hadn’t gotten any answers from the Oracles as to why there had been an unknown 8th, and when dealing with an enemy as insanely powerful as a Hamoriti, information was the only real weapon one had.

The Ancients had been wise to leave the Oracles behind with their knowledge of how to fight the minions, otherwise the Trinx would not have been prepared for this day. They’d been relying on the Ancients’ playbook in all of their preparations, trusting that they knew how to deal with this enemy, but these unknown factors that kept popping up, the latest being this interstellar transmission capability, made Nesfa wonder just how in the dark even the Ancients had been.

The Trinx weren’t their match, nor was the entirety of The Nine. How the hell were they expected to manage this disaster?

The fact that they still had the Hamoriti effectively contained to this point, as far as its minions were concerned, was shocking even to Nesfa, but they had been holding the line despite the assertions of hopelessness from the others. The Trinx hadn’t expected to actually stop the Hamoriti, but they had felt obligated to try and, as strange as the galaxy was, had somehow managed to do it up until this point. Every day hinged with uncertainty, and fate seemed determined to break them, but for the moment everything was holding together and he intended to make that last as long as possible.

When he finished reading the report he headed off to get transport over to the shaft that led down to the Ancient shell, taking the data file with him and hoping that the Oracle would be able to figure out how they could shield the facility from the Hamoriti’s transmissions before it happened again.

10

August 21, 2729

Pleissa System (Jonstar capitol)

Havbret

“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Breeso said as he walked beside the war commander, with the pair of Jonstar headed to the exterior landing pad. “One misstep and you’ll be killed.”

“I am well aware of that,” Nicktori said evenly as the pair of quadrupeds came to an ascension ramp. They stepped on it and allowed themselves to be slowly dragged up to the higher levels of the military complex, giving the pair only a few minutes before the war commander would depart. “But the Trinx have proven that the Hamoriti can be contained. For how long I do not know, but every year we can buy gives our people more time to prepare for relocation…and if it is possible to maintain the containment indefinitely then it’s an avenue that we have to pursue.”

“I still say this is foolishness,” the civilian leader admitted, “but if anyone can make it work it’s you.”

“That’s why I’m going,” Nicktori said, sweeping his horse-like head to the left to throw Breeso a sarcastic look.

“We’re going to need you here, so don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

“This entire mission is a risk.”

“Please don’t be difficult, I’m trying to instill some wisdom in you before you depart.”

“You have been trying for years, little brother, and still continue to fail because you do not realize that I am wiser than you.”

“Says the one going up against a Hamoriti.”

“It’s minions, not the Titan itself.”

“You think it’ll just stay put and let you trash its spawn points? It’s going to come after you.”

“If it does we will run. The Hamoriti have never been fast.”

“Their area of effect weaponry don’t require them to be. They just have to get close, and your Degars aren’t exactly nimble craft.”

“You are not telling me anything that I do not already know,” Nicktori said as they reached the top of the ramp and stepped off onto a wide promenade that had the exit doors to the landing pad on the far side. In between those and the two Jonstar were more than a dozen others, all of whom were security save for two, one of which was kin to them. “Final farewells?”

“If you can spare a moment?” their father and defacto ruler of the Jonstar asked, though most of the critical functions of running their empire fell to Breeso, Nicktori, and others.

“We can.”

“I hope this is not the last we see of one another, but if it is I want you to know that I will see to it that the time you buy us will not be squandered. Furthermore, there has been a small lead turned up. I am sending Yesvo to follow it. I do not hope, but it must be investigated regardless.”

“What kind of lead?” Breeso asked, this being the first he’d heard of it as well.

“Previously unknown coordinates of an Ancient world found in the local lore of a race that predates us. It was an obscure reference, but we’ve managed to calculate the system in question. It is in unclaimed space beyond the Frektordan. Perhaps we will discover something of use there, perhaps not.”

“Hopefully not another Hamoriti,” Nicktori said, glancing at his closest advisor who was waiting along with his father. “Are we set?”

“They need another hour and a half, then we’ll be fully provisioned.”

The war commander turned to his brother. “Make sure the supply convoy is assembled quickly. I do not know how rapidly we will expend our ammunition, and I know you have more pressing concerns to deal with here…”

“You’ll have what you need,” Breeso interrupted him. “Fire at will…and a keep a tally of the minion kills for your reports. The people need to see that we can indeed fight back, even if not against the Hamoriti itself. Please don’t make me have to tell them you died in a vain attempt.”

“Your confidence is underwhelming,” Nicktori said sarcastically.

“None since the Ancients have fought these beings,” their father said with caution. “Learn, adapt, and do not hesitate to fall back. An unfamiliar enemy can often win the day with the element of surprise…and we are also unknown to the Hamoriti.”

“Well said,” Nicktori agreed, lowering his head slightly. His father did likewise and they touched the thick, natural armor there in a quick gesture of respect and kinship. The war commander kicked his brother in the leg, then winked as he and his advisor walked the remaining steps to the doors that would take them outside to their waiting transport.

“I hope he knows what he’s doing,” Breeso said warily.

“With the Hamoriti loose there are no certainties anymore. He is playing a gamble, and even he does not know how it will turn out.”

A month and a half later...

A fleet of Li’vorkrachnika cruisers descended from orbit, passing through the still warm atmosphere from the latest tsunami attack. A third of the small firebases they’d set up on the surface to facilitate the teams fighting underground had just been taken out in a handful of seconds, but there was no time to waste with concern. The Hamoriti had gone back underground again and two of the as yet untouched minion spawn sites had grown to the point where they were building small connecting tunnels to the surface.

Out of those tunnels small minion flyers were emerging, even smaller than the Li’vorkrachnika wisps, but armed with a potent energy weapon that emitted from their heads. They had ambushed a few transports headed to ground with more troops, then the Trinx had ordered the continuous convoys pulled back just prior to the Hamoriti surfacing and toasting their bases in the southern hemisphere. With it now gone again, leaving a magma spewing geyser a half mile wide in its wake, the minion fliers had to be dealt with before the transports could fly troops in to the surface entrance to deal with the base itself.

At present there were 18 different minion spawn sites that were known about, with the Hamoriti spending most of its time deep within the planet and bouncing around from point to point, harvesting resources it was assumed, but other than a crude position fix they didn’t know what it was doing down there. Once Trinx and Li’vorkrachnika ground troops engaged a minion site the Hamoriti didn’t involve itself, probably for fear of damaging the minions at the same time, but if it could catch the invading troops on the surface it would do so, coming up anywhere within a thousand miles and releasing a tsunami.

That meant the troops heading down to fight below ground had to get there quickly, and without the firebases the Hamoriti had just wiped off the map that was going to be even more difficult. They hadn’t been situated near any of the minion sites, and to date that had kept them off the Hamoriti’s hit list, but apparently no longer. Every time they adapted to the creature the creature adapted back, turning this growing war into an unstable and unpredictable affair.

The Trinx campaign commander watched from orbit around another planet, feeding instructions to the ships on site and to the Li’vorkrachnika while staying safely away from the Hamoriti. Chosan was one of the wisest of the Trinx generals, and Nesfa had personally entrusted him with this never-ending task, but the Hamoriti was demonstrating considerable strategic skill. More so even than the Ancient records had indicated, though back in those days the minion swarms were the main nemesis they had fought, with the direct Hamoriti conflicts reserved for the last days of that great war.

As valuable as the insights were that the Ancients had left behind, Chosan was having to write a new book of engagement as time progressed, and he was afraid the learning curve was allowing the Hamoriti to gain ground. It wasn’t much, but whereas before they’d been dealing with one minion spawn site, now there were many. He was probing some of them with orbital fire, burning straight down through the rock with pinprick attacks, but those didn’t do much more than cut tunnels for his expeditionary vassals to move down through, and more often than not those had to cut out other tunnels to allow the Li’vorkrachnika down.

A quick look at the cruisers and Chosan ordered one of their few vassal warships to catch up to them before they engaged the flyers. Dropping like a rock it shot down from orbit and into the atmosphere, creating a fireball in the process that lit up the ashy sky in a long plume. When it eventually slowed the friction on its shields lessened and view of the red hull plates returned just in time for it to drop in above the cruisers as the minion flyers were coming up at them from below.

Little lines of blue energy, looking impossibly thin from a distance, began shooting up and hitting the cruisers as much larger green plasma orbs fired back down at them. Almost all of the Li’vorkrachnika ships sent to fight the minions were still equipped with their old weapons, but while the plasma was not as potent as the Vichsam it was still effective in such large amounts. One hit would have killed a wisp on contact, coming from a naval battery, but against the minions it would take five or six such hits to drop them out of the sky, making the tiny flyers extremely resilient.

The vassal warship was another matter. Its weaponry was varied and built specifically for killing minions in all their forms, including a large number of small klixon cannons that were one hitting the flyers and taking down dozens per second once the ship entered the fray and took point. The tiny blue beams from the minions only scratched its shields, but they racked up considerable damage to the cruisers’ protective energy barriers, eventually taking them down and slicing through the yellow/tan hull armor with each pinprick strike.

But the cruisers were warships, far outmassing the tiny flyers, and even as primitive as they were they did not go down quickly. That said, there were tens of thousands of the minions coming up out of the surface tunnels and heading towards them, with the first Li’vorkrachnika cruiser going down some 12 minutes into the fight. After that they began dropping like rocks as the attrition damage mounted, but they were likewise killing so many of the minions that the single vassal could handle the rest without being overwhelmed itself.

Chosan watched the battle along with reports coming in from others below ground, which was how he spent most of his days. He slept as little as possible, for fear of the Hamoriti pulling another bit of strategic magic and gaining an advantage. When he was out of touch with current events his juniors took over, and while he would have trusted them with virtually any other opponent, facing a Hamoriti was the stuff of legends and he couldn’t bring himself to relax even when he was attempting to rest.

That constant pressure was taking a toll on his body, but there was no way around it. This campaign had galaxy-spanning implications and, without hyperbole, was the most important duty his race had ever undertaken.

A signal from the Sety ships in stellar orbit informed him that there were incoming jumps to the star, which drew only minor attention, for the Li’vorkrachnika had jumpships coming and going constantly now that their planet had been effectively taken over by the Hamoriti. None of their people left on the surface were still alive, save for those currently fighting underground and stationed in the remaining firebases. How long those would stay operational Chosan didn’t know, for all it would take was the Hamoriti popping up and repeating the last attack. Why it didn’t take them out already might have been a question of resources, or maybe it just hadn’t noticed them there yet.

He doubted that, but without minion scouts across the planet there was a question as to how much sensing capability the Hamoriti had. Chosan chose to assume a lot, but he didn’t order the Li’vorkrachnika bases evacuated. So long as they were operational they were serving a purpose, with flocks of their little transports hauling troops over to the access shafts they’d cut to get down to the other minion sites.

When the information on the incoming fleet crossed his screen he didn’t even bother to look at it, focused as he was on the minion flyer battle that was costing the Li’vorkrachnika dearly. He was considering sending in another vassal, but since this was the first engagement against this new type of minion he didn’t want to risk a second one just yet. If there were to be any surprises, let the Li’vorkrachnika’s pathetic ships take the hit. His vassals were too rare and powerful to waste on uncertain strikes.

He’d only sent the one because he suspected the Li’vorkrachnika fleet couldn’t handle the task on its own…at least not without sending 20 times that number of ships, and he didn’t want to waste them in such a manner without sufficient cause. He knew well that only a joint war would be effective, and sending the Li’vorkrachnika in on their own in most cases would just end up with a no value slaughter. As it was they were dying left and right to accomplish even minor gains, but those gains were setting up the Trinx to accomplish the primary goals and root out the minion spawning sites, forcing the Hamoriti to begin them again and taking away their ability to reproduce on their own.

It wasn’t until Chosan received an incoming comm did he realize that the newly arrived fleet wasn’t Li’vorkrachnika.

“Commander,” a Jonstar said, with its large, intimidating eyes being a welcome comfort to his own. “I apologize for our lateness, but we stand ready to assist you.”

Chosan remained silent for a pair of seconds, feeling the first bit of relief in years, then he wasted no further time. “I need an immediate orbital strike on two minion locations. They have access tunnels reaching to the surface and I need you to target down them, maximum yield.”

“Gladly,” Nicktori said. “I presume the Hamoriti is below ground at present?”

“It is.”

“Do you have an estimate as to how quickly it can resurface?”

“Its speed varies, but at present,” Chosan said, checking his map screens, “estimate no less than 38 minutes from atmosphere. You should be able to strike before you have a chance to get caught out.”

“Has it demonstrated an ability to attack while below ground?”

“No.”

“Well enough. Send the coordinates.”

Chosan looked to one of his subordinates, who immediately sent the information to the Jonstar fleet. “Done.”

“Pull your ships back,” Nicktori said, seeing that there was a current engagement going on in the atmosphere nearby. “There’s going to be spillover, even if we directly hit the shaft.”

“They’ll be gone by the time you’re in position…and thank you.”

“We should have been here long before now,” the Jonstar admitted.

Chosan nodded, then cut the comm as he watched the newly arrived ships break up. There were six super-large ones, two of which began heading down towards the atmosphere while the others and the smaller support ships picked a holding orbit and moved towards it off the stellar jumpline they’d arrived on.

The two massive cone-shaped ships sank slowly down through the atmosphere over the pair of sites, eventually stalling out a handful of miles above each. The minion flyers, those few that were still coming up out of the tunnels after the vassal and Li’vorkrachnika had destroyed the others, shot directly up to target the huge ships, but their tiny weapons had no effect. They swirled about the point of the two cones, each of which was pointing down towards an individual tunnel shaft, and fired with impunity at the Jonstar vessels as both summoned up an internal charge that began to crackle around the exterior of the ship points in a fiery orange cascade.

The effect grew as the charge increased, turning the tip of each ship into an inverted Christmas tree of lethal lights that moved about in an unpredictable, chaotic pattern. It was all held against the ship’s surface until the southernmost vessel finally released its charge after a few minutes of building to maximum power, sending an intensely bright beam of orange straight down into the tunnel below.

The energy vaporized the surrounding rock and punched down with a kinetic tremor that rippled out across the landscape, followed immediately by a series of others, as if the ship was pounding the planet with an insanely big machine gun. A plume of debris built up around the tunnel shaft, expanding outward like a donut and mixed with stray orange energy arcs that bounced from one bit of rock to another, destroying everything on the surface within several miles around the impact site.

But the largest damage came down through the shaft, expanding on it and pumping raw destructive energy through into the minion spawning site miles below, burning out their cocooned flyers, tank minions, and every other type of living weapon they had begun to produce, as well as the biological factories that were growing them at an insanely rapid pace.

It took more than 8 seconds for the Jonstar weapon to release its full charge into the planet, with the second ship doing likewise over its minion site shortly thereafter and both ships immediately retreating to space to avoid any chance of being caught by the Hamoriti.

Chosan collapsed in his seat, leaning forward and resting his head in his hands as his fatigue seemed to catch up with him as his mind finally allowed itself to relax. While the Sety were here they were pretty much observers so long as the Hamoriti stayed on the same planet, but now that the Jonstar had arrived the Trinx no longer stood alone. Two of The Nine were here, with their unique tech complementing each other and giving Chosan some badly needed assets in this fight. Even if the Jonstar didn’t intend to send down any ground troops, their Degars’ colosat bombardment capability would allow them to take out minion sites near the surface, and any connecting tunnels they chose to build would just act as conduits to reach even deeper within the planet.

The Trinx looked at the present position of the Hamoriti, which was still meandering about near the planet’s core.

“Your move now.”

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1

August 3, 2734

Deeran System (Benoid)

Wexfa

Wixxi ran through the forest following the small trail that connected their frontier villages as she stared up into the sky where there was an occasional break in the yellow canopy. Up high there was a ship was descending, and it was Star Force. At first the Hevmaj though it was right over their heads, but she didn’t grasp the size of the thing until a few aeroships passed underneath it. They were flying high already and the little fuzzball had thought they were going to pass over top of it, but when the reverse happened she realized that this was something bigger than big and had jumped out of the treehouse she was in and began running to the nearest village.

Wixxi’s stubby legs moved as rapidly as possible, hopping over a few puddles on the trail and otherwise trying to avoid the rocks and roots that had been exposed after the recent storm. It had dropped so much water that the rivers had flooded…something that hadn’t happened in more than a century.

The rain had very rarely used to come to her continent, with the forests being dry scrubs for the most part, but ever since the Hevmaj had joined Star Force things had changed rapidly. The rain was something new, and coming on the heels of several atmospheric adjustments that were being made. Though Wixxi didn’t fully understand what they were doing, she’d learned in the maturia that there were large pockets of water beneath the surface, and that Star Force was tapping those to create subsurface structures.

The water they took out was then being shunted up to the surface, with the humidity of the planet gradually increasing. That had produced an escalating climate change that was causing the forests covering her continent to grow rapidly, and even a few ‘lakes’ had been created. Previously all surface water had been located on other continents, but now the central landmass was beginning to become dotted with shimmering pools that many of the older Hevmaj still couldn’t believe were actually here.

Wixxi continued to run as the giant ship came closer to the surface, with her guessing it was headed for the large plain that had been cut out of the forest further to the south. There was no way she could run all the way there, but in the village there were high observation posts open to the public and that’s where she intended to go, hopefully being able to see what was happening before they got too crowded.

It took a few more minutes before she reached the edge of the village and the thick yellow trees disappeared, with her bare paws crossing over from dirt to synthetic paving stones. They were impossibly smooth, yet grippy, and covered the narrow walkways running between the 14 tree-like buildings that made up this village. Wixxi’s continent wasn’t densely inhabited like the others were, but rather dotted with tiny villages that allowed the large tracks of forest to be preserved rather than cut down and replaced with the magnificent cities that Star Force had taught the Hevmaj to build.

They’d been here all her life, and she’d grown up in one of their maturia, but now that she’d chosen to live on the frontier Wixxi had met many older Hevmaj that told her stories of the times before, and it seemed like most of them had chosen to migrate away from the magnificent cities and cluster here, where they could live in relative isolation, given that the Star Force empire was so different from what they’d originally known that they could never become completely comfortable with the changes, at least not in the major population centers.

They weren’t naysayers, fortunately, and Wixxi found that she rather liked the odd Hevmaj. She wasn’t one to work, rather simply living her life on the spur of the moment and doing what she liked. Most of that time was spent in the forest, exploring and just soaking in the natural environment that had been absent from her maturia training. What she would do tomorrow she didn’t know, nor care. All that concerned her was the moment, and right now there was something big going on that she wanted to see.

Wixxi ran through the narrow streets and darted inside one of the three tallest structures, heading up a stairwell with considerable effort and coming out on the top level breathless, sucking in heavy puffs of the argon-rich atmosphere that the Hevmaj breathed. The Star Force people didn’t, and had to wear masks whenever they went outside. Likewise the Hevmaj, if any of them were to go into the few oxygen-rich cities, had to wear their own else they’d take in the poison. Because of this there was a stark divide between the empire and the Hevmaj. They were part of Star Force, but a disconnected piece of it that could never fully integrate with the oxygen breathers.

The same was true of the other races in the Benoid, all of whom had also joined the empire. They could either breathe their air or at least exist in it, save for the Vonx, who were fully aquatic and couldn’t breathe atmosphere at all. Even within the Benoid the Hevmaj had been necessarily separated from the others, or so Wixxi had been told, but they’d always kept close ties with the others how and when they could. The same was true now that they were part of Star Force, yet the physical limitations of their race always kept them distant.

Which was why it was rare to see one of the Star Force ships on the surface of the planet. Normally they’d dock with starports in orbit and transfer supplies there that the Hevmaj ships would bring down, but this was even more rare, for her continent saw almost no traffic at all, and the size of the ship was so big that it could have held the population of the nearest 100 villages with ease.

When Wixxi finally got her breath she pushed her way through the other 8 Hevmaj and got a place on the window that stretched the entire length around the tower top, staring out silently with the others as they saw the giant ship finally touch down in the clearing. She’d come up here before, using at telescopic viewer to watch the clearing being cut so far away. She would have walked there to see it in person, but it was very far away. Fortunately, the building was taller than the forest by quite a bit and allowed enough of an angle to let her and the others see a great distance, including the tower tops of the nearby villages that all stuck up above the sea of yellow leaves that carpeted the landscape like a big, fluffy blanket.

But off in the distance the ship that had landed stood taller than even the towers, with its size almost fully encompassing the plain that had been cut by Hevmaj workers. Wixxi was pretty sure that there weren’t Hevmaj in this ship, and pulling her viewer out of a small pocket on her utility belt and used it to zoom in enough that she could pick out individual trees.

It took a while to find one of the entrances on the giant ship, but when she did she saw a ramp half lowered and disappearing below the tree line. Wixxi couldn’t see the ground, but she could see what was coming off the ship.

They were construction mechs, and there were a lot of them. She knew what they were based on her maturia training, but she’d never seen more than a handful in person. Some had been used to build a neighboring village two years ago, but these were much bigger and pouring out of the giant ship. Wixxi watched for several minutes before cargo crates and bundled machinery started to follow, being brought out on anti-grav sleds. The mechs would be using it to do what, the Hevmaj couldn’t make out. Until the machinery deployed she couldn’t tell what it was for, and unfortunately the tree line was in the way.

She couldn’t see anything below the ramp, and even the mechs were shorter than the trees…or at least most of them were. A few monster versions could be seen roaming around the ship, but other than a few meters of mech Wixxi couldn’t see anything.

That didn’t matter, for she and the others stayed there for a quite a while watching the offloading and trying to catch any glimpse of activity that they could. No one knew what was going on, but whatever it was it was big.

At least for their little corner of the frontier continent.

Mandy Garrison walked down one of the MCV’s many ramps, following the last of the mechs out of the atmospheric containment field that separated the ship’s interior from the oxygen-less atmosphere. The Human tech wore a fully body suit of light armor that had an attached pack with enough air to last more than 24 hours.

The soft, wet ground past the ramp was now a mess of mud thanks to the mechs, but she didn’t care. Her armor was completely self-contained so, even as her dark green boots sank into the inch of muddy water and depressed twice that far, she pushed through and began following the mech trail not caring about how dirty she got. None of it would reach her skin, and she’d learned from many past construction missions that the grime was just part of the job. Once they got this site properly conditioned the wildness of it would be replaced with Star Force infrastructure.

Until then, she and the others got to play in the mud.

Mandy was the only Human on the MCV, with the rest of the crew and workers being comprised of Kiritak. Now that the trade route between the Benoid and the ADZ was up and running, a lot of new faces were showing up in the mini empire, herself included. Regular jumpship traffic was moving along the route, with citizens now able to book passage whenever they liked. The trade routes had even moved out past the Benoid now, with the cluster of systems becoming a central hub with four other spurs branching off of it out into the surrounding region, establishing a Star Force presence in the huge tract of stars that was many times the size of the ADZ and beyond their control.

Key to it all was their military, and the Benoid already had a sizeable fleet patrolling its 7 systems, plus a handful of Sentinels in each, but that was just the first few phases of development. Mandy had been sent here with her crew of Kiritak to begin carving out a subsurface military base that would be recovered with forest after construction was complete. Wexfa already had several military bases located on other continents, both made up of Hevmaj and mainline troops, but in order to more firmly secure this world there needed to be other bases, some of which were clandestine.

This project was for one such facility, and while they weren’t going to try and disguise the construction site, most of what they built would be below ground and therefore not visible for others to see. The location of this future base might become public knowledge, but such things often faded with time and the remoteness of this continent, which Star Force intended to keep remote and virtually unpopulated, would make it a different type of challenge for any invading army to overcome.

The more varied a planetary defense plan was, the greater longevity it would allow. Right now the planet was safe, but only with a couple of layers of protection. This base and others slated to be built in the coming decades would add another layer, though with resources always being a limitation this was a significant project that she’d been entrusted with.

Mandy had learned that a lot of races outside of Star Force only built what they thought they would need, and a lot of times that proved to be insufficient when the time of crisis came. Star Force built to be ready for more than they expected, and were always adding additional layers of defense, even on Earth, as time progressed. It could have been deemed as wasteful when these resources could have gone to establishing new colonies or additional habitats for the ever growing Hevmaj population, but when an attack came you didn’t want to be in the position of wishing for more military resources.

And those resources had to be built during times when they seemed extraneous.

The lizard front was still approaching, but its rapid progress had been reduced down to a creep thanks to Canderous’ activities within the region. That said, the lizards were still expanding elsewhere and flanking the protected region that Star Force was securing as much as it reasonably could. It was never enough, and lizard incursions were still occurring around the perimeter. Mandy didn’t know if they’d ever get this far, and if they did it would be after fighting through several other defense forces, but the key to holding territory was in the creation of strongholds that you could fall back to if things went poorly for you and good for the enemy.

This planet wasn’t a stronghold yet, though the Hevmaj and others might think so given the upgrades Star Force had made. The base Mandy and the Kiritak were about to build would be designed for the Bsidd, who would eventually be depositing a large amount of troops in the system. When they did the ‘stronghold’ status would ensue, but they couldn’t come until enough facilities were constructed, both on planet and in orbit, which was why Mandy and this MCV had been sent along with 9 others to the system.

The tech hopped out of the mech tracks and got to the short grass that had yet to be smashed into nonexistence. Staying on it she paralleled the mechs’ path and followed them out to the various depots they were creating with stacks of crates and equipment, ending up at the coring machine as it was set in place. The giant slab of machinery had been cobbled together from multiple sections and now stood like a thick, square brick that had squashed itself into the mud, but there was an access staircase on the near side and Mandy jogged across the mech ruts, getting to it and climbing up before the next one strode past.

There were no workers outside the ship save for those in the mechs as of yet, with Mandy being the only person on the ground. It would stay that way until she gave the order, and she was going to hold off on the heavy work until they got the site cleaned up a bit. The Kiritak were more mobile than she was, given their hopping ability, but she wasn’t going to have them moving around in the muck, which was damn distracting and tiresome.

Mandy got to the control station on the outside of the slab of machinery and confirmed that the various segments had been locked together into workable order. With a final check of the area to see if the mechs had retreated back far enough, which they had, she powered up the internal reactor and brought the mass to life.

With the press of a button several arms lifted out of the smooth surface as the machine began to transform, unfurling like a giant flower and sending various legs out to the sides that dove down into the muck and created grip points. About four minutes later the base of the machine lifted off the ground, pulling Mandy up into the air with it as some of the legs became rigid and inserted into the soil below as pylons, fixing the now elevated platform in place as various other arms and legs stretched out and created a perimeter around the dig site.

Energy shields colored to be visible to the workers snapped into place on the underside while extendable walkways formed outside, including an addition to the staircase that Mandy had climbed up. Once fully deployed, the mobile rig was set to begin cutting down into the muck and the bedrock beneath it. The tech held off on that, needing a crew onboard to handle the machine so that it didn’t eat out the very ground it stood on, but before that happened it was time to create some roads.

Mandy left the coring machine and walked across to several other packaged machines that needed activating while the mechs unloaded the last of the initial equipment, then they also went through a transformation, brandishing small scale digging equipment of their own which they began sinking into the muck at various points where the Human indicated, scooping it up and carrying it over to several dump sites around the perimeter, forming a ridge-like mound that started to stretch around the square edge of the clearing as they continued to add more and more material to it.

When they got a stretch of nearly half a mile long cleared out from the area in front of the ramp, Mandy ordered the next set of crews to come out. Several small hovering craft flew down carrying stacks of panels which they first deposited at the foot of the ramp. With the rest of the small convoy holding on the ramp and within, floating in place patiently, a few Kiritak clad in their own environmental armor unloaded and unfolded the ‘road’ plates, further scraping and smoothing the exposed areas of ground before laying down the first section, which was 12 meters square after unfolding and 1.3 meters thick.

When that one was set they added three more on the sides of it, excluding where the ramp now was, with the convoy beginning to come down and unload more plates as more and more workers were given workspace to use. They continued to add to the grid, locking them together like legos and creating an offloading plaza that they then began expanding into much narrower roads that stretched around the perimeter of the MCV and eventually connected to each piece of machinery that Mandy had went around and activated.

When a road spur finally connected, the Kiritak workers would come with it, traveling on the smooth paving stones and avoiding the mass of muck around them, with the ground water now leaking into the small trenches alongside and outlining the roads with tiny, muddy moats.

When the roads hit the coring machine Mandy returned along with the work crew, seeing to it that they got underway. She didn’t need to issue any orders other than to get to work, so the tech just watched from a distance, standing on the edge of the loading platform the road plates had made nearby as several mechs waited beside her.

With a huge lurch a drilling pylon dove down from the center of the machine like a spike and ate into the muck beneath. Within a few moments that material was shot out another arm on the machine where it fell into an open collection crate that was the equivalent of a huge bucket. Mandy watched it fill up, then the spout shut off and a mech walked up to remove it as the mud and dirt, soon to become mixed with rock from below, began flowing out another arm into more waiting crates so there would be no delay.

The mech behind Mandy picked up an empty crate and moved it into the open slot while the full one was carried away down the road then off it and onto the mech tracks that led to the perimeter mound. The Kiritak at the controls tipped the crate over and dumped the material on top of what was already there, piling it up higher in a wall that would eventually encircle the construction site.

Mandy liked how procedure had them build their own little fort out of the excess material, and this one was going to get some very high walls before they were done. Those walls would eventually be cannibalized by factories within the MCV and sorted into various useable materials, nearly all of which would be shipped elsewhere. Everything in this base was going to be built from parts shipped in, but the ground they were hollowing out had to go someplace.

Star Force would find a use for it somewhere on the planet, in one form or another. That wasn’t Mandy’s concern, she was just here to dig and build, which right now meant playing in the mud.

As one of the walkers came back by her it stomped on the road plates, leaving a trail of mud behind and smacking tiny bits of it up into the air with each step, some of which splattered Mandy’s faceplate. The energy shield covering it didn’t allow any of it to stick, but the rest of her green armor was already dotted with brown and she knew it’d get far worse as the day went on, especially given the rain clouds to the south that were slowly making their way closer.

The tech sighed. At least on the inside of her armor she was clean.

2

Garen-248 was reading the display holos over his desk, noting the update ping that the construction of the Bsidd base had just begun, when something hit him in the back of the head. He spun around in his chair and saw a food cube on the floor, as well as sensing a familiar mind in the doorway. Before even looking at her he telekinetically picked up the cookie and flew it into his mouth, then left the chair spinning as he stood up.

“Three second rule still applies, I assume?” he asked Victoria-243, who was holding and munching on a handful of the snacks.

“Not on a clean floor.”

“I wasn’t expecting you back. What’s up?”

“New assignment. Davis didn’t like what you’ve been doing so he’s giving you the boot.”

“If you’re going to lie at least make it sound genuine.”

“You sucking sounds genuine to me,” Victoria said, stepping forward and giving Garen a friendly hug while carefully cradling her stash in her hand. She hadn’t seen him in over two decades. “I’m passing through, just wanted to stop in and say hi.”

“Where to?”

“Taking a fleet up the trade routes to do some patrolling. No more empire building for me, just pirate hunting and shooting other types of bad guys. How are you doing?”

“You mean since I took over your job and all the others? Slow and steady progress.”

“I still think you should have come back with us. The hard work was over.”

“Some days I agree, but the Benoid is better off for me staying…and don’t argue that point. I know the Hevmaj better than anyone, and bringing in less familiar Archons to take the lead would have led to inefficiencies. We need the Benoid as a stronghold, both militarily and economically to stabilize this region, and the sooner the better, else the trade routes are going to get very dicey.”

“They already are, which is why I’m here. I assume you’ve read the reports?”

“The attempted hijackings? Yes.”

“No, the successful ones.”

Garen frowned. “When did we lose a ship?”

“Not us, our trading partners. Their ships have been getting hit after they leave the commerce planets and its diminishing the incentive of weaker races to do business with us. I’m here to hunt the hunters and restore peace and justice to the galaxy,” she said sarcastically. “I’ll be stopping in for resupply from time to time. This is going to be my fleet’s port of call, so make sure your appropriations adjust adequately.”

“Glad to have you in the neighborhood, but I don’t like the idea of you sucking up all my replacement drones.”

“I don’t plan on losing many, but I would suggest you enlarging your prison facilities. I don’t plan to shoot everyone.”

“Bringing some trophies back?”

“Who knows, but I need some place to stash them if I do. And so far your multi-racial facilities are minimal.”

“We only have one at present, and it barely gets any guests. Did Davis send you?”

“Steve did, but he said Davis was urging us to push the trade routes harder. He really wants a connection to the Voku, more so than branching out first.”

“We’re a long ways from that. What does he expect to get from them anyway?”

Victoria smiled. “That’s what you get for hiding out here. Paul and Cal-com are working some master strategy together, and Davis is in on it. Star Force and the Voku are unofficially joining each other.”

“Why hasn’t that been in any of the updates? I do monitor the boards you know, even if they are on a stupidly long delay.”

“This isn’t public knowledge yet.”

“We’re Archons.”

“This isn’t known to anyone yet, and is traveling through word of mouth. We’re kind of still feeling out what a merger would look like.”

“We?”

“The trailblazers are asking for suggestions.”

Garen huffed. “That’s a first.”

“Not so much. What they’re talking about is a lot of low level interaction with the Voku, the sort of stuff they’d never get involved with. Us lessers do, so they want to brainstorm. Nothing official, and it’s not like they’re taking a vote, but they’re quietly asking around and Steve wanted me to have a chat with you about the Benoid while I’m here.”

Garen looked over his shoulder and telekinetically dragged two chairs over, sliding one behind his fellow Archon. “We’re not talking militarily here, I assume,” he said, sitting down.

Victoria twirled her chair around and straddled it, resting her arms on the backrest. “Davis wants free flowing commerce and travel permits between the two empires, but we can’t really do that until we get a trade route linkage set up. The Voku’s own convoys are shipping out necessary equipment and personnel, but there’s no civilian angle as of yet.”

“I didn’t think the Voku had any civilians.”

“They don’t have lazy ass freeloaders, but they do have independent ventures. It seems only their top tier is dedicated to the empire round the clock, with the rest supporting it more like a hobby. That leaves a lot of down time that they fill with other things. And no, that’s not in the database, just word of mouth I’ve got from Steve. Davis wants the Voku to be able to access our transportation grid and involve themselves as much as they like within our society, and if we can do that the Benoid is going to be on the primary trade route connection.”

“What do the Voku want with this?”

“Their empire is split in two, and rather than try and colonize a string of worlds across the gap they’ll just use our infrastructure.”

“So we’re a rail link for them.”

“Will be, eventually. But Davis wants to make it more personal than that. ‘Teammates’ was the word that was used.”

“Territorial acquisition?”

Victoria shook her head. “I don’t think so. At least not within our borders, but you never know going forward. That’s why they’re looking for input from local commanders like you. I assume you’re still going to stick around here for a while?”

“I don’t like other people playing in my sandbox.”

“Star Force is our sandbox. You’re just sticking to a small corner of it.”

“Point taken. Other than self-defense, what is Davis looking to get from the Voku here?”

“Nothing specific. He just wants to open the link up and see what develops. But we’re all encouraged to make use of any opportunities that arise to include the Voku where beneficial.”

“So the Benoid is going to become a way station and you want to set up some stores to take advantage of the traffic?”

“Metaphorically speaking, yes.”

“And you’re here to plow the road for more colonies to be established.”

“I’m here to mow the weeds. Others will do the plowing.”

“Are we pulling back the extensions to the other trade route branches?”

“Not pulling back, but the Voku line is taking priority. Once we get that established we’ll branch off of it heavily.”

“That’s a change of procedure, and is going to hinder our ability to get out ahead of the lizard creep rimward of here.”

“I know. Steve thinks this is the better tradeoff.”

“Warship traffic?”

Victoria nodded. “Once we make a connection and Voku ships are moving along the route it’ll be a lot more secure than through just our own efforts. That’ll allow us to build it up faster…”

“…and then we branch out. I get it, but we’re still going to be losing systems to the lizards that otherwise we could have saved.”

“You think we shouldn’t then?”

“I think the Voku should build our way as well.”

“Not happening. They’re pouring their resources into what used to be Nestafar territory. Word has it they’re getting ready to hit Orica.”

“Ambitious bastards.”

“Their new toys are rather impressive. I’m told that most of them are staying in their home territory, but a few have made their way out with the reinforcements. They severely outclass us now.”

“What kind of toys are we talking about?”

“They’re still using the transformative tech, but the components have gotten smaller. The new ships and mechs have been dubbed ‘sandmen.’”

“Weaponry upgrade?”

“They have chimra now.”

Garen frowned. That sounded familiar.

“Look it up later,” Victoria said. “It’s in the database.”

“I know I’ve seen that word before,” Garen said impatiently, swinging his chair around and scooting it across the floor until he got back to his desk. He accessed the secure Archon files while Victoria rolled her eyes and scooted her chair as well, pushing it with her feet until she came up beside him.

“That’s right, ignore your guest.”

Garen typed in the word and it went straight to the V’kit’no’sat weapon system. It wasn’t one of their primaries, more like an older model they’d retired, but it was something that they’d used rather than just cataloged.

“Tri-beam?” he said, reading the statistics that were still listed in V’kit’no’sat. The Archons preferred them that way, not always trusting in a translation.  “That’s hard to target.”

“But incredibly damaging if you can,” Victoria added. “So far we haven’t seen them use it in combat, but I’d wager they know what they’re doing.”

“Where are they getting all this stuff anyway?” Garen wondered, for this was a huge step forward in their already impressive tech.

“The big shots are still mum on that.”

“Think they found their own V’kit’no’sat leftovers?”

“Not according to the map. They’re way outside the old borders.”

Garen stared at the database records a bit longer, getting a good grasp on the weapon system that he must have come across at least once earlier, then he spun around to face Victoria. “I can see why Davis wants to make friends.”

“We’re already friends. Steve says that they want us to become brothers.”

“Sharing brothers?”

“I doubt it. Not like we need it anyway.”

“In the short term we could.”

“Hardly. We already have the blueprints for the chimra, it’s the prerequisites we lack.”

“They could give us a few and we could glue them onto the hull,” Garen offered sarcastically.

“I think we’re doing well enough with our own tech, but if you can get them to sell you some then go for it.”

“How soon until I start seeing Voku on my doorstep?”

“The route they’re using now is more of a straight line to Achkor, but they’re having to convoy up heavily and only have so many ships available. If we can link in they can forego most of their military escorts and begin shipping cargo on our jumpships as well.”

“As strong and fast as they are, why the need for heavy escorts now? I know they’re brushing up against the Skarron advance but they shouldn’t have much trouble blowing through systems.”

“Would you send one of ours out without protection here?”

“Of course not, but I don’t see how a longer detour will be that much of an advantage to them.”

“I’m not completely sold on that either, but Davis is and that’s good enough for me.”

“Just wondering, or is Davis wanting me to head up this route expansion?”

“No, he just wants you to integrate with it as much as you can when it happens. Offer up any suggestions that come your way.”

“Keeping my ears and eyes open, check. Now tell me, what big baddies are floating around out there to warrant you getting the patrol assignment?”

“I spent a lot of time with the Denshur building up the Benoid too,” she reminded him. “I want to clean up the neighborhood so I volunteered.”

“Missed me that much, huh?”

“Actually, yeah, but I could have just visited. This needs done and I already know the region. Seemed like a good fit.”

“How long you staying?”

“A few years at least. There’s no fixed timetable, but I may end up roaming around the route endpoint as it extends toward the Voku. We only have their maps to rely on, and there are still a lot of uncharted systems with who knows what lurking out there.”

“I wasn’t aware of any holes in the map between us and the Voku?”

Victoria glared at him. “Not as in missing star systems, but as far as not knowing what’s in them. Damn, Garen, you sound like a newb.”

The Archon spun back around to his desk without saying a word, then pulled up a map of the huge region between the Benoid and Voku space, all of which sat below them on the galactic plane. He zoomed in on the area in question and gestured towards all of the system tags that highlighted where each race was located.

“Looks filled in to me.”

“What the hell?” Victoria said, scooting closer and taking over the controls. She’d just looked at the map three days ago.

“Seems you can’t read a map, newb.”

“Wait a second,” she said, pulling up a panel with map statistics. A moment later she turned and punched Garen in the shoulder. “These are unconfirmed.”

“So is most of the galaxy.”

“No, I mean these are traveler logs compiled by races we’ve had contact with. They’re unreliable.”

“Reliable enough to spot any big threats,” Garen countered.

“Not if those threats keep to themselves or a single star system.”

“If they keep to themselves they’re not going to be a threat to us.”

“Unknown means potentially dangerous. We can count on the Voku charts, but everyone else’s are suspect. Why do you use that map anyway?”

“Unconfirmed maps are more useful than blank ones, plus I don’t need them for anything here. The surrounding area has been confirmed, which you know.”

“Well, I do need to know if I’m chasing thugs in those areas. Don’t flash your junky maps at me again, boy. You can give a girl all kinds of wrong ideas.”

“Feel free to update them while you’re out there. Until then I’ll use what I’ve got instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.”

Victoria just shook her head. “Reckless is he.”

“Don’t quote Star Wars to me.”

“Surprised you caught the reference.”

“After spending all that time with Dennis how could I not?”

“True…”

“Ok, bottom line. If and when the Voku end up here I can give them a comfortable stay, but right now I’m not sure how to further integrate them if they’re only interested in passing through.”

“I don’t think anyone does right now. Davis is just looking for suggestions.”

“Why does he want us to bond with them anyway…other than the fact that they could kick our butts right now, technologically speaking?”

“Steve says they consider them to be worthy of a deeper alliance. Probably has something to do with Paul.”

“What’s the Grand Admiral up to nowadays?”

“I don’t know. He bounces around so much he’s practically a ghost. And what was that about making Star Wars references?”

“Don’t you get the feeling that there’s something bigger going on that we’re not being told about?”

“Yeah…I do.”

“Six years.”

“What?”

“Six years is all that separated me from the trailblazers.”

“Our class started 4 years after theirs.”

“I know, but most of them are 6 years older than me. If I’d been the same age then I’d have been one of them.”

“They’re also kicking our butts in the levels, so stop your whining.”

“I’m just saying, I wish they’d quit keeping secrets from us.”

“Like that’s ever going to happen,” Victoria scoffed.

3

December 9, 2734

Orica System (lizard territory)

Inner Zone

Gahmorn Pro-zel stood behind his command station on the oracle of the conglomerate he commanded. It was one of the older models, as were all of the 178 conglomerates currently under his command. The few new warships had gone with Cal-com, as they should, leaving him with the ‘secondary’ forces to deal with this lizard rabble.

His fleet was still emerging from their braking runs against the large red star in the binary pair, though this system actually sported three stars, with the third situated in a high orbit around the central two. Around them all was 134 planetoids, of which 83 were currently inhabited, making this one of those rare golden systems that contained a small empire’s worth of territory in a single location. Originally this had been the Nestafar’s capitol, which the old Human alliance had massacred in retaliation for the Nestafar’s betrayal to the lizards. Oddly, Star Force hadn’t been involved in that, yet the system had been wrecked regardless.

The Nestafar had begun to rebuild, only to have the Skarrons invade and take it from them…along with the rest of their territory. Knowing the value of such a location, the insanely vast empire poured significant resources into Orica to develop it into a stronghold of their own, only to have the lizards attack and a very long battle ensue that would see the system fall yet again.

And now it was going to fall to the Voku, but they intended to keep it and give the system a proper caretaker. Pro-zel’s task was just that, purge this system of the lizards and begin bringing in support convoys to establish a permanent presence. Orica was soon to become part of the Voku empire, and neither the lizards nor the distant Skarrons could do anything about it. ‘Old’ as their tech might be now, the ships and troops under Pro-zel’s command were still formidable and wholly outclassed those they were about to do battle with.

As the conglomerates waited around the red star for the remainder to join them, tiny pieces split off and shot out on microjumps to scout their targets. The last update they’d received was more than a decade old and had come from the Hycre, but with the way the lizards built a lot could have changed in that amount of time.

The first scouting reports came back as the last of the conglomerates arrived and a sea of lizard ships were waiting out of weapons range for them to make a move. They weren’t running straight at them to die easy deaths like many from this race typically did, which was a pity. It looked like the lizards were going to try and make them earn this system rather than just going out in a blaze of suicidal glory.

One after another the scout ships reported back infrastructure and defensive upgrades on the varying planetoids, with another 4 having been colonized since the last report. The largest of them all, population wise, even had large segments of a ring shipyard sitting in orbit. A closer evaluation saw that those segments were in fact operational and building ships even as they were being added to themselves. Pro-zel found that to be very industrious of them, but he was going to wreck it all the same.

Both the Voku and the enemy waited patiently as the scouts zipped around the system gathering intel, for the lizards couldn’t catch them and Pro-zel wasn’t going to give attack orders until he knew what he was up against. The awkward stalemate lasted several hours before the conglomerates finally moved out of their holding orbits and pushed towards the sea of cruisers nearby.

Those defense ships broke formation and retreated, giving Pro-zel’s ships clear jumplines that they then took to the various planetoids, splitting up and beginning their assault in earnest. With the invading fleet reduced in number at the various locations the lizards finally launched their counterattacks, with the Voku splitting up their massive ships into more agile ones and taking the fight to them head on across 54 different worlds.

As usual it was might versus mass, with the lizards possessing far more ships than the Voku had brought, but they didn’t have enough to compensate for the superior technology and tactics of the dominant race. They had been trained and equipped by the Elders themselves, and there was no way Pro-zel was going to lose to these primitive barbarians.

The orbital battles took quite a while to come to conclusion, with more than a week of fighting before all the ships and defense stations across the system had been taken out. Pro-zel had lost only 4% of his ships in the fighting, and acknowledged Cal-com’s wisdom in delaying this assault long enough to get a truly overpowering force assembled. With the Voku fleet mostly intact, they began moving around and taking out secondary targets, whether they be shipyards or cargo ships, while the first of the ground troops landed on three different planetoids.

Those troops were also equipped with the ‘old’ technology, but even given the lizards’ deviousness and inclination to build a mass of subsurface structures they weren’t going to be able to do more than slow the Voku down, for Pro-zel was spamming these three targets with his troops rather than spreading them out across the system piecemeal. He wanted clean, efficient battles rather than true contests. This wasn’t a mission to test one’s strength, but to clean out the vermin and take possession of the system.

And to do that Pro-zel had plenty of time, for there was no amount of reinforcements that the lizards could reasonably send that would alter the course of events here. The Voku were going to claim Orica for their own, it was just a matter of how and when. Given that almost guaranteed eventuality, the Voku commander chose to take the patient approach and clear out a few planetoids at a time, giving his forces a base of operations to work out of that wasn’t contested, while simultaneously sending word back for the supply convoys to start coming.

So long as the Voku had at least one planetoid that was solely theirs they could begin building, for their fleet would keep the lizards away even if they were still in the system…and the sooner they got construction efforts up and running the sooner they could start building their own defenses. Orica had to become an economic stronghold within the region and was key to Cal-com’s plans going forward.

And Pro-zel intended to take it with the minimum number of troops lost as he could manage. He didn’t like the lizards lingering nearby, but there was nothing they could do to stop the Voku, so he might as well put up with their presence for a while if it meant preserving personnel and equipment for later use down the line. Because old or not, this tech was still valuable, and would be used in forthcoming assaults in the surrounding region, for the Voku were going to carve out a piece of the new ‘border’ inside of what used to be Nestafar space and hold it against the lizards, Skarrons, or anyone else that came Star Force’s way.

But first the handful of chosen systems had to be taken from the enemy, then the other surrounding ones had to be cleansed even if the Voku weren’t going to set down roots there. It was a campaign that mirrored what was occurring back in their home territory, for per the Elders’ wishes they were expanding their borders and hacking a huge chunk out of Skarron territory, not to mention safeguarding other neighboring races that had previously been beyond their mandate.

Everywhere the Voku were expanding, making this an exciting and dangerous time for the empire, for there was a lot of work to do, and when you were pushing against opponents those opponents usually pushed back. Fortunately Cal-com had given him enough conglomerates for this mission to be one-sided enough not to be an issue, which had been the point. Orica had to fall and fall quickly to set up a chain of coming events, the most important of which was occurring simultaneously to this assault and other smaller ones.

For Cal-com would have been here, overseeing this massive campaign himself, if he didn’t have somewhere more important to go. Right now he and a much smaller fleet were traveling far beyond any world seen by the Voku before and headed for the Shaleth System, a target that Cal-com had said was chosen by the Elders themselves.

The Dafchor rarely confided in his senior commanders as to what the Elders had told him, for his orders were unquestionable, but Cal-com had explained the importance of this mission to him anyway, underscoring that while he was taking Orica, a vital piece in the ongoing strategic puzzle, he would be quietly taking a much more valuable one, from which he would be operating out of indefinitely. That meant Pro-zel and others would be out of contact with him for some time until a proper relay network could be established out to Shaleth.

Pro-zel didn’t understand why the Elders had instructed the Dafchor to take that seemingly insignificant world, but if they wanted it done then so be it. He and the other senior commanders could operate independently as long as needed, and Cal-com needed him here, in Orica, even after the last of the planetoids was cleansed of lizard presence. Pro-zel was to secure the foothold then organize the acquisition and defense of the Nestafar Region until he could receive further orders from the Dafchor, with a huge responsibility being put on his shoulders.

But that wasn’t anything new, for commanders all across the Empire were being given tasks that only the elite few would have been given previously. In a time of great expansion such as this, they were being called on to handle tasks far beyond their previous scope, and in Pro-zel’s opinion it was about damn time. If the Elders wanted them to sit and defend territory then he’d do it, but the Voku were a race bred for action, and it seemed fate had finally gotten around to allowing them their due.

Not in terms of territory or bounty, but in glory. The responsibility for such great tasks was what they craved more than anything, for the more they were asked to do the more valuable they were, and that put them one step closer to the Elders’ equals rather than being whimpering children begging for scraps of technology.

Pro-zel doubted they’d ever progress that far, but he liked the idea of being battlefield allies more than being inferior servants…and apparently the Elders agreed, else they wouldn’t have been asking so much of the Voku and giving them so much more technology to accommodate those requests.

No matter how you looked at it, this was an age of change and Pro-zel was eagerly anticipating the days ahead. These lizards were primitive, but given the scope of their empire and their ability to build replacements quickly, they were going to be a formidable challenge going forward, even if this current assault wasn’t.

Or rather the challenge wasn’t in achieving victory, but in doing so as efficiently as possible to give Cal-com more troops to work with going forward, and that was a responsibility that Pro-zel took very seriously, for the Dafchor had also confided in him that there were tasks ahead that may be impossible to achieve, but that the Elders had commanded them to try regardless.

That single bit of foresight made everything Pro-zel did now tinge with greater importance, for these missions were laying the groundwork for the impossible one yet to come.

When Cal-com’s fleet arrived in the Shaleth System they found themselves above a huge, dying star. It was a massive red giant whose internal fuel supply was nearing the end of days…but given how long stars typically persisted there was no danger of it ‘going out’ any time soon. That said, the radiation levels were considerably lower than they had once been, meaning the habitable planets in orbit were becoming less so over time. Already the outer two had been encased in an ice sheet that had killed off all the vegetation on the planet, with the innermost third still clinging to a narrow band around the equator, though it had been reduced to scrub brush in lieu of the massive forests it had once contained.

Cal-com didn’t know the history Shaleth, he just saw a slowly dying system that still held use for both the Voku and the lizards, for they had a sizeable colony on the inner planet. Far more so than it would have appeared to warrant, given that this location wasn’t on any of their known supply lines, but rather in a little nook of territory equating to a ‘filler’ system located in between the major ones.

Cal-com suspected that this one had been around far longer than those his forces were currently assaulting near Star Force territory, hence the greater size. Never the less, it was his target and he immediately dispatched one of his three conglomerates to neutralize the small defense fleet while he took the others and split them up into blockade groups, intent to keep all enemy presence contained to this location. Let a ship escape or an interstellar signal be transmitted and he’d lose the anonymity the Dafchor was hoping for, which was why he also sent a piece of his command conglomerate straight to the lizard colony.

That piece flew ahead of the rest and dove into the atmosphere, coming down atop the section of the lizard infrastructure that held their interstellar transmitter. Three brilliant energy beams leapt out from the warship, nearly on parallel lines, but they actually converged at a given point several miles below the craft. At first the three beams hit the lizard defense shield 200 or so meters apart, but the green, blue, and orange beams refocused and moved towards each other until they overlapped on the same spot…

When they did the chimra effect occurred and the shield immediately breached, with the three beams spread out again beneath it and causing damage to separate locations.

The warship adjusted the targeting on the constant beams and brought the intersection point down to the transmitter. When it touched the beams no longer melted the infrastructure on contact, but they exploded it in such a magnitude of force that the entire assembly was junked instantly. The warship ceased fired when it was inoperable and flew back up to orbit, ignoring the ground defense batteries that were only tickling its shields.

Cal-com observed the attack from afar, intently monitoring the output from the enemy transmitter. As far as he could tell no signals had been sent, meaning their surprise attack was going to remain a secret for some time and he intended to keep it that way. With the blockade formation patrolling the area around the star, both to intercept ships trying to flee and to poach any that might come into the system in the coming days, the Dafchor expected to have a decent amount of time available to him before the lizards had a chance to respond…which he was going to need.

Once the system was cleared of enemy ships Cal-com ordered the first conglomerate and pieces of the second to head down to the surface and begin cleansing the planet. As they did so he took a chunk of his command conglomerate, which of the three was the only one comprised of the new technology the Elders had gifted the Voku, and flew to the outermost planet of the three in the system.

There he found an ice-covered world, but per the instructions given to him via his implant he searched a specific set of coordinates with the ship’s sensors until he found structures buried beneath the ice. He didn’t know what they were…until the implant suddenly released new data it had been withholding until this moment.

Cal-com suddenly understood why this system was important. Not only was it centrally located, offering him reach options to the other servants of the Elders, but it held the remains of another race that had died out long ago. One that also served the Elders up until they were overcome by an enemy too powerful for them to hold at bay.

That knowledge settled a question that had long been lingering in the core of his mind. Would the Elders intervene if the Voku faced annihilation?

Apparently they would not. Their servants had to learn to stand on their own, in victory or defeat. Help them the Elders might, but they would not carry them.

Then again, the Elders had only recently returned to the Voku. What they had been doing in the absence Cal-com did not know, but if this race, who had been called the Yampley, had been in a similar situation and not been able to survive in their absence as the Voku had…

The thought sickened Cal-com, for if the Yampley were as loyal as the Voku they did not deserve this fate. Powerful the Elders might be, but the remains on the planet below only underscored how vast and dangerous this galaxy truly was.

That thought made it all the more imperative for him to get to the other servants before it was too late for them. If he failed, this would be their fate at the hands of the lizards.

Giving the order without delay, even as the ground battles on the other planet were just getting underway, Cal-com had his conglomerate section disintegrate and break up into a number of protective warships and the Hatomek seed that subsequently plunged into the ice near to the ruins, burrowing its way down to the surface and beginning to locate and extract the necessary materials to grow itself into the world-building machine that would eventually create the defenses to hold this system against any lizard counterattack.

Cal-com noted with pride how much faster this seed worked than previous models, for it was constructed from the new technology as well, and took very little time digging its way into the bedrock and carving out a dome in the ice above for the Voku workers to begin grounding additional supplies within.

4

February 28, 2735

Numar System (lizard territory)

Sashneo

Tom-008 stood in the nexus onboard the Zeus, personally controlling the ultra-heavy cleansing beam that the command ship was using in low orbit to pulverize the lizard infrastructure on the planet below. The defense shields protecting the numerous colonies covering the planet couldn’t stand up against the beam for more than a handful of seconds, for it was a major upgrade over the previous versions, capable of delivering pinpoint destructive energy on a level that Star Force had never achieved before.

Tom and the other trailblazers knew the days of the cleansing beam were coming to an end, in light of higher end weapons projects coming down the research pipe, but that didn’t mean they’d given up on their current batch of tech. There were always improvements to be made, and the ‘ultras’ were one of them. Beam width was the same as a ‘heavy’ but the intensity was ratcheted up so much that only a very dense shield could hold up to it…or a different matrix that the lizards couldn’t yet produce.

Regardless, with the ultra onboard his command ship Tom was able to bust through lizard defenses that typically would have delayed a planetary assault such as this for days as orbital bombardment hammered each of the shields until they fell, then cleansing beams or rail guns would take out the exposed generators and primary defensive emplacements, opening up the bases or colonies to a ground attack or further obliteration from orbit.

Odd as it was, throwing a chunk of mass at an opponent never got old. The physics were simply undeniable, with the rail gun, a weapon that dated back to the very beginning of Star Force, slated to always be in the offensive bag of toys, right up to the day when they finally caught up with the most advanced tech the V’kit’no’sat had. They’d be highly modified rail guns by then, but the principle was sound and there was no easy way to kill the momentum they produced.

Ammo resupply was their weakness, and in a situation like this it made more sense to use the cleansing beams to knock down buildings along with a few Ka’sevron rounds thrown in by the Ma’kri. In the past Star Force would have tried to assault the lizard colonies with their buildings mostly intact, preferring a cleaner battlefield to work on, but the more time that went on the trailblazers had just gotten in the habit of obliterating them from orbit, then sending down skilled teams to deal with the rubble fighting and subsurface hunting.

They didn’t like fighting that way, but the lizards would never surrender. Even now Tom was issuing periodic calls down to the various colonies to see if they’d relent, but never once in his life had he gotten a reply. They were intent on fighting it out to the last scaly minion, and with this planet covered in numerous colonies and billions of lizards, it made more sense just to blast them from orbit than to go at it hand to hand, or even with the mechs and aerial craft.

Tom punched through another shield plate then fired a second short cleansing beam lance down and into the shield tower, blasting it apart with one hit as the internal components were vaporized along the beam’s path and the rapid expansion burst out laterally and popped the tower in the blink of an eye. The debris rain around the site was an added bonus, but the trailblazer turned his mental attention to another colony nearby as the regular cleansing beams began chewing up the now exposed one.

There were only so many he could hit with the ship in its current position, but he wanted to remove their defenses as quickly as possible to get this small region of the planet knocked down enough that the Zeus could move on to the next while leaving the drones and Ma’kri in place to really hammer it. He hated fighting like this, for it was almost exactly how the V’kit’no’sat would have gone about it, but with the lizards being totally intractable it was the quickest option to take the planet from them, especially considering that they didn’t intend to use any of the enemy’s infrastructure.

It would all get tore down and recycled, whether it be standing or rubble, so there was no disadvantage in taking it apart from orbit. Tom just hated such destruction, both in the lives and the equipment. When one conquered a planet the idea was to take over what was there. Wiping out a civilization was not conquering, that was annihilation. Star Force were definitely conquerors, but rarely were they annihilators.

The V’kit’no’sat were almost exclusively annihilators.

But the lizards couldn’t be conquered. They couldn’t be negotiated with. All you could do is fight and kill them…or be killed by them. That was their choice, and unless Star Force wanted to force them into imprisonment utilizing stun weapons and such, slaughtering them back was the only way to fight them.

Star Force had never gone that far, for they always gave the lizards an out. A chance to surrender, or sometimes retreat. The outcome was always the same, but it was by the lizards’ choosing, not Tom decrying they had to die.

But die they would, for the lizard civilization saw their personnel as expendable tools. They’d just grow more in a different location, hoping that these here would do at least some damage to the invaders before they died.

And that was the primary reason Tom and the others chose to use orbital bombardment to raze the surface…to give the devious bastards less opportunity to find ways to kill a few of his troops when they did go down to the planet.

Sashneo was not lightly populated either. A lot of the higher tier lizard infrastructure wasn’t present, but in the 221 years since Star Force abandoned this transitional world they’d filled it with low tech colonies, going for a massed approach rather than a fortified stronghold. With the fleet Tom had at his disposal, some 22 Warship-class jumpships and 4 Ma’kri in total, plus the Zeus, he was going to take the planet regardless of how much they’d built it up, but he found it odd that this planet had gone down a slightly different track than the others that Star Force was currently taking back.

Over the past few decades the map had been changing drastically. A huge swath of what had been lizard-occupied Calavari territory now gleamed Star Force blue, and ever since the massive pushback at Jafat had failed, barely, the local region had pretty much been free pickups for anyone that could overwhelm the local defense forces. No more were there reinforcement fleets perusing about ready to drop the hammer. Everything was now up for grabs, with Tom and a handful of other trailblazers pushing to grab up as much territory as they could before the lizards caught their industrial breath and started reinforcing their systems again.

Simultaneously the Voku were hitting the lizards hard in what had been Nestafar territory while Kerrie-057, Larissa-048, and the H’kar were pushing out from Alpha Region and securing another huge swath of territory that was slated to become property of the Bsidd as their explosive growth continued…aside from a few planets that would be returned to the refugees in the ADZ that had previously fled them.

Wes-049 was making a smaller push up the galactic plane beyond Delta Region with Axius, with the intent of adding more colonies in that region to house that growing population, both from internal reproduction and immigration. Axius was now tops within Star Force in terms of citizenry, but it was estimated that the Bsidd would pass them by at some point. Odd as it was, given how this had all begun, Humans were now a tiny minority within their own empire, despite a population that had recently passed 10 trillion.

Democracy would have put Humans in the backseat, had it still existed, but a beast such as Star Force was such a high level entity that it simply could not exist with such a simplistic design. Humans were the glue that held everything together, because they were better than everyone else. Not in birthright, though the Ikrid blocks and psionics were immensely useful, but because the most advanced individuals in every division within Star Force were Humans, from techs up to Archons. They had individually earned those positions, and acquitted the enormous responsibility for maintaining and advancing the empire.

That wasn’t something a popularity contest would result in. Star Force had to exist based on merit, else it would have collapsed long ago.

This next phase of advancement was a huge undertaking, and as such required an increasing level of skill to pull off, not just in taking worlds back from the lizards, but in expanding out to the new acquisitions without allowing Star Force to become too heavy to manage. Some people believed that a civilization could only expand so far before it lost coherency in a variety of fashions. Tom knew that wasn’t true, for there were ways to make it work if you were clever enough, but every empire that grew to significant size had to know what it was doing, else they’d self-destruct in a variety of ways.

That was true of the lizards, Voku, and even more so the Skarrons. The size of their empire was ghastly huge, and even with the lizards tearing huge chunks out of it the overall mass was unaffected. It was simply too huge to kill. Tom didn’t know how that fight would ultimately turn out, and whatever went down was going to occur on the other side of the ‘no-go’ line so it was probable that Star Force wouldn’t know, unless the Skarrons pushed the lizards back this far.

Respect was due to anyone who could assemble and maintain an empire of that size, and with the path that Davis had set Star Force on, it wasn’t going to back down from those challenges ahead. It was already proven that they could do things better than everyone else on a ‘small’ level, and now was the time to prove they could do it on a larger scope. V’kit’no’sat or no, they couldn’t hide and let the galaxy burn around them, and while there had been some hesitancy on that issue in the past, that was no longer the case.

Star Force was pushing hard into the lizards, using the window of opportunity that Paul had told Tom and the others about from the Dragon Forecast Bureau. And in truth, technological advancements aside, the only way to truly beat the lizards was for Star Force to grow insanely larger. They couldn’t do that purely with Humans, nor was Star Force really about just Humans. It was a set of principles, based on the sovereignty of the individual and not the race, that just happened to have rogue Zen’zat that came with a slew of genetic abilities that the others didn’t possess.

But as Tom and the others had learned over time, those abilities weren’t all encompassing, with other races holding single, or sometimes multiple abilities that could be used to enhance Star Force above and beyond what Humans alone could do. The Bsidd were the biggest case in point, but the Kiritak were the first major addition in that department and were still quietly forming the backbone of Star Force’s industry.

Add in the hundreds of other races that were part of Star Force, whether by group or individual, and on the whole they were stronger than ever. Now they needed to add more systems and more population to the mix. That, coupled with the continuing tech upgrades coming out of the pyramid and the way Star Force was now gobbling up lizard territory, had gently shifted the trailblazers’ focus from holding back the lizards to outright beating the bastards at their own game.

The no-go line kept a complete victory out of the question, for in order to defeat the lizards it seemed you had to annihilate them, and now they’d passed into a region where Star Force wouldn’t go. There were other races and factions out in the rim, like the Nexus, that were far more powerful and territorially large than Star Force and the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t bothered to notice them, so it was hoped that the same would be true of the Humans’ expansion. But going closer to the core would be akin to waving and shouting at them through the Skarron empire, so despite their newfound boldness Star Force was going to keep a safe distance, even though there would never be any guarantees of anonymity no matter how far they went rimward.

As Tom finished popping the shield plates over the last of the lizard colonies within range, he took a moment to run his fingers through his shock-white hair, rubbing a spot on his head that was still aching from his last ascension. Paul had brought it out to him a month ago, before Tom had left on this campaign, and still there was a lingering bit of friedness there.

He wasn’t complaining though, for the Sav ability was a tier 3, and had he wanted to he could have controlled all of the cleansing beams on the Zeus and half his drones simultaneously. The processing upgrade had been one that had long eluded them, save for Bo, but now that they’d finally cracked the trigger all the trailblazers were getting it and Tom didn’t mind the discomfort that came along for the ride. It was almost gone anyway, and more than worth the tradeoff.

He rubbed it a few more times through his genetically altered hair as he mentally checked on the locations and statuses of his entire fleet, which were currently assaulting three different positions on the planet. The flurry of indicators flooded through is mind within .4 seconds, and thanks to the Sav he comprehended it all with clarity. In truth he’d gotten good enough with the nexus interface that he’d already acquired some impressive skills in that regard, but the Sav had taken everything he’d built up and just multiplied it exponentially.

Incorporating it into his standard training was his next big challenge, for it literally changed everything as far as what he was capable of doing, but he’d have time for that later. Right now Sashneo needed his oversight, and he’d have plenty of breaks to train in over the coming weeks. While his fleet was fully capable of handling this invasion without him, he knew that him being linked into the system and making little tweaks here and there could have a cumulative effect going forward.

And with billions of lizards down there that needed killing, there were lots of opportunities for tweaks to be made and deviousness to be uprooted before it could kill his people. That was the biggest need for him and other Archons with the fleets across lizard territory…sniffing out traps and figuring out how best to hit the lizards when they were dug in underground. This planet wasn’t the biggest one he’d been involved in hitting to date, but it was the most populated, offering up a little bit more of a challenge.

At this point though, for a trailblazer, this was easy peasy. It was vitally important, but not a real stretch of Tom’s skills. From an outside perspective, what was taking place on Sashneo was armageddon. The operation was so huge it left any civilian awestruck, but after so many battles his troops had become seasoned fighting the lizards and didn’t hesitate when given a target of this size. There was an awful lot of work to do here, but they knew they could handle it, one piece at a time, with Tom handing out assignments as they moved forward.

Back in the day, when Tom had passed his test for the A7 program, he never could have comprehended doing something like this, let alone how routine it had become.

Then again, he’d never expected to be 700 years old either. That longevity of growth had to have an effect on people, Archon or not, but back on Earth when he was a kid such things were out of the societal viewpoint, deemed nothing more than myth, so it was understandable that he had no clue a person could rise to this level. Now he was focused on taking care of business and continuing to climb the improvement ladder, for he and the others knew the V’kit’no’sat were still well ahead of them.

Back in his basic days he thought he’d comprehended the threat they posed. Now he realized he hadn’t a clue what they were capable of, data files or no. And what was even scarier was the fact that while Tom was a couple centuries away from catching Yoda, there were V’kit’no’sat hundreds of thousands of years old…and more.

With his mind still linked in to the battlemap he looked down on the huge lizard civilization he was set to destroy, realizing that compared to the level of the V’kit’no’sat, this was still just child’s play.

5

May 4, 2735

Noop System (beyond Gamma Region)

Tieor

The Mandoshan freighter made its braking maneuver into the commerce system on an odd jumpline, but odder still was the fact that the ship’s deceleration track ran to a normal orbital depth, though with a much higher rate of transition. That indicated gravity drives far superior than what the Mandoshan built into their ships, but no one noticed, or had the technology to, for unlike the more impressive star systems, this one had no stellar tracking grid.

The freighter in question redirected to the only habitable world in the system without incident, making the microjump at a speed expected from such a lethargic craft. Hundreds of others of different makes and origins were transitioning to and from the star every minute, with this freighter just mixing in with the flow until it reached the planetary monitoring grid and was picked up by the local traffic control staff.

It was queried as to its destination, then given a route to take to get down to the atmosphere without bumping into anything else in the cluttered orbital space. Thousands of habitats orbited the planet, along with just as many parked ships offloading cargo or personnel into the various public terminals. The Mandoshan freighter wasn’t headed for any of those, but had a destination point marked on the planet’s surface in one of the less respectable spaceports.

It was one of 189 on the planet registered for regular traffic and saw a fair amount of lower level commerce, so when the freighter in question dropped into hover mode over the cityscape it had to wait for the choke point to clear as a pair of Gordin freighters, twice the Mandoshan’s size, came up out of the half mile wide opening and made for the clouds overhead.

When given the go ahead from bay control the Mandoshan freighter eased its more or less circular bulk down through the ‘tight’ opening and into the enclosed airspace below that stretched out in a radius of several miles. The covering was little more than a sturdy tent, with no armor or defensive value other than to keep the weather out, but visually at least it separated the bay landing pads from the rest of the city.

The freighter eased to the west and came down on the landing pad assign to it next to four other craft, parking next to a Vrax freighter of similar size, but when the Mandoshan ship set down it didn’t offload any cargo, just a group of passengers that walked to a nearby exit where they were met by a single individual that then led them out of the spaceport and through the city via less than savory routes.

All eight individuals wore grey robes with large hoods that covered most of their faces, keeping them out of sight as they meandered through the scattered crowds made up of numerous races. Tieor had no native population, and had begun as an entertainment resort complex for the wealthy travelers on an uninhabited world. Over time those operations expanded, and were still present in one small corner of the planet, but ancillary development had started up around servicing those high end customers, and now, thousands of years later, it was the lower end that dominated the planet with their economic presence dwarfing that of the privileged elite.

Tieor functioned as a way station for some 80 star systems in the local region and even had connections further out, with it being on one of the major trade routes connecting the three major powers in the expanded region, those being the Hershat, Zocktrel, and Worar. That fact alone attracted a lot of varied races, but the ones beneath these hoods had never been seen in this part of the galaxy before and preferred to keep it that way.

The guide was one of Tieor’s natives, a Donklap, who looked halfway between Ewok and monkey. He stood shoulder height to most of the robed individuals, but walked in a very peculiar way, with his arms lunging side to side rather than swinging front and back like most others. Even that didn’t stand out in the crowd, for there were other Donklap around, along with many other races that clashed so much that they all seemed to blend together into a mix-matched harmony.

The Donklap led the eight robed individuals to a location not far from the spaceport, bringing them inside a commercial district and into an alley between establishments. On the far end of it was a locked loading door for cargo arrivals, which the Donklap had a key for. He slid the two-pronged ‘C’ into the holes and rotated the mechanism around, popping the door locks and allowing it to slide into the wall to reveal the interior hall. All eight passengers slipped inside, then the Donklap shut and locked the door from the inside before ushering them on into the facility.

They passed several sealed doors, for these had been welded shut to keep anyone from the stores from accidently stumbling into the portions of the shared complex that didn’t belong to them. After passing through several ‘dead’ rooms they came to another locked door, which the Donklap knocked on three times, then stared up at the security camera above it. He reached a hand up and split his fingers apart in the secret sign, with the door opening a moment later.

A Protovic stood behind it with weapon in hand, stepping to the side to let them enter, but making sure no one else slipped through before he had a chance to shut the door again.

When he did the eight individuals pulled back their hoods and slipped off their robes, revealing themselves to be a mix of ADZ races. One was Critel, another two Protovic, a fourth was Bonpar, and the other four were Human…all ex-Star Force military, coming from Axius to the mainline branch and everything in between.

“Lieutenant,” the Protovic greeted one of the Humans, recognizing him but not the others. That wasn’t uncommon, for Brayden’s Marauders had over 12,000 regulars, with that number growing each decade.

“Le’han’trel,” the Human replied, knowing every one of the men under his command personally, not counting the affiliates like the Donklap, who were local hires. “Is the client here?”

“Not here as in the base, but he’s in a hotel nearby. I can arrange for you to meet with him whenever, wherever.”

“Arrange it,” Mason Harkor said, tossing his cloak bundle onto a nearby table with the others. “Somewhere private, but not here.”

The Protovic nodded then gestured to one of the six locals in the room, which doubled as their lounge/comms center, then rattled off instruction in a language that the Lieutenant couldn’t identify. A spindly creature that looked to be little more than bone with skin draped over responded and got on the comm, sending out a text transmission and nothing that would give anyone information as to the details or location of their outpost.

It was a legitimate business acquisition, for the Marauders were renting the facility, but as far as the landlords knew it was just a warehousing slot allotment, and as long as the demaks, their local currency, kept flowing in they never bothered to check up on the tenants. Similar arrangements were common on this part of the planet, and it gave the Marauders the anonymity they needed, for while mercenaries weren’t uncommon on Tieor they were something best kept out of sight.

Especially high level mercs that had better equipment than the local defense force.

“Alright guys, settle in. We’re going to be here at least a few days.”

“Left, then two rights,” Le’han’trel said, gesturing to a side door that led into other areas of the fairly large facility that housed and equipped a force of more than 200 on a regular basis, though at present less than 50 were currently on site. “Quartermaster is a Kiritak called Gargi, she’ll set you up.”

“What do we have in the mail bag?” Mason asked when the other 7 in his strike team had left the room and he had appropriated a nearby stool to sit on.

Le’han’trel grabbed a datapad off a shelf and tapped it on, pulling up an inventory list of all the requests coming in to the mercs for work, most of which they would have to turn down. The Marauders only did defensive work, and didn’t take any contracts that would conflict with Star Force standards. While they weren’t officially affiliated with them, the unit had been created by Brayden Yen, a high ranking commando in Clan Caitlyn that had ‘retired’ to civilian life.

Upon leaving the military he spent the next 60 years acquiring the credits he needed through a variety of work, all non-military, then recruited a handful of other former Star Force commandos to create the first of what would come to be called the Marauders. Mason was one of those originals, and spent the next few decades working security assignments in the undesirable sections of the ADZ where Star Force security had no presence and where businessmen were willing to pay for personal security.

Over time Brayden collected more exiting Star Force personnel, citing that he wanted to establish a unit that could go where Star Force couldn’t, into the darkest corners of the galaxy and root out the nastiness there, essentially doing the same sort of thing they’d always done, but doing so on their own volition and own orders. They would be free to act as they chose, but at the same time wouldn’t have any backup, for they weren’t part of Star Force anymore.

That changeup on an old priority appealed to a decent fraction of the retired personnel that Brayden solicited, coupled with the idea of getting paid for the fighting they did. They’d be serving Star Force indirectly, but getting rich at the same time. That alone was reason enough for many who got the invite to join up, and for the others it was Brayden’s future plans for the unit.

The former commando didn’t want to just hunt down trash in the dark corners of the ADZ, but he intended to go outside Star Force territory to the truly wild regions of the galaxy and bring a little civilization to the chaos. Nothing grandiose, just a mission here or there to get rid of some scumbag. Star Force had a huge territory, but the galaxy was far bigger, so after the Marauders were firmly established and making enough credits in the ADZ to support themselves, and then some, Brayden began pushing operations beyond the ever moving borders, staying a step or two ahead of Star Force’s creeping territorial lines…which were now surging head over heels outward.

The Marauders were still ahead of the curve, for the Noop System was way beyond the ADZ, but not so far that some of the races here hadn’t established diplomatic contact with Star Force. It was in that gray zone between known and unknown that they chose to work, banking on Star Force’s reputation to give them leverage and credibility while still operating outside their sphere of influence. This system and others weren’t too unimportant for them to care about, they simply couldn’t protect everyone, and it was those places that were beyond Star Force’s help that the Marauders chose to operate within.

“We’ve got four requests for assassinations,” Le’han’trel began to read off. “Two hijackings of freighters, sixteen requests for permanent defensive deployments ranging from a personal security guard to an entire moon, and an assortment of transport missions along with a few odds and ends. Mostly trash stuff that we’ve told people time and again that we won’t do, but they still ask anyway.”

“What about the moon?” Mason asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Not something we’d want. It’s a vice den and they want us to set up to keep any other merc units or law enforcement out.”

“Anything worthwhile?”

“Some small stuff, wouldn’t take more than a squad of three or four. Fuel costs in getting there would eat up most of the profit though, because none are local.”

“By local you mean on Tieor?”

“Yes.”

Mason waved his fingers in a ‘give me’ gesture and the Protovic tossed him the datapad. “Still haven’t got these guys up to speed on English yet?”

“Passable, but anything complex is better handled in Klixet. Between them all they know 19 other languages, so I’m not pressing too hard. The earpiece translators we’ve gotten configured to Klixet pretty well, so as long as they can translate into that we can manage with our clients…mostly. For a few we’ve had races that barely spoke Klixet, and didn’t know any of the others. This planet is a mess linguistically.”

“What isn’t out here?” Mason asked as he flagged three requests that he’d be willing to assign the Marauders to. One would make for a decent payday, the others would offer a slim profit margin. Normally they would be booked constantly, but at the moment they had a bit of flexibility and he intended to handle one of the small ones himself after he was done here.

“Log these,” he said, tossing the datapad back to the base chief, which the Marauders referred to as a ‘handler,’ for he handled all the local assignments and reported directly to the Lieutenant in charge of this Marauder sector, which was Mason.

“How are things back home?” Le’han’trel asked as he moved over to one of the suitcase-like computer stations.

“Seems like Star Force is taking a planet a day from the lizards,” Mason exaggerated. “They’re steamrolling them now, on multiple fronts.”

“Just not in this direction?”

“Fortunately there are no lizards down here, but no, this region isn’t a priority yet, and I doubt it will be for some time.”

“Good for business.”

“Bad for the galaxy. We can always move further as needed, and even a single Star Force ship in this system would do more good than we can.”

“I know, but we’ve still got bills to pay, my salary included, and a unit like ours has to go where the trouble is to cover our considerable overhead…and that’s just the small part that I’m number crunching.”

“Brayden knows what he’s doing,” Mason assured him. “He’s got enough resources put back to cover us if business suddenly dries up, so don’t worry about that.”

“Good to hear. Don’t want to get back to the ADZ and find out that I’m not getting paid.”

Mason laughed. “No worries there. Your account is kept separate from the general fund. We won’t be raiding it even if things go horrifically bad. You thinking of getting out?”

“And do what? Sit on a beach watching the sun rise and set along with 50 billion other people? No thanks. It may be scummy out here, but at least it’s not overcrowded. Axius worlds are too jam packed for my tastes.”

“There are a lot of other options. The Clans, for example.”

“Thought those were Human only.”

“They’re badass only. Get your skill scores high enough and they’ll let you in.”

“So I’m assuming you got kicked out then?”

Mason raised a finger and pointed it at the green and purple skinned Protovic. “Easy there. I’m still your commander.”

“Guess that’s just my question regarding why you left.”

“I didn’t come from the Clans. I was born on Earth.”

Le’han’trel frowned, with his glowing facial patches making the gestures stand out more than they would on a Human. “I thought you served with Clan Sangheili?”

“I did at the end. I spent most of my time in a mainline unit, then wanted to see something more specialized. The Clans offered a bit of that, but not enough, so I eventually quit.”

“Quit?”

Mason smiled. “I took a leave of absence to try and figure out what exactly I wanted to do, traveled around the ADZ, just lost myself in the crush of people that you were talking about. That was when Brayden found me and offered up the type of challenge I’d been needing. I was never going to go truly civie.”

“Good. Thought you lost your head there, and maybe your self-sufficiency at that. I could have swore I saw a gray hair or two.”

“Stop listening to rumors. Hairs can malfunction for a number of reasons, and they often fix themselves over time. It’s not a tell-tale sign of degradation, and no, you didn’t see any on me.”

The Protovic shrugged. “If you say so. Never could understand the hairy races.”

“At least we don’t shed skin layers.”

“Yes you do, just in tiny pieces constantly.”

“I guess, but you don’t see us doing it. First time I saw a Protovic pulling his skin off it nearly made me puke.”

“Why? It’s just a thin layer. Looks the same underneath.”

“It’s creepy. Like you’re a snake or something.”

“You don’t like snakes?”

“It’s just creepy,” Mason reiterated.

“So glad we could have this bonding moment,” Le’han’trel said as the affiliate at the comm station got his attention and the Protovic walked over to confer with him. “Mason, we’ve got confirmation. Tomorrow morning in a private lounge at what passes for a restaurant not too far from here. We’ve used that site before, and it offers some concealed cover for backup if you want it.”

“Translator?”

“I’ve got three that speak their language, or rather a communal one.”

“Good. We’ll take whoever’s the most reliable.”

“We?”

“You’re coming too.”

“Ok, but why?”

“Does he speak English?”

“Passable.”

“I’d like better than passable. Miscommunication has cost us one payday already, I don’t want to risk another.”

“Alright, I’ll translate the translator for you. But I’ll have to go in armor, unless you want a walking glowlamp drawing attention.”

“You can hide your ugly face, it won’t bother me,” Mason quipped.

Le’han’trel grimaced. “Next time we’re eating together, I think I’ll peel my arm just for fun.”

The Lieutenant stared at him for a long moment. “Hide your beautiful face, then.”

“That’s better,” he said, pointing to the doorway. “Don’t know when the last time you slept was, but tomorrow here begins in 4 hours, and our contact is set to meet us in just under 9.”

“I’d better catch a crash nap then. Do we have any donuts on hand?”

“If the rest of your guys haven’t eaten them all up, sure. If they have there’s more in packaging, but they’ll have to be baked.”

“Always the last one to the food,” Mason grumbled, getting up off his stool and heading for the cafeteria.

6

May 5, 2735

Noop System

Tieor

Mason, Le’han’trel, and a local named Varsa sat in a secluded booth listening to a potential client explain to them what was happening in a nearby star system. Coming through double translation, Mason wasn’t sure he was getting the gist of all of it, but from what he could tell the number of militants had doubled since the initial offer had been made that had prompted the Lieutenant to come out to Tieor. They were set up in a confiscated complex that had originally been a livestock processing plant, but had killed off the surrounding herds and were using it for their headquarters while they raped and pillaged, literally, the surrounding cities.

The local defense force had been killed earlier, having gone up against the militants and been beaten badly over four years ago. With no resolution to the matter and the militants gradually reaching out to more and more distant cities, the locals had put together a fund to hire someone to come in and clean up the mess before it got any worse.

Those mercs they hired, which were on the very low end of the respectability ladder, took their money and ran. It had been another two years since that point, with the militant base expanding and setting up the planet as a haven for more and more offworlders to come to, escalating to the point where they were running rough shot over most of the planet. The other cities’ civil defense forces couldn’t stop them for more than a single instance before the other militants would retaliate by blowing up a building or two, or perhaps just strafing the streets from the air with one of their aerofighters.

Eventually the entire planet had banded together and put together the funds necessary to hire a respectable mercenary agency, and had come all the way to Tieor to do it, which was how they’d found their way to the Marauders.

Mason had already known this wasn’t going to be a milk run, and through his double translators he pressed for more specific details. The Batarank that they were speaking to produced a series of plastic sheets of paper with information and images on them from a briefcase it was carrying, and Mason began to sort through it while Le’han’trel continued with the questioning on his behalf.

The militants were offworlders, but they didn’t belong to any faction known to the Marauders. They were collecting more and more personnel, including some tanks that were giving the locals all kinds of headaches. A few of the militants had been killed by vigilantes, who were striking back despite the reprisals, but they couldn’t scratch the tanks nor stop them when they often went in to wreck a local village.

They also had four aircraft. Two were shuttles, one was an orbital dropship, and the other was an aerofighter. Or at least as far as the Bataranks knew. They’d only seen one operating at a time, and from the markings it appeared to be the same craft, though Mason wasn’t going to assume that as confirmed. All in all, there were probably some 2,000+ militants on the ground, but with the more recent updates it seemed that several new ships had arrived to deposit more in the facility, of which the Bataranks had no knowledge or counts of.

Mason dismissed their guesses, knowing that he’d need to do a proper recon before committing any ground troops, but this didn’t sound like something the Marauders couldn’t handle. Which only left the question of payment remaining.

That wasn’t a straightforward deal, for there were numerous currencies that didn’t all transfer between worlds. Eventually Le’han’trel got it sorted out, using various materials in exchange for the currency, and gave Mason the approximate credit value, were it back in the ADZ. It added up to 12% above the posted rates that the Marauders advertised for an operation of this scale, and as long as there were no additional surprises they were set to go.

Normally, additional surprises included a surcharge, but the type of operation this job had been solicited as hadn’t changed, just the numbers involved and those were really inconsequential given the team he’d brought. They needed the money for operating expenses, but beyond that they weren’t going to try and squeeze more credits out of their clients as others might do. That was a decision made on principle, but it also worked as a good marketing rep as word of mouth got around.

A few more questions about the local geography and weapons capability of the locals, which was almost nonexistent, and Mason agreed to take the job. The Batarank was visibly relieved when they signed the operating contract, which was unnecessary in mercenary work, but Brayden wanted the agreements officialized if for no other reason than to have a record of what the deal actually was rather than relying on the clients’ memories in case something didn’t turn out as they’d hoped. It was rare, but sometimes they’d ask for a small task and expect you to fix other problems once you were on site, and the contract was good to have on hand to point out what you were actually getting paid to do.

After a few more unnecessary words that Le’han’trel didn’t bother to translate for Mason, the Batarank left in a hurry and the Protovic, clad in a full body suit and face mask underneath his robe-like garments, turned to the Lieutenant.

“We’re not sticking around to eat, are we?”

Mason glanced around outside the booth. “We’ll linger a bit. They have anything good here?”

“Not that I can eat.”

“Your problem,” he said, smiling at the faceplate. “Get us some snacks and whatever Varsa would like, but nothing that will take more than half an hour.”

“Get you some snacks you mean,” he said, running through the menu with Varsa.

Two weeks later the Mandoshan freighter arrived in the Dechma System, following the client’s ship by less than a day. Mason’s small jumpship was much faster and could have arrived within 34 hours, but he didn’t want to get there before the client did, which would make things awkward. This way the Bataranks would know that they’d been hired and weren’t here on some other action, and he hoped he might be able to pull some live intel from them during the operation, given that they had eyes and ears everywhere, and the Marauders needed to eliminate all of the militants and not leave so much as one around to cause trouble after they left.

That would be sloppy business, and if the Bataranks were going to scare off more poaching of their planet in the future by hiring the Marauders, they need a clean and efficient sweep of the malcontents to drum up the fear in anyone else that might think the planet an easy mark.

The jumpship was called the 17, which simply meant it was the 17th interstellar-capable ship that the Marauders had acquired. They didn’t name them like Star Force did, and this one had been bought from the local market to make it blend in with this region of the galaxy rather than bringing in an ADZ craft that would stand out like a sore thumb. If they wanted to attract attention and intimidate someone then that was the way to go, but more often than not the Marauders preferred a less than auspicious entrance.

That said, the Mandoshan freighter wasn’t really a Mandoshan freighter anymore. It had been hauled back to the ADZ and gutted, literally, with everything interior being junked and sold for spare parts while maintaining the outer shell. That shell had been used to build a new ship within, using ADZ technology that was far superior to what the locals here possessed. That meant the Marauders could use the Mandoshan freighter to move about anonymously, but still have the muscle necessary if they needed to fight their way out of a situation, or out run one. As far as they knew, their gravity drives were considerably better than anything the nearest 50 systems had to offer, meaning they could literally go where they wanted, when they wanted, without anyone able to follow them.

The Marauders didn’t make use of that function often, preferring to keep the capabilities of their ships a secret aside from the ‘foreign’ models they threw about every now and then, but this operation was small scale enough to fit everything they needed in this 620 meter long/wide freighter, though to make it a proper jumpship nearly a third of the internal volume had to be dedicated to housing the engines and power core.

Mason had brought a crew of 8 with him to Tieor, then grabbed another dozen or so personnel that were on station there, including Le’han’trel, leaving the base in the hands of Krivan, a junior but trustworthy member of the mercenary organization. With everyone originating from within Star Force, finding people that could be relied upon wasn’t a problem, plus they didn’t have local affiliations or history to muddy the waters like some of their competition did.

When they entered planetary orbit of Numchalla, they took their time and made a thorough scan of the surface using their own equipment before heading down to the largest spaceport on the somewhat backwater world. It boasted a population of 23 million, but saw those Bataranks scattered across numerous cities and villages, leaving them without any one stronghold to work out of. The city of Yiivala was the largest, and where their client had informed them that they should land their ship, for there were only a handful of slips large enough to accommodate their vessel on the surface.

As they queried the local controller during the atmospheric descent, they got a panicked message from their client indicating that the militants were currently in Yiivala and were demanding payment from the shippers coming and going. Mason replied that they’d take care of it, then he told the pilot to land them as if nothing were amiss before heading back to the equipment room via a detour through the lounge and training area.

“Change of plans,” he told Le’han’trel as he was working with a set of free weights. “There’s a reception committee at the spaceport, so gear up. We need to introduce ourselves.”

“Meaning?” the Protovic asked, his face aglow as he set the weights in their nearby storage rack as several other strike team members did likewise.

“Our quarry seem to be taxing the shipping traffic coming through the spaceport.”

“Ah,” he said, understanding. Le’han’trel was glad it wasn’t an actual reception committee. Those political shenanigans were boring as hell.

Mason led the way out and met up with the others in the equipment room where a few of the mercs were waiting rather than getting into their armor.

“You want all of us?” one of them asked.

“Better safe than sorry,” Mason said, opening his locker and pulling out the pieces of the Reen-made armor that had been custom fitted to his frame years ago. It wasn’t up to Star Force quality, but since they didn’t sell military equipment to civilians, others specialized in that market and the Reen had the best personal equipment available. Despite the fact that they themselves were huge quadrupeds, they knew how to make adequate armor for Humans and other bipeds. “And I don’t want any of them getting away, so be ready to run down multiple targets. Jackson, get the Valerie prepped. Their fighter is in the air to intimidate the shippers to pay the price.”

“You want that captured or scrapped?” the ex-Star Force Regular pilot asked.

“Preferably captured, so we can sell what’s left of it.”

“I’ll try and be gentle,” he said, pulling on a different set of armor than he would have worn had he been going in with the infantry.

Mason clicked the various pieces of armor onto his body, locking them in place then testing to make sure all the joints were secured. He pulled the helmet on last, finding the fit reassuring, for he’d spent hundreds of combat hours in this suit, and hadn’t yet had to replace the headgear.

The others dressed in similar armor, all of which was painted dark blue with red stripes going down the outside of the arms and legs. Their weapons had also been painted the same color of red, with the plasma rifles being custom fitted with an extra component slung under the barrel. A typical modification, but whereas most individuals would have added a rocket launcher, flame thrower, or some other type of area of effect weapon, the Marauders had purchased a stun mod that gave them the ability to take down targets without killing them, though it was nowhere near as effective as the stun weapons Star Force used, nor could it pass through armor.

That meant most enemies they faced had to shot to be disabled, with the stun mostly being useful against unarmored opponents. Reports were that the militants wore a hodgepodge of armor, so it was likely that they were going to have to be taken down the hard way or forced to surrender…though without a translator handy during a firefight there wasn’t going to be much opportunity to offer one, unless they bad guys just threw their weapons down and their hands up.

Once he was fully equipped he and the others moved to the internal hangar and three auxiliary exits, one of which was on the top of the craft. They waited inside until the freighter had set down, then listened to the communal comm channel for Mason to give the word.

“I need a target count,” he said, looking at the vid screen next to the closed hatch that showed what was outside before you opened the opaque door. “I mark two to port.”

“Got another aft.”

“Three starboard fore.”

Mason waited a moment, then the pilot finally added, “Someone’s coming up to the ship, heading to the main bay doors.”

“Lower them, but stay out of sight inside. I need a team topside.”

“On it,” Ray’so’mal said.

“Le’han’trel, take the bay team. I’m flanking.”

“Copy.”

Two mercs wearing full armor minus the helmets, escorted a third individual that wore casual clothes plus a hip-holstered pistol over to the ship’s lowering ramp as the apparent leader began speaking rapidly in Klixet, making demands for the crew to come out and them being given access to inspect the cargo, citing something about a maintenance fee when a flash of blue armor ran out from the left side and barreled down the ramp.

Le’han’trel rammed the merc on the left in an unarmed tackle before he could bring his weapon up, in typical Protovic fashion, then as the other two turned and backed away from the pair and tried to draw their weapons a slightly delayed pair of blurs followed him out and took them down, but not before the unarmored Selofan got a shot off into one of the Marauders.

The chest shield held up, barely, until physical contact was made and that ripped through what was left of the cheap energy barrier and the militant was knocked to the ground. The Marauder rolled off him, grabbing his pistol as he did so, then another Marauder followed him up and shot the leader with a stun blast of hazy green energy that left him groggy but still conscious. A second shot solved that problem, then the other Marauders coming out of the ship helped wrestle the armored mercs to the ground and disarm them as a few plasma shots were heard elsewhere around the bay.

Mason was the recipient of those shots, three of which missed but one hit him in the left pectoral, soaking into his energy shield as the militant shooting at him from afar turned and ran when he saw two more armored soldiers following. The Human swore and sprinted after him, ducking into a side doorway and trying to keep within sight. The pudgy alien was slow, but he had a head start through unfamiliar terrain.

After two fleeting glances through the confines of the spaceport Mason lost him, only to see pointing arms from the surrounding crowd telling him to go left. He didn’t know whether to trust them or not, but he figured why not and headed off that direction as opposed to just choosing one at random.

The hallway went through several curves, then quickly exited onto a city street where a blue plasma streak shot past him and hit a bystander. Mason visually tracked it back to the source and sprinted off after the militant again, this time with clear street to work with as the crowds backed away from the weaponsfire.

He might not have been in as good of shape now as he had been when in Star Force, but he hadn’t lost much of his speed and used it now to run the bastard down within 20 seconds, not bothering to shoot back until he got within a couple of meters of the target. A shower of sparks blew out from the impact point on the militant’s unshielded armor, but apparently the plasma shot wasn’t enough to get through to the ugly thing’s skin.

Not wanting to try for a head shot, he sprinted up closer and jabbed the barrel of his rifle into its back, tipping it forward and tripping it up on its own feet. Mason jumped into the air as it happened and came down with a stiffened knee on top of the militant, disorienting and knocking the breath out of him as the ex-commando made the takedown.

He put the muzzle of his plasma rifle in the guy’s face and held it there, giving him the idea that it would be a good idea to stay down and stay put. The militant complied and Mason held him in place until his backup caught up to him, then the Marauders pulled out some easy-snap restraints and took the guy prisoner.

Mason glanced back the way they’d come, remembering the bystander that had been shot, then he punched the exposed head of the guy once for the sloppy shot before hauling him to his feet and dragging him back to the ship when he refused to walk.

7

With the floor of the landing bay secured and the main doors on the 17 open, the pointy end of the Valerie eased out of the ship, hovering into the clear and staring down the handful of people that were still in the bay, some of which were now coming out of the woodwork knowing that the Marauders were here under contract and feeling safe enough to have a look around now that the short-lived fireworks were over.

But they weren’t, and as soon as the Valerie got clear of the ship by a good dozen meters or so it kicked up its anti-grav and gained altitude, picking up the nearby militant fighter about a mile off as it circled about lazily. That demeanor shifted as soon as the Marauder got his craft above the retaining walls around the bay and into view, with it accelerating towards him in a quick curve off its former heading.

The Valerie’s shields went up, offering more than enough protection against the plasma weapons of the primitive fighter. The Valerie itself was armed with plasma, but not all versions were equal and Jackson knew he could down the fighter with ease. That wasn’t the mission, however, plus they were over the city right now and he needed to draw it off to keep from hitting anyone below.

Making it look like he was running, the Marauder accelerated to the east, holding back from full thrust otherwise he’d outrun his pursuit. It didn’t take long for both of them to pass over the city’s edge, for it wasn’t that large, and a few kilometers was all the distance he needed before the grassy plains took over. As soon as both fighters were in the clear the Marauder stopped playing impotent and executed a tight, sweeping turn that the opponent tried to mimic…and failed.

Two full rotations around and the merc was on the militant’s tail. He popped a golden ball of plasma against the hull, confirming that it had no shields as it melted/exploded a small section just behind the cockpit. The pilot kept the yield on the plasma low and peppered a few more key spots as the enemy fighter tried to evade, but with the superior design of the Valerie the Marauder was able to keep with it and, so long as he was patient, was able to line up all the shots he wanted.

Eventually one of the small probing shots hit the engines and the fighter dropped from the sky during a loop low to the ground. He’d waited for that moment to fire the last shot, hoping to knock it down when it only had about 30 meters of altitude to fall from. The stubby ship hit nose first, digging a short trench into the grass before the momentum flipped it over in a somersault that crunched various edges in, like the fighter was being punched into a wad of metal, but no explosions resulted and the craft finally came to a rest amidst some small brush fires, more or less intact.

“Bird is down,” the pilot reported. “Need a recovery team asap.”

Jackson brought the Valerie into a low hover and drifted it around a square patrol pattern as he waited, looking to see if the pilot would come out or not, as well as to keep anyone else from venturing out to the crash site from the city or the tiny dwellings nearby.

Too easy.

Two weeks later Mason was on the perimeter of the militant stronghold with two other former commandos, neither of which he’d served with previously in Star Force, but the way they trained their people made it easy for them to link up without any prior knowledge of each other. These two were both Human, with Frank having been Axius and Zaeb mainline. The pair had been with Mason on numerous missions, mostly those that required a bit more muscle than usual, and he liked keeping them close, for as a trio they were virtually impossible to stop.

Frank carried an auxiliary shield generator in a backpack, while Zaeb and Mason were packing extra weapons. No explosives, for they wanted a clean strike, and their plasma rifles were more than adequate to burn through any doors that needed removing.

The trio of ex-commandos moved along a ditch, splashing through the bit of mud in the center in the dead of night and moving up to a bridge that held a guard station. The depression was deep enough to cover them from view and the station was on the exterior side of the trench, focused on incoming traffic without any windows to the inside. Mason had checked on that from afar during the reconnaissance run the previous day, for ever since the Marauders had started picking off the scattered militants across the planet they’d begun retreating here and turtling up.

Not concerned with the sounds of their footfalls, the trio ran through the ditch along a now empty grazing field. No one was out and about the exterior perimeter, and even if they were it would have been on the other side of the fence that tracked the inside of the little-used waterway. They needed to get to target quickly, and the longer they lingered the better the chance of someone spotting them out of pure luck, hence the running.

Most of the base defenses were well inside the perimeter, waiting for someone to cross the bridge or come over the fence and through the fields by foot. Taking the guard station would do little to hamper the defenses, in fact, it was basically a decoy setup, for if anyone hit it the rest of the base would immediately know and go on alert. That made it a sacrificial lure designed to pull the Marauders in, but Mason was going to take it anyway.

He was in the lead as they came up on the bridge, then stopped short of one of the two support beams that came up out of the dirt to hold up the short structure. Pulling his plasma rifle out he hesitated for a moment, letting the other two catch up from the few steps behind him that they’d been running to avoid a lucky shot from taking out all three. He pointed up the side of the ditch, with Frank jumping into the lead and scaling it on all fours.

When he got to the top he pulled out a pistol and moved up to the base of the structure, looking around as the other two climbed up more slowly using just their legs and a balancing hand. There were no lights on this side, save for what was on the bridge, and they didn’t shine on anything other than the road. The ambient glow brightened the area a bit, but the sky was hazy and the trio appeared as nothing more than weak shadows as they circling around and came in the guard station’s front side.

Frank sprinted across the opening, firing a plasma shot through one of the windows with it blowing apart the glass and turning it into shrapnel that bounced off the militants’ armor, startling them out of their relaxed poses as they drew their weapons to try and target the enemy as he shot from left to right across their view.

With their attention drawn that way Mason stepped out on the left and held position, firing multiple blasts from his rifle into the pair of guards before they had a chance to readjust their aim. His shots were precise, and he nailed one of them with three hits to the abdomen, burning through the armor and hitting flesh. That militant went down, but Mason had to duck below the wall and out of the wide window as the other shot towards him, holding his ground for a moment while the doorway into the second room of the station opened up and more guards flooded out.

Mason rolled to his left, making room for Zaeb to crawl up next to him, then when Frank came back into view on the other side and drew a flurry of plasma lances through the opposite set of windows, the pair popped up and scattered the militants as they fired into the group of 6.

Frank didn’t stop to snipe, rather heading directly for the doorless entryway and barreling inside. The auxiliary shield generator deployed around him, cutting off his own return fire while creating a bubble-shield that had been scaled down to minimum distance. It absorbed the hailstorm of blue streaks all the way up to the group, where Frank jumped into their midst and went at them hand to hand.

Mason and Zaeb moved in then, firing through the window and knocking down the militants with clean shots while their opponents were distracted. Their armor gave them longevity, but the three Marauders knew what they were doing and cut them down so fast it seemed like they hadn’t been wearing any at all.

“Clear,” Frank reported after ducking into the back room.

Mason picked up two of their weapons and tossed them behind a counter to start making a pile as Zaeb dragged the bodies outside. They didn’t have time to take prisoners, and the pair that weren’t dead were soon going to be from their wounds, so Mason didn’t pay any attention to them other than to keep them away from their weapons while Frank began moving a desk aside and exposing a panel on the floor that the dumb militants hadn’t even realized was there.

The Marauder shot the attachments off in lieu of the tools to remove them that he didn’t have, then he pried the panel up with his armored fingers, exposing the maintenance walkway that traveled all the way into the facility along with the power and sewage lines…directly under the defenses the militants had set up on the exterior.

Mason commed the others and the trio held the guard station until they arrived, coming up the road in a tank of their own and parking it just on the outside of the bridge. It was wheeled, for the design was far cheaper and more useful for the Marauders than buying the anti-grav variety, though they did have a few of them in their inventory for special occasions. This one was preceding a line of infantry equipped in the same Reen-manufactured armor, all of whom clustered inside the guard station and waited to see if the militants would come out to them.

They didn’t, sitting back behind their turrets and in their tanks waiting for the Marauders to come to them where they were strongest. Mason didn’t intend for their tank to be used yet, for it was just a visual distraction at this point, but eventually they’d need it to deal with the militant versions, which were little more than dangerous toys in comparison.

The 18 other infantry he took with him down into the maintenance walkway, which was barely wide enough for one of them to slip through with all the piping and technical accoutrements dangling in the way. Moving single file they jogged as best they could through it for more than 3 kilometers before they got to where the schematics said was the junction with the outermost buildings in the facility.

They didn’t come up there, but rather moved further through the network of underground tunnels until they came to the nexus point that branched off in three directions. They split up there and set a countdown timer, giving them all 6 minutes to get in position. Mason took Frank and Zaeb with him, while Le’han’trel led one of the other teams. The Protovic had the hardest assignment in this assault, that being hitting the barracks, or rather what the militants had converted into one.

Mason’s trio had picked up Navo and Willis, and the five of them moved through the tunnel until they came up underneath another sealed panel. They waited until the countdown expired, then blew the panel latches off with plasma fire before pushing the stubborn thing up a few inches, finding that there was something on top of it.

Using his well-trained muscle, Mason wedged himself between it and Frank’s backpack, stepping on the fellow Marauder to use him as a stool and prying the panel up enough to get an arm out, seeing nothing but boxes around him.

He pushed his head and torso through, then used the rim of the depression for the leverage he needed and dumped whatever was on top of him aside, allowing him to crawl out and get his weapon back from below as Navo handed it to him coming up. Mason took it and pushed another box stack to the side, making walking room and moving through a forest of supplies until they got into the clear, with no one else in what appeared to be a storage room.

He waited until the other four caught up, then he blew apart the lock on the door and the squad got moving through the facility enroute to one of the fortified buildings they’d scouted from afar earlier. They had to cross out into the open once, hopping from building to building whereas most of the other structures were all interconnected, but they did so fast enough either not to get noticed or to draw any return fire as they busted their way into a populated building that held a number of prisoners/slaves draw from the local population.

There were only two guards on them, which were taken down quickly enough, but by that time the cat was out of the bag and the militants knew they had infiltrators in the base. Not taking any chances, Mason and the others stunned every unarmored person they came across, whether they be militant or not, intending to sort it out later and to keep those they were here to rescue from running about wildly and getting shot in the crossfire.

One pair they found in an isolated room appeared to be mating, and as Mason stunned them both he cursed the stupidity of it. The alarm had already gone up, and this idiot was busy getting laid. He didn’t know if the other was a victim or not, but the one had half a militant uniform on and Mason didn’t really want to look any closer. He grabbed the rifle from nearby and carried it with him out of the room, disposing of it by chucking it behind a potted plant that had since died due to lack of watering.

He and the others worked their way through the large building, finding only one more guard stationed at the opposite entrance. After taking him down with ease, they pulled back and moved to an adjacent building through a connective walkway, hearing the first sounds of a distant firefight that should have been Jarod’s team.

Mason sprinted ahead, and now that their prisoner camp had been ‘rescued’ the rest of this mission was just hunting down the army of militants and taking them out in one form or another, with most of these guys going to have to be killed given their armament and the fact that there were only 19 of his men here to work through well over 1,500 of them. How many Mason didn’t know for sure, but the numbers didn’t intimidate him. These were scum and had the skills to match, and he’d fought far harder training simulations than this.

So long as his people kept their heads and watched each other’s backs they’d be fine. Between their equipment and experience advantage, not to mention their unit coordination, they could take out as many of the enemy as needed so long as they didn’t let them draw them out into the open.

Mason wasn’t green enough to let that happen, and he knew the faster they made kills the less chance there would be of the militants mounting any type of cohesive counterattack, which was why he and the other four ran into the next firefight without bothering to find cover, coming out into a foyer behind a group of 20+ targets that were firing the opposite direction.

The Lieutenant barreled in first, knowing his job was to disrupt and set up shots for the others, so he didn’t shoot more than one initial shot, then used his rifle along with his arms and legs to batter the militants aside, knocking some down and others out of their cover for the opposite team to shoot while his own squad pounded the armor of those on the ground trying to get up until they stayed down.

It took more than a minute to kill them all, and some of his men took glancing armor hits, but their personal shields, coupled with Frank using his auxiliary to block a lot more shots, had kept the militant plasma off them long enough for the firefight to snowball in their favor, leaving the 11 of them standing over the bodies and kicking aside the enemy’s weapons just in case they weren’t fully dead yet.

“Anyone hit?” Mason asked, just in case.

“Nice flank,” Jarod said in thanks.

“Take that way,” the Lieutenant said, thumbing to the right indicating the next adjacent building. “Running sweeps, don’t slow down and give these guys a chance to think.”

“On it,” Jarod acknowledged, taking his team that way while Mason moved on to the left with his squad.

8

Mason ran in tight formation with the other four Marauders, all tucked around Frank in the center with his auxiliary shield extended to cover them as they charged the militant bunker on the exterior of the facility. It had only been made recently, more piled dirt than anything, but it held a pair of plasma turrets and a fair amount of infantry, with open tarmac surrounding it in a sea that very easily could become a kill zone.

Most of the militants in the rest of the base were dead or incapacitated, but there were plenty of holdouts that had found some type of advantage and they were camping out there. Mason would have offered a call to surrender, except that he didn’t want to give away their position to this group before starting their run, for even a single second of invulnerability could make the difference between them getting to the bunker or not.

So far this one had been sitting totally uninvolved in the fighting, and the Lieutenant wanted to hit it before they could go on full alert…and he didn’t want to wait for the tank to work its way around to this side of the base. Currently it was on its way in and blasting the crap out of the militant versions, and more importantly keeping them off his infantry.

Picking their spot early on in what they thought might be a blind spot, the five Marauders started running behind cover so they hit the open area on the move and headed straight towards the bunker on an angle that put them directly in line with one of the window slats.

They’d made it nearly a third of the way across before someone bothered to notice them, firing a rifle shot that hit and splashed against the bubble shield before the main turret on that side swiveled to the right and took aim.

Mason and the others held tight, knowing that the shield could take at least two good hits before popping, then they’d be down to their weak armor shields, all of which were at full power, but none of them could take a square hit from the tripod turret and remain intact. Their armor would protect them from whatever plasma made it through, but a second hit would almost certainly breach through the dark blue plates.

But the ex-commandos were quick, and before the turret could fire off a second blast they were on the bunker and the five of them broke apart, running out from under the energy shield and jumping through the window holes as Frank slid underneath the turret barrel, running into the short wall below and reaching up to grab the weapon. As he did so, locking it in place where it couldn’t shoot anyone, he reached up his left hand with a pistol and fired a shot inside where he had a clean line of sight between the other Marauders.

Mason had dove through head first, barreling into two of the infantry stacked inside that were just now getting to the open-air windows. Playing bowling ball, he knocked them down and tripped a third while Zaeb followed him through, staying on his feet with a more gentle leg slide, and shot one of the standing militants beyond him twice in the gut before turning his rifle on those the Lieutenant had knocked down.

A shot from Frank finished off the standing militant while Navo and Willis entered through a different side of the bunker, with the Critel taking Mason’s roll of cannonball and diving through, further messing up any cohesion the defenders might have had. Both Marauder’s shields went down, either from plasma shots or the physical impacts, but their armor underneath was sturdy enough to take a few more hits while they fought a quick, pitched battle inside the small bunker with the four of them going hand to hand and getting in what shots they could, while Frank stayed on the outside firing in from the window wall.

Between their quicker reflexes, better equipment, and familiarity of fighting with one another, the Marauders came out on top in the fight, taking down all 13 of the militants with only a shoulder wound to Willis to show for it. The plasma damage had burned through and seriously incapacitated his right arm, but he was still able to stay on his feet and fight one-handed, finishing off one of the last militants with an overhead smash of his fist followed by an angry uppercut from his knee that knocked the helmet clear off the red-skinned alien.

Mason shot his exposed cranium with a stun blast, then began policing the bodies as Willis groaned and sat down on a nearby gunnery chair.

“You hit?” Zaeb asked.

“Oh…yeah,” Willis said. “I think I’m done for today.”

Mason circled around behind the man, flinching when he saw the charred hole in his shoulder that was only starting to seep with blood. Everything else within the inch-deep cavity had been cauterized on contact with the plasma. He pointed the others away, with them dealing with the dead and wounded while keeping an eye on the outside as Mason pulled open a small pocket on his armor’s thin backpack and took out a tube of healing gel.

“Hold still,” he said, popping the cap open and spraying the sticky foam into his shoulder. Star Force might not sell weapons, but they were good about making their top line healing technology available for public purchase, and he would have lost several people in past years had the Marauders not stocked up loads of it. They valued their personnel as much as Star Force did, though the same couldn’t be said of other mercenary units operating in the region.

“Thanks,” Willis said as the pain number kicked in, reducing his agony to an uncomfortable ache in his now invisible shoulder, as far as his senses were concerned.

“You’ve got to head back now. This is bad.”

“How the hell did they hit the same spot three or four times?” he complained, knowing the statistical improbability of that in a chaotic firefight.

“It happened,” Mason said, getting on the comm.

“I’ll get him out,” Zaeb offered. “Go finish off these bastards.”

Mason clapped the Marauder on the shoulder as he passed him by, heading for the windows since there were no doors on the crude structure. “Tank’s on its way.”

Navo slid out ahead of him, with the pair joining Frank as they ran off back into the buildings, checking with the other strike teams and seeing what targets were left, as well as the external spotters they’d left on the perimeter. If any of the militants tried to get away they’d run them down, one way or another. This mission had to be a clean sweep, and Mason wasn’t about to have to report back to their client that they’d gotten almost all of the militants.

With the primary bunker covering the access road now out of commission, all that remained were small barricades that held a few militants hoping to hold out or just clinging to whatever cover they could. Mason headed for the nearest one of those, with the trio immediately taking fire down a long hall that led to a park-like lounge.

“Not that way,” he said, backtracking and quickly consulting what passed for a battlemap on his helmet’s HUD, which had the facility’s blueprints on hand for easy reference but with no active position markers for the rest of his troops. Without the secure comm tech that Star Force possessed, and didn’t sell, an enemy could pick out the locator beacons and cause considerable trouble for any units using such a system, hence the Reen and other suppliers didn’t bother to manufacture them. Nor did anyone outside the ADZ, as far as the Marauders knew, though they were looking for such a system to use against technologically primitive opponents.

“Stay here and get their attention,” he told Navo as he thumbed Frank a different direction. They looped around to another approach, a shorter one, then with Navo taking badly aimed shots down the hall the pair rushed the barricades from the side, again getting a few steps of invulnerability thanks to the distraction, with Frank’s auxiliary shield soaking up the rest of the damage.

Mason jump-kicked over the barricade and knocked down one of the four militants while Frank simply ran up and began shooting, again using the cover to his advantage while Mason went hand to hand. The combination worked well, with them downing two of the militants before Mason took a shot to his chest that melted the top layer of his armor.

A blue streak past his right arm hit the enemy as Navo sprinted up to them, then another from Frank in the exact same spot on the militant dropped him, leaving only one for the three of them to deal with.

That militant immediately dropped its weapon and sunk to its knees, yelling something in a language that none of them could understand, but it was obvious that he was surrendering.

Mason kicked aside its rifle and pulled out another set of easy-snap restraints, securing the militant’s hands behind its back then yanking its helmet off. A quick stun shot from Frank sent it into dreamland and Mason dropped the body back to the ground. They couldn’t play babysitters right now, but they’d be back for him later and the cuffs would be an easy clue that this one wasn’t dead.

They checked the others, finding one still alive but unconscious, so they pulled his helmet off and stunned him too before they got moving again, hunting down the last bits of resistance they could find and coordinating with the other teams until the militant facility was theirs.

“Tell him no,” Mason said to Le’han’trel, who was working through one of their hired translators as the Marauders were having a discussion with the Batarank security teams that they’d called in to help search the complex. Any possessions of the militants that they’d brought to the planet and not stolen from the locals were, by contract, the rightful claim of the Marauders, so the mercs had been escorting the search teams around for that reason in addition to their own protection, just in case a militant or two had been hiding out somewhere and chose to make a last stand of defiance.

There had been three that they discovered, all of which were out of armor and either base support or fighters that had been caught off guard and couldn’t get to their armory in time, which the Marauders had already emptied and loaded up on some trucks to take back to the ship. They had four altogether, tucked inside the 17s bay along with the tank, Valerie, and some other craft they hadn’t needed to use, and had found on previous occasions that it was better to haul their own loot out rather than to have to rely on the locals to assist them, for on occasion there were arguments and the Marauders didn’t like giving other people leverage on them.

And today was one of those days.

There was a flurry of words between the translator and the Batarank representative, who wasn’t the same one that had hired them. That often caused complications, but in this case it was the local government who had done the contracting, so technically it was the same party they were dealing with.

“They insist,” Le’han’trel said from behind his helmet faceplate, “that the prisoners face justice.”

“Meaning they want to kill them?”

“I think that’s a safe bet…or worse,” he added as an unpleasant afterthought ran through his head.

“If there’s any killing to be done it’s at our discretion,” Mason said. “Remind them of that fact.”

The Protovic issued the translation to the translator, who intentionally kept his own voice as neutral as possible, as per standing Marauder orders. If there was to be any intonation it would come from the mercs themselves, which Le’han’trel added by removing his helmet and staring the shorter Batarank down with his almost tattoo-like glowing facial patches giving him an intimidating visage as the translation was carried out.

There was a back and forth that followed, with Mason out of the loop as Le’han’trel handled whatever was going down. Eventually the client backed down, or at the very least he stopped talking, which Mason assumed meant he was capitulating.

“Care to clue me in?” he asked when the talking had stopped.

“We need to pack up and go sooner rather than later,” the Protovic suggested. “They refused to give us the remainder of our payment until the prisoners were turned over to them. I informed them that if they didn’t make the payment we’d take it ourselves, in a manner of our choosing. I think I called his bluff, but I wouldn’t want to give them extra time to get brave…or stupid. I think local politics are also coming in to play, with some of these idiots thinking they can gain traction by making an example of the militants.”

“Remind him that our contract gives us the right to do with the prisoners as we wish and that we expect payment before we leave the spaceport, then walk away with me.”

Le’han’trel did as he was told, then when the translator issued the order the three of them turned and walked across the building they were in that had been used by the Marauders to store captured gear that the Bataranks were now inspecting to make sure it wasn’t native to the planet. Outside was one of the trucks being loaded up, but there was still enough odds and ends to fill two more, which they’d have to wait on since they were already headed back to the ship with some of the prisoners.

There were 78 in total, most of which were wounded, some badly enough they might not survive anyway, but Mason wasn’t going to let them remain here to suffer further injustices. One didn’t right the other, and the Marauders were about preventing such things. If they couldn’t stop them from happening then they’d avenge them, but that never involved torture or reprisals of the sort that many ‘peaceful’ civilizations resorted to when they had a chance for some payback against their former victimizers.

The galaxy was a very harsh place, especially outside the ADZ, but the Marauders were never going to succumb to such barbarism, under any circumstances. They may have left Star Force for a variety of reasons, but the righteousness of their warfare principles was something that would forever linger on with them and the others that no longer served. The difference with Brayden’s mercenaries was that they still continued to embrace righteousness rather than leaving it as an ignored internal conscious. The galaxy was harsh indeed, but they intended to fight that harshness in their own way, and no matter what these militants did, they weren’t going to leave them behind to be torn to bits by the locals.

Leaving the impression that the Marauders were in charge, which they were, considering their military might exceeded that of the militants which the Bataranks couldn’t handle, Mason and Le’han’trel began roaming the few locations in the base where they still hand people, informing them of the situation and goosing them on a bit. He didn’t know if the Bataranks would try and force the issue, counting on the good will of the Marauders as a weak point for them to leverage, but if they had to play bad guy briefly then so be it. They’d hold them to the contract whether they liked it or not, even if they had to loot the local facilities themselves to get their payment.

One thing Mason had learned out here was that weakness invited predation, and the last thing a mercenary unit wanted was clients to think they had the option of not paying up after the fact. They’d already received a 25% down payment, but future clients had to understand that they were not to be trifled with, so they couldn’t let one get by without paying, even if it meant going to extreme measures to get it.

He didn’t know how much of the Marauder’s reputation had reached the Bataranks, but if they pushed this then they were going to get a lesson one way or another. Best option right now was to spirit away the prisoners quickly before they had a chance to plan something, but they still had to wait on the trucks, so he commed the ship and had the Valerie take to the air…a little added disincentive for the locals to get too arrogant in their new position.

Either way this went down, the Marauders would not be taking a second contract with these people. Anyone who even hinted at not paying was scratched off their list automatically, and these guys had just crossed that line.

Fortunately the empty trucks returned within the hour and Mason was able to cram the last of the booty in along with the remaining prisoners, who were the least injured of them all and could suffer through the cramped positions, which had them laying like logs on top of each other bound up in order to make them all fit. They deserved that small measure of discomfort anyway, but Mason wasn’t going to wait around for another truck regardless. He and the other Marauders didn’t have room to board it for the ride back, so they formed a double file column behind and followed on foot, getting a bonus workout run in with the truck going slow enough not to leave them behind.

It also made for a show of strength, for they were wearing their armor and carrying their weapons as they headed back to the spaceport, making it clear that no one was going to stop the truck and take the prisoners away from them. The others had made it back fine without more than a pair of infantry riding along as escort, but with this being the last one the extra show of force was a good, inadvertent addition, not to mention the Valerie that was casually circling above.

It was too far for them to run the whole way, being some 90 kilometers distant, so Mason had them running in formation until an empty truck was able to return. When it did they loaded up and drove off at normal speeds, getting through the Batarank streets without incident, for the locals made way for them well ahead of their route, probably due to the local broadcasts, for there were cameras everywhere now that they were out of the base that would now return to being a livestock processing facility.

Part of Mason wanted to leave it in rubble, but that wasn’t part of the mission. Despite leaving Star Force, neither he nor any of the other Marauders could bring themselves to eat meat, and a facility that was purposed with slaughtering herds and processing their bodies into foodstuffs was an outright abomination, but there was only so much the Marauders could do to tidy up the galaxy, and their efforts on this planet were now done.

That was something about this job that Mason hated, but that he’d had to force himself to get used to without it becoming apathy. No matter how many injustices they attended to, there were always more just sitting on their doorstep. He had to keep his mind partially numb to it or otherwise it would have driven him insane, and more than a few ex-Marauders couldn’t take it, having to return to the ADZ where things were more civilized.

Mason told himself he was out here to seek out problems and fix them, and even one taken care of was better than none if he hid away in the ADZ. He had to pick and choose when to intervene, while never allowing himself to stop caring about those within sight that he couldn’t save.

When they got back to the spaceport they ran the trucks up into the bay of their ship and sealed up the main door, putting a final stamp on the proclamation that the militants would be going with them, after which Mason found the local representative and asked for the remainder of their payment.

There was no refusal, fortunately, and the Lieutenant made a quick inspection of the cargo crates that had the various goods they’d agreed to in the contract. The 17 opened its bay door up once more and the mercenaries took their payment onboard, along with the Valerie that finally came back in once the deal was concluded, then the ship took to the sky, saying goodbye and good riddance to the planet.

9

July 7, 2735

Noop System

Tieor

The Marauder’s small jumpship returned back to their primary staging base on the commerce planet after taking a detour to a nearby star system where Mason offloaded their prisoners. The merc unit had a long-standing agreement with the locals on Tryion, who operated a respectable prison facility that the Marauders typically dumped their captives into. They’d be kept there for several years minimum, but after deposit the Marauders had no further say in their fate.

They might run into them again down the road, but that was just part of the business. And more often than not, anyone that surrendered to or was captured by the Marauders didn’t want to have anything to do with them again and spread the word to others, which only added to the mercs’ rep in this region. Regardless, the unit couldn’t be tasked with housing prisoners, so the ability to offload them somewhere they knew they wouldn’t be mistreated was more than worth the occasional freebie mission than ran on Tryion.

It was a poor world that couldn’t afford mercs so the agreement was mutually beneficial to both parties, but especially so to the Marauders. They didn’t want to be forced into fighting engagements where they didn’t have the ability to take prisoners. Brayden had stated up front that they were never to become a ‘kill only’ organization, so securing a means to offload captives was a priority for the Marauders.

That meant that after dropping this load off on Tryion Mason didn’t have to devote men to guard them, foodstuffs and medical supplies to sustain them, and keep in the back of his mind the possibility of them getting loose and doing damage to his crew or ship. The mercs could handle short stints like that, but not never-ending ones, with the second leg of their return trip to the commerce world being relaxed and boring downtime that some of them used to rest, others to do some training in the limited facilities onboard ship.

They made the slow jump back to the planet as was protocol, to not give away the full strength of their engines to onlookers, but as soon as they braked against the gravity well and the comm signals and sensors began to register normally they knew there was trouble.

“What the fuck?” the helmsman said, getting dozens of warning beacons from across orbit. “Get the Lieutenant, now!”

“What’s wrong?” another bridge officer asked.

“Just get him…go! Don’t ask questions.”

“Going,” the Protovic said, leaving the helmsman alone on the bridge. A little over a minute later he returned at a run along with Mason and a few others.

“What do we got?”

“Major trouble. Looks like there’s someone attacking the planet.”

“What the hell,” Mason said, walking over to a side station and pulling up the sensor feeds. “Who?”

“Best I can tell it’s a hodgepodge fleet, and they’re not broadcasting any ID. We’re not close to any of them now. They don’t seem to care about the jumplines. They’re clustered around four orbitals and making hits on selective ships in orbit. Where do you want me to put her?”

“Keep your eyes on them and keep your distance until we figure out what’s up,” Mason said, his eyes on his own display screen. “Get a comm link to base and check on their status.”

One of the other Marauders slid into the comm station and made the connection as the others lingered around, waiting to see what the Lieutenant would have them do. He didn’t say anything, studying the information feeds crisscrossing the planet and pulling up every news report, emergency bulletin, and military chatter that they’d broken the codes for earlier. Mason realized that there was also a ground war going on, with Lethol already having been taken and two other major cities currently under assault.

“Base,” the Marauder at the comm station announced, tossing a headset over to the Lieutenant.

He slid it on as he continued to study his screen. “Mason here. Report.”

“I’m very glad you’re back,” Krivan said genuinely. “Tieor has gone berserk. 18 days ago this fleet shows up in orbit and takes a manufacturing orbital. Didn’t even try anything fancy, just blew their way in the front door. Planetary defense force intervened and promptly got their asses kicked, though they did take down a few of their ships in the process. They’ve owned orbit since then.”

“Who are they?”

“No one knows. A mix of races, a lot of them local, and they’re all using different equipment. Different uniforms too. Best guess would be a mercenary coalition, based on the way they fight, but none of the pieces has been identified. Either they’ve been real quiet around here or they’re from pretty far away.”

“Is the base secure?”

“Other than some looters snooping around, we’re fine. The major fighting hasn’t gotten here yet, but the local population is causing almost as much damage as the invaders. It’s a mix of panic and opportunists, with every criminal band and drunken nobody out tearing shit up and grabbing hold of whatever they can. They know the defense force can’t patrol the streets and fight the invading army…and they’re getting the crap kicked out of them anyway. One city is down, and we expect another three will be in their hands within two days.”

“How many are currently under assault? I’m digging through what news reports I can now.”

“Allow me,” Krivan said, transferring the Marauder’s database up to the 17. “I’ve been having our guys pull recon runs across the planet while canceling current assignments. The defense force has put out a call to all merc units and anyone with combat training to help in the ground fighting. I haven’t given them an answer, but price wasn’t an issue. They’ll pay pretty much anything within reason.”

“How many troops do these guys have?” Mason said, running through the Marauder numbers and seeing that this enemy was fighting not just in two more cities, but had fingers out into 18 currently. There were more than 2,000 the size of Chrandor, which is where the Marauder base was located, and it looked like this army was hitting the largest and/or most strategically important locations first.

“We have current estimates at over 50,000 infantry, but more troops ships continue to arrive on a regular basis, so we have no idea how large this is actually going to get.”

“What the hell is going on…” Mason whispered, getting up to speed quickly thanks to the professional sitrep he was reading rather than sorting through the civilian grid mess.

“Lieutenant, are we getting involved or should I start packing up shop?”

“How many other merc units have responded?”

“A lot of the smaller ones, but they don’t have anywhere to run to anyway since they’re based on planet. A couple of the big names have sent piecemeal forces in, but the rest are like us and waiting to see what’s going on before they commit to anything.”

“How much longer do you think the defense force is going to hold out?”

“They’re not holding onto anything right now. It’s all a fighting retreat.”

“I mean how long before they’re all dead and they’ve only got mercs and police left to fight with?”

“Maybe a few more weeks. I don’t know, they’re not being stupid about it and standing their ground pointlessly. They’re just outmatched.”

“Equipment?”

“Everything we know is in the report I sent you, and it’s largely unimpressive…but better than what the locals have by far. Decent personal armor, no shields that we can tell, and enough tank and air support to shut down any large groupings of the defense force infantry.”

“What happened to their toys?”

“Targeted and taken out in the first two days, many still sitting in their bays in other cities. Whoever this is, they’re not hitting targets blindly. They planned this out well in advance.”

“What’s the status of our spaceport?”

“I’ve locked it down with a few of our people supplementing the locals. The looters haven’t been able to get to it, but it’s been busy with traffic seeing that it’s one of the few reliable ones left on the planet.”

“Good work. Make us a hole, we’re coming down.”

“Already got a slot reserved for you. Not sure how the enemy fleet is going to respond though, they’ve been picking and choosing what ships to go after. Nothing predictable to my eye.”

“If our people aren’t geared up, get them so. We’ll be there shortly.”

“Good luck,” Krivan offered before Mason deactivated the headset and tossed it back to the merc at the comms station.

“Caught the last part of that,” Le’han’trel said, appearing behind Mason. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

“What am I thinking?” he said, continuing to read through the detailed reports. “Take us down,” he added to the helmsman.

“That we can’t do anything about their navy, but we could make a big impact on the ground.”

“Depends how many more troops they keep bringing in.”

“And it’s possibly the biggest payday we’ve ever seen.”

Mason half smiled. “That thought had occurred to me.”

“And?”

“And I also know that if this force takes the planet, it’s going to destabilize the entire region. That means a lot of trouble, and our previous clientele list is going to dry up real fast…save for jobs probably fighting against these guys at some point or another.”

“You think they’re after more than a full planet?”

“I have no idea, but so much cargo goes through this system that it will wreck the economies of at least a dozen other worlds if Tieor falls.”

“Chaos usually means good business for mercs.”

“For the unscrupulous ones maybe, but remember that our clients have to have funds to pay us with, and if their cash flow gets disrupted their ability to hire will disappear when their bank accounts run dry.”

“Point,” Le’han’trel conceded. “So, you want in on this?”

“We’re going to take on some small missions just for the payday, but there’s no way we can handle an invasion this size on our own, even if the local defense force doesn’t totally fold.”

“If you call in other units from the surrounding systems we can make one hell of a dent.”

“That I’m not doing,” Mason said firmly. “This is Brayden’s Marauders, and Brayden will have to make that call.”

“That’s a long delay.”

“Which is why I’m recalling every unit under my command to have them standing by just in case he does give the go ahead. Damn it, get base back again,” he said, motioning for the headset. Once the merc keyed up the transmission, he tossed it back to Mason. “How many ships do we have insystem, and have any been sent out with word of what’s going on?”

“We’ve still got the 13 parked in the spaceport, and the 29 came back with Nevil’s squad, but no one has gone out to spread the word, at least not from us.”

“Get the 29 prepped for takeoff with a minimal crew as a courier. Have every bit of data you’ve collected onboard and I’ll add a final message once we hit planetside. Headquarters has to know what’s going on.”

“They’ll be ready before then,” Krivan promised.

Mason took the head set off and tossed it back to the comms station as the planet grew rapidly larger on the vid screen in front of them. “How do we look?”

“No one is heading for us yet,” the helmsman said noncommittally.

“Get us down quickly, but not too quick. We don’t want to make ourselves a priority target.”

“Speedy turtle, copy.”

Mason tapped Le’han’trel on the shoulder as he rushed past him, with the Protovic dropping into step beside as he headed back to where most of his team was situated, with him and the others in his wake making a few detours to round up the others and bring them all into the main lounge, cramped as it was with the full complement them in there.

“Listen up,” Mason said as the last few scurried in. “Tieor is under attack by an invading fleet of unknown origin. They’ve already taken orbit and are kicking the crap out of the defense force on the ground, with several cities already under their control or soon to be. Our base is secure for the moment, and while we’re sending a courier back to Brayden to see what he wants to do about this we are going to take the local government’s generous offer for assistance and do some trimming around the edges. It’ll be some quick credits, for these guys aren’t all that well equipped, but they’re continuing to get more troops in from orbit so there’s no knowing how far this will escalate.”

“Things look fairly bad now, but as most of you know, taking a planet is a long, tedious process and it looks like that’s what these guys are here to do. We’re going to slow them down a bit, make some profit, then let Brayden figure out the rest. Those of you with wounds I want back in base holding our little piece of real estate. The rest of you armor up immediately. Once we set down in the spaceport we’re taking the shuttles and heading out immediately. I doubt there’ll be much haggling over the contract given present circumstances, and I expect to have it signed and confirmed before we arrive at the periphery of the fighting.”

Mason took a deep breath and let it out slowly in an audible sigh. “This is bigger than anything the Marauders have tackled to date, but nothing compared to what we’ve gone up against versus the lizards or Skarrons. I don’t want any sloppiness in the transition, because I expect we all have a bit of rust to shake off. Life as a merc is a lot less strenuous, and we’re going to have to dust off our old skills to make this mission a go. We’re going up against an army again, so don’t underestimate the opposition. They’re primitive compared to us, but they’re not just randomly hitting Tieor. They’re doing so with a well-executed plan thus far, and we’re going to disrupt it as much as we can. Expect reprisals, and if I say to pull out don’t hesitate.”

“They also have tank and air support, so we’re going to have to be cautious. We’re not devoting ours this early, so this will just be infantry ops. I’m leading the first mission to see what these guys are made of, and until we get a proper name we’re referring to them as ‘Tangos.’ Once I get a feel for the Tangos we’ll send out multiple strike teams, but I’m taking an initial team of 20 out, with volunteers getting first dibs…and since the guys on the ground aren’t up to speed yet, you guys get first call. If you don’t feel up to this then don’t step up. I need sharp guys for this first mission, given that we don’t know what we’re up against yet.”

“Gear up regardless. Unless you’re in your bunk I want you ready to fight at a moment’s notice. I don’t know how this is all going to play out, so we’ve got to be ready to adjust and adapt quickly. Also, there are going to be other mercenary units out there fighting alongside the Tieor troops. We’ll try to avoid them as much as we can, but don’t put it past some of our competitors to stab us in the back if they get the chance, so keep your eyes open and our base secure. Going forward there are no guarantees.”

Mason made eye contact with several of the varied races around him, seeing looks of anticipation and gravity. These were all seasoned vets that knew the score, and like himself they were ready for a bigger challenge than usual…especially if they were going to get paid a lot to do it.

“Alright, get going,” he said, with a clap of his hands, prompting everyone to start moving in a controlled hustle out of the lounge, save for Willis who was sitting on the couch with the hole in his shoulder still plugged up with healing packs.

“You stay put,” Mason said as he left, pointing a finger at him for emphasis. Next order of business was securing a contract with the locals, so he headed back to the bridge to give the defense force the good news and to settle on a price.

10

July 18, 2735

Noop System

Tieor

“What?” Mason half-yelled into his helmet as he ran through Tieor’s streets. He and two other Marauders were heading to a breach point in the city of Machna that had just come under attack, but the Tangos had caught them out of position by finding some subsurface tunnels to skirt the perimeter defenses. No one else had caught it yet, and the Lieutenant knew that they were the only ones that could plug the hole in time. For all he knew, they could be sending an army in through the shafts, but if they could catch them confined they could bottle them up. He had other Marauders closing in, but his trio was the closest.

“Dropships coming down,” another Marauder told him, situated back in ‘safety’ and coordinating all of their disparate positions throughout the chaotic city as the populace began to flee, making running through the streets problematic, even in armor, for Mason was constantly having to avoid or bump out of the way the locals scrambling about. “Big ones, headed for the outskirts of the city. Looks like they’ve got a lot more troops heading your way.”

“Who the hell are these guys?”

“Don’t know, boss, but you’ve got a few minutes before they hit dirt.”

“Copy,” Mason said, knocking aside a Vichni as the fat alien jumped out in front of him from a nearby building. The merc half twisted to make it a moving hit, for every second he delayed the enemy consolidated its strength inside the city.

Not much further up he came to a cross street of smaller width and turned hard left, running into a group of Donklap and half jumping over them with his legs hitting their short heads. He turned the fall into a crude somersault, landing on his armor’s pack and turning over onto his feet. A moment’s delay and he was back up into a run after making sure none of his weapons had fallen off their attachment hooks in the tumble.

The other two Marauders were still with him a few strides back when they got to the tunnel cupola, which was ominously empty. The subsurface transit system moved throughout the city, but didn’t pass beyond it, meaning the Tangos had found a service link or something to make their way into it. With no people moving about, it meant they were down there and had killed or scared off everyone.

Mason pulled his rifle off his back rack hook and primed it, finally flicking on his energy shields now that there were no pedestrians around to run into as he got to the stairs and dropped to a knee as he slung the side of his body around to the right and scoped out the descent.

A yellow plasma orb flashed by his head, with him firing a blue lance back almost on reflex into the knot of troops stationed below behind some trash cans and other impromptu barricades they’d rearranged. With just that second of a glance he knew they were holing up to protect more troops coming through, which meant they had to act quickly.

Mason fired off three more shots, causing two of the Tangos to duck down while one kept firing at him, finally grazing his shoulder and draining some energy off his shield.

“Blow through!” he ordered just before the other two Marauders caught up to him. At his word they didn’t slow and made the turn at a run, barreling down the stairs and firing as they went.

Mason stood up and followed them down the moment they were past, with all three fanning out laterally so they could fire without blocking each other. They all took hits, but between their shields and speed they got on top of the defenders within a few seconds, firing into them at pointblank range before switching over to hand to hand and knocking the dozen or so of them aside with fist, foot, and rifle butts.

It was a risky ploy, but Mason knew from experience that if they waited it would only get worse. The Lieutenant smashed one of the unfamiliar bipeds back into a support pillar, with its thick, armored arms flailing wildly with the hit as it spun off the stone to the floor. A green plasma streak hit it on the way down, then two more from the other Marauders burnt through the rest of its armor before Mason was back to hand to hand, flipping another over and onto the ground before squeezing off a single shot against one that Vick had knocked back.

The mess of brown armor around them dropped to the ground over the next half minute, with the red stripes on the blue Marauder armor gaining a host of melty dots alongside them, but all three mercs had avoided any penetrations and sought to avoid any further chance by going around and pumping shots into the fallen Tangos, dead or not, just to make sure. They had about 10 seconds to work through them before another two came up from below and opened fire.

The mercs broke up and ran to the sides of the landing at the base of the stairs, with Mason diving over a trash can and coming up out of a combat roll firing. A few crisscrossing, well-aimed shots downed those two Tangos before they could do much damage, though Mason’s left thigh now sported a new melt mark just above the knee.

“Down!” he yelled over the comm as he ran forward and over the next set of stairs.

“On your six,” another voice said, with Mason glancing back and seeing four more Marauders at the top of the stairs coming in to back them up.

Mason didn’t wait on them, leading his pair and them down further into the tunnel junction and immediately seeing the Tango’s entry point, along with another three coming out of a wall panel on the other side of the monorail line that crossed left to right. He fired on the first of them immediately, veering right to expose the firing lines of those behind him as yellow plasma came back his way. He was able to dodge the first few shots, then a fireworks display of blue lances shot out past his left side and took down the Tangos after a few seconds of repeated hits to their chest armor.

A fourth was just coming out of what looked like a maintenance crawlspace, so Mason shot him twice before running up to the position and pulling him out the rest of the way, dumping him on the ground for the others to finish shooting as the Lieutenant put his barrel into the shaft and fired repeatedly down it at whoever else was in there.

“Blow it,” he ordered, knowing that one of the men behind him had some small explosives in his pack. Mason and most of the others didn’t, carrying ammo resupply for what they expected to be an extended firefight, but they’d learned long ago that a few ‘boom booms’ could come in handy now and then.

A yellow orb flew out of the shaft and hit Mason in the helmet, partially deflecting off his regenerating shields, but the rest got through and melted his faceplate, giving him a distortion over his left eye as he ducked to the side and away from the shaft. Two other Marauders stepped up and fired inside, then the other came forward with a pair of grenades and chucked them in.

“Back!” he said as Mason and the others scrambled away. A few seconds later they detonated and blew out half of the wall in a plume of dusty debris.

“Check it,” Mason ordered, still to the side and inspecting his helmet from the inside with an armored finger pressing against the melt point to see if it had broken through the material or not. Fortunately it hadn’t, but there wasn’t much material left and he figured another solid shot would make it through to his face.

“Back!” he heard again, turning his face away as another large explosion burst out in all directions, covering him with small bits of debris as the Marauder added another grenade.

“Sealed,” he heard through the dust, then a gust of fresh air from above pushed the grey fog aside and he could see the mess of wall and machinery blocking what had once been the maintenance shaft.

“Put an eye on it,” Mason ordered as he headed back to the stairs.

One of the Marauders pulled a small camera out of his pack and stepped up on a trash can so he could reach the ceiling, where he glued it in place focused on the grenade damage. He activated the telemetry and checked that the controller was getting the feed. Once confirmation was made he hopped down and ran off after the others, leaving the live feed to monitor the debris in case it was dug out and the Tangos tried to come through again in lieu of leaving a man behind to watch over it.

“Lieutenant, get to a building top now,” the controller said.

“What’s wrong?” Mason asked, looking around and spotting the tallest building near him and heading towards it as the rest of the Marauders split up.

“I need visual confirmation of the landing ships.”

“On my way,” the ex-commando said, finding the local’s equivalent of a stairwell and climbing up the emergency ladder shaft that ran next to the lift. He didn’t want to bother with it, not knowing how many other people were cramming inside or how long he’d have to wait, so he climbed the plate-like steps until he came to the top cupola that ended in a phone booth-like structure on the roof. He ran outside and looked around, guessing as to the direction the landing craft would be based on the current fighting going on in the southeast quadrant.

Sure enough that’s where the ships were, three of them in total and spaced at least a couple miles from the perimeter defense lines where the Tangos were currently engaging the defense forces and mercs stupid enough to line up in their path. The Tangos spreading out and trying to flank those more or less stationary positions were what the Marauders were going after, supplementing the defenders without getting themselves involved in more than they could handle with the few dozen infantry he had deployed.

He didn’t recognize the design of the ships, but two were clearly troop transports. The third, however, was a grounding craft, carrying underneath it something that Mason hadn’t seen in a very long time, and the sight of the white sphere sent a shiver down his spine.

“Confirmed, control. That’s a Skarron Type-5 walker.”

“How the hell did these guys get their hands on one of those?”

“I don’t know, but we don’t have anything here that can take that down, and neither do the locals.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Keep our fighters the hell away from that thing. In fact, don’t let any of our units get within spitting distance. We’ll work on their infantry…and see where this goes.”

Trayven walked into Brayden’s office, knocking on the open door to get his attention. The Colonel of the Marauders looked up from the datapad that had the report from Tieor on it, with him going over the military aspects of this unidentified army for the umpteenth time.

“Are the ships loaded?”

“Not yet, we’re still waiting on a couple of transports,” Trayven said, holding up a datachip. “We just got another courier from Tieor.”

“Bad news?” Brayden guessed, gesturing for his ops commander to toss it to him. It’d been several weeks since the first courier arrived, but to send another so quickly meant something had to have changed or they wouldn’t have wasted the ship.

“See for yourself.”

Brayden inserted the chip onto his datapad and saw a number of files on it, but first among them was labeled ‘Skarron Walker.’ He immediately opened it up and saw Mason’s brief notes indicating that a pair of Type-5 walkers were being operated by the invading army with no sign of Skarron or Hobbit involvement. Regardless, they were trashing what heavy weapons the local defense force had and were shutting down the airspace around them with just their plasma cannons…and Brayden knew that their own plasma weapons would be next to useless against that armor.

“Shit,” he pronounced, pulling up the auxiliary files that held a multitude of data on both the walkers and the rest of the invading army’s movements and reinforcements.

“My thoughts exactly.”

“Get every rail gun and missile mount we have loaded up, plus all the small scale explosive ordinance.”

Trayven’s eyes widened. “We’re actually going after those walkers?”

“We’ll charge extra,” Brayden quipped, his eyes still glued to the updated report.

“Don’t you think that’s more than we can handle?”

Finally looking up from the datapad, the Colonel sighed. “I honestly don’t know. But if we can bag even one of them I want the Marauders to have it on our rep. I have no illusions about single-handedly saving Tieor, but there’s fighting to be done on a scale we haven’t seen since we left Star Force, and a lot of credits to be made in the process. I don’t know how this is going to play out, but we need to be there and no other merc unit is going to be able to touch those walkers. They’re ours for the taking, if we can.”

“Alright, I’ll get the weapons mods switched out before we leave.”

“And send a courier,” Brayden added, “with all the information we have on Tieor and these walkers to the nearest Star Force colony.”

Traven turned around, already halfway out the door. “You think they’ll intervene?”

“No, we’re too far out for them to worry about. But there’s not supposed to be any Skarron influence in this region whatsoever, and I doubt they just sell their toys to the highest bidder. I don’t know what’s going on, but anything Skarron-related Star Force needs to have the intel on, especially if this is somehow connected to a push into this region.”

“I hope not, or we’re out of a job.”

“We move when the lines do,” Brayden reminded him. “Get the message sent and our ships loaded, preferably within the day.”

“Give me 8 hours on both and we’ll be good to go.”

The Colonel nodded, satisfied, and turned his attention back to the new reports, studying where and how the invaders were kicking the crap out of the planetary defense forces…and where the Marauders might do the most damage when the bulk of them finally got there.

“Archon,” a voice said softly from behind Jenna-732 as she sat in the small cafeteria along with a few hundred other personnel in the clandestine base on the surface of a volcanic world beyond the ADZ that was part of the combined Clan Ninja Monkey/Clan Cloud circuit.

The Mage turned around, still chewing on a sugar stick. “Whaaat?”

“We’ve received a bit of intelligence from a mercenary unit concerning the Skarrons.”

Jenna swallowed. “What system?”

“The Noop System.”

She frowned, looking at her Padawan. “I’m not familiar with it.”

Levi-12733 shrugged.

“Neither was I until I looked it up. We only have basic data from survey records, but it’s located 128 lightyears from here and more than 400 from what we know to be the Skarron border. Furthermore, the mercenaries appear to be a unit comprised of former Star Force personnel, some of which have seen combat with the Skarrons. They’ve sent data indicating the presence of two Type-5 Skarron walkers involved in a planetary invasion by an unknown force, but without any Skarron or Aronsic present.”

“What mercenaries?”

“They’re called Brayden’s Marauders, and they operate out of the ADZ with the bulk of their activities occurring beyond Star Force’s reach.”

“So who has the walkers?” Levi asked.

“The Marauders say the invaders have not identified themselves, but are a conglomeration of various units unknown to them…and to us. I had an analyst run through their profiles, and we can’t identify them either.”

“It’s a big galaxy,” Jenna reminded him. “But I’ve never known the Skarrons to share to their military equipment.”

“Or to work with intermediaries,” Levi added.

“Which is why I brought it to your attention, given that you’re about to depart.”

Jenna raised an eyebrow, looking at her apprentice. “Feel up to a road trip?”

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1

September 30, 2735

Ma’kri Jor-El

Mid Jump

Jenna and Levi sat in one of the sanctum’s meditation rooms, both on nearby cushioned pedestals with their arms interlocked at the wrists. Jenna held Levi’s right in her left, with a symmetrically reversed hold on the other. Both Archons were motionless, eyes closed, but with a flurry of brain activity that would have pegged out the old neural scanners that had been used to monitor training drills such as this. Archon psionics had come so far since those early days that a whole new generation of monitoring equipment had to be created to keep up with them.

And the more they advanced the more they realized that a hugely disproportional part of psionics was Ikrid. Originally they had dismissed the non-physical skills as secondary, but there was so much that one could do with basic Ikrid that it hadn’t become apparent until they’d leveled up that Tier 1 ability. There were literally over 500 different applications logged in the V’kit’no’sat database, some of which even the trailblazers hadn’t achieved yet due to lack of prerequisites…and that wasn’t even counting the Tier 2 upgrades.

At the moment Levi was using Orren, a Tier 2 Ikrid modifier that gave him additional invasive power when trying to actively press into and hack another mind. It wasn’t something that could be practiced against a machine, like some of the other Ikrid applications that the techs and Archons had gotten innovative on to find ways to train in isolation, but rather had to have an active mind to access, and in this case Levi needed a strong one to probe.

Using non-psionic volunteers didn’t offer more than a bit of exploration and light practice, and even going up against lower level Archons didn’t offer the necessary resistance to really push your abilities…but Levi had all the challenge he could ever have wanted from Jenna, whose mind was far stronger than his even without the Farchor ability upgrade, which added additional defensive mechanisms to prevent the type of tampering that he was attempting.

Jenna wasn’t counterattacking him, rather just trying to block his intrusion. Physical contact had to be maintained for them to get around the Ikrid blocks, but with the flesh to flesh connection established her mind was open to his ‘sight’ and directly accessible. Biological as they were, each Archon’s brain was essentially just a computer with an immense amount of automated processes. Numerous programs were operating within the mage’s mind without her conscious effort, such as her breathing and heartbeat. If an opponent was strong enough, they could hack into her mind and manually shut them down…essentially killing her with a thought.

And where the power of the mind was concerned, amount of tissue was a huge deal, just as it was with muscles. A small opponent might have stronger muscle fibers than a large one, but add up all the weak fibers and you could possess a greater strength than the more developed individual simply because of your size. That was a big disadvantage for the Zen’zat against the rest of the V’kit’no’sat, and even more so for the Archons since they didn’t use the Zen’zat physical upgrades that the Knights did. Even that bit of additional brain tissue was useful, in that it gave you more processing power and additional transmission capability.

The Ikrid blocks had been designed to essentially give the Zen’zat an immunity to that so long as they could stay out of touching range, and with their armor blocking physical contact it wasn’t an issue so long as they weren’t captured and interrogated, but it didn’t allow for a Zen’zat to hack into the minds of the larger V’kit’no’sat races very well. That, in turn, offered the other races some comfort, but with everything V’kit’no’sat there was an upgrade to make you better, which is where Orren came in.

It took the size issue and basically threw it aside by giving the individual specially designed tools for accessing another mind and bypassing the natural defenses with guile rather than brute force. Often an opponent wouldn’t even feel the presence of another mind when Orren was used, for it was so low in terms of pressure that only an active monitoring of one’s status would reveal the incursion.

Only a handful of V’kit’no’sat races were permitted Orren, and none of them had it by default. Individuals had to earn it through a variety of means that were similar, but not identical between the races. It was too powerful a tool to just hand out to someone who hadn’t proven themselves, for even a sloppy attempt could succeed against an experienced opponent, and that type of vulnerability would have upset the powerbase within the V’kit’no’sat that was very delicately maintained.

That powerbase was one of their few weaknesses, for none of the races had all of the psionics that the Zen’zat did. They didn’t trust each other that far, and the Zak’de’ron having too many was one of the reasons that they didn’t fit in with the ‘equity’ that developed over time. Zen’zat were so small and pathetic that they weren’t seen as a threat, particularly because they didn’t have a race. They were created from Ter’nat and became Zen’zat after having proven themselves to have some merit in becoming useful tools to the V’kit’no’sat rather than a member race.

And they’d wanted their Zen’zat to be powerful enough to compensate for their small size and be of use to the other races, hence they got above and beyond what the other races possessed, with a caveat. All of their psionics after the basic 7 had to be ascended to, whereas most of the other V’kit’no’sat psionics were a default from birth. Orren was one of the few that was not, due to the unique power it gave an individual over others.

But where Orren was the mental sword of psionics, Farchor was the shield. About a third of the V’kit’no’sat races had it as default, with the others all having the trigger woven into their genetic makeup to allow them to gain the defense if they were skilled enough. It wasn’t an immunity to Orren, but rather a counter-intrusion program that ran constantly. In addition to throwing up red flags for the conscious mind to see, it essentially worked like a drone army in the battle against the intrusion, able to fight the hacking on its own without conscious effort.

How it fought was customizable, which had to be tailored with time and training, but even the default basics made it very difficult for an opponent to be able to take remote control over the individual. More than likely a disruption or a few memories gleaned would be the result, and the ‘kill thought’ ability was shut out entirely, for the basic life functions were so armored with redundancies that there was no way an outside ‘signal’ could override them.

A mind was like a dart board, with a bullseye in the center that was the conscious ‘core’ of the individual, then there were rings expanding outward, with those closest to the core being the most fundamental and hardest to access. Surface thoughts were in the outermost ring, with a whole host of other functions in between. When an individual gained Farchor it pretty much blocked out the inner two or three rings by default, leaving the outer rings accessible but with increased resistance.

That resistance what was Levi was probing within Jenna’s mind, with his master making a conscious choice not to press back into his, but to try and block her apprentice’s attacks like they were tennis balls being flung her way. His power level was too low for him to get very far with a brute force attempt, but Orren made things tricky and offered her a decent challenge when she opted not to respond. If she did she could shut down his attempts quite quickly with a little disruptive pulse into his mind.

Levi was a level 23 padawan and hadn’t gotten Farchor from Jenna yet. It was up to her which Tier 2 psionics she shared with him first, and she’d wanted him to get used to Orren so he’d be able to understand how an opponent was operating before he got Farchor. Jenna was far better at defending because she had that perspective and ability to counterattack, so to her it made sense to give him the offensive capability first.

That, and she wanted practice defending.

Outside the advanced training group there were literally no opportunities to work on these type of psionics, and she was very glad the trailblazers had come up with the ‘Jedi’ program of pairing a mage with a padawan…or in some other rare cases that were beginning to pop up, having two mages working together as a field unit pair. Most of the trailblazers were too busy for that sort of thing, but Jason and Paul were known to link up for a mission here and there. Then again, they’d always been a pair since basic training.

Jenna was a level 107 mage and had moved through the padawan ranks mostly in the advanced training group, never having a master of her own. Some others were doing the same thing now, simply for the lack of available mages. Some didn’t want an apprentice, but even if all of them did there were so many Archons reaching padawan level that there simply weren’t enough pairings. Down the road that would hopefully change, but for now they were still in a transitional period headed into what Paul referred to as the ‘Jedi Order,’ which was their long term goal for restructuring the Archons.

The padawan levels 80-99 had been reworked to accommodate each Tier 2 psionic that was unlocked, with several more to go that hadn’t been discovered yet. As it was, Jenna felt it would take another 10-15 years before she got Levi to where he needed to be before transferring all of her own psionics to him. There were four that she’d been holding off on, while he currently possessed 16. She’d fed him each one individually rather than having him unlock them all in the first year as some other masters did. It was her prerogative how she had him progress, and he’d been open to doing it her way in exchange for the ability to have a permanent training partner/teacher while they moved about the Star Force empire doing field work.

Not all Archons preferred staying in the advanced training group, which had grown to several levels. The inner circle was inaccessible to even Jenna, with Vermaire and a few handpicked others pushing the limits even further and trying to find the missing psionic triggers…as well as working on a lot of other things that she and the others would only find out about after the fact.

Currently the top Archon was, once again, Morgan-063. She’d bounced in and out of that title a number of times, but she’d eeked out an 8 level lead at the moment and currently stood at mage level 398 out of a total of 500 levels in what the trailblazers were referring to as the first ‘adult’ rank. After all the centuries of training and advancement that Jenna had gone through that almost seemed like an insult, but after hearing their reasons and the continuous comparisons to the V’kit’no’sat Zen’zat she reluctantly agreed that they were only now really on par when reaching mage.

They weren’t inferior anymore, but they were far from dominant. The mages could hold their own with the rank and file Zen’zat, and probably defeat them given the extra psionics that they now possessed, but go up the ability ladder above ‘average’ within the V’kit’no’sat and even the trailblazers were quickly outclassed. Jenna didn’t know what the next Archon rank would be after mage, but she had a long way to go to get there. Drills like this with Levi were helping her level up her Ikrid skills, despite the fact that the levels themselves couldn’t measure all of it.

That didn’t matter to her, for she wasn’t training just to achieve a higher rank. Jenna was training for higher ability, in every way, shape, and form regardless of whether or not it could be outwardly measured. Many aspects of the mind couldn’t be, or at least not yet. That was one of the projects going on in the advanced training group that she knew about, with the techs trying to find more ways of measurement and the Archons taking those and creating new challenges out of them.

Jenna figured they’d eventually get around to finding a way to add more requirements to the levels, and she definitely wanted to defend her ranking when they did, but in truth she just wanted to be as prepared as possible to defend her mind if/when it ever came under attack. The Ikrid block was a great comfort, but that wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to be able to resist a strong mind enough not to become a living thrall, and according to Kara that was a distinct possibility with the higher level V’kit’no’sat…and especially with the dragons.

If they could access her flesh and worm their way inside her head, they could essentially rewrite part of her programming and control her from afar even after breaking physical contact. She needed to be able to resist that programming and even flush it out after the fact if it happened, hence the need for practice defending, which was why she didn’t balk at giving Levi ample opportunity to probe her mind.

Others, she knew, found it intrusive and kept their efforts restricted to certain outer ‘rings’ but she did not. The type of sparring she and Levi were doing was very intimate, given that he was able to probe her thoughts, emotions, memories, etc. More often than not he even tweaked her sexuality program in order to throw her off balance, and that alone was enough to make some people recoil.

But not her, and it wasn’t because she liked him either. He was attractive, and that was one of the big reasons she’d chosen him out of the pool of available candidates, for if you were going to be traveling and living together for multiple decades you might as well have someone you wouldn’t mind getting locked in a closet with. Not that that would ever happen, but it was a mental test she used when picking training partners and such, and Levi had fit the bill there even though there was nothing romantic between them. Casual flirting and sarcasm, sure. But the idea of ‘coupling’ was a totally foreign concept for the Archon now.

And by that she and the others weren’t referring to sex, which was now no longer an issue for the mages. They’d figured out how to deactivate her menstrual cycle genetically, rather than using surgery or chemicals that could be undone with a regenerator treatment. Jenna and the other females, she assumed anyway, were now sterile by choice and she didn’t miss the occasional bleeding, but for her it wasn’t an opportunity to reengage in sexual activity without the risk of producing offspring.

It was the opposite for her and the other Archons, a sign of total commitment and saying that reproduction had 0% to do with their priorities. The sterilization could be undone with another genetic alteration if needed, so it wasn’t permanent permanent, but it was something that set her apart from the rest of Humanity and made her feel a little more badass than the rest.

As for her sex drive, that remained intact. They hadn’t messed with it, and amongst the Archons it was seen as kind of a test. It was said that sexuality had a strong influence on the weak minded, which was basically saying that any Archon who had sex was admitting to being a loser. That wasn’t necessarily true, but that’s how she and the others decided to view it.

Which was why she didn’t tell Levi to keep his distance from those thoughts and feelings within her mind. It was very exposing for him to go there, let alone prod around, activate, or even amplify that part of her, but Jenna didn’t like the idea of having a no-go zone. She was an Archon, she had nothing to hide, no shame, no embarrassment, and if she did that would have been a sign that she had something to work on.

Jenna also knew that an enemy wouldn’t hold to a no-go zone anyway, so if she was really serious about learning how to defend herself she had to get hit in every which way during training, holding nothing back.

It was awkward at first, because since becoming an Archon she hadn’t really dealt with that part of her in any significant way. It was always riding in the background, but it was things like that that could be used against you, so she welcomed the challenge…and that fact that Levi’s mental prodding felt really good.

But therein was the trick of it, because if she let herself enjoy it her defenses would lapse and he could gain further access to her mind and circumvent her blocks. The Farchor especially could be partially disabled if she went into ‘pleasure’ mode, which was why Levi hit her with that attack often, because it had offered him the most success in the past.

And that was the way it worked with Archons. Sexual pleasure wasn’t a bad thing, but pleasure for pleasure sake without a purpose was the sign of a junkie-style loser. If you wanted to reproduce it served a purpose. Archons didn’t and therefore sex had no purpose. The rest of the Human population still didn’t seem to understand that simple principle, thinking that the Archons were emotionless monks or just downright crazy. After all, what would it hurt to have a little fun during downtime?

Except that Archons never had downtime in that way. Everything they did, including sleep, had a purpose, as did this mental training. Orgasm for the sake of fun was stupid. Orgasm for the sake of training…just an added bonus.

Jenna knew that was sound thinking, and prided herself on being a step ahead of a lot of the others in that regard, for her mind would be a bit more shielded in the aftermath of the training than theirs would be. The ironic thing, in this case, was that she was resisting the pleasure rather than embracing it, and only when she failed royally did she end up in a state of euphoria.

At which point Levi would just stare at her with a ‘you are weak’ look of victory on his face. She hated that smirk, but even more so the fact that he was right. She shouldn’t have a part of herself that she couldn’t control, and it goaded her into working even harder to put some armor over that vulnerability.

Which was why now when Levi tried that tactic he didn’t get far. Resisting pain was a unique skill, but resisting pleasure was wholly different…and it was a skill that Jenna was proud to have learned, for now Levi couldn’t get her awash with that type of distraction anymore, but he could still throw it her way for a momentary quiver, during which he’d try and penetrate somewhere else before she could fully react.

Like her Tier 2 Snu ability, which offered an immunity to Fornax, an opponent could no longer disable her with it…with the difference being that this wasn’t a skill she’d unlocked, but rather one she’d constructed herself. And the more little advantages like this that she could create, measureable or not, the more powerful she’d become.

And the more powerful she became, the bigger the difference she could make when a time of crisis came, which was the motivation driving her every waking moment.

2

The sexual ‘prods’ were only one tactic that Levi was using, knowing that he had to hit his master from different angles and keep up the frequency of rotation. His Ikrid skills had advanced to the point where he could manage two or three different avenues simultaneously, but if he wanted a blunt force attack he could only focus on one area. That wasn’t going to work with Jenna, for her mental strength was far beyond his, but if he wasn’t going for a break and just a distraction it could still be useful.

Which is what he hit her with after getting her a bit loopy with a bit of euphoria. He expected the pushback, which came after only a little hesitation, but Levi didn’t wait around to fight that losing battle, instead using his Orren to slip a deep strike in past all the mental noise. To his surprise it hit without much resistance, giving him access to her visual processors. Before she could detect that hack and shove him out again he sent a burst of sparks into her eyes and retreated, hoping to make another Orren strike before she recovered from this one.

The padawan didn’t have similar luck when he tried to access her muscle control, intending to give her a bit of a facial twitch. He didn’t meet up with her conscious effort on this one, but rather her Farchor ‘minions’ which existed as a mass of programming that fought him automatically. He could have got through it with time, but all she needed was the red flag thrown up and a moment to respond to get her conscious power thrown into the fight and kick Levi’s mental tendril out forcefully.

But she went one further than that. During these drills it was standard practice for the defender not to strike back, for if Jenna did it would make Levi have to play a mixture of offense and defense. The purpose was for him to work on his offensive skills so Jenna would never respond by going into his mind, only defending her own turf, so to speak.

She did now though, following Levi’s Orren strike and running it right back at him. It caught him completely off guard and suddenly he opened his eyes and looked at Jenna, thinking she was the most beautiful thing in the galaxy.

The programming spike continued to alter his senses even after she withdrew from his mind, lasting a few seconds until Levi detected it and reset…with the highly attractive Archon sitting across from him returning to her normal aura within his mind, which was centered around strength, wisdom, and not romance.

“Better,” she said, opening her eyes but keeping hold of his wrist.

“What was that?” Levi asked, referencing the counterattack.

“The signal for a time out.”

“You could have just said something. Did I hit a sore spot?”

“No…it’s just the cumulative effect. You shouldn’t have got that one through.”

“So I’m not getting better, you’re just getting tired?”

“Getting tired because you’re wearing me down. You didn’t use to have this much stamina.”

Levi smirked. “Is that your version of innuendo?”

That prompted another strike, this one with Jenna bypassing Levi’s mental defenses on a whim and accessing his arm control. She made him release her wrist and bring his own palm towards his forehead in a slap…but he reasserted control just short of making contact, with the Archon glancing up at his hand just over his eyes.

“Missed it by that much,” Jenna commented. “You are getting quicker at recovery.”

“Now I know something is wrong. What’s up? You’re getting punchy.”

Jenna sighed, with Levi dropping his hand and grabbing her wrist again. “You’re getting to me.”

“The sexual strikes?”

“Yeah.”

“You told me to hit those hard.”

“I know.”

“And?”

“I don’t have the pleasure endurance. I’ve learned to put up with pain and keep going, but this is totally different.”

“Maybe you just need to take a break and enjoy it for once.”

She frowned at him. “Kind of defeats the point of the training.”

“I didn’t want to say this earlier, because it makes me sound like a junkie, but what if we’re missing something…and be ‘we’ I mean all the Archons. We’ve got a part of ourselves that we’re ignoring, and granted, it’s for reproduction and therefore we don’t need it, but maybe we’re missing something mentally due to lack of experience.”

“Which is the point of this training,” Jenna reminded him.

“No, you’re fighting it,” Levi insisted. “Maybe you just need to analyze.”

“Is this your way of trying to get me into bed?” she asked sarcastically.

“You know we can do better than that with a direct mental link.”

“Illusions are not a good thing, youngling. They mess with our senses and dull our reflexes. Learning to see through them is valuable, not embracing them.”

“Is that your way of trying to get me into bed?” he countered.

“I’m still trying to understand where you’re going with this.”

“Sometimes you need to lose in order to reevaluate the enemy. Take yourself out of the picture and just see it for what it is, not how you match up to it.”

Jenna considered that. “You’ve been working me over pretty hard. Not sure I’m missing that much. You’d have other girls lying in a pool of drool on the floor by now.”

“Maybe you need to be…maybe we both need to be, at least once, to see it clearly.”

“You want me to work you over?”

“That’s why I didn’t bring this up before. But if you really want to develop a defense against this type of attack, it seems logical. And I’m willing to bet that you’re hesitant to actually let yourself like it, the same as me.”

“If you go down that road it’ll mess with your head,” Jenna reminded him, which was basically Archon 101.

“Yeah it will, but we know we can reset ourselves afterward.”

“I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. You’re lustdrunk.”

“You tell me then,” he said, with Jenna feeling the prompt for a battlemeld link.

She accepted it, and suddenly her thoughts were his, and vice versa, along with their bodies in so far as they could sense what each other felt, though they couldn’t control one another. In what would have taken a long time to explain verbally, Jenna realized that he wasn’t lustdrunk. He was onto something, sniffing out a weakness, and belatedly she realized they were both going about this sheepishly.

Jenna broke the battlemeld link, but maintained their physical contact so they could access each other’s mind. “I don’t like this.”

“And we shouldn’t.”

“But if we’re going to get to the root of this…I guess we’re going to have to take a moment and be stupid.”

“Better to do it on our terms than have an enemy force us there later, even though the odds of that happening are slim.”

Jenna shook her head. “No, you don’t play the odds. If there’s a weakness you go after it, whether or not you think anyone can expose it. The odds of anyone getting to us outside our armor and getting past our mental blocks is slim, and even slimmer that they would take this track, but I don’t like carrying around Kryptonite.”

“To be fair, you’ve reduced it considerably.”

“But it’s still there, and I think you’ve hit on the piece of it that I’ve been missing. Because I’ve been resisting there’s a piece of me that you haven’t been able to prod. And without that bit getting hit, I can’t learn how to defend it.”

“It would take a totally different mindset from what we want,” Levi cautioned, “and it would leave you vulnerable for, I don’t know, a day or so afterward. But as long as we’re mid jump I don’t know of a safer time to try it.”

“Damn it,” she whispered. “You’re right, but my gut still says no.”

“That’s what’s been bothering me too, which was why I didn’t mention it. But look at it this way, if it is stupid we’ll learn why. If we don’t go there, we’ll keep wondering.”

“Ok, fine. But we work through this together and don’t tell anyone until we figure it out. If this ends up just being stupid gratuity then we don’t mention it to anyone. If there’s something valuable we figure out, then we share.”

“So, we’re calling a mulligan before it’s needed?”

Jenna smiled. “Well put.”

“So…you first, I assume?”

“You have to promise me one thing, Levi.”

“What?”

“Damn…I hate even saying this.”

“Suck it up cupcake, and just spit it out.”

Jenna knew he said that just to goad her, but like all Archons it worked, for they were more comfortable with conflict than anything else, and it settled her mind.

“You have to force me to enjoy it. I can let you in past my defenses, but you’ll have to fix yourself there and not let me back out of it. I’ll probably try on reflex, and when I do you’ll have to be strong enough not to let me push you back.”

“I’ll need some time to put in some programming layers for that.”

“And you’ll need to keep me…subjugated for a long time. Say at least an hour. You have to get me so out of it that I’m not resisting anymore. You have to turn me into a…”

“Sex toy?”

“I am so hating this already.”

“Do you want this to be a series, or a one off?”

“I can surrender once. I don’t want to make a habit of it.”

“As you mentioned before, my endurance has improved greatly. I can keep you hammered for at least two hours, guaranteed. I promise you’ll be drooly by the time it’s over.”

“No, it’s just…you have to do this so much that I’m not left hanging wanting more. If this were sugar, you have to take me to the candy store and let me eat as much as I want until I’m sick.”

“Leave no stone unturned?”

“If this is going to be a mulligan, make it count.”

“I can do that.”

“Give me a moment,” she said, letting go of his wrist and standing up, with him releasing hers. She took a few steps over to the nearby wall and leaned against it with one arm. “I don’t like this. My mojo is screaming no, but like you said I can recover from it later.”

“You’re afraid you’ll like it enough that you’ll want a second go?”

Jenna’s shoulders sagged. “Actually, I think I might…and that isn’t right either. We should know every piece of our own design inside and out. Being fearful or embarrassed of going somewhere isn’t right.”

“I’ve had a bit more time to think on this than you have,” Levi offered. “And I’ve had the perspective of pummeling you with assaults and observing how you react. This isn’t combat, it’s something else, which is why I think it’s a weakness for us.”

“Did you get laid before you became an Archon?”

“A few times.”

“Maybe that’s where I went wrong. I never did.”

Levi shook his head. “With the access we have to each other’s minds, we can do far better than that, so I don’t think that’s really the issue. You don’t get the full picture when you get laid, just a piece of it. I think we need to go through every variation at least once just to become familiar with it, that way we won’t worry about what might happen, because we’ll already know.”

“But it sounds like you’re just a sex junkie when you say it.”

“Which is why I didn’t mention it before.”

“We both know this is a road to nowhere, right? It’s designed for reproduction and we have no use of that.”

“Agreed.”

“And that a lot of people indulge in the pleasure, but because it’s an illusion that pirates the rest of our senses we can’t make use of it.”

“Agreed.”

“And if we were seeking pleasure in the first place we’d never be able to train, because we have to embrace the pain that comes with it.”

“Agreed,” Levi repeated again.

“So that begs the question why am I so weak minded that I’m considering this?”

“I think that’s the trap for us. This would serve a purpose, though it seems like an excuse.”

“I’d prefer an opponent that I could just punch.”

“Or we could just genetically turn it off.”

“No,” Jenna said quickly, pointing a finger down at Levi where he still sat. “That’s cowardice.”

“Agreed. This is a challenge we have to overcome, but we can’t fight it. We have to surrender to it in order to gain the information we need to create a proper defense. At least that’s the conclusion I came to. Still sounds sucky when I say it though.”

“No, you were right earlier. I’m not sure about this, but what’s the downside? A moment of stupidity. I’ll risk that just to keep this from bouncing around in the back of my mind forever. Archons shouldn’t be sheepish about anything, and that fact that I am now is bothering me. But the biggest thing is I don’t need this, and I’m doubting myself as to why I’m considering it…which is a huge red flag.”

Jenna pushed off the wall and came back over next to Levi and sat down. “Alright, my mind is made up. This may be incredibly stupid, but I’m going to see it through regardless. Just make sure you don’t screw up your part. You have to be relentless and probe every corner of my sexuality multiple times. I don’t want to have to do this twice.”

“I can do that,” Levi said, without any sarcasm or innuendo, which settled her. They were both Archons, and at the end of the day they’d always be. Individuality was the lifeblood of an Archon, and sexual emotions were binary, creating an urge to pair up and surrender that individuality, which was yet another reason why they were a negative if allowed to run their course. But the two of them would never go there, could never go there. Not because it was forbidden, but because it wasn’t them. Such mistakes were the stuff of the young and newbs, and they were far from either.

She was a girl, he was a guy, and they might as well use those biological attributes to their advantage to help each other. If this worked she’d return the favor and they’d both grow stronger after recovering from the sensory distortion. If not, she’d shake it off and they’d move on, no longer worried about it.

“You’re not going to make this awkward?” Jenna asked.

“We passed awkward when we started this training.”

“For the record, this is one reason why the general population should never have Ikrid. They’d never leave their quarters.”

“Wow. Death of a civilization via pleasure. That’s a new one.”

“Sexuality has a strong influence on the weak minded.”

“Or the ignorant,” Levi added. “Surprise attacks always will be like that.”

“Do you have these same worries, or is it just a girl thing?”

“Different version probably, but basically the same thing.”

“Ok,” she said, interlocking wrists with him again. “This is going to take some time to let you in. Don’t go poking around until you’ve got a lock. My involuntary reflexes could be stronger than you think.”

“I’m assuming so. I don’t think you realize just how powerful your mind is. Looking from the outside I think I can size you up better than you can.”

“Be cautious and make this happen the first try. I’m not used to shutting down my own defenses.”

“Relax, I’ll give you what you need.”

Jenna smirked, but Levi immediately shook his head. “That’s not innuendo. This is a type of training and I’ll make sure you get what you need. I imagine you’re going to have to do some work on your end to really accept this, so focus on that and don’t worry about the rest. I’ve got this.”

Jenna sighed. “And here I’m being schooled by the padawan…how embarrassing,” she said, closing her eyes and beginning to take down her mental barriers around her sexuality, Farchor included. She sensed Levi ‘knocking’ on her motor control, then got the mental explanation that he needed to hold her body in position himself, releasing her to focus purely on the pleasure.

And the fact that she was, if he did this correctly, about to become a drooling idiot burned her. Jenna pushed that unwanted thought away and focused on letting him in. However this went down she wasn’t going to let herself be shy. This may be an unused part of her psyche, but she was going to bring it out into the open and get a feel for it. The ironic part was she couldn’t do that herself, which was why it’d always been lying dormant within her mind.

But no longer. Time to end the mind games once and for all. And she was very glad she had her fellow Archon to help her, for something like this, sexuality aside, required a great deal of trust, for she was opening her mind deeper to Levi than she’d ever let anyone in before. That wasn’t easy to do, but Archons were loyal to the core and Levi’s tone had indicated that he understood the importance of this. She could trust him to help her, and that was the only reason she was able to remove the deepest blocks, for had there been even the slightest bit of hesitancy those would have remained no matter what her conscious mind insisted.

But aside they went, temporarily disabled as Levi’s mind entered those areas and began putting up ‘supports’ to keep the doorway open for when she recoiled later. This was going to be jarring for her, from a pleasure standpoint rather than pain, but it was still going to shake her. How much she didn’t know, but her job was to just ride it out and learn from it after the fact. She didn’t like not being in control, but releasing it was the mission here, so that’s just what she did.

The two of them sat on the pedestals, arms locked and motionless, with Jenna’s last coherent thought being that it was probably a good idea that she’d chosen the hottest padawan available.

3

October 5, 2735

Mak’ri Jor-El

Mid Jump

Jenna and Levi sat in the meditation chamber again, going through another round of Orren drills for the padawan. It was the second set since their experimental training, with both Archons having devoted themselves to physical workouts as Jenna sought to recenter herself. Yesterday Levi had taken the sexual distraction route again, finding it effective but in a different way. Today though was going horrible, for he couldn’t get any useable amount of traction from her with that tactic.

He knew he was scoring hits and tweaking those emotions, but her recovery rate had become so fast that they didn’t offer more than the slightest of head starts. With the entrenched defenses that Farchor gave Jenna, there was no way Levi was going to have enough time to undo them, making her mind virtually impregnable unless he could find a way to distract her. As it was, he was having to work a bit harder to access any part of her mind, with her sexual areas having been her weakest blocks. Those defenses had ticked up a bit already, which made Levi begin to search around her mind’s many facets trying to find another way in.

Going easy on me? Jenna asked during the doldrums.

Hardly. You’re locked up tight.

I don’t feel like it. Everything is still a little loose.

Not enough for me to pry free, and your sex drive isn’t having as much an effect on you.

Are you sure? Yesterday I thought you were being gentle.

I was at first, but I’m not holding back anything today. I can’t distract you for as long as I used to. You’re snapping back too fast for me to go elsewhere.

Keep trying. I don’t think I’m that good yet.

If you have another weak area, feel free to point it out. I’m not finding anything.

So you’re saying it worked?

I know I’m not holding back, so yeah, it seems to have. Care to share what you’re doing different?

As far as I know I’m not, Jenna admitted. But I’m no longer worried. Wary, but not worried, if that makes sense.

I think so. It was my idea, after all.

And I’ll return the favor later. Right now make sure it’s a genuine quality control test. If I have any cracks left, find them. Forget other avenues and just focus on this one.

I have been. I can’t do much here that I haven’t tried.

You haven’t tried a binary.

Levi mentally cringed. I don’t think I’m strong enough for that yet.

Give it a try anyway. The more failures you have the more data you’ll have to learn from.

Alright, Levi said, finding her sexual programming again and concentrating. What Jenna meant by ‘binary’ was a double attack, one using the Orren to slip in unannounced and the other being a brute force Ikrid assault, trying to overpower her defenses and fight his way in. He didn’t stand a chance against her superior strength, Farchor aside, but in theory if he could make enough mental noise to help cloak the Orren angle it was possible he could get some traction right under her nose, so to speak.

Trouble was, applying so much power basically took away his finesse skills, like trying to fight a boxing match while balancing an open bottle of water on his head. He didn’t think he could do it, but if she wanted him to try he’d give it a go.

Levi amped up his mental pressure and applied it directly to that subsection of her mind. He felt her press back without counterattacking, as if holding a line rather than trying to push him out of her head. That gave him some freedom to experiment, but when applying full power to any point, or across her entire sexual program, he couldn’t concentrate enough to engage a separate Orren tendril. He pulled back a bit, going at about 75% strength and knowing that was pretty much a joke from Jenna’s point of view, but he didn’t lose any ground and she didn’t kick him out, merely holding her own against his lesser pressure.

The padawan managed to summon up a secondary attack on the same area and at first it managed to get through and he was able to create a little bit of euphoria in her. That sent a quiver through her power levels, reducing the pushback for a split second before she just amped it up to compensate. The window of opportunity wasn’t enough for Levi to act on, for he was tapped out just maintaining the two simultaneous attacks, and a moment later his Orren tendril was discovered. Jenna pushed it out and regained her iron wall against him, with Levi abandoning the effort less than a minute later.

Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.

Not bad.

Looks like you finally got your sexual resistance you wanted.

It’ll be armor once I get around to customizing my Farchor there, but yeah, looks like it. Keep poking around to see if you can find anything. I want to be sure about this.

Well I’m sure. I got nothing left to try.

Maybe you’re subconsciously holding back after the pathetic mess you left me in earlier?

Feel free to check, Levi said, immediately feeling Jenna’s presence enter his mind. He didn’t resist her, not that he could have kept her completely out if he’d wanted to, but he let her poke around his memories and current analysis of her, also giving her a chance to look at herself through his eyes. She lingered there for what felt like a long time, then the Archon eventually pulled out, satisfied.

Jenna disconnected their mental link and let go of his wrist, opening her eyes and looking at him. “Didn’t realize I was that resistant.”

“Happy now?”

“Relieved, not happy. I’m still a little loopy.”

“I figured you would have burnt it out of you by now with all those cardio workouts.”

“Not completely. Still missing a bit of my edge, but it’s coming back. Feels like I missed a week of workouts.”

“When was the last time you missed a week…ever?”

“Combat mission, about four decades ago. A lot of hunting, very little fighting. I was very rusty by the time I got back to a sanctum. This is different, but with a similar diminishing effect.”

“Kind of makes you wonder why anyone has sex.”

“What you did to me was far worse, youngling. But yeah, it just cuts your badass mojo right out of you.”

“You’re welcome. I’ve also noticed you’re being a bit nicer to me.”

Jenna frowned. “Really?”

“Yeah, but I guess that’s just a side effect. I tried to use that inside your head but it didn’t work because you were already holding back. When we spar again you’ll probably have to shake that off.”

“Do me a favor and give me a reason to hate you a bit.”

Levi suppressed a smile and, without warning, ripped a side-fist punch across her head. He hit her so hard it knocked her off her pedestal and left a big red mark on the side of her face.

Jenna shook her head, having had her bell rung a bit. “Bastard,” she said, standing up and staring laser beams at him. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he said, rising gracefully from his pedestal to join her, figuring that the mental training session was over.

Jenna thumbed over her shoulder. “Sparring ring.”

Levi sighed. “I’m going to pay for that, aren’t I?”

“No, I’m just going to beat the crap out of you like normal.”

“Oh, well then…” he said, a mock expression of relief on his face as he walked past her and out the door. “Let’s get to it.”

Four days later…

“What have we got?” Jenna asked the Captain of the Jor-El as it entered high planetary orbit over Tieor.

“Low orbital traffic, no known ship types. Definitely no Skarron presence.”

Jenna bit her lip, squishing her face up in a confused look. “Find their toys.”

It took a few minutes, but eventually the crew brought up a bad hologram of the surface of the planet. It was being scanned from high orbit, hence the poor quality, but it made out the shape of a Skarron Type-5 walker well enough, sitting in the center of a city. Another hologram came up showing an identical one with several damaged spots, then the zoom panned out and numerous vehicles were surrounding it beyond plasma range.

“Put us down there, then find a camping spot in orbit,” Jenna said, heading for the bridge exit. “Don’t get involved until we figure out what’s going on.”

“And if they involve themselves with us?”

“Pull out to an orbit they can’t follow, but leave a comm buoy within our suits’ transmission range.”

“Copy that.”

Jenna reached out with her mind and found Levi in another chamber nearby. Gear up, we’re heading down.

Brayden sat in the pilot’s seat of one of their hover tanks, with it being the most advanced model they fielded and completely useless against the Skarron walker they were engaging. He knew that closing to within the walker’s plasma range was suicide, so the Marauders were hitting it from afar using a combination of rail guns and missiles, neither of which the Colonel’s tank possessed. What it did have, however, were strong anti-tank plasma weapons and a multipurpose low yield turret useful for both anti-personnel and anti-air functions, both of which were getting a workout as Brayden was fighting off the Tangos’ counterattack.

They were hitting the Marauders with their own small tanks, infantry, and aircraft…the latter of which were a big problem given that he’d ordered his own fighters to keep well away from the walker. He’d gone so far as to keep them out of this mission entirely and had them sitting at a staging base, both to secure it and their line of retreat if it came to that. Right now he was having second thoughts about that, for a good pilot could stay away from the walker and still engage their fighters, though them having a safe haven to run to would have made engaging them very difficult.

His tanks were taking a beating, but they had enough anti-air capability spread out among them that they were picking off a few of the enemy fighters and keeping them back from the assault tanks, which had been modularly fitted to hit the walker and nothing else. They all had to have escorts, and Brayden knew he’d be better suited to fighting that battle than taking pot shots at the more or less stationary walker. It was moving constantly, trying to close with the Marauders who wouldn’t let it, but from a gunner’s perspective it was so big and slow that it was easy to hit.

And hit it they were. The shields had already been breached and the bright white armor was cracked and burnt in many places, but it was still very much alive and lethal. Brayden had six attack groups spread around the perimeter, all of which constantly kept adjusting their position on the grassy plains to keep near to it, but far enough outside its own weapon range. The walker had its own escorts alongside its thick bipedal legs, but most of the Tango’s units had moved out to engage the Marauders, leaving only a handful behind within the protective halo of the walker’s plasma.

Brayden knew they were wearing it down, but his tanks would come out of this with heavy damage at minimum. He just hoped he didn’t lose any crew in the process.

The mercenary commander swung the front end of his triangular tank around and fired off a pair of red plasma orbs ahead of a group of infantry that contained a few rocket launchers. The ground exploded and the grass caught fire, scattering the troops as he accelerated towards the flames and eventually pushed through, with his secondary gunner chipping away at those infantry with the small turret on top of the tank.

Just then another of the Tango fighters zipped by low overhead, stitching the ground with plasma strikes, three of which hit the tank. Its shield held up against the first two, but the third got through and kissed the hull, followed by several hits from surrounding enemy tanks as they focused on the single Marauder target…as Brayden had hoped. His wheeled tanks were less resistant to weaponsfire, and in order to keep them operational he needed to play bait with the more advanced units, and the best way to do that was dive down the enemy’s throat and dare them to ignore him.

If they did he could hurt them badly, if they didn’t then they’d pour firepower into his tank leaving the others free to fire at will. Every operational unit he kept in the game meant more firepower for his side, and for that reason he didn’t mind his own armor getting hit and melted off in spots. This was a messy fight, and they were going to have to fight messy if they wanted to bag that walker. It was doable, otherwise he wouldn’t have committed his forces against it, but if they handled this right they should be able to kill it and keep themselves alive…but there was a narrow margin of error there and as the Marauders’ commander, his place was in the thick of it, taking out enemies and keeping his people alive.

So that’s where he kept his tank, protecting his group of rail guns as they peppered the distant walker with huge metallic slugs that were slowly breaking apart the Type-5’s armor with concussive damage that their plasma resistance didn’t affect. A few missile plumes would be seen going in with the slugs, but most of them had been fired off already to take down the shields as quickly as possible.

The Marauders were having to fight a battle to allow them to fight a second battle against the walker, making for an unusual mission, but one that his men were more than capable of handling.

Unfortunately they weren’t able to handle it cleanly, for after another twenty minutes of fighting one of the other attack groups lost a tank in the final stages that didn’t just go out of commission, but it was blown apart by repetitive attacks that were more vengeance than tactical. It was the last gasp of the Tangos on that part of the battlefield before they retreated, leaving the now smoking and motionless remains of the Skarron walker behind like a giant statue memorializing their defeat.

The other groups, now free to turn their few remaining rail gun slugs on the surrounding tanks, made quick work of those that lingered, with about 20% of the counterattacking forces pulling out successfully. Brayden had lost some 42% of his equipment, with tanks down all across the burning plains, but it was that one vehicle that had got pounded repetitively after it was down that he lost two people in. The rest of his mercs were able to be pulled out, and while some were seriously injured they would all survive save for that unfortunate pair.

He knew this was war, but that didn’t mean there had to be a lack of honor. Once the tank was down it was no longer a threat, and the same was true of the Tango’s tanks that he was now ordering his people to search for survivors, calling in his fighters to scare off what was left of the enemy’s now that the walker was out of order while a number of shuttles came in with search and rescue personnel, both to attend to their own wounded as well as take captives.

Brayden eventually popped the hatch on his tank and went out on foot to help safe the enemy craft and recover their pilots. He was angry at having lost two of his men, but he wasn’t going to take out that frustration on these pilots, otherwise he’d be just as bad as them…though a part of him wanted to, just to even things up.

He knew that others might be feeling the same way, so he sent a comm message out reiterating standing orders just as he got a signal from his own controller, indicating that there was an approaching dropship coming in from the southwest.

A Star Force dropship.

Brayden tagged another of his infantry to replace him in the search and recovery efforts and looked up into the sky, seeing the all familiar silver silhouette gleaming in the sunlight as it flew down towards the surface about a kilometer off. It didn’t land though, merely hovering over the ground briefly and dropping a pair of armored troops out the side hatch to land about three meters down, then it took off again and disappeared up into the sky.

Brayden wished his armor had Star Force comm protocols, for he was used to being able to see who was who at a glance, but these two sets of armor had no ID, though he knew they were transmitting constantly. His equipment just couldn’t pick up the cloaked signals.

His eyes did catch the armor make as he got closer, with him realizing that it was Archon armor. What they were doing all the way out here he wasn’t sure, but assumed it had to do with the Skarron walker. They probably wanted to know where it had come from too, but a part of Brayden was surprised they cared to respond given how far away from Star Force territory this was.

But that wasn’t what took his breath away, for when he got close enough for his mind to register colors he realized that the armor wasn’t green and black, as his eyes had guessed looking through the smoke trails. It was brown and dark blue.

That meant a padawan and a mage, two sets of armor that he’d never laid eyes on before that designated their highest ranks. Having one of them here was mindboggling, but two…that was inconceivable.

Brayden didn’t know what was going on, but this mission had just taken a turn, probably for the worst. While an Archon was always a welcome sight, where they went there was usually trouble.

And a padawan and mage meant a lot of trouble.

4

Jenna saw one of the Marauders wave to them and jogged over to his position with Levi following a step behind. In the distance the dead walker stood smoking, though the thin trails coming off it were insignificant compared to the amount of smoke coming from the grass. Huge patches of it had already burnt off, leaving the ground she was running across now being little more than black char coated with the occasional bit of debris. Larger tank remnants were spread around, obviously the source of the small bits, and she could sense minds still inside some of them.

“Archon,” the Marauder greeted them when they met up. “I’m surprised you came.”

“We were in the area,” Jenna answered. “Which one of you is Brayden?”

“I am.”

“Situation report.”

“The locals are losing, badly. It’s not a complete rout, but cities are falling without any real hope of holding out. We still don’t know who these guys are or what they want, and the few prisoners we’ve taken haven’t been forthcoming. We’re fighting here on contract, but I don’t expect this to be the winning side when all is said and done.”

“There are still men in some of those tanks,” Jenna pointed out.

“We know. I’ve got teams going around and pulling them out. I had planned on interrogating them, but now that you’re here, would you mind?”

“Have you searched the walker?”

“Not yet. We took it down from range, so I haven’t had any units in close yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s dead.”

Jenna glanced at Levi and he took off running in the direction of the Skarron war machine.

“How many ships did you come with?” Brayden asked.

“We’re not getting involved in the fighting until we know what’s going on,” Jenna cautioned. “For all I know this planet had this coming.”

“We sent records.”

“We got them.”

“Then I don’t understand the hesitancy. The Marauders have no affiliation here other than a small outpost, but it’s clear that this is the type of predation that Star Force routinely stops.”

“Star Force also has a habit of taking planets from others,” Jenna pointed out. “And we don’t do it for pay.”

“We only take defensive assignments,” Brayden said defensively, sensing the rebuke in her tone.

“We’ve currently got the lizards on the defensive. You going to chip in and help them out too?” she asked, taking a couple steps past his shoulder and pointing. “Get whoever is in that tank out and I’ll see if I can get some answers for both of us.”

Brayden followed her armored finger with his eyes and saw the wreckage of one of the Tangos’ tanks about 300 meters off. “Easy enough,” he said, getting on the comm and calling his units with cutting tools and medics to him.

Levi accelerated gradually, passing through a flame wall about 100 meters away from Jenna with the tiny plasma flares barely tickling his shields. They did interfere with his vision of the ground ahead, so he switched on his Pefbar and was suddenly able to see through the smoke and flames as he finally got up to his normal cruising speed. Both the armor he wore and Jenna’s were the light variety, now reduced down in size so much that they appeared to be little more than thick wetsuits over the moving portions. The solid plates were downsized as well, making for a very fast, agile armor that the pair favored.

He wore a slim pack on his back with a handful of supplies, over top of which a weapon rack held a rifle, a pair of pistols, and an ammo pouch. That was standard gear for ‘social’ calls, and would be amped up considerably if any heavy fighting was expected. The extra weight slowed him down a bit, but he’d been running and fighting in armor like this for so long that the bulk on his back almost felt like a third limb by now.

Crossing the distance over to the walker in a blur of moving legs and pumping arms, Levi scanned ahead with his Ikrid, not trusting that the deadly machine was truly out of order. When he got close enough he picked up a single mind remaining, but by the time he got to one of the massive legs the contact winked out, with Levi assuming that one of the crew had been barely hanging onto life and had just now succumbed.

That meant there was no one inside to get to open the door, so when he drifted to a stop underneath he circled around the walker, getting a view of the damage to all sides, then picked his spot and dropped to the ground, gathering his legs underneath him. He triggered his Yetu, extending his legs out in a jump that was amplified by the momentary surge in muscle speed. That sent him shooting skyward without the help of his armor halfway up the walker’s leg.

Levi grabbed hold of a joint, gluing himself to the side with a tiny telepathic order to the armor that activated the magical grip points in the hands and toes, giving him a spiderman-like grip even on flat surfaces. He had to move slow, and some materials were less agreeable than others, but he was able to climb up the leg and then onto the bottom half of the giant sphere, using weapons damage for grip when able. He scaled it to the point where there was a man-sized hole, then climbed in through the short tunnel that a rail gun slug had carved out.

There was a mess of chewed up machinery, but he was able to wiggle his way into the crew compartment where he found a slew of body parts from races that he couldn’t identify. There were two more or less intact corpses in uniform, but the rest was a blood-splattered death cocoon with multiple access points to the exterior light, indicating where the rail gun rounds had entered from, one of which was imbedded in the sidewall, now a squashed plug of metal rather than the pointy bullet it had originally been.

Levi pulled himself out of the damage-created shaft and stood up, feet squishing on gore. A quick look around confirmed that the control station that he was interested in was still intact, though there was a lot of extra junk in the way. He walked across the body parts and climbed up on the now twisted rigging that had allowed what looked like bipedal pilots to operate a craft designed for the multi-armed quadrupeds that were the Skarrons.

The padawan ripped off a panel exposing the interior components of part of the computer system, then pulled out a long, rectangular component, disconnecting the three wires linking it to the auxiliary power and comm systems. Levi reached back and opened his pack, sliding the salvage inside. He knew the techs back on the Jor-El would be able to access the device, which would then give them an itemized history of this walker. Where it had been, who it had been assigned to, what damage it had taken, the sensor records surrounding that damage, and anything else useful to the Skarrons in analyzing their defeats.

Star Force had known about the data nodules for some time, and had made a habit of ripping them off the dead walkers when they could, though it seemed that each one, no matter how large it was, only contained a single nodule, making it a bit of a lottery as to whether it would be destroyed by damage or not. Given how many walkers the Skarrons deployed in the field, all it would take would be one nodule recovered to give them an idea of what had happened in any given battle, so this one being intact was a stroke of luck…in addition to the thick support beams it was located next to.

He knelt down near one of the more or less intact bodies, examining the uniform and any other bits of detail available. These obviously weren’t Skarrons, which ruled out one possibility that they’d been considering. The mercs’ data had said they hadn’t observed any Skarron or Hobbit presence, but Jenna and Levi had found it very odd that the Skarrons would let anyone else use their walkers, especially since they didn’t even let their own Hobbits operate them.

But it seemed they had here, or had they stolen a walker from them? Too many possibilities to narrow down yet, but they could scratch one off the list…and hopefully this nodule would give them a few necessary tidbits to help unravel this mystery.

Levi spotted a sidearm loose on the floor and picked it up, finding the trigger and shooting one of the torn up walls. A short burst came out and melted into a panel, but it wasn’t plasma. He guessed it was a lachar, and by the design and yield he guessed it was low on the tech tree. Odd, given how advanced a war machine these dead guys had been piloting, yet they were carrying primitive personal weapons?

That suggested a hodgepodge grouping, and from the look of the body parts lying around, there were at least three different races present in the walker, all of which he was unfamiliar with, though it was difficult to say for sure about the third, given that he was having to mentally piece it back together.

Levi took another glance around, finding nothing else of interest, then he jumped up to the top of the chamber, grabbing hold of a different bit of damage and climbing out through a much larger gash that led him to a door-sized hole high up. He skittishly walked out to the edge, unsure of his footing and being wary that it might slide out from under him at any moment, falling apart.

With a thought he activated the powered setting on his armor and took a step out onto the curved hull, sliding down a few meters quickly and then transitioning into freefall. He braced his legs and caught them against the ground, pushing hard and having the armor do most of the work in lieu of the jump pack he didn’t have. His feet dug into the ground several inches as he dropped to a knee, bleeding off his momentum before standing back up and beginning his return run towards the cluster of merc tanks on the horizon.

The tank pilot that Jenna had tagged for recovery had lost a hand and was unconscious when they pried him out of the pinched cockpit that had been dented inward from a rail gun slug deflection. The Marauder medic had quickly sealed off the wound to keep any additional bleeding from occurring, but we wasn’t about to inject him with any supplicant without knowing his biology. It was quite possible that this one was going to die simply from the loss of blood, but as the medics ran their tests to determine what he could or couldn’t take Jenna slipped off one of her armor’s gloves and pressed her small, pale fingers against the ridged forehead of the orange-skinned biped, using the physical contact to amplify her Ikrid link.

There was a mess of pain and recent memories to sift through, made all the more murky by the unconscious state he was in and her unfamiliarity with this race, but she took her time and sorted through what she could, gradually finding some points of recognition and working from there. It took more than ten minutes before she finally got a name, followed by a bit of additional information before the Tanzghi’s mind disappeared along with his life.

“He’s dead,” she said to the medics who were readying an injection. Jenna turned to face Brayden as she slipped her glove back on and locked it into her wrist plate. “This one belongs to a war party called something I can’t pronounce, but loosely I’d tag them as the Tipring.”

“War party?”

“Neither army nor mercs, they’re recruiting from their populations in time of need. This one has been involved for a lot of years, and it seems to think that whatever they’re doing is to protect their homes. Conquer or be conquered, though with a few wrinkles that I couldn’t quite iron out. Anyway, the Tipring are part of a coalition that’s on some sort of quest. Please tell me some of the others are still alive?”

“I’ve got reports of four captives recovered, but they’re all in bad condition. One has already died, at his own hands.”

“Lovely,” Jenna said, reaching out with her Ikrid to scan at maximum range. It took a moment to weed out the merc minds, but she was able to spot two more anomalous ones within bits of wreckage. “I can sense two more.”

“Where?”

“There,” she said, pointing to half a tank more than a quarter mile off, “and…never mind. That’s one of yours,” Jenna corrected as one of the search team members pulled out of a wrecked tank and walked off empty handed.

“Near death?” Brayden asked.

“I can’t tell this far away.”

“Let’s get on it,” the Colonel said to the scattering of mercs standing around the pair, who immediate broke up and got moving now that they had a task assigned. Brayden went with them, but Jenna lagged behind as she felt Levi approaching. A minute later his running form broke through a smoke cloud and came into view, coasting to a stop alongside her dark blue armor.

“Anything?”

“Crew is dead, and they’re definitely not Skarron. I did find a nodule. Looks intact.”

“Good.”

“You?”

“Not much. My date died before we could get very far.”

“There’s gotta be more left around here.”

“A few. The mercs are pulling another one out now, but so far they’re all in bad shape. We may have to go on a little field trip of our own later.”

“Why wait?”

“I don’t like mercs, and I want to get a feel for these guys as much as the Varshoo.”

“Got a name then?”

“Yeah,” she said, sending him a brief telepathic summary of what she’d learned.

“Curious,” Levi mewed.

“What?”

“Something about the way they decorated the interior of the walker,” he explained, sending her a telepathic image of what he’d seen.

“And?”

“I’m not sure, just an odd feeling.”

“If your odd feeling gets and definition, let me know. In the meantime let’s glean what we can from the scraps here, and keep your eyes open for anything on these Marauders. If you can manage a date with a bit of snuggle time go for it. There are at least two girls out there.”

“Plenty of guys then,” Levi deflected.

“You romanced me out.”

“Could just try a friendly hug outside of armor?”

“Or a punch…but I don’t have an excuse for that yet. Just try and find some way to get some skin contact.”

“Your spidey senses tingling?”

“I don’t know. They just rub me the wrong way. If there are any good guys in this fight, it might not be them.”

“Don’t trust a quitter?”

“If they’re still interested in fighting, why did they leave us?”

“Good point.”

“Keep your eyes open and study everything. We’re blinder here than usual.”

“You want me to run my find back up to orbit?”

“No, but call a dropship in to pick it up. I want you here with me snooping around.”

“Don’t think we’re going to get anyone out of armor here. Are we going back to their basecamp?”

“Play it by ear and see where it leads,” Jenna said, beginning to walk in the direction of the newest survivor that the mercs were just now getting to with their equipment, for plasma had a way of melting hatches closed. “For now, just roam. I’ll see what this guy can give us.”

5

October 10, 2735

Noop System

Tieor

The pair of Archons ran together through the night, traveling at better than 30 miles an hour as they cruised at Levi’s maximum sustainable pace for the cross country trip. Both Archons were using their armor’s powered enhancement to reduce the workload, making it feel as if they were running without any extra weight on them at all. Typically they didn’t use that setting save for extreme situations, preferring to just use their strength to overcome the slowness of the armor, but given the distance they were running across an uninhabited bit of countryside towards one of the Varshoo-held cities they didn’t want to arrive there exhausted.

Jenna let Levi lead the way so he could set the pace, given that he was the slower of the two, but she handled the navigation, giving him a telepathic nudge to veer left at a clump of trees ahead. The padawan did as directed, taking them a bit off the path and through some waist-high grass before the bare dirt returned for a few strides, then was quickly replaced by scrub brush that tickled their armor with thorns. They blew through it like a knife blade, leaving only a small disruption for someone to follow.

That wasn’t the concern here, for so far no one had noticed their passage. The surveillance around the captured city was aerial only with a few loose patrols around the perimeter, meaning that if they tried for an aerial assault they’d probably be picked up on their descent, even if they dropped from orbit with jump packs. The long route over land was the easy way in, but taking vehicles or going via road would have been a bit too obvious, even at night. On foot was the preferred method, because no one expected anyone to travel the 42 mile gap across wilderness in a single night, let alone within two hours.

And because of the design of their armor their movements were whisper quiet, making them literally ghosts in the night with the overhead cloud cover masking any starlight. They both had a tiny pinprick of light on their helmets that they could use for their nightvision, in a frequency that most races couldn’t see naturally, but neither Archon needed it, for they simply used their Pefbar to see ahead and all around them, offering them better situational awareness within a limited radius.

Beyond that they were essentially blind, but the tracking systems on their battlemap let Jenna navigate them to where they needed to go, for she’d set up several waypoints based on previous orbital scans and they were arriving at the last of them now, for just around the tree clump she’d had Levi veer left at was a ridgeline that would run straight up to the city edge. There it would be cut off abruptly by the infrastructure on the city’s back side where the wilderness pressed up against the outer ring. There were a fair amount of trees there, cutting off most vehicular traffic aside from a few wide paths that doubled as roads for those travelers that chose to skirt around the perimeter rather than take internal routes from point to point within the city.

The approach made for a huge blind spot that the invaders were basically leaving unmonitored, and to be blunt why would they bother locking it down? They were running rough shot over the planet and methodically taking one site after another, making it appear that it was only a matter of time before they conquered the entire planet no matter how many mercenaries the locals hired to try and slow them down.

Jenna still thought it was sloppy, especially considering that those mercenary units weren’t tied down to any location and typically would have their own transports, whether they be ships, aerial craft, or some form of speeders. Had she been the Varshoo commander, Jenna would have put up at least a light patrol perimeter around the city in all directions to give the troops inside a heads up in case someone tried a counterattack, but most of their efforts seemed to be focused on locking down the spaceports and main roads, keeping people inside as much as keeping others out.

According to the few minds she’d been able to raid from the Marauders’ prisoners, Jenna had determined that there were at least 18 different factions within the Varshoo army here, and many more in their overall empire…save for that it wasn’t a civilization. They were a conglomeration of mercenary units, security forces, defense leagues, and about anything else that had an even vaguely military aspect to it. Each puzzle piece was put together to form the Varshoo, which was a military for hire, so to speak. What they were doing here she hadn’t been able to determine because the soldiers she’d interrogated didn’t know, but this wasn’t the first planet they’d hit.

She’d found memories from 14 other assaults, all successful and against similarly primitive civilizations. The Varshoo were conquering designated worlds then handing them over to someone else, moving on and repeating the process where necessary. Sometimes they’d move straight on to another mission, others would involve holding breaks at some neutral point or even see the puzzle pieces return to where they’d been gathered from. What was behind it all was still uncertain, but Jenna had gathered the identities of those higher up the ranking ladder who might know the answers to those questions, which was why the pair of Archons were headed towards the city of Djok.

It was the headquarters for the faction that had been involved with the first Skarron walker. Oddly, the other one belonged to yet another subsection of the Varshoo, but none of the soldiers had known where it originally came from, though they knew of others having been used in previous missions. They were the key pieces in their assault plan, but not for the raw military power they possessed. They were brought in after the initial attack to demoralize the locals and hold onto a region of the planet where the Varshoo were devoting less troops than they should. It was a bit of tactical mastery and would have worked had the Marauders not inexplicably been able to destroy one of them.

Jenna had tried to get some information on the ex-Star Force unit from the Varshoo, but they knew nothing about them. They’d traveled a long way to get to their target system, having originated entirely outside the local geography…which was why the mercenaries had no knowledge of them either.

Levi took to the lower side of the ridge, dodging between trees as he followed a dry creek bed yet stayed out of view underneath the spotted canopy, pacing the wash some ten meters or so from the edge. Jenna could tell from his movements that he was getting tired, but his speed hadn’t flagged yet, which meant he wasn’t too fatigued. If it started to drop off she’d slow him even further to make sure he wasn’t going to tank on her later, but he was holding up better than she’d thought he would. Halfway through their run she thought he’d been overcooking it, but apparently he was a bit more robust than she’d realized.

Then again, running at night always made things seem faster, even when using Pefbar, for you couldn’t get any distant visual markers to calibrate off of, just the quickly moving terrain nearby. Jenna had already worked up a good sweat, which she could feel soaking into her minimal clothing underneath, but she wasn’t feeling taxed and could have sped up a bit without wearing herself out if need be. Levi might be one of the most advanced Archons in Star Force, but she and the other mages were far beyond him, not just in psionics, but in physical skills. Had there been a trailblazer here her role would have been reversed, for they were likewise ahead of her, but few others were.

She’d gotten used to being one of the dominant ones and took to that role well, regardless of whether or not the Archon was with her kin on a training stint or fighting who knew what race out on the frontier. Other than the Voku, no one else even had a chance going hand to hand with her level of skill, meaning that wherever she went she had the advantage, and the outcome of the battles wouldn’t depend on her outfighting her opponent, but in maneuvering the conflict into situations where she could apply her advantage.

She could kill 10 tanks single handedly if she got to them one at a time, coming in from anonymity and getting the jump on their pilots, but go straight in at 10 of them on a wide open battlefield and her armor would quickly be tasked with keeping her alive long enough to run away. She could own any hand to hand confrontation, no matter how many individuals were involved, but Jenna still had to pick her fights…which was why they were going into the Varshoo-held city on foot, hopefully keeping any interactions a personal affair and not inviting any of their tanks or aircraft to the occasion.

They made their way along the ridgeline without incident, other than a few annoying soft spots in the ground that would sink in on contact and threaten to trip you up. Jenna had started to press her Pefbar down into the ground to see the little rodent tunnels to give her some warning, but eventually just said ‘screw it’ because at the speed they were running she didn’t have enough time to focus on such small details. Her balance was good enough to recover when it did happen, as was Levi’s, so she just stuck behind him a couple of steps and ate up ground until they got to the city’s edge.

The padawan slowed, finally, and began to recover his strength as they crept up towards one of the dirt roads, keeping trees between them and the city lights as Jenna mentally pointed him to a spot with a little bit more elevation. On top of it was a guard post, but the two minds inside were bored and half asleep, so not a threat. Not wanting to risk an alarm, Jenna had them move a quarter mile around the perimeter to the north and enter the city there, sprinting across the dirt road and sliding into one of the building alleys that were for pedestrian traffic only.

Given that it was on the outskirts this one didn’t have anyone using it, so the two armored Archons jogged down it with impunity, seeing only a few doors and no windows. They took a moment to have a look up, then both of them took to an opposite wall and began to crawl up using their armor’s grip points, for the building sides were nearly sheer.

Jenna made it to the roof first, pulling herself up over the edge as Levi crawled up the taller building and kicked off the wall, jumping across the alleyway to her side and rolling out of a reverse somersault before catching up to her as she walked across to the building side with a larger street below. She inched her head over and looked down, finding a light amount of traffic, mostly pedestrians who were moving with haste. They weren’t the Varshoo, rather denizens who had been captured along with the infrastructure. A quick mental scan on a few of them indicated that they were in no immediate harm, but they were spooked none the less, not knowing what was coming in the future with their new rulers.

She also realized that most of the people were staying indoors, with only those that needed to travel about were doing so. That should help their transit, but the agitated state the populace was in would also make them more aware of what was going on around them. Hopefully though, that attention wouldn’t be focused skyward.

Jenna backed up a few steps then sprinted off the building, planting her foot on the edge and jumping with the assistance of her armor. Levi followed a split second later and the two armored bodies flew across the gap to land on the slightly shorter building on the far side of the double-laned road.

They ran across to the next building, but given that it was taller they had to transfer over to a side building and the alleyway there to do their spiderman thing and climb up high enough to make the next jump. One after another they made their way across the city to the location of the Varshoo headquarters that had been set up in one of the local buildings, but with ample security established around the block that it was located on to deter guests.

The first sniper position they came across saw the Varshoo soldier slumped over his weapon as Jenna walked up to him, already having knocked him out from afar with her Ikrid. She searched his memories, trying to determine if any of the people on their ‘to find’ list were inside. As far as this one knew at least some of them were, so the Archons eased up to the edge of the building and looked across the wide street to the buildings on the far side. The one they wanted was behind those, but the gap was too far to jump…and neither of them had brought a jump pack.

“Pole vault or slingshot?” Jenna asked, giving Levi his preference.

“You think I can make the roof, or have to shoot for the wall?”

“I’m thinking wall.”

“Pole vault then. Softer landing.”

“Alright, get ready while I blanket the area,” she said, her eyes disfocusing as she reached out with her Ikrid searching for all nearby minds. Any that had a line of sight on the street she hacked into, planting a little bit of programming that would disincline them from looking up. The effect would last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on the race. Given that she was unfamiliar with these they probably only had a short window of opportunity, but it should be enough so long as something didn’t attract their attention, otherwise it would break the little spell she was weaving on them.

It took too long for her to get through them all, with the first ones being questionable as to whether they were still affected or not, but Jenna gave Levi the go ahead anyway and he started running from the far side of their building roof where he had been waiting. She offered out a battlemeld prompt and he immediately took it, syncing their minds and giving them access to other psionics. Using Bataf, which the Archons typically referred to as ‘repulsor,’ Jenna pushed her hands out towards Levi and emitted an invisible column of energy linking to him. It was loose at first, then with their linked precision it instantaneously hardened as he jumped, becoming the ‘pole’ that he rode up into the air as Jenna gave him a telekinetic kick in the butt on the way up to add to his momentum.

She pivoted her hands up, bracing with her entire body for his weight was transmitting down to her limbs, but she held her position and allowed him to ride the pole all the way up over her head, then as he began to tip over to the street side the Archons transitioned the ‘solid’ state of the pole into a repulsive conduit that actually pushed him further. That thrust was less controlled, but their previous practice with one another had been sufficient for them to get the distance they needed, with Levi eventually letting go of the psionic and falling the last few meters as he reached out with his hands and feet and stuck against the side of the far building Garfield style.

Jenna saw and felt him slip, for she was still battlemeld linked, but he held on with a few fingers as the bounce bled off, then he was able to steady himself and begin crawling up to the roof. When he got there he spun around and planted a foot against the slightly elevated rim and made himself the grip point as Jenna backtracked to get some distance, then took off sprinting for the edge.

When she got there she jumped, getting more altitude than Levi had managed out of his own legs, but without the help of the ‘pole’ she didn’t get nearly as high. But as she got into the air the pair established another repulsor conduit between them, but caused it to attract rather than push. Like a long rope retracting, it pulled Jenna across the gap and up a bit as her own momentum did most of the work. A few seconds later she hit feet first against the wall below Levi, then she scaled the side on his invisible rope until their hands met and he pulled her up over the edge.

Their battlemeld link broke then and Jenna searched the street, surrounding roofs, and windows to check on her psionic blanket she’d laid down.

“We’re good.”

Levi turned and looked across the huge roof to the slightly taller building beyond that was their eventual target, picking up a few minds in between behind several protrusions and access hubs into the building below.

“We’ve got company up here.”

“I’ll take left,” Jenna said, with the pair breaking up and quietly sneaking off to different sides of the roof to send the sentries into naptime once they got within close enough proximity to establish a firm Ikrid link to them all, for they couldn’t have one nod off in the view of the others, meaning they had to do them simultaneously when their sight lines overlapped.

But it wasn’t something new to the Archon pair, and within a couple of minutes the rooftop was theirs, setting up their last jump over to the Varshoo command center.

6

Jenna clung to the building wall with two feet and one hand, holding Levi’s armored glove in her other as she blanketed the surrounding area in Ikrid, keeping any onlookers from noticing the two tiny ticks attached to the side of the building as her padawan slowly traced his finger across the window.

Or rather through it, for his fingernail was fully imbedded inside the material and poking through to the interior air as he used his Rensiek to increase and channel his internal heat production onto the surface of an invisible shield covering his finger. The heat went to it, pouring through his flesh and pooling there to reach the temperature necessary to melt the glass. Jenna hadn’t been sure that he was strong enough to get to the required point, for not every planet’s ‘glass’ was made of the same material.

This stuff appeared fairly flimsy, but she didn’t want to just break or shoot their way in. She would have done the cutting, except that her Ikrid skills were also well beyond Levi’s and keeping them hidden while in plain sight was the priority at the moment. They still had several hours of night left, which certainly helped their efforts, but the city lights made it difficult to hide down low on the streets. Likewise the top of the command center was ablaze with all manner of illumination, prompting her to decide to go in one of the dark windows on the other side of the street from their jump point and nearly at the same altitude.

Levi pulled his finger slowly, needing to keep the heat flowing to it in order to melt the material. Little globules ran down over his finger, hardening as they dropped off or moved onto the rest of the window. He had to maintain the heat shield all the way up to the knuckle, for if even a little droplet hit his exposed skin it would burn it instantaneously. It was odd how he could hurt himself with his own heat, but the numerous applications that came into play as one got stronger in Fornax more than made up for the danger.

The Archon patiently made a huge arc over his head, having to reposition his body several times to keep the motion continuing into a large circle taller than his height. He made it approximately two meters wide and had to scoot to the side on the window to keep from falling off when he finished the cut. With some telekinetic pressure he held and pushed the clear circle inside, with Jenna crawling over and following it in with a hand placed over top the hole and the mage swinging herself down and inside.

She took the glass plug from him and pulled it aside while he crawled in, disconnecting one of her gloves in the process. The pair then slid the circle back into place and used their hands to squeegee the excess material back into a few spots in liquid form, letting it harden enough to hold the window segment in place, though there was no way to hide the finger-wide cut.

Jenna released her last Ikrid links and waited, assuming no one would notice the odd window given its height and the darkness, but she didn’t want to be sloppy. When no mental alarms were triggered she tossed Levi his glove and reattached her own, then the pair got moving across the dark room and linked up in the battlemeld.

With Levi’s abilities adding to her own, Jenna began searching the building and accessing the nearest minds as she began looking for one of the priority targets. Language issues and unfamiliar mental structures bogged her down, but by constricting the search to hierarchy placement she was able to get an idea of which floors held the commanders. With those being in range of the pair’s combined Ikrid, she searched them one mind at a time until they got their first hit.

Jenna logged that position on her blank battlemap using a program that had been introduced along with the telepathic armor that allowed for tracking data to be gathered by her psionics. As a result a waypoint popped up inside the building even before the floors did, aside from the one they were on that was within range of her and Levi’s armor sensors.

The mage didn’t stop with the one target, but kept on searching for others and tagging their locations. Eventually she found three before she ran out of contacts. The building had over 200 people in it, and one target was enough to give them a shot at figuring out what was going on with this invasion.

Thinking together as one, Levi went to the door and opened it, knowing that the hallway outside was clear. He broke the battlemeld link just outside and headed for the few minds on this floor, intending to black them out given how sparsely populated the large building was.

Jenna stayed put, picking off a few nearby minds from where she was and forcing the individuals to fall asleep. Once she was sure they were out of the picture for a good few hours she found a nearby ladder/stairwell and moved down while Levi continued the hunt on the upper levels. She got to one of their three priority targets first and stayed with the two and a half meter tall hairy creature where it laid slumped over a tabletop.

Pulling her glove off again, she made physical contact to increase her Ikrid effectiveness and dove into its mind, sifting through weird and varied thoughts until she found something familiar. Focusing on the memory of the Skarron walkers’ deployment she backtracked to linked thoughts and eventually got to the planetary invasion overview after a few minutes.

Levi reported back that the upper building was clear and she responded telepathically telling him to finish up below while she worked. Knowing that he’d take care of the rest with ease, Jenna kept digging into recent events. This one had a different point of view than the lower ranking soldiers, and eventually she was able to determine that they were here because they’d been contracted to take this planet for someone called the Trzzl. It was a person, not a race, but someone with a lot of influence in whatever region the Varshoo came from.

They had been instructed to keep as much of the infrastructure and population intact as they could, but some losses were allowable. The Trzzl wanted the civilization as much as the planet it was on, but this one didn’t know why. They were here to take it, hold it, then turn it over to the Trzzl’s people when they eventually arrived. To him this was just a mission and he didn’t care what took place in the aftermath. Once they were done they’d be leaving, but Jenna sensed that how they proceeded with this takeover was important and would have consequences, whether positive or negative, going forward for the Varshoo.

She pressed that further, with the difficulty increasing the further Jenna went off of current events. Speculation was something that required an active mind, with the memory of speculation being something very difficult to track down even in a familiar one. For this mind it was buried too deep, but she was able to pull a sense that reputation had a significant effect on the Varshoo and that what they were doing here would affect their people…all of their peoples, given that they weren’t a united civilization.

There was also a bit of fear there, but she couldn’t track it down. She wished this had been a Protovic or Reen, because she could have dug deeper, sleep state or no, but Jenna didn’t even know what this one’s race was called, let alone was familiar with their mental structure. Most minds tended to be structured in similar ways, which was how she and Levi were able to render them unconscious, but even small differences were troublesome when trying to access memories.

Jenna went back to the walkers, focusing on them and following that thread to its source. This one did know where they’d come from, with the Archon triple checking her findings, not believing what she was hearing through his memories. This one hadn’t been involved in acquiring them and the others, for the Varshoo had come into possession of several more, but it had heard the story of how the Varshoo had claimed them.

It was that story that she was trying to check on, gathering up all the details she could glean from its memories, which was hard without being able to understand words.

Jenna took what she could get from this one then left it behind to sleep as she moved down a few levels and found one of the other three targets that Levi had already knocked out. It was a different race, one that she recognized as a Delveb. The Voku had records on them and Star Force had linked up the identity when the mercenaries had sent them data on the invasion. Apparently they were a scattered, yet highly populated race spread across a significant portion of this galactic arm. Jenna wasn’t any more familiar with their mental structure than the big guy, but this spider-like quadruped resembled Bsidd minds in a very limited fashion, offering her a bit more access due to her past experience with theirs.

The Delveb didn’t have any more information on the Trzzl, but its knowledge of the Skarron equipment backed up what she’d picked up in the other one. There had been a planet within range of the Varshoo that was owned by the Skarrons, some type of forward outpost, and it had been hit by another race. During the fighting some type of biological weapon had been used against the Skarrons, wiping out nearly half their population over the course of several months. The remaining troops then fought the attackers nearly to the extinction of both sides.

The Varshoo had been monitoring the conflict and in a moment of either brilliance or recklessness they send landing craft down to the Skarron regions that had been contaminated with the bioweapon. They raided a military base and recovered a lot of abandoned equipment, which was where they got their walkers and a lot of other small-scale weapons. Neither side in the planetary fight stopped them, nor had the means to given the confrontations occurring on other parts of the planet and the limited naval forces left in orbit after the Skarron defense fleet was painstakingly destroyed.

Whether the attackers didn’t care or just didn’t have the gumption to pick another fight, the Varshoo were able to come down and raid the base and surrounding area for several days before leaving with multiple captured Skarron transports and their own full of precious war machinery.

Jenna almost laughed. How they had managed that was almost ridiculous. The Varshoo’s tech level was low, and the fact that they were able to pluck even one walker away from the Skarrons was hilarious. It also meant that this whole trip out here was a wild goose chase. The Skarron Empire wasn’t expanding into this region, yet anyway, nor did they have any affiliation with the Varshoo.

That left just one question for her to get an answer to…and that was which side here were the good guys, if any. The Varshoo weren’t here to slaughter, and Tieor being the defenders didn’t automatically put them in the right either. Jenna hated walking away from a fight, especially when a lot of people were dying, but she wasn’t about to throw in without making sure what she was fighting for. For all she knew this Trzzl had a reason to take over this planet, and methods aside, she needed to know more before declaring the invaders ass holes and gut punching them on their way out of the system.

If both sides were ass holes, then it was possible that the Trzzl might actually end up making the planet a slightly less yucky place, and if that was the case then Star Force wasn’t going to get involved in this mess. Bad guy versus bad guy was a fight that Jenna had learned to stay out of a long time ago, and with this system being so far away from Star Force territory her options for dealing with the situation were limited. Had it been closer they could have just taken the planet for themselves and cleaned it up properly.

Jenna wasn’t able to get anything more out of this one, so she tracked down the third while Levi stayed on watch roaming the building and keeping a close eye on the surface entrances. If people started to come in he’d have to bag them before they could sound an alarm, and such things couldn’t be concealed forever. Not to mention if people called in to the command center and didn’t get a response. The Archons’ time here was limited, but they could stretch it as much as needed if they felt like making a bit of noise.

That wasn’t going to be necessary, for the third target was the highest ranking individual on the planet…as well as one of the shortest. It barely stood even with Jenna’s waist, but had as much mass as she did, making it look almost like a black bowling ball given the odd clothing that it wore. Its mind was less extreme and she was able to get a bit more information on the Trzzl. Apparently it was a king-like individual who controlled a large amount of territory spread out in bits and pieces across a very wide region of space, avoiding the major powers and picking on the primitive systems.

The Trzzl was on a quest to uplift the lesser planets, as far as the publicity/propaganda was concerned, and had contracted the Varshoo on four different occasions for their mercenary talents. What was odd was in the payment, for it occurred in the form of tribute from the conquered worlds. Foodstuffs, raw materials, and a limited amount of industrial produce would be percentaged into an annual shipment back to the Varshoo in lieu of a monetary payment.

It was then that Jenna realized the Varshoo were a collection of needy factions that used their combined military power to supply a good portion of what their planets lacked. That was the hint of fear the other one had, for if they failed in a mission there would be no reward and their people would suffer for it. Also, if they failed their reputation would diminish, with future contracts of necessary size drying up.

That made this invasion a mess of a situation. Jenna released the Varshoo leader’s head and stood up, putting her glove back on and reaching out her mind to Levi to find where he was. Her battlemap had lost track of him, given so many floors of material in between them, but her Ikrid didn’t have that limitation and she saw he was near the ground floor.

“We’re leaving,” she said, using her comm and seeing his signal ping on the battlemap when he responded with the stronger signal.

“With or without answers?”

“They scavenged the walkers. There’s no link to the Skarrons.”

“Scavenged how?”

“I’ll fill you in on the way back. How’s it look below?”

“Quiet for now, but I had to grab four more people coming in.”

“Meet me at the window,” she said, starting to walk away from her sleeping prisoner and head that way herself.

“Are we helping the locals?”

“Both sides need helping…which we can’t do this far out.”

“One of those, huh?”

“Yeah. That said, you don’t make someone else’s problems your own, so we’ll throw the locals a bone or two on the way out.”

“The other walker?”

“You read my mind,” Jenna joked, coming to a ladder and beginning to climb up to the waypoint on her battlemap that marked where the cut window was. By the time she reached that level Levi’s mind was catching up quickly from below so she didn’t rush, getting to the room they’d entered from a few seconds ahead of him. She reached out with her Ikrid and made one last check on the minds nearby, finding them still unconscious.

“Slingshot?” Levi guessed.

“Yep,” Jenna said, getting a telekinetic hold on the window slice and yanking it free of the melt points. She managed to do it in a way that didn’t result in any pieces breaking off and keeping the circle’s shape intact, then she gently set it aside and began to move the various pieces of furniture away from the opening by hand along with her padawan. When they finished she knelt down beside the opening as a gentle breeze blew in, making the potted plants rustle, though neither Archon could feel the effect inside their hard armor.

Jenna offered a battlemeld prompt, with Levi taking it immediately and beginning to run across the room for the few steps of acceleration that he could manage. As he did so a repulsor conduit between the two of them yanked him forward, helping him get up to greater speed until he flashed past Jenna, jumping off the edge of the floor where the glass had been cut away and out into the nighttime air towards the far roof.

When he passed her they reversed the conduit, with Levi forming it off his back and Jenna using it to push him forward across the gap. She added a telekinetic lift to it, gaining him a little more height, which translated to meters of additional distance that eventually dropped him right at the rooftop edge. His legs hit short, but he grabbed on with his arms and thumped over the edge, hitting on his abdomen and crawling the rest of the way up.

Jenna backed up to the wall and activated the powered function of her armor, then took off sprinting and jumped out the hole in the window with Levi yanking her across the gap with another repulsor conduit. Without the telekinetic boost she fell short, but her padawan’s invisible rope swung her against the building three levels below. She crunched her legs up on impact, softening the thud she made when her boots hit, then walked up the wall and onto the roof with Levi’s help.

The pair took off running for the far side and began an equally quiet exodus from the city.

7

October 12, 2735

Noop System

Tieor

Jenna shot one of the Varshoo infantry in the face with a stun pistol, dropping it to the ground as she ran past and hopped over the short wall on the perimeter of the park that nestled up against one of the partially captured cities. Most of the fighting was over, but a full quarter had still to be pacified. That sort of street and in-building fighting wasn’t suited to the Skarron walker, so it had been positioned in the park so it could guard the city against any heavy tank retaliation while intimidating those within by its mere presence.

But it wasn’t alone. After the takedown of the other Skarron walker at the hands of the Marauders, the Varshoo had surrounded their second key chess piece with an army of tanks and infantry that had not moved into the city limits. The exterior park sat nestled up against the northern border and was partially encroached on by a forest, with the city and the eastern and western approaches covered in wide open grasslands where the walker had done the majority of its damage against Seriprin’s perimeter defense turrets.

Right now the Marauders were approaching over land, but at a considerable distance. Whether the Varshoo were aware of that or not the Archon didn’t know, but there was no way they could miss the Valeries streaking over the city and hitting selective targets within, all the while staying low enough and positioning themselves on the other side of buildings to keep away from any potential spray from the Type-5. So far it hadn’t responded, having no real anti-air weaponry of its own, and sat parked in a large picnic area that was perfectly flat and covered with some type of short, blue grass, looking like it was a statue that belonged there.

The tanks ringing it were on the eastern and western sides, given that those were the overland approaches. The south was the city where more of their tanks were roaming about and securing those sections they’d already taken, but the north wasn’t covered by vehicles. There was a decent amount of infantry spread out there, but it was the Marauder rail gun tanks that the Varshoo appeared most worried about.

That left the pair of Archons with a window of opportunity, if they were fast enough. As Jenna crossed the low wall and entered the park on the northern border Levi did the same some 400 meters away to the west, stunning a few infantry as he passed them. Both of them were running casually towards the south where the walker was, but they accelerated up to a near sprint as they got into the clear and out on the wide open tracts of the park that were segmented by rows of trees and clumps of bushes and ornate flowers.

Jenna zapped another Varshoo soldier as she ran by, hitting him at a range of some 20 meters, after which she tucked her pistol away onto her back rack and just focused on her movement. They weren’t here to fight it out, despite a long argument she’d had with the merc commander. He seemed to think this was exactly Star Force’s type of work, but given that he’d quit the military he didn’t get to carry such opinions anymore. Jenna didn’t mind stunning the Varshoo when she came across them, but she wasn’t about to start killing them.

There was a fight here, to be sure, and every fight was potentially Archon business, but this was one of those times when, in order to fix the problem at hand, you’d have to fight both sides and take control of the planet for yourself. That was outside of her reach, so she and Levi were going to back off and let this play out without them. Jenna didn’t like that, but sometimes it was more important to keep yourself righteous than to worry about the outcome, and this was, unfortunately, one of those cases.

The issue of defense wasn’t enough for her to come down on the locals’ side, and the merc commander had even admitted that he was here for the payday more than for any concern about the planet…though he had pressed the significance of this world to the surrounding region. That may have been true, but the locals weren’t exactly upstanding individuals and a change might do some good. If that change occurred through bloodshed it was unacceptable, but if she couldn’t stop it from happening she wasn’t going to contribute to it with the same.

Brayden had been insistent that he was going to keep the Marauders here and try to win this fight, but that he’d need Star Force’s help to do it. Jenna had reminded him that even if she helped him fight off this invasion, they wouldn’t be sticking around to protect the planet thereafter. Then, after even more arguing she offered him a limited amount of help, which he politely accepted. They sealed the deal with a handshake, skin to skin, which gave her a quick glimpse at his thoughts.

That quick access was all she needed, for she was very good at reading Humans. A lot of the concerns she’d had about the mercenaries evaporated, but it was clear they weren’t Star Force troops anymore. A lot of what they had once been still remained, and because of that the planet might be a little better off if they did indeed prevail, but the merc commander was definitely being driven by credits and reputation, seeing this as the biggest opportunity his unit had ever had and wanting to climb the ranks in militants for hire crowd.

So as they’d planned, his troops were on their way here…but not to attack the walker. That was reserved for the Archons.

As Jenna and Levi ran towards the Type-5 the gap between them diminished, with them eventually coming together on a stone courtyard with the big, elevated golf ball visible across the next line of trees. Around them a scattering of infantry took notice and fired a few shots off at them, but they were running so fast that when they missed they didn’t get a second shot. Jenna saw one of the tanks on the western side of her park battlemap begin to move their way, but it was going to be too late.

They had a straight line approach to the walker, with only some infantry units in between and they weren’t going to engage them. Before the Archons hit the trees they linked up in battlemeld, with Levi’s psionic component of Neritu adding considerable range and power to Jenna’s Ikrid, letting her stretch out all the way to the distant walker and probe the minds inside as they ran.

She could feel them, but the range was still too great for her to access them enough to assert control. The question was how close would they actually have to get, and would it involve dodging plasma blasts. Both Archons thought they could do it from at least plasma spit range, but with the bit of available terrain in the park they had a backup plan if their strength wasn’t enough.

Jenna took the lead on this due to her greater skill, for identifying the minds was easy compared to accessing them. New races, new difficulties…and that meant she needed more time and power to do the necessary override work.

Meanwhile the pair raced forward, looking for all the world like they were intent on committing suicide. The infantry tried to stop them, but the shields on the Archons’ armor held up against the few lachar blasts that hit. Levi crossed in front of Jenna as a group of three Varshoo tried to block their path and rammed them aside, clearing the road for her to keep running and as much attention on the walker as possible. Once past that group they were in the clear, literally, for the trees had disappeared behind them and they were now out on the open picnic area where the walker stood motionless.

Tanks were on approach from the west, but given their rate of advancement and the Archons’ running speed they were going to be kept out of this little battle, so long as Jenna didn’t have to delay their approach.

That almost happened, for she could feel the gunners begin focusing the walker’s plasma cannons in their direction, ready to pepper the ground in front of the two fast moving infantry and either kill them or cause them to veer off. At the last moment she got control of the one in charge of the batteries on their side of the walker and froze him in place. That was easier than making him power down the weapons, and as the Archons ate up more meters of their approach she was able to freeze another of the crew.

Technically both Jenna and Levi were doing the freezing, but he let her lead their combined effort, though he could ‘see’ everything that she was doing, and vice versa. The mental strain was significant, but it was also shared by them both, making it manageable enough for them to disable the crew and keep the walker standing still and quiet as a statue as they raced their way towards it, trying to beat the approaching tanks.

When they got within 400 meters they had enough power to assert remote control over one of the crew, with Jenna instructing him to lower the boarding ramp. She managed to do it with a suggestive impulse rather than having to play puppet with him, which was fortuntate, for at this range that would have been difficult with them both being on the run. Had the individual been more mentally resistant it could have caused them problems given the unfamiliarity of his mental structure.

A lachar blast streaked across in front of them, but the infantry weapon had been fired at considerable range from the east with little chance of hitting. There were more soldiers over there, now running towards the Archons who were nearly at the walker’s feet. With the boarding ramp lowering and no return fire coming from the Type-5, the rest of the Varshoo knew something was wrong, but they weren’t going to have the chance to do anything about it, even if they managed to get a few lucky shots in.

A bit of plasma spit burnt through the grass ahead of them as one of the tanks made a long range shot, but the air had dissipated it so much that it was no threat to a fully armored soldier. Jenna and Levi ran through the low flames and jumped up onto the boarding ramp before it was completely lowered and climbed up the ladder-like contraption, disappearing inside the walker.

Jenna had the crew raise it immediately, with the two Archons crawling up inside the contraption the Varshoo had created to allow their pilots to operate the device. In sync, the two Archons pulled out their stun weapons and shot all four of the crew, relieving them of the need to keep their minds suppressed or frozen.

“Woo…that worked,” Levi commented as he released the battlemeld link to his master and started pulling bodies out of the chairs and dumping them on the floor. “Can I drive?”

“Help yourself,” Jenna said, sitting down and accessing her battlemap. “Holler if you need help.”

Levi grabbed a seat and went meditative, crossing his arms and legs and doing his best impression of Yoda, knowing that the way to drive one of these was telekinetically in order to compensate for the physical differences between Human and Skarron. This wasn’t the first time he’d driven one, for he’d trained on a mockup simulator along with a lot of other Skarron and lizard craft, as all the veteran Archons had.

Outside one of the giant legs pushed off and tilted the Type-5 ever so slightly to the side, then it stumbled forward taking a short step and establishing the robotic gait that they were known for. Watching the display screens so he didn’t step on anyone, he began walking the giant machine forward and beginning a turn towards the west.

Jenna waited a heartbeat, then telekinetically reached out and flipped on the shields.

“Duh, thanks,” Levi said as the tanks approached. They didn’t fire on the walker, not sure what was going on, and the Archon didn’t fire back. They were just going to deny the Varshoo the war machine that they didn’t deserve, leaving the primitives to fight this messy war using their own tech.

Whether out of confusion or prudence, the tanks never fired on the walker, but they did run alongside it as Levi drove it to the west towards the approaching Marauders. Jenna got a commlink to Brayden and confirmed their rendezvous point, which the walker would reach in two hours. The Marauders beat them to it and secured the area, fighting off the Varshoo tanks and forcing the survivors to abandon their charge and retreat back towards the city.

Once they were gone Jenna lowered the boarding ramp and helped drag the crew out one at a time down to the surface where Brayden and several other mercs waited. A Star Force dropship had already arrived, escorted in by the merc Valeries, and a group of commandos came out to Jenna, taking the prisoners off their hands and carrying them back to the dropship. She let Levi handle the others while she stepped off to the side to talk with Brayden.

“Don’t make me regret this,” she warned.

“You made that look easy,” the merc commented, pulling his helmet off.

Jenna left hers on, and he should have too. One rogue sniper shot would be all it would take to end his day in a very bad way. Yet another sign that these people were no longer Star Force, and starting to pick up some bad habits.

“I ought to blow it up.”

Brayden shook his head. “No, we’ll put it to good use. I promise.”

“I’m taking a chance on you, and the sad this is I won’t be around to find out if I’m right or not.”

“Any chance of getting some naval assistance on your way out?”

“No.”

Brayden sighed. “Very well. You’ve aided us quite a bit already. The new toy aside, it would have taken everything we had left to take it down, and that was after weeks of refit to our surviving tanks, so you have our thanks.”

“We came here for the intel, not the war, but you’re welcome. Just don’t try to use that thing without some practice. It’d be a shame if you broke it the first mission out.”

“We’ll take real good care of it, you can count on that. Do you want us to take the crew?”

“No, we’ll be dropping them off on our way out.”

“Where?”

“Near one of their bases.”

“Why not a prison?”

“We stole their ride. We’re not taking sides. You get the walker because I trust you. I don’t have the same confidence with the local defense force.”

“You mean what’s left of them.”

“From here on out you’re on your own. If the Varshoo bring in any other toys, we’re not coming back to deal with them.”

“Fair enough,” he said as Levi came down with the last one and handed him off to the commandos, then walked up beside Jenna.

“Keys are in the ignition.”

“Control keys?” Brayden asked.

“Just an expression,” Jenna answered. “You can figure out the details on your own.”

Without another word the pair walked off towards their dropship, but Brayden wasn’t going to leave it at that.

“Not to sound like an ingrate,” he shouted after them, “but I get the feeling you don’t like us very much.”

Jenna turned around. “No, I don’t.”

“Why?”

“You’re a quitter,” she said flatly.

“If we weren’t out here, the frontier would be a little more messier than it is now.”

“Not the point.”

“So you just don’t like the fact that we’re doing things on our own now?”

“If I didn’t think you were doing some good, I wouldn’t be giving you the walker.”

“So why the animosity?”

“You left the team, and now you want me to treat you like you’re still one of us. You can’t have it both ways. You wanted out, now you’re out.”

“So that’s the way it is?”

“That’s the way it is,” Jenna echoed.

“As you wish,” Brayden said, putting his helmet back on.

Jenna turned around and walked off towards the waiting dropship with Levi, leaving the mercs to do their thing and wanting to get away from the mess of a planet that was Tieor.

8

October 14, 2735

Ma’kri Jor-El

Mid Jump

Jenna twirled her stun sword around once, accelerating the top half of the loop and using the force to negate the sideways slash from Levi’s double-bladed weapon. The two tubular blades met with a slight ping as the energy matrixes met and canceled each other out, resulting in no flow of the energy with the physical contact. The sound was muted, for the swords were set to a very low setting, but still there was a bit of FX where every blade crossed, adding a bit of energy to the rather standard training drill.

Levi held the blades together for a moment, then reverse-slashed with the other half of his weapon, aiming for Jenna’s right shoulder as he tried to keep pressure on her blade to delay its movement. The mage wasn’t so easily suckered, and she took a half step back before she pushed off a few inches and snapped her blade across her body and blocked the second hit from the double sword with another ping on contact.

Then it was Levi’s turn to backstep as he reset himself with a twirl of his twin blades around the safe central portion of the sword. He didn’t take long to lunge back in, blade pointed towards Jenna’s midsection in a jab attempt that he knew she would easily block. When she did, batting the blade aside and setting herself up for a possible slash of her own with a step to his left, the padawan dropped down onto his heels and spun, bringing the other side of his sword around behind him toward her legs.

Jenna hopped over it, but while she was in the air Levi had a movement advantage and used it to enhance his spin, so that when she did land the other side of his body had rotated around and brought the back half of the sword with it, headed towards the side of her leg as she landed. It didn’t hit, for Jenna had dropped her own sword alongside her leg to catch the blow, but Levi pushed hard and got his master’s own blade to move towards her leg and nip at her boot.

Jenna felt a tingle of numbness enter her foot, but it wasn’t enough to trip her up. She responded by yanking her foot back and planting the tip of her sword into the floor of the training room, using the solid rod to pivot on while Levi twirled back in reverse to stand himself up. With the elder Archon now leaning forward, she let go pressure on the sword and used her off balance stance to propel herself forward as she brought the sword across to her other side, tip pointed down to catch Levi’s blade whether he was intending to hit her or not.

A step later and she was inside his swinging arc, bringing her right knee up and nailing him in the gut. With a telekinetic tug she threw him off her knee and onto his butt, landing her sword in the crevice between his chin and chest, an inch and a half away from touching his throat. She pulled back immediately, having finished that maneuver on reflex more than intent, and stood a couple meters away while he stood up.

“Sorry,” she offered, for this training session wasn’t supposed to be a full blown sparring match.

“So much for defense only,” Levi commented. “What’s wrong?”

“Just a little twitchy.”

“Why?” he asked, bringing half of his sword up in front of him in a guard stance, with Jenna likewise resuming a defensive position.

I don’t know, she said telepathically as Levi came back at her, making two quick slashes with the same side of the sword before throwing in a reverse that forced Jenna to switch her sword from one side of her body to the other. But that was a good hit.

You had it blocked, he said, continuing to lightly spar with her, focusing on the transition between movements more than the force of the blows.

Not well enough.

That’s my point. What’s wrong?

Jenna focused a bit more and met the next three slashes with crisp returns, then added force to the fourth, nearly knocking the double blade out of Levi’s hands as she batted it away to her left.

“It’s not me, it’s you,” she said aloud. “It’s like you’re not trying very hard, so I ease off then you slip it back up. If you’re doing it on purpose I’ll beat the crap out of you, but I don’t think you are.”

Levi winced. “Actually, I was.”

Jenna glared at him. “That’s not the point of this drill.”

“No it’s not, but something isn’t right with you so I was probing. And when I made a hit you seemed to take it personally.”

Jenna swung her sword to the side, lowering it almost to where the point touched the floor, and raised her other hand in exasperation. “I guess I just don’t like walking away from a fight.”

“Who does? That shouldn’t throw you off your game. Your head’s not fully into the training, you’re just acting out of reflex…and not to brag too much, but I’m too strong and know your techniques too well for you to hold me off with even a slightly disfocused effort.”

Jenna shut the power off on her sword, then retracted it back down into the handle. “Part of my head is still back on Tieor. We had to walk away, but part of me still thinks we should be back there saving lives rather than here training.”

“So we go back then,” Levi said simply.

“And do what?”

“You tell me.”

“No, don’t give me that bullshit. If you have a suggestion just spit it out.”

“I don’t, actually. But if you feel like we need to be there, then why not go back and see what we can do to help out.”

“We’ve already taken out the walker. What more would you suggest?”

“I suggest you quit beating around the bush and tell me what’s really bothering you.”

Jenna put her hands on her hips, starting to get annoyed, but as she thought it through she realized Levi was right.

“I think I screwed up.”

Her apprentice frowned. “How?”

“By picking a side.”

“We didn’t kill anyone, and the Varshoo have no business invading planets and killing people, no matter what their situation is back home.”

“But that walker we gave the mercs will kill people, which means we did take a side and got involved in the fight…then didn’t fully commit.”

“I’m sure there’s plenty of war to go around if you want to go back and pick up where we left off.”

Jenna shook her head. “We can’t, and you know it.”

“I do know it, but apparently part of your head doesn’t.”

“Then explain it for me.”

Levi deactivated and retracted his sword, then tossed the extra-long hilt aside onto the mat. He counted off points on his fingers.

“One, we’re not going to help the Varshoo take over the planet. If that was ever an objective we’d have to do it without killing anyone, and we don’t have the means to do that out here. We could help them take over and reduce the losses to the native population, but we’d still be assisting those in the bloodshed, which is unacceptable.”

“Two, we can’t defend the planet for the same reason. If this was a lizard invasion it would be different, because we kill those bastards on sight. Skarrons more or less the same thing. The Varshoo aren’t our enemy. Maybe they deserve to be, but they’re not right now, and we go through a series of procedures to deal with ‘not so friendlies,’ which we’re not in a position to do here.”

“Three, Tieor isn’t an ally. If it was, we’d fight whoever was attacking them. Are they on the defense, yes, and that makes me, at least, sympathetic to their plight and wanting to assist, but if we’re going to fight a war to save them it has to be our kind of war. We can’t do that here, other than in small respects, and those would be aiding a planet full of people that might very well go attack someone else later. Maybe this attack is a reprisal for one that Tieor made against the Varshoo. Until we can determine who is in the right, all we can do is block the fighting through nonlethal means. Can we do that for the entire planet?”

“No,” Jenna admitted.

“Four, we have the mercenaries. There are a lot involved in the fighting, but having one unit made up of our former brothers and sisters throws a wrinkle on the situation. I want to view them as allies, but they left and are not entirely trustworthy simply for that fact. I have to keep myself from making the mistake of treating them like other commandos. They may have been once, but they’re not now. My gut says to aid them in battle, and leaving definitely doesn’t feel right if you’re looking at it simply from that perspective.”

“Five, we came here to track down the Skarron link, and there is none. Our original mission is complete, but because we involved ourselves with the mercs we got entangled in a fight that we didn’t finish. I know that leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth, but we did save them from having to take on the second walker by themselves. It probably would have trashed what was left of their unit if they tried, and they were definitely going to try after taking down the first one. We threw our former guys a bone, simple as that.”

“And what if they use that bone to hurt somebody they shouldn’t?”

“The same could be said of the Hycre when we gave them cleansing beams. We can’t monitor everything they do.”

“I wasn’t the one that made that call.”

“And I wasn’t the one that made the call on the walker,” Levi added. “But I agree with it. Those mercs are the only partially honorable part involved in that war. Better to leave it in their hands than the Varshoo.”

“When you put it that way it seems pretty simple.”

“It is simple, when you analyze it.”

“Thank you. I’m more of a counterpuncher than anything, so you made things a lot clearer by laying it out and letting me react to the logic rather than trying to produce it.”

“So you’re good now?”

“Yes,” she said, pushing the button on her stun sword and extending the blade, followed by a whisper of a ping when the energy activated. Levi telekinetically pulled his back into his hands and brandished both blades, then ran a step towards her and began a series of hits and counter hits, seeing in evidence her returned focus.

He amped up his intensity, applying more power to each hit, and she responded in kind for more than a minute, then she quickly shifted to offense and proved yet again why she was the master and he the apprentice, for she got inside his defenses within five moves, then shoved an open palm into his chest, knocking him backwards and adding to it with a telekinetic shove that took him further away from her, but Levi did manage to remain on his feet.

“We are so going back,” she said, standing her ground.

Levi looked at her for a moment with a blank expression, then a grin spread across his face. “You have a plan?”

“It’s amazing how clear your mind can become when you decide to say ‘fuck it all,’” she said, waving him forward with her free hand as she set herself into a guard pose with the blade level over her head.

“What am I missing?” he said, readying himself for another lunging attack.

“A bit of recklessness.”

Levi considered that for a moment, then his eyes went wide with understanding. “No way.”

“Yes way, youngling.”

“It won’t work.”

“Probably not…which is what makes it a worthy challenge.”

“And if we fail?”

“Hence the reckless part.”

Levi raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”

“I’m through letting circumstances dictate my actions. Time we do the dictating,” she said, waving him forward again.

Levi twirled the double blades around. “You lead, I’ll follow,” he said just before launching himself at her and engaging in another rapid fire crisscrossing of stun blades.

When the Jor-El returned to Tieor it didn’t deploy a dropship to take the two Archons back to the surface, rather it headed straight towards the largest warship the Varshoo had and launched a Nami at it. The powered missile shot ahead of the Ma’kri and decelerated rapidly as it came up next to the target vessel, which hadn’t bothered to move. It did have its shields raised, but they did nothing to stop the IDF bubble from going up and snaring the warship in place.

The other warships nearby did move when the Star Force vessel came in close, not knowing of its strength, but clearly seeing that it was larger than any of them. To counter it they moved a fleet in around the knife-like ship and opened fire…with the Jor-El simply ignoring their pathetic attacks and moving up over top of the target warship and the Nami holding it in place.

A few pinpoint mauler blasts brought the ship’s shields down, followed by a few more that plucked away the ship’s upper weapon batteries. Once those were down the Ma’kri extended its own shields around the captured ship and sent a dropship equipped with breaching gear down to the hull, where it cut and installed its own airlock in the Varshoo ship.

Through that breach point two sets of armor followed, with it resealing behind Jenna and Levi and the dropship returning to the Ma’kri. There was an assortment of Star Force troops onboard that they could have used for this sort of assault, but the Archons had decided that the risks for this operation were going to be theirs alone…which would allow them to be as reckless as they liked without having to worry about protecting anyone else.

As the Varshoo ships were seeing, the Ma’kri was so powerful that it didn’t even need to bother shooting back at their fleet and simply absorbed all the damage they could dish out while Jenna and Levi fought their way through the enemy ship with a combination of stun weapons and psionics. The confined corridors were an advantage to them, given that the Varshoo couldn’t mass any real weaponsfire against them, not to mention that the Archons could see through the walls, doors, and around corners with their Pefbar, giving them dominance in that fact alone, ignoring the rest of their long list of advantages.

The two stayed together for the first bit of the boarding action, then after seeing the next to no resistance that they were getting decided to split up in order to subdue the crew faster. It took no more than 12 minutes to get to them all, stunning them into captivity and taking command of the bridge. There they locked down the ship and proceeded to begin collecting the crew of over 800 and dragging them into the hangar bays where a flock of dropships came in to pick them up.

All the while the other Varshoo ships continued firing on the Jor-El up until it fired another Nami at a distant cargo ship that was far larger than any of the enemy warships. Pulling the captured vessel that the Archons were on with it, the Ma’kri moved over to and landed another dropship on it. Levi took to subduing that vessel himself, then a series of commandos, Knights, and techs came over to it from the Ma’kri and began setting up the cargo ship as a makeshift prison, with Jenna finishing the transfer of her prisoners over to it, leaving the captured warship unoccupied.

When the Ma’kri had moved only a couple of Varshoo ships followed it, with the others staying back out of fear, and rightly so, for less than an hour after the cargo ship was taken two more missiles shot out and caught the warships nearby, with the big ship abandoning its other captives and flying to disable their weapons before delivering Jenna to one and Levi to the other, both of whom made short work of the crew and began carrying their bodies one or two at a time to the hangar bays for pickup and transfer to the prison ship.

It was after those two additional warships were captured that Jenna finally sent a message out to the Varshoo fleet, instructing them to either flee the system or surrender, with the threat of similar seizures extended to their vessels as well. Their cargo fleet heeded the warning and immediately began withdrawing to a ‘safe’ distance, but their warships lingered in planetary orbit up until the Ma’kri eventually shot after another one, displaying far superior engines to anything the Varshoo had seen before, the Skarrons included.

When that warship was hit with a Nami, disarmed, and captured within the Ma’kri’s shields, the rest of the Varshoo fleet ran off elsewhere in the system to be tracked down later, for only one enemy jumpship was insystem and it loaded up as many vessels as it could and took off before it too could become a victim of the mystery ship, carrying with it the news and warning back to the nearest Varshoo staging base.

9

October 25, 2735

Noop System

Tieor

With the Marauders providing air cover, Jenna and Levi made an aerial jump into the city of Lethol, coming down onto one of the city streets rather than a rooftop. As soon as they hit ground they were off and running down the mostly empty streets, looking for targets. They dispatched the first few handful of Varshoo soldiers with stun blasts on their way towards the main barracks the invaders had set up, then ran up against a unit of 20+ that were coming out to meet them as more were being roused from their bunks or other duties.

The two Archons were the only ground troops assaulting the city, but the Marauder fighters overhead had made it clear that Lethol was under attack. Still, no one had known where the pair was coming down, so they still had a great deal of maneuvering options within the city if they chose to use them.

But they didn’t. They weren’t here to evade the troops, but to confront them head on.

Already in battlemeld, Jenna and Levi split up and moved to opposite sides of the street as they ran towards the lachar shots coming at them, most of which missed but with a few impacting on their shields. With their footspeed that wasn’t going to be a problem, but if they let groupings like this have time to throw a lot of firepower into their armor then they could get into trouble really quick.

Activating their Lew ability, the Archons created an invisible energy conduit between the two of them that would transmit Ikrid stimuli on contact. When they got to the attackers they didn’t shoot back or dive into their midst, but rather ran along the walls and bypassed them, with Levi having to punch one out of the way as he did so.

When the energy field passed through the troops they dropped over unconscious, as if Jenna had individually targeted each of their minds and put them to sleep, which she could have, but Lew made it far easier because once activated neither Archon had to focus to get the desired effect, just get the invisible ribbon into contact with them.

There was a limit to how far they could stretch it, and unfortunately it wasn’t lengthy enough to allow them to circumvent an entire building, but they did manage to widen their formation a bit when they came out onto the courtyard in front of the hotel that the Varshoo had claimed for use as their barracks. They managed to catch another few dozen scattered around the area, with Jenna firing a shot wide left to catch another outside the Lew clothesline.

All the others were within that effective range, so the Archons simply ran up to the barracks’ main door and took down the few more that were coming out to fight…then they simply stood on either side out of sight and let them run out into the trap, toppling to the ground unconscious as soon as they hit the invisible barrier. Jenna and Levi used their Nemsa ability to strengthen their combined telekinesis and dragged the bodies to the side, stacking them up in neat little rows to keep the center lane clear and not give any clue that there was actually a trap waiting for the Varshoo as they continued to scramble out.

They took down over 300 soldiers with that trick before the flow finally ceased, then the pair went inside and hunted down the few remaining stragglers, clearing and reclaiming the barracks before they moved off elsewhere in the captured city and eliminated the remaining guards, for most of the Varshoo assault troops had moved on to contested sites, not expecting any major counterattack here.

It took over 12 hours to search the city and eliminate the remaining pockets of Varshoo personnel, for which they had to rely on a lot of local tips once the captured denizens thought it safe enough to start helping them out. The Marauders handled those information duties after they set down a collection team within the first hour and began picking up the unconscious prisoners as per their agreement with Star Force that Jenna had hammered out with Brayden, who was more than grateful for their return, but not immediately keen on her plan. That said, he wasn’t about to turn down the kind of help they could offer, and eventually agreed to her terms.

With Lethol recaptured, they were essentially putting up a huge middle finger to the Varshoo, made all the worse by the orbital beatdown that had already been exacted. Jenna followed both with an edict to the invading troops across the planet, ordering them to withdraw immediately and they would be allowed to leave the planet. If not, she and her apprentice would be coming after them.

The Marauders made sure to capture, and then distribute images of how the two soldiers had taken down the entire defense team left in Lethol, hopefully sowing some fear into the rest of the Varshoo, but whatever effect it might have had wasn’t noticeable, for their armies didn’t even bother to respond, continuing their pushes into other areas of the planet and further whittling down what remained of the planetary defense force and their allied mercenary units.

Jenna had expected that would be too easy a victory, but the edict had to be given to set the groundwork for events to come. So as the Marauders collected the prisoners, took possession of the city and helped to see to its population’s needs, and loaded the captives onboard Star Force dropships so they could be taken up to the fleet of now prison ships for safekeeping, the two Archons redeployed themselves out to one of the primary zones of conflict rather than going after another guard force in an already captured city.

Deciding to bite off the biggest amount they could chew, in order to make the biggest impression and test their skills before battle fatigue had a chance to set in, they had a dropship take them to the outskirts of Hamrathor, where the largest Varshoo army was stationed and currently pummeling a third of the city.

“You ready for this?” Jenna asked.

“Are you?” Levi echoed.

“Run and gun and don’t look back,” she advised.

“And when we run out of stun rounds?”

“We improvise, but no killing on our part.”

“And if the others have different ideas?”

“We can’t control them, so just focus on us.”

“This is still crazy,” Levi emphasized.

“We can call it off if you’re not feeling it,” she said, knowing that the only way they were going to survive this was as a pair.

“Fortunately for you, I happen to like crazy,” he said, looking across the grassy plain towards the city edge and the surrounding tanks as he flexed his armored fingers in anticipation. “Let’s bring some civilization to the savages.”

Jenna felt his battlemeld prompt and accepted it, with their minds linking and able to read each other’s senses. Now they had four eyes, four ears, and two bodies’ worth of stimulai between them, not to mention a host of special psionics at their disposal. Levi was still missing several, but the ones he’d already developed would serve them well, and she’d need him and his skills augmenting her own in order to have a chance of pulling this off.

Without a word between them, the two began running forward across the grass and up to cruising speed as they looked ahead at the remains of one defense turret on the far left and the tanks that were currently assaulting another one far right. They were running directly towards their flank, which had hundreds of infantry in columns with them…and that was just the units on this side of the city. Thousands more were already inside, with their air cover swirling about shooting targets on the ground with no opposition coming from the air, just an occasional anti-air burst from a surface battery or defense tank.

Halfway across their run the pair of fighters that had futilely chased off the Archons’ dropship turned back and angled towards the pair of fast moving dots in the grass, stitching the ground around them with plasma fire, which got the attention of the infantry ahead, who turned in their direction now that they’d located the well-known threats, for those two suits of armor were now infamous on the planet after the recent broadcasts.

Suddenly one of the aerofighters stopped firing and took a nosedive towards the ground, pulling up just shy of crashing and skidding across the dirt into a gentle tumble as the other one bathed the two Archons in plasma, igniting fires in the grass around and ahead of them before flying by and making a long arc to circle back around, but as it did so the two suits of armor emerged from the smoke still at a run, heading for the infantry ahead of them and the tanks behind that were busy exchanging fire with the defense tower that was on its last leg.

The infantry wisely stopped their advance and took up firing positions, forming rows and waiting for the enemy to come to them. That waiting didn’t involve holding their fire though, with the first row taking wild shots at range that began to narrow in on the Archons, who didn’t bother to do more than throw a little weave into their running approach.

With the fighter circling back around, it was going to get one more pass against them before they met up with the infantry, but as it moved back towards plasma range the dots increased speed beyond anything that should have been physically possible, then one of them shot forward even faster, flying through the air like a cannonball and landing in the front line of infantry…which collapsed around his impact point, dropping over a hundred men to the ground instantly.

The fighter had a brief window of opportunity to shoot the other one and accelerated in low to the ground and stitched a long line of red plasma orbs up to the enemy soldier, then tipped the targeting reticule down to try and keep the damage pouring on that spot as the fighter continued to move forward. When it was almost overtop the target the pilot blacked out, then his ship nosed into the ground and flip over end for end until it eventually skidded to a stop in a long furrow of dirt off to the side.

With the rest of the Varshoo fighters further off and no immediate threat, Jenna finished her run up to the infantry and threw a linked telekinetic wall at a group of them that still maintained formation off to their left and were peppering Levi with blasts. His shield were already weakened from the fighter damage, and now they were getting hammered hard by the dozens of lachar hits. Small as they were they added up, and it would take time for their shields to replenish themselves once they found cover.

Except that there was no cover.

They knocked down 11 of them, taking them temporarily out of the fight as Levi ran around the others, using a Fornax field to keep them twitching on the ground while he chucked a few stun grenades into the mix, taking the opportunity to down dozens of them before they could get up again. Once Jenna got up to him they split and used their Lew to run around and knock out more of them, all the while their shields were dropping into the danger zone.

Before they got through them all Levi’s went down and his brown armor started taking a few dings from the lachars, but those quickly stopped as he threw up a bioshield over himself. That matrix had less power behind it, but its design was so much more advanced that it was essentially worth 60% of the technological version so long as he sustained the effort.

Jenna still had some regular shields left, so she kept sprinting around and dragging their Lew line across the infantry and knocking them unconscious with the invisible hits until one of the tank shots impacted the ground a meter in front of her, with the concussion of superheated air knocking her up and off her feet momentarily.

She landed in charred grass, immediately pivoting to her right and darting to the side to throw off the next salvo. With her shields down to a sliver, she put up her own bioshield and let them start to recharge, catching a handful of lachar blasts that kept coming her way. Throwing in several deviations in her running path she managed to dodge some of them, but there was a continual chain of hits wearing her down, as was expected.

There was no way around that, given the frontal approach they were taking, but they’d almost gotten the infantry mowed down to adequate size for them to throw their finishing move…but the tanks were going to be a problem, for they were out of range and now coming after them with the defense turret no longer showing any return fire.

Jenna knew they had to hurry, so after running around and knocking down another 20 or so Varshoo with their Lew, the Archons came back together and huddled up, with Levi literally wrapping his arms around Jenna as they took a knee, trying to present as small of a target as possible. His bioshield combined with hers, linking together as the Cerden ability allowed, and grew far stronger with the bond, allowing the next tank shot to hit and not breach.

They were extra vulnerable while stationary, but both of them had to concentrate in order to bring the Jini saturation levels up to what they needed. It took a long few seconds, during which the lachar blasts honed in on their position from the surrounding infantry and added to the damage a second tank plasma blast did, along with a partial third from another tank now gaining a firing line on them.

One second more was all they needed, then together they emitted the Jini, sending out an Ikrid bomb similar to the Lew, except that this one reached out like lightning strikes and hit any mind within range, draining part of their charge without any conscious control or effort.

The remaining infantry from the initial firefight, as well as those that had come over from the other side of the tank formation, toppled to the ground unconscious with those closest to the Archons going down a split second sooner than the ones further out as if a giant tidal wave had hit them. The more minds taken down, the less charge there was to continue spreading out, but unlike an Ikrid link this effect had no range limit, so long as there were links in the chain to jump from.

The infantry soaked up most of the Jini, but some managed to travel through them to the nearest of the tanks, taking out four of their crews and leaving them intact, but inoperable. That left Jenna and Levi huddled together with a moment of peace, as no more incoming weaponfire was hitting their combined bioshield that was just a thin shell remaining around them.

Both of them knew they couldn’t waste time, so they dropped the protective barrier and stood up, sprinting towards the dead tanks and using them as cover as they closed with the rest of them. Soon they were running around the blocks and into view, dodging some more large plasma blasts until they got within Fornax range. Those they sent out individually, splitting up and heading towards different tanks, momentarily disrupting the crews of the closest ones until they could get within sound Ikrid range, then each Archon accessed the minds inside and put them to sleep, Levi one at a time while Jenna managed two or three with each connection.

That left a handful of tanks remaining that had been closest to the city defense turret. Sprinting towards those Jenna juked to the left right before she expected the next plasma blast to be fired, but the stupid gunner fired a bad shot and missed to his right…meaning Jenna dashed directly into its blast point.

She reflexively threw up her bioshield just before it hit, but it punched through with ease then ate through her armor’s shields, knocking her down and melting the outer layer of her armor. Stunned by the hit, she reached out with her mind while her arms grasped for the ground to roll herself over and stand up, finding the tank that’d shot her and throwing a Fornax blast that way to try and buy herself time. The range wasn’t good, but her shot hit, causing the crew to twitch uncontrollably for a moment, but by the time they got their hands back on the controls and shook off the ‘what just happened?’ confusion, Jenna was back on her feet and moving again.

Levi got to the tank before she did, already having knocked out another. They finished the last ones off without taking another plasma blast to the face, then ran together over to the city’s outer wall and took cover alongside it, melting against the five meter tall barrier as a scattering of aerofighters passed by overhead…but at the moment they weren’t interested in them.

Levi had felt Jenna take the hit, still linked in battlemeld as they were, so there was no need for questions. He knew her status, just as she knew his, and they both knew they had to lay low a bit to let their armor and bioshields recharge before they entered the city and went after far more troops than they’d just taken down now…though they’d have the advantage of cover to work with.

While they waited, Jenna got on her suit’s comm and got a line to the Marauders.

“Send in the Valeries and get those fighters down near us if you can. We’ll hold here and try to help you pick them off if you can get them close enough. Send the transports immediately. We’ll cover them on the ground if we have to, but you have to get to these tanks and infantry before they wake up. I don’t want to have to take them down twice.”

“We’re on our way,” Brayden answered. “For the record, I have no idea how you just did that.”

“Archon secrets.”

“Are you injured? Looked like you took a direct tank blast.”

“Yeah, not one of my better moments. Got a little cooked, but I’m fine.”

“Valeries will be there in…seven minutes. You good till then?”

“Yes, but get them to chase them as low as they can near us.”

“Still want to take the pilots alive?”

“That and our range isn’t very far.”

“We can take them down the hard way if needed.”

“Stick to the plan,” she said, with warning in her voice.

“Copy that. Just offering to make your job a little easier.”

“Don’t worry about easy, just pick up what we drop…including the brand new tanks we just bought you.”

“How much time do we have?”

“I’d safely assume half an hour. After that a few individuals might start waking up. If one of them happens to be a tank pilot…”

“We’ll be there in 20,” Brayden promised.

10

Levi ran down the narrow city street, throwing what felt like his billionth Fornax blast into a pair of soldiers ahead, then ran sideways and leapt up onto the wall, bounced off it with his right foot, and came down on the twitching Varshoo from above. The padawan knocked both down to the ground, pinning one against the paving stones with his armored knee while he dove into the other’s mind and took a pair of seconds to render it unconscious. He lingered for a third, making sure it went deep enough to stay out long enough to be retrieved, then he repeated the process with the other.

His head ached with both contacts, but he did his duty and made sure they were both out of commission for a while, then the pain relented a bit. He took off down the street again, headed towards one of the shopping centers that the Varshoo had taken and were now holed up in. Jenna was already there picking them apart, but she’d sent Levi out to clear the surrounding streets and cut off anyone fleeing the area. He’d taken down six others before this pair, and from his Ikrid ‘radar’ he could sense that there were no others coming out…at least not on this side of the large complex.

There were many ways in and out, and there was no way that only two of them could blockade the place, but the goal was to locate and disable the Varshoo soldiers…and if he could pick up a few more on the exterior with easy takedowns, then so be it.

He placed a beacon on the battlemap for the location of the downed pair then paid them no more attention. Periodically his and Jenna’s comm systems would transmit the beacon markers to the Marauders, letting them know where the unconscious troops were so they could get to them before they woke up…or the locals got to them. Between the citizens in the under siege city, the few remaining defense forces, and the handful of mercenary units present, there were a fair amount of people who would consider shooting the unconscious Varshoo if/when they realized that they were still alive and not dead.

The Marauders were running interference with them and collecting the prisoners while the two Archons did all the fighting, not wanting to risk anyone else or have to kill the attackers. The objective here wasn’t to take sides, but to stop the invasion, for neither the Varshoo nor Tieor were worthy of their trust. Jenna had decided to act in order to stop the carnage and to send a message, and neither she nor Levi had any illusions that they were saving the good guys from the bad. This was a fight against chaos and barbarism, and while they couldn’t stop everyone from dying they were sure as hell going to stick the middle finger up to the notion that they had to take a noninterference approach.

The few troops they had on the Ma’kri weren’t fighting, rather handling the prisoners in orbit, and it was going to stay that way. The two Archons had dived in over their heads here and they weren’t going to risk anyone else. The Marauders were already here and fighting so they didn’t care about them, plus they were taking the hardest work off the quitters’ hands anyway.

But it was taking a toll on Levi and Jenna, though more on the padawan. His armor had melted spots all over it, and he couldn’t count the number of times his shields had gone down over the past 8 hours. There had been over 20,000 Varshoo troops within the city, given initial estimates, and he and Jenna had gone through better than three quarters of them personally. He had no stun ammunition left, and his psionics were so overstressed his head was complaining even when he had brief moments like this to rest and recharge.

Power wasn’t the issue, he was just getting fried with every mental contact he made. Levi tried to alternate psionics to keep himself functioning, but even his Fornax tissue felt like it was fraying with each subsequent usage. He really could have used a stun sword right now, or even stun gauntlets, but their weapons had run dry early on, and even two subsequent ammo/weapon drops into the city had been expended given the number of troops the two of them were having to take down.

Ironically Jenna’s armor looked even worse than Levi’s, for she was trying to take the brunt of the fighting on herself. The two of them weren’t linking up with battlemeld anymore, for even that psionic was now painful. If they had to they’d briefly connect to take down a few troops, then it was back to old fashioned hand signals for most of their coordination, for they were so tired they didn’t even feel like speaking over the comm channels.

He’d been pushed this far a few times before in training, but never in combat. He knew the more activities he could eliminate the better, for his focus could then flow into the others and speaking was one such thing. Opening a comm channel and talking to Jenna was easy, but with his mind being so punch drunk it was almost a rule now not to talk, and since they were already using their arms for movement and fighting, throwing hand signals just seemed to be the most efficient way of communicating…even if in fact it was not.

Levi searched ahead with his Ikrid in a brief radar ping, getting the position of the people and sensing where Jenna was inside the complex, then he shut it off trying to minimize the continual frying. That wasn’t the wisest thing to do when in combat, but he had no choice. The city still had enemy troops in it and if he didn’t try some kind of prolonging tactics he was literally going to burn out and be unable to render people unconscious short of beating them there.

When he got back to the entrance he sent out another ping, then ran in and eventually caught up to Jenna. He immediately got a battlemeld request and accepted it, knowing exactly what to do as soon as they made the connection and her thoughts melded with his. Without even seeing her he ran across to the next hallway, turned the corner and activated their Lew, stretching the invisible barrier out painfully, then he and Jenna both ran down their respective hallways and swept the psionic ribbon through the entire store that a group of Varshoo were holed up inside.

When he got to the far end of that block he saw Jenna to his left as she relinquished the battlemeld. She ran towards him and signaled to the nearest door. Levi got there first and went inside, pushing past the barricades that had been set up and began looking around to confirm that they’d got everyone down. He used his eyes rather than his Ikrid and ran around the three-chambered store, seeing more than 40 Varshoo lying about where they’d fallen.

He pulsed once to make sure they were all down and not hiding behind some clothing rack, then he grabbed a few of the weapons nearby and tossed them aside for good measure before heading back out and following Jenna into another section of the shopping center where they tackled a trio of well-placed snipers, with her using her psionics to take them down from afar and sparing him the effort of doing so.

She pointed him to the right and the pair made their way back out into the hallways and to an alcove nearby where she gave him the ‘watch my back’ signal while she entered a doorway and disappeared inside. Levi stood guard in the hallway, watching both ways with his eyes rather than his overtaxed Pefbar for several minutes before she came up behind him and tagged him on the shoulder, then signaled for him to go inside.

Too tired to ask questions, he turned around and went in…suddenly finding himself in the local’s equivalent of a restroom.

He laughed, then walked over to a stall and hit the release on his armor. They’d both been fighting for hours and though his body had gone into a sort of stasis mode with the constant adrenaline pumping through him, his bladder had been mildly complaining for some time now. Apparently hers had been as well, and odd as it seemed, they weren’t going to go back to the ship to relieve themselves.

Yet another excellent reason for the master/apprentice pairings.

Levi stepped out of his armor and almost choked at some of the smells present, from races he’d never encountered before coming here, but his quickly shrinking bladder made up for it and when he got back inside his armor and headed out with Jenna at a run towards wherever she wanted them next, he felt considerably better.

“No,” Brayden said flatly to the Tieor Defense Force commander. “These are our prisoners…all of them. Don’t make me take them from you by force.”

Le’han’trel translated for him, and when the Protovic finished the thickset Shysosvan angrily shot back a reply…then stopped short as his eyes widened, looking at something behind the mercenary.

“Is there a problem?” Jenna asked icily, walking up behind the half dozen mercenaries from around the corner of one of the broken buildings in the center of the city. They’d managed to get to the Varshoo just before they overran their last defense station, then had redeployed themselves elsewhere in the city to finish cleaning up the stragglers.

Both Archons were in shambles, with holes spread over their impressive armor like they’d been hit with a shotgun blast, though none of them had penetrated all the way through to their flesh. That said, Brayden did see a few leakage points where the inner gel layer was pushing through, meaning those spots were now exposed and the next hit there would make it through to their bodies.

“They have a number of the Varshoo and don’t want to turn them over to us,” Brayden explained.

“He doesn’t have a choice,” Jenna repeated from behind a large melty scar mark on her visor approximately where her left eye would be.

“He seems to disagree.”

“Tell him again,” she said simply, but Brayden wasn’t fooled by the calmness in her words. He’d worked with a few Archons before, and he could tell that this one was angry. When their voice went whisper quiet you knew they were about to do something violent.

Le’han’trel repeated their demands, then got a less argumentative response from the Tieor commander.

“He says the captives are theirs and will be punished according to local laws, blah, blah, blah.”

Jenna walked past Brayden and the mercenary cringed even before the bulky alien was knocked backwards three meters by a single palm thrust, bowling over several other subordinates that had been visually backing him up in their little spat.

“Try now,” Jenna repeated, with Le’han’trel adding an explanation of how messing with the Archons was not a very good idea in his experience. Then he went on to remind him that they’d just beaten the entire army assaulting their city by themselves, floating the question of what the Defense Force could do to stop them and insisting that such a refusal was both stupid and rude, considering they’d just saved their lives.

Jenna walked up near the downed alien as the Protovic spoke, but she waited for what he told her rather than trying to glean any information from their minds. She was barely holding her head together as it was.

“Take them,” Le’han’trel translated.

“Brayden,” Jenna urged.

“Mason,” he delegated, with the other Marauder leading a group of others forward and into the area where the locals were holding the few prisoners that the mercs hadn’t gotten to before the Defense Force did.

“Are there any other areas of activity?” Jenna asked when the Shysosvan and his party had scurried off, wanting to get away from the gods of war before they could become their next victim.

“A few transports took off across the plains, but per your orders we let them go. I have sweeper teams looking, but so far the city appears clear.”

“Broadcasts?”

“We’ve had local crews plus our own recording and transmitting the whole thing. Anyone on the planet watching saw what you did, and we’ll keep spreading the images…and making sure they do too. When do you want to release your ultimatum?”

“Not now. If they refuse to leave we’ll have to hit another city, and we’re not in any shape to do that.”

“No replacement armor?”

“We’ve both got another custom pair, plus generic ones on our ship, but we need rest first. We’ll let you know when to release it, until then just feed us the locals’ response and we’ll get back to you when the time is ready…and make sure these idiots aren’t holding out on us. Not one of the Varshoo stays here, clear?”

“Very. I’ll have my people snoop around to make sure.”

“Good,” Jenna said, rotating her left arm around in a lengthy stretch. As she did Brayden saw a small breach point on the back side.

“You hit?”

“Just a scratch. We’ll stick around another hour or so, to make sure the locals hand over the prisoners and that there aren’t still pockets of resistance. You’ll need to do the looking though, and we’ll supplement with orbital scans.”

“Understood, but if I may ask…where are your weapons?”

Jenna exchanged a glance with Levi. “We stashed them in a room when we ran out of ammo so we didn’t have to carry the extra weight.”

“I’ll get them,” Levi offered, turning and walking off.

“Let us,” Brayden said. “Just tell us where they are. We know what to look for.”

“Thank you,” Jenna said, sending a beacon point to their tracking systems on top of the waypoint she’d dropped earlier to mark the building.

“How were you disabling the others without ammo? I haven’t seen any bruising on the prisoners from physical night taps.”

“Psionics,” Jenna said, looking over her battlemap as she talked.

“Does using those make you tired?”

“Extremely. We’ll be here for the next hour,” she said, sending him another beacon marker. “Bring our weapons and any additional intel or problems to our attention, then we’ll be back in orbit for a while. I trust you can maintain the city without us?”

“So long as they don’t send a second attack force, yes.”

“I meant with the locals.”

“There’s a lot of good will out there right now for us. Enough that we’re already getting support from some of the citizenry. I think we can handle things, even if the bureaucrats feel like trying to throw some weight around.”

“See that you do,” Jenna said before turning around and slowly walking off with Levi. They made their way about half a kilometer off to a courtyard large enough to accommodate a dropship that they called down with supplies. When it landed they camped out in the rear compartment, getting ambrosia and some foodstuffs while still staying in their armor. A Knight came down with it and stood guard outside while they hung around the open ramp, just sitting and staring off in a fatigue-induced haze until the mercs caught up with them again.

They brought their empty rifles and pistols back, then Brayden gave them a situation update from his search teams. They were finding pockets of citizens that had taken to hiding, and in some cases sealing themselves into whatever hideaways they thought could preserve them. It was going to take some time to rescue them from their own imprisonment, but the Marauders insisted that they could handle that, and with no more Varshoo troops showing up in the search the Archons finally called it a day after the last of the prisoners were recovered, both from the Defense Force and the city streets, and loaded up into Marauder transports.

Those were taken to a landing zone outside the city where other dropships were coming down to pick them up. Jenna trusted them enough to finish the handover without her babysitting them, so she took Levi and herself back up to the Jor-El with both heading straight for their quarters, already having got some food and ambrosia in the dropship.

Jenna didn’t even bother to shower, simply pulling her sweaty self out of her armor and flopping down on her bed, resisting the urge to fall asleep as she activated her Sesspik. The healing trance took a moment to begin, but when it did the ache in her head diminished by half instantly, with the remainder slowly eeking away as she sped her recovery as quickly as possible, knowing that unless their luck was very, very good there was going to be more fighting in the other cities, and that they couldn’t delay retaking them very long.

As it turned out, she and Levi would have to fight three more battles against the largest sections of the Varshoo army before the rest of their units finally accepted her offer of retreat. A lot of the Tieor government didn’t care for that option, wanting the invaders captured or killed, but with the Marauders backing up the two supersoldiers they were able to provide enough intimidation cover to allow the Varshoo to evacuate the cities they still possessed and return to their troop transports.

Those were allowed to fly up to orbit and dock with the cargo ships that were still in the system. Given that some had fled with their jumpship, it was a tight fit squeezing them all in on their own vessels, but there they would stay until jumpships were sent to pick them up, with a Varshoo courier vessel being sent out immediately to relay the request and inform the others as to what had happened here.

The Varshoo warships, on the other hand, were not returning with them. Star Force took possession of those and subsequently turned them over to the Marauders, along with the task that Brayden had been initially reluctant to accept…that being the permanent defense of Tieor. The mercenary preferred to pick and choose where he fought, but he was also ambitious, which was part of the reason he had left Star Force to begin with, and Jenna had just given him an entire planet of his own.

It took several weeks of wrangling and threats, but eventually what was left of the Tieor government and Defense Force agreed to her terms. The Marauders would take over full responsibility for the defense of the planet, in whatever manner they chose, supplanting the inadequate local defenders. With their own more advanced technology, the captured Varshoo warfleet, and the battle records of what had taken place across the planet, the local Tieor population was firmly behind the change, feeling that they were extremely fortunate not to be living in occupied territory right now, and with that support the local government couldn’t do anything to remove the new rulers of the planet.

But rulers in a caretaker sense. Jenna had instructed them to defend and pacify the planet, ensuring that no bad behavior was going on with the government and interfering when necessary, but otherwise letting the locals manage themselves. That would keep the Marauders independent, but still involved enough to bring a bit of civilization to Tieor, though obviously not up to Star Force standards.

As for the Jor-El, it would be leaving as soon as the Varshoo jumpships came to pick up their army, after which time the Marauders would be on their own, both in terms of military support and oversight. Jenna made it clear to Brayden that he was completely on his own, and whether this turned out to be a beneficial turn of events or just a delay in the Varshoo taking over she wouldn’t know, for Star Force wasn’t going to maintain any ties, even surveillance. The mercs were on their own, for better or worse.

Accepting the dangerous challenge for what it was Brayden, thanked the Archons for their decision to return and the new future for his mercenary unit…whose reputation had just skyrocketed, not to mention their war assets, though many of the ships would have to be refitted, possibly back in the ADZ at a later time. Never the less, they had suddenly become a naval-equipped organization with a planet full of resources and personnel to draw off of.

Brayden still intended to keep the Marauders as 100% ex-Star Force personnel, but recognized that he’d need to set up some support units with locals. He had a lot of work ahead of him, very lucrative work considering the fee Tieor would be annually paying them, both in currency and raw materials, plus real-estate to set up proper bases.

Jenna left him and his men to their own volition, not sure how Tieor would play out but washing her hands of it. She’d done an awful lot to help out, and done so in a typically Star Force way, but their fate was now their own. A day after the Varshoo jumpships departed with their troops the Ma’kri left as well, heading to the nearest clandestine Star Force base for resupply, then it would be off again on another mission of Jenna’s choosing.

Where that would lead her and her apprentice she didn’t know, but there was always need for them somewhere on the border and she liked being a roamer far better than being tied to a semi-permanent assignment for a decade or more.

As they traveled back from Tieor she wrote up a report that would post to the message boards as soon as they got back on the grid. She sent a special flag with it, for the attention of the trailblazers, in which she detailed how useful the master/apprentice system was, for to her knowledge such a pairing had never been pushed to that limit. Jenna added the subsequent problems with the psionic overusage, including the battlemeld abilities, noting that some additional high endurance training should be devised to counter the problem.

And throwing a training issue out to the trailblazers was the equivalent of feeding them candy. Either they or Wilson would come up with a counter program in short order, but for Jenna she wasn’t going to worry about it. Her focus was on getting into the action and making a difference on the front lines, whether lizard huge or border world small. She’d use whatever training they devised, but she wasn’t going to waste her time experimenting and designing it.

That was for others. She and Levi both were cut out for action, and one way or another they always found their way to a mission that required it. The lizards might be the greatest threat Star Force currently faced, but that didn’t mean all the little ones didn’t matter, and as both she and her current and futures apprentices grew in strength, the bigger the difference they could make in these small conflicts where sending in a Star Force army wasn’t an option.

Jenna hadn’t originally intended to take on that role, but accepted it for what it became as well as the nickname some of the others on the major front lines gave her.

Newbslayer.

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Table of Contents

- Star Force: Initiation

- Star Force: Hamoriti

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

- Star Force: Marauders

- Star Force: Newbslayer