Star Force 69-72
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Science Fiction & Fantasy; Colonization; Dystopian; Galactic Empire; High Tech; Military; Space Fleet; 90 Minutes (44-64 Pages); Literature & Fiction; Hard Science Fiction; Adventure; Two Hours or More (65-100 Pages); Action & Adventure; Space Opera; Genre Fiction; War; Health; Fitness & Dieting; Exercise & Fitness; Yoga; War & Military; Space Marine; Teen & Young Adult; Star Force
Description: Anthology containing: Star Force 69-72
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

1

February 26, 2825

Jartul System (Calavari Region)

Daka

Mark-084 stood on the mountaintop that held the remains of the old Alliance base, looking out at the surrounding geography that was a mix of small mountains and plains, the latter of which held a number of lizard cities. Smoke was rising from them even now weeks after they’d been assaulted by Star Force troops. The battle for the planet was over, but the cleanup mission was going to take years to disassemble the lizard infrastructure.

But they had time, and Mark was going to be personally overseeing the reclamation of Daka for Star Force. Clan Gunstar was going to get a small piece of it, but the bulk of the planet was going to be one of the new tier 4 worlds, housing the best of the best of Star Force personnel when it came to the aerial division and all supporting assets. Under Mark’s leadership the planet was going to become the premier industrial producer of aerial craft and the test bed for future prototypes, as well as the most intensive and extensive training available for all of the empire’s various factions.

Likewise there were 8 other tier 4 worlds planned, though none had been tagged to date save for a waterworld in the Bsidd Region that was going to house the tier 4 aquatics stronghold. Already the reorganization of Star Force was beginning to show dividends, with the tier 3 sectors that had already been created on Earth and Corneria having begun to generate a new ‘feel’ to the civilization there. Everywhere from the residential sections to the entertainment facilities was more mellow, focused, and purposeful. The chaos of the general population was gone, as were the dysfunctional citizens.

Roam a tier 3 region and there were no fat people, no old people, no cutters, anorexics, gays, addicts, loudmouths, egotists, zealots, etc. Everyone here had earned their way in, and that trial in and of itself had allowed them to solve their personal problems and rise above the rest of the citizenry…and now they no longer had to see the problems of others on a daily basis. The ‘normal’ was now perfection, in that the people here had no personal problems dragging them down with the focus being on improvement, both personal and communal, and a striving for excellence rather than coping with flaws.

The synergy that had resulted surprised many by its suddenness and intensity, with the go ahead for the tier 4 worlds coming quickly thereafter. The basic theory was to create an advanced core group that would bring the rest of Star Force up with it, much like the Clans were, except that these tier 4 worlds would be skill specific and essentially the poster model for others to learn from. Mark had wanted Daka for the aerial specialty for that was what the planet had originally been tasked for when the Calavari had owned it prior to the lizard invasion, not to mention its strategic location.

It was on the very edge of Star Force territory at the moment, but with a coreward boundary line essentially fixed the further push against the lizards would be rimward, eventually making Daka centrally located if all went according to plan. The ADZ was going to be displaced as the geographical center of the empire as they ate up more and more lizard worlds, with Davis already commissioning the placement of Epsilon Eridani caliber systems at various points along the current borders. Those so designated would be receiving supply shipments from across the empire to fast track their development, with Daka being one such planet.

The first convoy wasn’t due to arrive for another month but Mark wasn’t in a rush. There had been so many lizards here that it had literally been a blood bath. The widespread usage of the Keema weapon batteries within the drone fleet had given them the range advantage they needed, and most of the destruction of the lizard civilization had occurred from orbit, but there had been considerable ground fighting for the limited troops the Archon had brought with him to cleanse the planet of the longtime invaders.

The base beneath the mountain had been repurposed for the lizards, leaving nothing of the original behind, but Mark recognized the location just the same. He’d fought here against the Nestafar when they’d backstabbed the Alliance and joined with the lizards over 400 years ago, and though the grasslands had been burnt away the rest of the topography hadn’t changed.

It felt strange to be back here, for when he’d left the Calavari had been the larger and more powerful race with Star Force being a junior member in the Alliance. Now the Calavari were the smaller faction within Star Force, with the Bsidd likewise having joining them and the Kvash having been wiped out. The Nestafar were likewise all but gone, with only a small ward colony left that was also part of Star Force now. The founding members of the Alliance, once the huge, powerfully dominant races, had receded, with even the Hycre now taking a backseat to the Human-led empire. Mark and his kin were now in the driver’s seat, and doing a far better job of fighting the lizards than the Alliance ever had.

Mark knew that criticism wasn’t entirely warranted. The other races didn’t have a pyramid of highly advanced tech to continually leech off of, but that aside the old Alliance’s methods had been inadequate and rather than repeating failure Star Force learned and adapted…which was necessary against an opponent that did the same. Mark knew that they’d never be beaten, for the lizards had grown so large and vast that they could keep spreading throughout the galaxy faster than Star Force could hunt them down, so the mission was to be better than them while staking out a ‘safe’ chunk of territory for themselves and others to take shelter within.

Daka had just been added to that list of star systems and its inclusion was long overdue. Now that Mark was here he was going to be leading numerous other invasion fleets against the surrounding systems, carving out another section of lizard territory while others did likewise at numerous locations throughout the local section of the galactic arm. Eventually they planned to move all the way over to the new Voku stronghold and place a line there, allowing their new ally to fight the lizards beyond and protect their own designated ward races while Star Force became the link between their territories.

It was now a common sight to see an occasional Voku convoy passing through the ADZ, despite the fact that they didn’t own any territory within it. More and more resources were coming forth from the Voku empire and being sent out to Cal-com’s new territory and Mark welcomed the help, for not only were they defining the spinward border of what would eventually be Star Force territory, but they were also holding a bit of the coreward line as well. And though it was going to be a very distant goal, Mark knew that Star Force was also going to have to expand up and down all the way to the edges of the galactic disc in order to cut the lizards off from further expansion in their area or they’d just skirt the edges and surround them.

There were so many systems out there that Star Force couldn’t save because they were too far away that it left Mark feeling a bit hollow inside, but he and the others had decided to grow their empire as large as they could in order to save as many races as possible, and the stronger the lizards grew the less able races there were that could defend themselves. Star Force was winning their corner of the war, but virtually everyone else was losing and fueling the growth of the lizard juggernaut.

The number of races fleeing into Star Force territory was growing as well, with some coming from the coreward area that had made their peace with the Skarrons only to now be displaced by the lizards. Others were coming to them for a myriad of reasons, some because of other threats, some in the hope of preventing doomsday from coming their way. Few were the races that could stand alongside Star Force as their equals, and those known were far away from here. The Nexus, for all its power and size, was so far rimward that they didn’t have any claim to this region aside from the H’kar fleets that were still fighting alongside Star Force, and that was more on their own merits than any edict from the Nexus leadership.

The Skarrons were the other major power, but as far as Mark knew they were getting their assess handed to them by the lizards and despite the information digging that Star Force had been doing for centuries there didn’t seem to be any other major powers out there within any proximity…meaning that this region was essentially an all you could eat buffet for the lizards when and where Star Force couldn’t stop them.

It wasn’t fair. Nobody chose when or where they would be born, and many new races he’d come to know were fairly honorable and industrious but there was no way they could stand up to the tech level of the lizards, let alone their numbers. Some of those races had been wiped out, others had seen survivors flee to Star Force. They’d done nothing wrong, hadn’t made any missteps, and still they’d gotten obliterated. That frustrated Mark to no end, because he hated no-win scenarios.

He and the other trailblazers had been facing one their entire life with the V’kit’no’sat, but rather than give in to despair they’d devoted themselves to finding ways to do the impossible, and although that day hadn’t come yet, fortunately, they’d progressed so far that it had brought them into a dominant position over the lizards…but that made the situation in the region even worse, for Star Force could stop the slaughter. The trouble was, they couldn’t be everywhere at once.

“Not enough good guys in the galaxy,” Mark said to himself as he looked out over the planet through his helmet’s faceplate. Clan Gunstar was pretty much on autopilot right now, for aside from a few tweaks here and there his second gen Archons were handling his development plans while leaving him free to work on whatever he needed to. Right now that was going to be Daka and building this planet up for all of Star Force, then inviting the top pilots and aerial engineers here to train as they continually refitted the empire’s equipment and combat techniques.

He’d been doing much the same thing within Clan Gunstar ever since its creation, but Daka was going to be a training world that all the Clans could use, not to mention the other races within Star Force and even some of their allies. With the change in lizard tactics and them deploying huge swarms of wisps to counter everything from infantry to warships there was a growing need for aerial craft and this planet was going to begin producing them in crazy numbers…or at least that was the plan, and his plan, for Davis had left Daka up to his discretion while feeding him all available resources that he requested over the next 50 years.

Mark toed a bit of dry dirt with his dark blue armored boot. There was so much work to do here and none of it fighting, assuming they really had cleared out the last of the lizards. He doubted they’d make a second invasion of the planet, for that was no longer something they felt like doing. They hadn’t taken a planet from Star Force in ages and were no longer trying. Their plan seemed to be to turtle up along the border and make themselves as hard of a target as possible to delay Star Force when they eventually came for them, all the while expanding elsewhere and preying on those too primitive or too weak to defend themselves.

Daka was staying in Star Force hands from here on out and Mark was going to make this home for a lot of people. People who earned being here, and who would literally feed off of the attitude of their likeminded peers. Freedom was essential for any civilization, but while you had to let people make their own mistakes you didn’t have to be dragged down by them. People could learn and grow elsewhere, or not, but in order to get here they had to prove themselves worthy…then Mark would take over from there.

Aerial training wasn’t so much a thing of learning various techniques or developing skills as it was of sheer repetition. A commando improved by upgrading their body through training, but a skeet didn’t become more powerful with more missions. It was mechanical and static, meaning the pilot had to advance in terms of reflexes, endurance, and mostly the mental applications. Experience was the key factor and Mark knew that Daka had to have people flying, both for real and in simulators, on an exhaustive schedule. Only that would give his trainees the chance to learn and adapt while he and a few handpicked others worked on improving their equipment.

One of those advancements coming down the line was the neural interface. So far it’d been used in naval and mechs, but aerial was a bit different and Mark had insisted that they still use hand controls until the technology became more streamlined. It was going to be far superior, if for no other reason than being able to see all around you in a way similar to Pefbar, save you’d be using the craft’s sensors instead of your body’s.

Mark was already using the tech in an effort to goose along its advancement, but during this latest assault he’d piloted a standard hand controlled skeet. The new models just weren’t reliable enough yet, though that time was coming soon…and when it did, aerial combat was going to change drastically, which was one reason why he wanted to personally oversee the development of Daka so he could gear it towards that new reality from the ground up rather than having to do a refit later similar to what would be occurring on many other worlds after the transition.

One of those items was going to be a subsurface comm grid that would allow fighters to be flown remotely the same way that naval flew drones, allowing them to be used as disposable assets in various circumstances. Mark had already decreed that they weren’t going to use actual drones, with every craft having a pilot’s seat just in case you needed to manually fly it, but now his pilots would be able to sit inside a city and fight the battles anywhere on the planet from relative safety.

That was, assuming you got a grid to cover the entire planet. He wasn’t going to trust orbital transmissions, plus the lag effect would always give an actual pilot in the seat a slight advantage, but he saw value to this new concept and was going to use Daka as a planetary test bed for it, then it’d be evaluated and used on other worlds if deemed advantageous.

But setting up relays across an entire planet was no small feat, nor was building the cities that would eventually cover the planet. Decades would not be enough. This was going to be a centuries long endeavor trying to rise to a level of Epsilon Eridani or even Sol, though with every year that passed those systems were growing stronger and larger themselves.

But you had to start somewhere, and this planet’s return to allied hands was that start, bloody as it had been. Mark would be basing here for the foreseeable future but he’d let the engineers handle most of the construction after he gave them the basic plans. While they did the tedious work he’d be leading warfleets doing the harder, more dangerous work of cleansing and claiming additional worlds. Some of those they’d keep, others they’d leave bare yet monitored. As it was Star Force had more worlds in its technical possession than they could fill, and that was becoming a big political rub with a number of races that wanted to colonize them.

Twice already Star Force had to forcibly evict squatters, and Mark was glad he wasn’t having to deal with that task. It was insulting to have to waste time and resources with so-called ‘allies’ when every world Star Force took from the lizards could mean that another one out there beyond their reach could be sparred, for while the lizard empire was vast it was not infinite, and even they had supply limits.

The stupidity of those in the ADZ was not something to underestimate, but here on Daka he wouldn’t have to deal with that. Not from general citizenry, and definitely not from any non-aligned race that they were graciously babysitting. Everyone coming to Daka would be here for a purpose, and that was the kind of atmosphere that he and others could genuinely think of as home…or so he hoped, if he did his job right and built the planet up into the aerial mecca he hoped for.

Mark took off his helmet, holding it in his hands as he breathed in the toxic air. It had the necessary oxygen he needed, but a lot of other stuff that didn’t agree with his lungs so much. It’d been a long time since he’d tasted this air and wondered how much his advanced physique would be affected, hence this little test.

His lungs didn’t detect any problem in his first few breaths, but that wasn’t abnormal. It usually took a little time before they started burning, but the feel of the air was the same as when he’d first come to Daka. As the minutes passed he continued to look around at the horizon, seeing the junked lizard cities and their smoke plumes, then turning around to see the mountains behind him that had a fair number of concealed hideaways within them, but from here it looked all natural.

The burning sensation started to manifest itself again, and after only a few minutes. Mark sighed and put his helmet back on, cycling the air out to clear it completely and return the internal composition to the desired setting of oxygen and nitrogen.

“So much for being fitter,” he chastised himself with a bit of chagrin. “I guess some things don’t change with time, short of terraforming.”

Nostalgia or no, the air was going to have to change, with giant scrubbers on the to-build list a number of decades down the line. This was a Star Force planet now and the atmosphere was going to have to agree with Human lungs eventually, no matter how much of a hassle it was going to be to filter out all the noxious stuff.

They had time, after all, and Mark was going to see that this world was built right…and as fast as possible without compromising that first tenet. Patience was a learned trait for Archons, for faster was always better, no matter what you were doing.

2

May 17, 2825

Shaleth System (Voku territory)

Inova

Cal-com sat on an elevated platform in his private oracle, reserved only for the Dafchor and select staff as he saw fit to permit entry, though to date that list held 0 names. This was his personal sanctuary from which he oversaw most of the operations within the local annex of the Voku empire. On occasion he would lead a mission personally, but most of those days were now behind him since the other 8 races had been reached and moderately secured on the far side of lizard territory.

Shaleth sat in the middle of it, cutting across the narrowest region in what was now shaped like an hourglass, for the core lizard worlds sat on one side in an ever-expanding sphere of systems and the conquered Skarron systems sat on the other, with that region expanding even faster and further as the lizards seemed to be devoting most of their resources there against the biggest threat they faced.

It might have been the biggest threat, but it was not the most dangerous. The Voku were that, with Star Force coming in a close second and eating away at the middle of lizard territory and bringing them closer and closer to Shaleth as he and Paul had planned. That day would not be in the near future for a lot of lizard territory remained, but the advent of some new technologies for the Humans had increased their pace of conquest, along with a population surge from their servant Bsidd giving them the raw numbers of soldiers and workers they had previously lacked.

The lizards could not expand in their direction and were losing territory all along their borders. On the far side where the Voku had reached the 8 races that Cal-com had been ordered to protect, he was taking possession of every lizard system he could in an effort to link the various locations in a spindly grid. The various servants of the Elders were not geographically close to one another, but none the less Cal-com knew that he had to pacify the entire region in order to truly protect them. Allow them to become isolated and swallowed up in the expanding creep of lizard conquests and they’d be perpetually at risk.

So the Voku were hacking out another chunk opposite that of Star Force and diminishing the lizards’ ability to spread in that direction, poaching their startup colonies before they could get established and pinching their massive empire at the middle, with Shaleth sitting right in the center of it in a gesture of defiance, for no matter how hard the lizards tried they could not retake the system from the Voku and they’d lost hundreds of thousands of ships trying. It was the link between the two regions and one that Cal-com had to hold, so he’d poured resources into strengthening it years ago, now giving him a fortress that the lizards could not touch even with their steady flow of technological improvements that were making it harder for the rest of the galaxy to cope with them.

Inside his oracle there were maps upon maps displayed as if they were artwork above holographic pedestals along with numerous worktables that had his personal plans laid out in the open. He had no fear of a security breach here, so he never bothered to lock away his work when he left the chamber. It had sentries at the entrance permanently, allowing him to let go any concerns of the immediate area and fully sink himself into planning and analysis sessions.

Right now he was combing over new intel reports that had made their way back to him. The 8 races that he had been tasked with guarding were now taking orders directly from him and given the mandate the Elders had placed upon him he was actively restructuring their societies so that they could play a part in their own defense despite their limited technology. What he was working on was creating an Alliance of sorts, similar to what Paul had done with Star Force, to secure the vast region that encompassed all 8 races and hold back lizard expansion into those areas beyond. He could not do this with the Voku alone, so he had been weaving an intricate industrial and economic base within the 8 races he commanded that was going to accommodate the incorporation of other locals who were more than eager to ward off the coming storm.

His intelligence reports were coming in from an army of scouts that were probing far beyond the lizard borders, even some going coreward of their furthest expansion. Cal-com knew Star Force would not go there because of the distant threat that lurked in the shadows, but the Voku didn’t fear it for the simple fact that the Elders hadn’t warned them off. Cal-com needed to know what the lizards were doing and where, with one of his maps detailing the chunk of territory that had been carved out of this portion of the Skarron empire.

It was the same Skarron empire that his people had come into conflict with before, only near their home territory. The Skarrons’ empire dwarfed that of the lizards, with it exceeding all current and previous scouting missions, though from captured intel he knew that it extended over into the next galactic arm, with its mass of holdings in this one merely being colonial expansions. The lizards were effectively fighting and conquering them here, but Cal-com figured it was just a matter of time before the real hammer blow fell on them. When that would occur was the question, though if the Skarrons had other, larger threats to deal with then the lizards might actually seem like a small matter that they could deal with at their leisure.

Cal-com knew that was a mistake, for the lizards’ greatest strength was their ability to spread and spread rapidly. Everything they were consuming within Skarron territory was just feeding their industrial engine and from it they were reaching out into neighboring systems that even the Skarrons hadn’t gotten around to conquering yet. It was those near his wards that he had been scouting out heavily, with a long list of races ready to join with the Voku and form the defense pact that he was painstakingly crafting.

Like his wards, the other races mostly were inefficient and primitive, with a handful that had or could defend themselves against the lizards for a fair amount of time. The issue was always the numbers and the ability of the lizards to keep sending replacements in without end. Cal-com was going to counter this by using his own troops for most of the fighting and defensive emplacements, creating little Voku colonies everywhere, even sitting in the capitols of other races, to establish the backbone of this pact while the other races supported them militarily where they could, but largely through the collection and processing of raw materials that they would then feed to the Voku.

Cal-com could build new ships quicker than the lizards could given available resources and there was only so much he could suck in from the home territories via cargo shipments, though those were having a significant effect already. If he could get this pact firmly established and funneling resources to him in the amounts he needed, then he could begin placing more strongholds on the map to counter the lizard advance.

That was the game he was playing every day. A huge effort across thousands of star systems that saw his own hunting fleets bouncing from location to location to eliminate the soft lizard worlds that his scouts tagged and to hit and eliminate some not so small ones to keep the flow of lizards ships away from certain areas. To the untrained eye it would have seemed an easy assignment given their technological edge, but the galaxy was a vast place and even this little corner of it was huge. There were only so many places the Voku could go, with the lizards taking advantage of the fact that they could go everywhere once their numbers reached a certain point.

What plans the Elders had for his ward races he did not know, so Cal-com didn’t meddle with them much other than to eliminate inefficiencies and get their civilizations geared up towards the resource race that they’d be thrown at. Beyond that he left their internal development to the Elders and their timetable, aside from several Voku cities built amongst their own planets to safeguard them and provide an example of what potential they had should the Elders find them worthy in the coming millennia.

Conscripting them into the Voku military was not an option, nor was it one that the Voku had ever used before. Their forces were comprised of one race and one race alone, unlike Star Force that had shown Cal-com the benefits of a combined force. The Voku had and would fight alongside Paul’s people in a similar manner when necessary, but the Voku would not taint their own civilization by incorporating others. They’d come a long way together, with the newest elevation of his race being seen as a well-deserved reward for their loyalty during the long absence of the Elders. Giving another race access to that would be a cheat that would diminish all the gains they had made.

No, the Voku were on a path of their own from here to infinity. They would help their friends and allies, fight and die alongside them if necessary, but the Voku would always remain Voku and would never meld with another race short of an order from the Elders to do so…and from everything they had taught the Voku, Cal-com knew that was not the path they wished them to take.

A keen interest to Cal-com also lay in the races beyond the lizards, with a significant portion of his scouting fleets probing what lay far beyond the new protected region and into areas where the lizards had not even been mentioned. His forces had to go pretty far to find advanced races that were not aware of the storm devouring everything in its path, but they had found several new threats out there of their own accord, as well as bastions of strength that he intended to make diplomatic contact with.

As he read through the recent reports he found that one of them had come to him first, with a diplomatic envoy from an previously unknown race wanting to have a direct discussion with the Voku’s leader…and a tech tree that was on par with his own, based off the limited analysis his scouts had made of their small fleet that had sought them out.

Along with the message came their credentials in the form of a territory map, linguistic database, and a sufficiently detailed historical record. They were known as the Preema and their territory sat well down the length of this galactic arm…with their numbers rivaling that of the Skarrons. That combined with their level of technology immediately put Cal-com on guard, and with that spike of trepidation his implants unlocked a new bit of information the Elders had stored within them.

What followed a burst of knowledge that confused Cal-com. The Preema were, per his new memories, an isolationistic race that maintained a very tight hold on a limited region of space, dominating virtually every system within their geographical boundaries as opposed to the Skarrons that skipped over most to cheery pick the ones they wanted. Most races did the same, but the Preema were able to pour so much population into a ‘small’ region that what happened within it was virtually unknown to outsiders, for no transit was allowed within or through, making it a gigantic black hole of information.

The Preema were benign as far as the Elders were concerned, keeping to their own systems with little concern for others. ‘Private’ was the word that best described the avian race, which made this unsolicited diplomatic contact far beyond their borders confusing…but also one that Cal-com knew he had to follow up on. Currently the ships that had brought the message were holding position at one of the Voku colonies that he’d recently set up in the gaps between the ward races’ territories. That was where they had made contact, and that was where they were awaiting a response.

Cal-com read through the whole of their data packet before issuing any orders, finding buried within it all the records of a brief conflict with The Nexus. For reasons not mentioned The Nexus had invaded their territory and, after a war that lasted only a handful of years, given up the task after being met with too firm of a response. The Preema had not pursued them beyond their own borders, deciding to only defend their own rather than try to conquer their attackers, but Cal-com found it interesting none the less.

The Elder had said The Nexus was reckless, and this was the first evidence of that that Cal-com had seen. He’d been keeping an eye on the distant empire that existed primarily in the next galactic arm out on the rim, but had not tasked any scout fleets in that direction, save for their nearest border with the lizards. He’d sent a few ships there to confirm the reports Paul had been getting from the H’kar and to measure enemy strength levels around the lizards’ core systems, but aside from a few delicate information hacks into the ships passing through H’kar space his forces knew little of The Nexus besides what was detailed in their public records.

The territory they watched over was larger than what the Skarrons possessed, but as the Elder had said they were reckless in that they did not own but a handful of systems within it. It was more a patrol zone than owned territory, with them dictating to others rather than taking physical possession or responsibility. They were almost always involved in some war within their borders, so for them to travel outside them to invade a race that seemed to keep to themselves on principle was a datapoint that he was not going to overlook. Something important had happened there, and more importantly The Nexus had not scouted out the true strength of their target, otherwise they would not have been so easily thwarted.

The Elder had told him that The Nexus would not last, and if they were actively pushing beyond their already oversized borders and picking fights with others then he could see one of them pushing back and wiping them out. He wasn’t sure if the Preema were capable of that or not, but The Nexus had been given a break when they did not counterattack…or had they anticipated that and the invasion been a probing mechanism?

There was conflict there regardless, and given that Cal-com was an ally of an ally with a member race of The Nexus could potentially be an issue, but again, the Preema were seeking the Voku out. They had to have a pretty big reason to do so and since it hadn’t come on the back of an invasion force he didn’t think it was with hostile intention. Nor were his forces anywhere near Preema borders, so a warning was probably not at issue either. Cal-com had put out an open call for allies against the lizards, but the Preema were so far away from them it didn’t seem likely that they would take issue with the distant enemy…especially since the lizards’ tech level was so low as to not pose a significant threat to them.

Whatever was going on was important, for this was not a low level race. That meant Cal-com needed to meet with their emissary personally rather than rely on an intermediary. With language issues being ever-present with first contact situations the less ambiguity involved in the process the better. He didn’t want to bring the Preema here, so he decided to go to them after he finished the review of their data packet.

Cal-com transferred up to orbit and boarded one of his conglomerates, taking it and it alone out of the system and across lizard territory. Between the weaponry and the speed of his ships he had nothing to fear from the lizards so long as he didn’t enter planetary orbit. Stopping a conglomerate as it transitioned around a star was something the lizards just couldn’t do, so even though he was in the middle of enemy territory it did not matter. Most of the galaxy was empty space, and if you knew how to navigate you could stay clear of the real ‘territory’ that races possessed, for dots on a map were one thing, but the actual geography of a star system was mostly unclaimable space.

And if the lizards happened to have an ambush fleet waiting along Cal-com’s course he wouldn’t mind a short delay to destroy some more of their ships. The less they had the less danger they posed to his wards and allies, despite their building capability. It might look like they had an infinite supply of ships, but he knew that wasn’t true of anyone. Illusions factored heavily into life, and the ignorant often took them at face value. Every lizard ship he killed mattered in the grand scheme of the war even if he never personally knew the implications of it.

3

June 19, 2825

Djaret System (Voku territory)

Djar

Cal-com stood on a neutral platform having been constructed by the Preema on the surface of the Voku planet to serve as a meeting place, for neither race could exist in the atmosphere of the other and facilities on either’s ship were not accommodating to the needs for this occasion. The Preema had anticipated this and brought the construct with them, then having landed it within the oxygen-rich atmosphere once Cal-com had given them permission.

It had been inspected by his troops to ensure there were no snares or hazards prior to his landing, with him walking up onto the spherical platform that was bisected with a clear energy shield. His side held the planet’s native atmosphere while the other held a pocket of the dark brown tinted air that the Preema breathed. When the allotted time came within 30 seconds a speck appeared in the sky above Cal-com that resolved itself into a trio of small craft descending towards the platform, save for the fact that they weren’t craft, but rather the Preema themselves.

Cal-com didn’t realize that until the first of them came within the atmospheric shell and its metallic wings folded up along its torso, then the material molded into the body of the Preema and the front of it split apart, revealing glowing white flesh that stepped out of the armor and into the open. The other two landed alongside it but remained within their armor, much as Cal-com had guards of his own with him, though they were stationed outside on the planet’s surface and these two were on the platform itself.

Cal-com wore the protective shields that his race favored over armor, so he had a measure of defense if something in this meeting were to go the wrong way that the Preema couldn’t see, though they might have guessed from the small pieces of equipment he wore over his bodysuit.

“I offer our greetings, Voku,” the Preema said through some form of translation software, for the words he heard in his own language were slightly delayed from the sounds the Preema was uttering. “We are pleased you agreed to meet with us personally.”

“Why are you here?” Cal-com asked, getting straight to the point.

“It is customary for us to make introductions when a race of sufficient caliber crosses through the local region, though our purpose here is twofold. We have heard your warnings of a primitive but dangerous race slowly approaching us and have investigated the matter from afar. We know little, but enough to see that the threat is not in sheer force, but through uncontrollable numbers spreading and consuming more worlds than anyone can safeguard. If this threat is to eventually make it to our borders, we would prefer to counter it sooner rather than later, if possible. We are here to discuss possible avenues to do so,” the Preema said, sitting down on the ground so that its head sat just a touch lower than Cal-com’s

The Voku stared into its six green eyes and could feel the physical power of the flying quadruped. Unlike others he’d come across, this avian was not fragile. Light perhaps for its size, but far outmassing him with enough musculature that he could tell it could handle itself in ground combat…and with the way its real wings tucked in along its sides he wouldn’t have known it could fly had he not seen it for himself.

The ears were barely noticeable, mere pinpricks along the sides of its large head and also six in number. Its skin was truly white, but also seemed to glow a bit despite the overhead sun. Bioluminescent he assumed, and the claws on its feet were just as pale, though they seemed less luminous but razor sharp and the length of Cal-com’s fingers. It had two on each foot, with the front pair sticking out between the Voku and the Preema’s head as it sat, giving him a good view of the tattoo-like grooves carved into them.

“At present we are simply trying to protect a designated region,” Cal-com explained. “A full victory over the Li’vorkrachnika appears to be untenable short of eradicating them from the galaxy. We do not have the strength or numbers for that, and it would be difficult to know that we’d gotten them all. Their civilization appears to be redundant, and no matter how small a piece of it survives can result in the regrowth of the whole. We’ve seen this in small scenarios when a single ship takes possession of a world then populates it entirely from local resources and personnel that they grow on site.”

“A worthy opponent given their lack of technology.”

“A menace that must not be taken lightly.”

“We do not take anything lightly, Voku. And we rarely leave our own borders. The fact that we are here discussing this now should be testament to our seriousness.”

“This enemy is also devious beyond measure and not afraid to spend lives to test theories or achieve objectives, no matter how great the loss. This is battle experience that I have with them and you do not, hence my warning.”

“Your caution is noted.”

“From what I know of you, your empire is larger than that of the Li’vorkrachnika, though condensed into a somewhat small region of this galactic arm.”

“Correct on both counts.”

“You obviously have a great deal of resources at your command, more so than even I do. How do you think to implement them?”

“However is necessary to keep this race from ever reaching our borders.”

“You can do that on your own merits. Why have you sought me out?”

“As you have said, this enemy is far too widespread to counter directly. You are seeking allies to contain their spread. So too now are we, and we wish to begin with those who have already seen success against the Li’vorkrachnika. Even now there is a race that is pushing them back. True?”

“We are, where our limited territorial acquisitions have taken root.”

“Our information spoke of another that you have ties with. There are rumors abound near the front lines of ones called Human.”

“What you refer to is a conglomeration of factions led by Humans and is called Star Force. They are an ally of the Voku, but their territory is on the far side of the Li’vorkrachnika domain and they will not be able to assist in efforts to contain their spread on this side.”

“We also hear that the great Skarron empire is falling to this enemy. Can you confirm this?”

“The Skarrons have lost a significant number of systems, but percentage wise it is minimal to date, though the carnage continues mostly beyond my ability to monitor.”

“And this small conglomerate ally of yours succeeds where they have failed?”

“Yes they are, and I believe they will continue to do so, but the Li’vorkrachnika will spread to more systems faster than Star Force can take them away. They cannot stop them, but they are no longer victims of them and appear to be able to conquer what they will.”

“And what of the Voku?”

“We are here for other purposes.”

“Safeguarding distant allies?”

“Yes we are,” Cal-com admitted. “And the best way I have found to do that is by decreeing a border against the Li’vorkrachnika that we will hold, regardless of whether or not we possess the systems under threat. It is not a solution, but a stopgap measure that achieves our current goals. The larger an area we can patrol and protect the better, though our own ship count is lacking, mostly in terms of reconnaissance. The Li’vorkrachnika can spread where we are not looking with little cost to themselves, and such easy victories we cannot allow. We need eyes and ears throughout the galactic arm, in addition to warfleets to enforce this border.”

“Never-ending wars are not to be entered into lightly,” the Preema cautioned.

“The Li’vorkrachnika offer no less. Perpetual fighting or submission, the latter of which almost always results in annihilation. They rarely coopt other races, though it has been documented on occasion.”

“Your information did not specify a homeworld.”

“They may have one for nostalgia sake, but their redundancy makes it a moot point. We do know that they have a region of higher density population and infrastructure, from which the rest of their empire is spreading out. That group of systems is far from here, and even if we managed to destroy each and every one it would not end the threat. Already worlds of similar caliber are under construction within what had once been Skarron territory, and every Li’vorkrachnika world has the potential to upgrade into such given enough time. They do not have a central point for us to strike at.”

“Am I to assume they are not interested in diplomacy?”

“Nor in surrender. Star Force offers it as a matter of principle in every engagement, and to date they have never accepted. Those prisoners taken try to do whatever damage they can and, failing that, attempt to end their own lives. The Li’vorkrachnika civilization seeks to consume all it encounters. They cannot be reasoned with, for theirs is a race built and bred for conquest.”

“So we have been told,” the Preema said satisfactorily. “That is why we are here now rather than waiting for the situation to worsen. Our sources have also said that the Li’vorkrachnika have obtained technological enhancements in recent history, enough to tip the balance in some regional conflicts. The longer we wait and the more races they conquer the stronger they will theoretically grow on that front, which is why a strategy must be developed to counter them above and beyond mere containment, for time appears to be their ally. Our own people have not discovered a potential solution, so we wish to consult with those who have fought and are currently fighting with them…especially those that are succeeding in those conflicts.”

Cal-com studied the Preema for a moment. “You are not here to waste my time with unnecessary pleasantries.”

“No.”

“You understand the unusual threat they pose and the challenges in battling it, and like us you don’t see a solution.”

“Not an obvious one, but their existence has only recently been brought to our attention. Their primitive technology makes them beatable, how to go about doing so in a final solution is the question at hand. If a purge is required then the price is going to be a steep one to pay in years, but if it has to be done we need to begin now, for exponential growth will only risk delay long enough for them to feast off their conquests and raise their technology level enough to take away our outright dominance. We will need to destroy them quickly and easily to combat their numbers. Even a small advancement will diminish our ability to do this. Where the failure mark lies we do not know, but so long as the days progress we are slowly approaching it. If the Preema wait until this threat is at our borders, we fear it will be too late. Hence this is why we have responded to your general summons and sought you out.”

“How long have you been aware of the Skarron empire?”

“A very long time.”

“They have been an enemy of the Voku for some time. What is your standing with them?”

“None. We know of them, but have never interacted given the distance between our territories.”

“Theirs was spreading in your direction prior to the Li’vorkrachnika invasion.”

“Which was why we took notice of them from afar.”

“I would like to know how many other strong empires you know of, for I do not believe that anyone is safe from this menace, and the more systems we can deprive them of, either through prevention or reconquest, the less difficult this monumental task will become.”

“We only speak for ourselves, but we can arrange introductions to others if you so wish. I would not wager they would involve themselves until the threat is upon their doorstep. We are more proactive than most.”

“This is a region of the galaxy that the Voku are new to, so even a simple map would be of use to us.”

“That we can and will provide to you before the day is out. But make one thing known…while we will fight the Li’vorkrachnika out of necessity, we will not be claiming any territory beyond what we currently possess. That is why we cannot fight this enemy on our own. Systems purged must be consolidated, else we risk them being reacquired by the enemy once we move on. We can assist in fighting them, but we will not become stewards of the galaxy to prevent their spread. Our borders are fixed and will remain so.”

“Neither can the Voku afford such expansion,” Cal-com agreed. “A collaboration must be achieved from the current races under threat in this region before they are exterminated. Those in former Skarron territory are beyond our reach.”

“Yet to defeat the Li’vorkrachnika we must purge them from everywhere?”

“Therein lies the essential problem.”

“To which you have been addressing it in what manner?”

“We have selected a region of territory and are seeking to deny the Li’vorkrachnika access to it. A stepping stone, both to secure those allies within and to block the spread of the enemy through the region. We detailed as much in the information packet we sent out.”

“So you did. I am curious to know if you have other avenues of assault.”

“We also have roving fleets seeking out and destroying the smaller enemy incursions before they can develop, as well as disrupting their shipping lanes as often as possible.”

“You have the tactics, but no master plan for victory?”

“One often cannot see the conclusion to a fight when it has barely begun.”

“And it is often the fights you cannot see the conclusion to that reckless races kill themselves on.”

“We do not have a choice in this one. The Li’vorkrachnika will be fought, either on our timetable or theirs. Recklessness would be doing nothing.”

“Something without purpose may still be wasteful. This enemy must be fought, but it has to be fought wisely and by all those affected. You have already set the foundation for such an alliance, and we will contribute to it so long as it remains feasible. How, when, where, and what remain to be determined. Are you the sole commander of your race?”

“I am.”

“Then on behalf of mine we request a temporary territory allotment on one of your colony worlds near the Li’vorkrachnika border. A shared world, and one that we will not retain possession of indefinitely, but we will require a staging base to operate out of. All we need is available landmass and safe passage through the system. We’ll take care of the rest as we work out the dynamics of how to battle this new enemy as a united front.”

“Request granted. The Yishmur System should suit your needs. Our planetary colony has an uninhabitable moon that may be breathable by your standards. We have not yet put down contained infrastructure there. If it is agreeable to your physiology I would cede it to you for the duration of this war.”

“Whether the atmosphere is breathable or not we shall make use of it. I will send a message and our race will come immediately with the material to reshape it to our garrison needs. Though this agreement is in its infancy I see no reason to delay. We are of an accord then?”

“I sent out an invitation for allies. You have responded. Accord concluded.”

“We take such matters seriously, and expect no less of the Voku. Do not mistake alacrity for insincerity.”

“We are of the same mind,” Cal-com assured the Preema.

“That you are,” it said, bowing its head slightly. “I would ask that you take no offense, but I have an admission to make that many would find disturbing.”

Cal-com stared at him evenly, though confused. “Offense at what?”

“Preema are telepathic. I have been watching your mind and comparing your thoughts to your words. You are genuine, and I needed to ascertain that before any accord could be forged.”

A thought flashed through Cal-com’s mind and the Preema flinched in reaction.

“Is this to be standard practice?” the Voku asked, trying to shunt all sensitive information away from his surface thoughts as Paul had taught him to do.

“Only when duplicity is suspected. These Humans. They have powers that you do not?”

“I will grant you the need to ascertain our intent, but I cannot allow you to pull secrets from my mind…nor can I trust in your good will. I am not angered, but I have responsibilities to maintain. From here on out our interactions will be technological in nature.”

“As you wish,” the Preema said passively. “I apologize for the intrusion, but we had to be sure before committing our fleet regardless of the alacrity needed.”

“Summon your ships and build your staging base,” Cal-com said, only allowing a few more seconds before forcing himself to leave. “And while you are doing so we will compare lists of potential allies.”

“Agreed,” the Preema said, standing up and backing into the erect, plied armor that quickly concealed its glowing visage. “Thank you for your understanding.”

“If I had the ability I would have done the same.”

“And if I didn’t, I would have been perturbed. We will take ourselves out of range and meet only again in person at times of your request. And should we be on the same battlefield simultaneously, we will not pry without just cause,” it said as the two escorts took flight first, then the Preema ambassador followed with a hefty flap of its long wings that sent it shooting up high into the atmosphere, ostensibly with an anti-grav component in the armor.

Cal-com kept his mind frozen as if it were ice until the Preema were out of sight, then he exchanged glances with his honor guard.

“That I did not expect,” he admitted. “We are going to hold them to their word. They don’t come within physical proximity to me again unless I invite them to do so.”

“What range do you want?” the Voku standing next to him asked.

“Out of sight…out of mind,” he said, throwing one last glance into the sky before walking off the platform and heading back to his transport.

4

August 2, 2825

Irten System (Gamma Region)

Ior

“Alright, ready for a headache,” Tom-008 said from the back seat in a Morpheus-class mech as it walked across the frozen tundra of Ior’s southern ice cap.

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Victoria Jenson said, not having a lick of psionic ability nor the full understanding of what the trailblazer was about to do. She was a mechwarrior Regular and had been assigned to this research project along with her Clan leader for reasons she didn’t entirely fathom, but he’d said it was important to both Clan Skystrike and Star Force on the whole, so she’d eagerly accepted the mission despite the live fire nature.

She was piloting the two seat mech from the front in one of the manual control harnesses rather than using the mental interface, which had her standing in front of Tom half naked and strapped into the rig but just out of arms reach so she couldn’t clobber him in the head accidentally as she swung her arms about. A lot of the regulars still weren’t as efficient with the mind reading tech though most of the Archons now used the interface. Theirs was more advanced because they could speak to the computer directly, whereas everyone else simply had it monitoring their thoughts and reading impulses. The system worked, but it wasn’t quite refined enough for Victoria’s tastes, so she was going with the manual controls for this challenge in order to be in top form.

They’d been working together in this tandem system for months now but this was the first real test of Tom’s tech, whereas everything else had been in computer simulation…and this time the danger was actual, with the weapons they would be firing and being fired at with being the genuine deal in order to gain an accurate analysis of effectiveness. Her job was to protect Tom and do a little damage of her own when practical, making her big mech essentially a football offensive lineman protecting their quarterback in this upcoming game, though she and Tom were the only living players on the field.

“You’ll have to, because there’s no way I’m trusting anyone else with this,” the trailblazer said, readying himself for the mental overload to come. “Even with Sav, I’m going to barely be able to keep up. Hit the ‘wake up’ button if you have to, because I’m probably not going to notice where we are or what we’re doing…and if I do it’ll be external.”

“I’ll keep us safe,” Victoria promised. “You just do your thing like always.”

“Not like always,” Tom said regretfully.

“Meaning?”

“New unknown stimuli.”

“Right. So you don’t know how much of a headache you’ve got coming?”

“Not really, no.”

“Pull down before you fry yourself.”

“You know Archons.”

“Exactly my point. If you’re the only one that can do this, don’t want to set back the project while you veg.”

“Your concern is underwhelming.”

“Just trying not to flirt. Don’t want to get demoted,” she said sarcastically.

“Compliment taken,” Tom said, sending a signal out from the mech. “Get us moving. We’re live.”

Victoria twisted in her control harness and the big biped mech took an awkward first step as it broke its standstill, but once she had a bit of momentum she smoothed out the motion and began strolling across the ice pack, sinking down an appreciable amount but nothing that was going to trip her up.

As she did so Tom closed his eyes for a moment then opened them again barely seeing the status displays before him as his mind was flooded with information. He was linked directly into the onboard Nexus and seeing through the weird ‘overmind’ perspective that the technology afforded. He’d done this numerous times in naval training and actual battle, but controlling ground units was much more difficult because you had terrain involved. Space was empty, and with emptiness came lack of detail.

The detail of the ice pack, the ridges dotting the immediate area, the atmosphere, the steps of the morpheus, and everything else involved in the area flooded into his mind and he began filtering it for the information he wanted, finding the four escort drone mechs standing behind them and prompting them to catch up and form a box around the morpheus while he likewise got the six huge Leonardo-class heavy mechs underway. They were the replacement for the Hoth line and were the medium sized variety of the hexped walkers, with the smallest version being the Donatello and the larger two being the Michelangelo and the Rafael.

A lot of the trailblazers hated to retire the Hoths, both due to the nostalgic aspect and the amount of heavy modification that had been made to them over the years. They were no longer the lumbering behemoths that the first prototypes had been, but like the Star Wars machines that had inspired the design they had a big weakness…and that was if they were flipped over they were virtually impossible to right on their own. Adjustments had been made to allow for a slow means of wiggling their way back over on top of their collapsed legs, but the process was long and tedious and completely unacceptable with the revised mandate going forward.

Another reason they’d been hesitant to replace them was because they worked so well against the lizards, who had nothing in their arsenal to tip them over with. That said, running the simulations against the V’kit’no’sat was essentially a cow-tipping affair, and in light of that the trailblazers knew they had to make a change and had decided sooner was better than later. The new hexpeds had their legs set on a ring around their turtle-shell like bodies with there being no top or bottom. Both compressed halves were identical, so if the leonardos trailing the morpheus were knocked off their feet or even flipped over their legs would just pivot around on their ball-like housings and stand the heavy mech up again with the former underside now being the top.

That wasn’t going to be an issue today, because there was nothing out on this ice shelf that could flip them, though it was possible that the ice could collapse beneath their feet in some places that didn’t have dirt a few meters down. That was a minor concern, for these six heavy walkers were here simply as carriers, with Tom linking to them from his nexus and causing their exterior doors to open.

His mind lit up with contacts and his Sav went to use consuming all the control signals from the tiny craft inside as they began to spill out onto the ground in metallic waterfalls on either side of the bottom halves of the headless walkers. When they hit the ground they floated on tiny anti-grav cushions with Tom sending them out to wherever he wanted them, not through group waypoint allotments but by controlling each individual Spark-class drone the same way he piloted a mech.

His head filled up with processing clutter, which his well-trained mind sorted out with the help of the Sav. He’d been pushing his limits over the past year trying to up his number of simultaneous remote controlled units, but of the 20,000 units he’d brought with him down to the surface he couldn’t handle more than 12,400 of them. The remainder he ordered through group tactics into a holding pattern around the leonardos, knowing that their programming wouldn’t allow them to fire unless they had a ‘manual’ command to do so.

That was standard Star Force protocol, for while they used automated commands on naval vessels there was too much clutter on planets for a computer to handle in the way of potential bystanders and the trailblazers weren’t going to tolerate so much as one person being wounded in an accident. Machines could only do what they were programmed to do, and there was always a limit to that programming no matter how advanced. There had to be a person at the controls to make sure weapons fired at the proper place at the proper time, and that was why ground-based drones had never been used in infantry applications.

It was true that a commando could have been linked to an individual drone like the fleet controllers in naval engagements, but that would have left far too few units in the field. A commando could kill hundreds of lizards in person far more effectively than one of these little sparks, so the only way this technology was going to be effective in large-scale battles was if multiple units could be controlled by a single individual…and done so without cutting corners and getting sloppy.

Tom still preferred using actual troops on the ground, as did the other trailblazers, but with the number of booby traps the lizards were setting up to try and kill even one Star Force soldier it was getting more and more difficult to assault their worlds with zero deaths. Often they had to pull back and sniff around with Archon scouts rather than diving in and kicking ass as they’d prefer to do. When you didn’t have expendable troops you had to fight in different ways, so the idea was to give Star Force some disposable ground troops to send in and trigger traps or to reinforce units in distress and have the machines take the brunt of the damage.

Despite all the advances they’d made in communications there was still a detectable lag in transmissions coming down from orbit, even if it was just over 50 miles. That would have been unnoticeable to most people, but with the mental interface and Tom’s Sav he could feel it, and when it’d been programmed into simulations he’d realized he needed to be on site to circumvent that problem. If he didn’t have the lag to deal with he could control more units, for everything that required him to think even the slightest bit extra diminished his controlling ability.

Even now he was using cheats by assigning sparks into small groups to fire on individual targets and a lot of other things that helped spare his mind additional stress, but to have the sparks operate on internal programming would mean mission failure so every movement they made had to come from him and him alone, which sent his mental processing levels sky high from the outset as he moved the swarms of little metallic spheres off across the ice field and out ahead of the mech that he was riding in but barely aware of in his overmind view.

He didn’t even realize Victoria was right in front of him, for while his eyes saw her his mind was too occupied that he might as well have been in the Bahamas and lying on a beach for all he knew. He was completely disconnected from what was right in front of him, and even his own body felt absent for the most part with his mind extending out through the nexus and into the fighting machines, making them an extension of himself and far more effective than mere programming could ever hope to be.

He saw hundreds of thousands of enemy contacts pop up on the battlemap starting 4 kilometers ahead and gave Victoria a new waypoint via the nexus controls, now unable to speak without dumping several hundred of the sparks in the process. The morpheus adjusted their track slightly to the right towards a rise rather than heading through the shallow valley as planned. The other mechs and walkers followed them as instructed in a short convoy while Tom sent the sparks out ahead and spread out the leading elements into skirmisher teams that almost immediately came under attack from concealed turrets.

Those turrets popped up through the ice, breaking the natural camouflage and shooting at the sparks with the ‘phaser’ tech the lizards now used along with a few rocket turrets. Tom felt the sparks get hit as if they were a part of his own body and moved the skirmisher teams around, firing the limited weapons each one of them had. One spark was the size of a jacuzzi, making it small enough to push its way through all but the thickest of forest, but the anti-grav took up more than 40% of the interior space in order to give it full time flight capability. Using mechs with legs saved so much space and power that Star Force preferred using walking machines, but in order to keep the mental processing power down they needed simple hovering tech on the sparks, not to mention the advantages that gave them with rough terrain.

Had Tom tried to mentally walk 200 units he’d have been overloaded, and driving the same number of walkers on their own programming meant they could potentially step on someone without him knowing…which was totally unacceptable. They had to float, but the tradeoff meant they had less internal space to utilize on other systems like weapons. A good chunk of their weight also came from armor and shields, leaving only a small cluster of plasma emitters linked to a single power source for each spark to fight with.

That meant they were ill suited for taking down turrets, but the vast majority of the targets ahead of him were infantry-class drones meant to simulate lizards with a phase rifle or rocket launcher. They were all little tanks with the appropriate weaponry and no defenses save for a bit of armor, but small enough that they took up no more room than a standard variant lizard did, meaning they could swarm you in a very small area just as the real enemy could.

Mixed in with them were tanks, also similar in size and make to the lizard varieties. Those along with the infantry bots were being controlled by Humans in orbit, meaning that if their internal programming failed in some way they wouldn’t let Tom exploit it, making adjustments as necessary but otherwise letting the little bots fight and swarm according to known lizard tactics.

And like lizards they had booby traps arrayed before them, with one of the skirmisher bots being taken out with an explosive detonation below the ice pack. It sent a huge plume of steam up into the air marking the position visually for Victoria to see, but from Tom’s perspective one of his many appendages was lost, though he could see the steam as well through all the little sensor eyes he now had.

Those sensors were minimal, as was the comm systems in order to keep the sparks small enough to be effective and not the equivalent of warships in atmosphere. He knew that increased their ability to be hacked or jammed by an opponent, but the lizards weren’t going to be doing that and these were just the prototypes. Besides, one couldn’t have a drone that did everything, so Tom had had to make a choice as to what specific role he wanted these for…and that had been anti-infantry and scouting missions.

The tanks and turrets ahead of them were going to make him pay for that design limitation, but he had five mechs and 6 heavy walkers to compensate, meaning he wasn’t going to just sit in the rear and direct the battle. Victoria was going to have to fight in it while he rode piggyback inside the cockpit.

That was where the danger came in, and if necessary he could cancel the entire exercise on a whim, but he needed to know how these sparks worked in actual combat short of using an invasion of a lizard world as a test bed. That would have been stupid for a number of reasons, but Tom also wasn’t going to use the lizards as research targets. They may have been enemies seeking to slaughter everyone else in the galaxy, but they were people too and he was going to treat them and everyone else with a measure of respect regardless of whether or not they reciprocated. If he had to kill them it’d be quick and efficient…and because they chose not to take the out he’d give them, either through retreat or surrender.

And likewise the little bots on the horizon weren’t going to hesitate to try and kill the mech he was in. Star Force rarely used live fire exercises, but with his mental finger on the kill switch Tom knew it was worth the risk. They had to really fight to see how this would play out, then they could build better simulations going forward.

To that end he linked with the leading leonardo and had it target the nearest turret and fire the small, clear Keema beam weapon that it carried over range, blowing apart the armored casing and killing the stubby raised bunker with a single, precise hit.

5

When Tom sent the order to fire the weapon he subsequently lost control of 12 sparks, reacquiring them a split second later and realizing he was already maxing out. There was no way he was going to be able to fight with this many so he dialed back and released 600 to automated functions, giving them a waypoint back to the walkers where they’d join in the nonfighting formation with the others. He’d pull units up from that pool as he lost others, but as soon as the heavy fighting started his mental processing power was going to be even more taxed and he didn’t want to go into it already stressed to the snapping point.

The ‘snapping point’ typically occurred in one of two ways. The first was what had just happened, his mind would release sparks to keep the others functioning properly and units would just drop off his mental map. The second was that all his controlling functions would lag and he’d get sloppy, not fully seeing them or what they were doing and losing the crisp, reflex-like synergy he had with the machines now. That was the worse option and he’d been training himself into a habit of letting units go rather than degrading his entire army, but the numbers were off today.

He should have been able to control this many units without too much difficulty. The sustained neural interface would give him the headaches due to prolonged activity, but the simulations he’d run had him handling this number of sparks before with reliable accuracy, else he wouldn’t have grabbed so many of them right off. For some reason reality was diminishing his control capability and he couldn’t put his finger on why. As a piece of his mind started to reflexively run through possibilities ranging from mechanical issues to sensory overload a full 1300 sparks went offline and just hovered in position waiting for instructions.

Mentally kicking himself for that…and losing another 50 in the process…Tom cleared his mind of all other thoughts and put himself into the battle trance with the sparks coming back online and consuming every part of his waking mind. He was them and they were him, with his mind pressing its limits to be able to see so many viewpoints and feather the mental trigger on so many weapons and navigation options. Normally an Archon in a nexus had to keep perspective over everything that was happening, but for this controlled experiment it was just about the combat…targets and kills and nothing else. He needed to know what he and the system was capable of before scaling back for more reliable operations.

As he maneuvered the skirmishers around he triggered more explosives, losing a handful of them but clearing the path for the mass of others to move through in clusters. There was a band of hidden turrets and traps stretched across the landscape that had been arranged by another Archon so Tom didn’t know of their locations, but once a corridor was punched through it there was a stretch of what appeared to be clear space leading up to the swarms of infantry bots.

Suddenly that clear space grew a spread of targets as more turrets popped up, having ignored the skirmishers and made themselves visible only when the masses of sparks were above them. They fired into the hordes with phasers and rockets, hitting many simply by firing without having to aim and getting multiple units with some of the explosions. The armor on the sparks was decent, but they were so small that they couldn’t pack much onto them for lack of available space…and the rockets’ yields were considerably high, enough to level a building and were only slightly smaller than a lizard debt pack.

Tom reacted immediately, pulling the sparks away from each of the turrets to create a clear zone that would allow the sparks to fire on them without hitting each other. He raised up the sparks into rows on top of one another, forming a wall around each turret as they pummeled them with plasma streaks save for the few he left open for the walkers to target. The clear Keema beams shot across the distance and tagged them slowly, for the recharge on the weapon was considerable and only the first walker was in position to fire.

He changed that up, having all of the leonardos fan out to get into firing position. Meanwhile a lot of his sparks were dropping offline from the damage and Tom began pulling a dozen or so out of the ‘waiting pool’ as needed…then the infantry bots accelerated across the landscape, coming up over several ridges like a flow of ants. They charged directly into the skirmishers, firing on them and taking several down as Tom surged the sparks forward, knowing this was going to stretch his mental limits. He stopped pulling up reinforcements as units went offline to the turret damage and waited for the snapping point to come as he started firing the weapons of more and more sparks.

He was targeting each one of them manually with a bit of aim assist from their computer programming as well as guiding their movements, all individually. That allowed him precise attacks as well as unparalleled unit cohesion for all of the sparks were fighting as if they were of a single mind…which in this case was literally true, for they were all an extension of one trailblazer.

Tom’s mind began to fog up immediately, forcing him to cut loose another few hundred. That brought the crystal clarity back and allowed him to cut through the infantry bots with a variety of tactics similar in nature to naval combat, save these happened at a much faster pace. Damaged units were cycled off the front lines and into support positions while clusters were used to separate and flank the enemy formations. They too tried to use tactics again the sparks rather than just coming at them in a blind horde that fired on the nearest targets, but they couldn’t coordinate as effectively as the sparks could, leaving Tom’s forces with a decided strategic advantage.

But they didn’t have a weapons advantage…or at least not much of one. They did have their armor and shields, but since the enemy was patterned off the lizards there were far more infantry bots than there were sparks, not to mention the tanks that were holding back behind a ridgeline. When the leading edge of the sparks crossed it they moved in, using the terrain to block the firing lines from the mechs.

When that happened Tom sent Victoria a signal to take them in, with him bringing the escort drone mechs along with her. They would need to take the tanks head on, or otherwise their greater armor would allow them to eat up the sparks. In the future they’d try to develop anti-tank variants but right now all these could handle was anti-infantry, with massed attack as the only hope against heavier targets.

That was one of the primary challenges for Tom today, to see what he could do against them. The sparks were little more than floating micro turrets that could be taken out with a single tank blast, so it was going to be in the maneuvering that he gained an advantage rather than through any shield recharging strategies that the Archons used heavily in naval combat. Virtually everything Star Force built had that longevity in mind, but Tom was going to have to go a different way against the tanks his mechs couldn’t take down.

He barely noticed as Victoria opened fire on the closest one, seeing it through the ‘eyes’ of the sparks and not the mech’s telemetry. He was viewing the other four but not the morpheus, allowing him to handle more of the drones in lieu of keeping in the loop as to what Victoria was doing. If his mental control were a hurricane, then the morpheus was the calm center of that storm that he was completely blind to…which made his copilot even more invaluable in keeping him alive.

Tom knew he was being crude with his control, but right now he was using only three options for each spark. Target and fire, position change, and altitude change. When he needed a lot of plasma beams on a tank he’d raise up and stack the sparks into a wall, or form a brick of them that would push into the infantry bots, flaking off dead sparks and driving well into their formation in order to disrupt it. He’d send reinforcements up that corridor so they could fire on the others from the sides, getting more guns on target and managing the flow of bots that kept increasing with every minute.

Had these been Regulars, Knights, and Archons on the ground they would have necessarily turtled up and worked to kill off those closest to them, weathering the storm through armor and shields and rotational strategies in order to keep anyone from getting killed, but since the sparks were just machines Tom could be more aggressive and abandoned most of the shield recharging formations and just hammered the opposing infantry. One on one the sparks would win easily, and it was important for Tom to keep the bots from massing too densely, else their combined firepower would eat through the sparks quite fast.

To do that he sent clusters shooting out into the enemy formation like fingers, then spreading them out and sending units right into the midst of the enemy formations expecting to lose them, but not before they killed many bots and thinned the lines…at which point he’d surge the others and wipe them out using traditional cycling strategies to preserve the rest of his mechanical troops.

It worked well enough that he saw the infantry bots start to pull back after about 12 minutes of fighting…then the tiny bit of his brain that was still left to wonder realized it was because the walkers had just gotten up over the ridge and into firing position. These leonardos were configured mostly as troop transports, but the defensive weaponry on them was more than sufficient to do damage to armored targets at range, not to mention some point defense weapons for if the bots ever got close enough to start chipping away at their legs.

Suddenly there were more targets popping up, which Tom only noticed due to their proximity to the walkers. He and the mechs were up with the tanks now, leaving the walkers in the back with the extra sparks tagging along in preprogrammed navigational mode. He wasn’t seeing through them, only the walkers, when the hidden doors under the ice opened up and broke through the cold camouflage and spilled out swarms of the infantry bots right into the midst of the neutral sparks.

Not one of them fired back, for they couldn’t without Tom’s control…forcing him to choose between fighting up front or disengaging his mind from those so he could defend the walkers…who couldn’t very well shoot down into the swarms of sparks without destroying them as well.

“Damn,” he whispered, losing control of over a thousand for a second when he uttered the word and lost concentration. It took him another second to decide to send the neutral sparks off to distant waypoints, having them run away from the walkers rather than switching control over to them or abandoning the front lines. They were faster than the infantry bots and quickly cleared the area, letting the leonardos have clear firing lines down near and around their feet.

A handful of Sammy turrets opened up on the bots, killing several with showers of yellow energy spurts that were actually a very high cyclical rate of the same beam firing tiny bits of bolts. Each turret bathed an area where the infantry bots were, for Tom couldn’t precisely target them without abandoning more sparks on the front lines, instead using area of effect commands and having the onboard computers handle the distribution patterns.

Instead of running or chasing the sparks the infantry bots ran under the walkers and fired on them with their tiny phasers, doing no damage to the armor with the walkers’ shields covering them. Those were virtually impervious to the small weapons…up until some of the bots began ramming the legs and detonating against them.

The shield strength dipped in chunks with each explosion and the phaser bursts only added to it in the hundreds of strikes per second. Tom forced himself not to calculate how much damage was being done and how much time he’d have, else he’d lose control of more sparks. He made the choice to let the walkers fend for themselves and ordered them to group up closer and share their point defenses as he continued to press the assault against the main infantry wave.

There was no victory end to this engagement. They were meant to fight and that was it, with the results being measured afterwards to determine weaknesses and efficiencies. His opposition was going to do as much damage as they could and they’d just found a way to mess up his plans, so rather than aid them by scrambling to make changes he continued on, letting them chip away at one of the leonardo’s legs as he kept the most number of sparks engaged as he could.

Meanwhile Victoria was hauling him around in the morpheus kicking the crap out of the tanks with her maulers and stitching the infantry bots with her anti-air pods whenever she could get an angle forward. A lot of anti-air defenses, whether they be man-sized or planetary, did not lower to ground level to avoid being disabled from such strikes. A big orbital battery tipping over to target things like Skarron walkers could be a huge boost to a city’s defense, but likewise that battery tip would bring the sensitive pieces of that weapon into the firing line of the ground troops.

That was why they were normally covered in a shell of armor or building that would keep them safe from all but air assets while they exclusively targeted the same. Some units like the mechs had experimented with shoulder-mounted pods that could tip over and double as anti-infantry mods, and that’s exactly what this morpheus had been outfitted with. The small sammies roasted the infantry bots with single hits, allowing Victoria to keep the little det pack bots from getting up to her mech’s legs while their numerous phaser hits kept chipping away at her mech’s shields.

She didn’t know what Tom was doing other than what the battlemap showed her, but there was a beehive of activity all around and she just did her job and focused on what was affecting her mech and what targets she could hit without jeopardizing their safety. There were a lot of tanks out there, in the hundreds, so she chose the ones that were separated from the others and took them on while the flanking drone mechs stayed alongside or drifted off slightly to go after other targets, always cycling back around into formation.

Tom was controlling them as well and it made her wonder why she was even here when he could have controlled this mech just as easily. It would have meant a few less sparks under his control but she didn’t really see the need for her to be here up until a large group of tanks came straight for them and the infantry bots shifted, heading kamikaze towards the drone mechs and firing some unknown weapons mods at them…which amounted to tow cables wrapping around their legs.

“What the hell?” she said, turning her maulers at the infantry in addition to the sammies to try and thin those around the morpheus and prevent any of them getting close enough to fire the cables, for they all looked the same externally so she couldn’t identify which they were and pick them off prior to firing their concealed weapons.

But as it was there were none coming at them anyway. They were meant to disable the morpheus’s escorts while the tank formation headed to pick off the quarterback.

Victoria knew that as long as she kept them moving and in play that Tom would take care of it, so she didn’t try to head towards the tethered mechs as the enemy would expect, but rather went the other way and waded out into the infantry battles expecting the leonardos to pick off the tanks or the sparks to swarm to their defense…except that the help wasn’t coming. There was no change in the flow of battle other than the enemy tanks moving faster than they were and encircling them with the infantry actually being stepped on as they tried to slow the morpheus through sheer numbers grouping around its feet.

She turned the mech’s torso and blasted two tanks with her maulers, one shot each, then got slammed with a series of blasts in the mech’s back and the shields nearly breached. Twenty seconds later they did go down as the tiny little phaser blasts added to the continuous tank hits and the rear of the mech was exposed, now taking armor damage.

And still there was no help coming to their aid.

“Tom, we’re getting cooked!” Victoria warned, hoping her voice would bring his attention to them. She waited, fighting it out but still seeing no response. She was about to ping him on the battlemap but decided to go the drastic route since this was a training fight and used the emergency override, pushing a button that momentarily severed Tom’s connection to the army around them.

“Feel like covering our ass?” she asked as he snapped back into awareness of his body and what was around him.

“What happened?” he asked, quickly seeing the status displays around him and noticing the mess they were in. “Why didn’t you ping me?” he said, reconnecting to the sparks nearest him as well as the leonardos, with two of them popping tanks immediately.

“Why didn’t you see it happening?” she countered, then remained silent as they both had to focus on what they were doing. Tom got them the reinforcements they needed before their armor was breached, then they pulled back and recharged their shields before diving back in for the last round of fireworks before the enemy forces were spent and the battle wore down to a few handfuls of units.

Eventually the end signal was given by the opposition and Tom put all his remaining units into standby as he pulled out of the intense control mode and returned it to a chess game, telling units where to move and letting them float there on their own.

“I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened.”

“How’s your head?”

Tom didn’t respond for a moment, flicking away several layers of numbness before the pain materialized. “Worse than I thought. I think I zoned that out too.”

“That was very untrailblazer-like of you,” Victoria noted. “You guys are usually on top of everything before it happens.”

“No argument there,” he said with a sigh as he massaged his forehead with a pair of fingers. “I guess we’re a lot further away from a working prototype than I thought.”

“You can’t fight like that,” she warned. “You have to know everything that’s going on or we’re going to get slaughtered.”

Tom smacked the back of his head against his seat in frustration. “I know. I know.”

6

August 11, 2825

Hyperion System (Zeta Region)

Yert

Mina Delari stood on the stage in front of the crowd of some 238,458 people singing the last song of her concert, hand reaching toward the sky boxes overhead as a waterfall spilt out over her, drenching her from head to toe as the chemical it was laced with dissolved her hair tie, her shirt, shorts, shoes, and every other thing on her body over the course of the following 15 seconds, leaving her fully nude and ‘exposed,’ as the song was titled, in her signature finish to her performances.

The Human female stood there as the last of the water washed the scraps of clothing off her and the crowd roared so loud she could actually feel the stage vibrate. She stood there smiling as she dropped her arm and posed, letting them get a good look at her as the song music ended and a finishing theme took its place, signifying the end of the concert and her farewell to the crow. Mina lingered for more than a minute, then walked back to a circle on the ground that only she could see and turned to give them one final pose, this one an X with arms raised and legs spread wide, then columns of steam rose up from the stage floor obscuring her for several seconds before dissipating and revealing her to have vanished.

Mina rode the lift down into the floor, stumbling slightly as it had to accelerate fast to get her clear and the hatch covered, then it slowed to a stop and she stepped off into the prep area below with assistants waiting for her. Per usual she didn’t accept any clothes from them, for once she ended a concert in the nude she remained that way until she got back home. One of her maturia handlers had told her during sexual training that if you had ‘it’ don’t be afraid to flaunt it, and she’d taken that advice to heart over the past two years.

She did accept a mug of Xerta, which was one of the current soda pop flavors popular amongst the Axius colonies that she was a native of. It had only been 6 years ago that she’d graduated from the maturia without a credit to her name and only a small, basic quarters module to live in and now she was touring the ADZ in her own private jumpship.

Mina took a couple gulps, knowing it would help her slightly sore throat from getting any worse and looking forward to a day of travel so she could get some sleep. This was the 18th concert on this planet in the past 10 days and her voice was nearly spent, but she’d made it through and would have a bit of respite until her next concert series on Priot, including two on the new tier 3 continent. She’d never performed for the ‘elite’ before and had actually thought they just worked round the day without any entertainment facilities but apparently she’d been wrong. The professional concert circuits were starting to go through the new regions now that they were getting established and that meant there were credits to be made, else they wouldn’t have bothered.

Mina’s team escorted her through the stage facilities with lots of workers pausing to take a few seconds of awe at seeing her naked. Nudity wasn’t banned in Axius or Star Force, but most people still chose to wear clothes enough that going in the buff got a lot of attention…then again she was also in insanely good shape and that never hurt. The floors were clean, as was the rest of the facility, so she didn’t mind walking around nude and did so as much for her reputation as for herself. She’d been sexually shy in the beginning, but now reveled in just being herself and not hiding anything.

She didn’t get a buzz anymore, just a sense of freedom that felt refreshing. The bath she’d just had helped too, washing off the concert’s sweaty sheen and leaving her with dripping blonde hair that she didn’t bother to ring out. It left a trail on the floor but there were no carpets so it didn’t matter. It’d dry, she’d dry, all was good.

After sucking down half the mug she was led to an exclusive autograph signing for 500 lucky individuals. She smiled and engaged in a brief bit of chit chat with them and the press as she speedily got through all of the signings then bid them and the planet farewell as she was taken out onto a nearby private landing pad that had thousands of fans standing on nearby rooftops to see her depart. They roared in the brightly lit night sky when she emerged, shocking her for a moment at how many of them had found vantage points.

Mina waved at them and blew a few kisses before walking up the ramp and into her dropship. Once inside she retreated up to the third level while her people finished loading up. There were two other dropships on the pad that would be packing up their gear and following them up to orbit but Mina’s left right away. Before it lifted off she was able to walk onto the clear upper deck and slide into her private jacuzzi that was not so much right now for most of the high placed onlookers could see down into that exposed part of her ship through the glass bubble covering it.

She settled in, smiling but not interacting with them anymore as the warm water soothed her sore feet. The shoes she had to wear in order to make the dissolve possible didn’t fit well and always left her toes a bit raw, and that was one small reason why she didn’t put any shoes on afterward until she got back to this blissful tub. She looked out the bubble at the surrounding buildings as they finally began to lift off. Her fans disappeared from view leaving nothing but the tall spires that probably held a few more with telescopic lenses.

Those last bits of cityscape finally vanished and she was left with just the stars above her as the dropship headed up through the atmosphere and into space, giving her a bit of much needed privacy. Her team knew not to disturb her after a show and would stay away until she called for them, which wouldn’t be for some time. Per her usual instructions the dropship took its time climbing to orbit and then over to the position where her jumpship was waiting, giving her a good two and a half hours to soak and relax with nothing but starlight and the occasional passing ship or station to keep her company…and those were too far away for anyone to snoop on her, not that they were going to see anything new. That was one advantage of getting exposed on a regular basis. You had nothing to hide, and when you had nothing to hide there was no need to worry.

It was a kind of freedom that she’d discovered after her first nervous nude show. She’d done a short one completely in the buff her first year, which had ironically put her in the spotlight and sent her career off at a sprint once people finally got a chance to hear her music en mass. A hot body wasn’t enough to get ADZ-wide recognition, for there were many of them and most of the races didn’t find Humans attractive anyway, but they did like good songs and that was what she was good at. The nudity was just an extra and something she did more for herself than the fans…but if it made their day so much the better. She didn’t mind sharing her sexuality, visually anyway.

It was in these transition periods from planet to orbit that she often did a lot of thinking, still with too much adrenaline to sleep and no more requirements to rigidly constrict her mind. She often wondered where she went from here. As a minor star in the ADZ she already had over 4 billion credits to her name and that would easily buy her inclusion in a tier 2 colony of her choosing for infinity or one of the private luxury residences in Australia, but neither of those was really a big deal now. She lived on her jumpship most of the time, traveling from system to system and racking up the credits for herself and her supporting label. The ship was hers, as was her team now, though the label still organized her performances and marketed her music, but they no longer gave her orders.

Not that long ago Mina had worked her ass off to earn her freedom by graduating from the maturia, and now she’d earned her freedom from her label, able to do things entirely her own way and being too valuable as a credit-earning asset to be argued with anymore. She had enough currency to stop singing and do whatever she wanted, which often made her wonder what she was doing this for now. There were bigger names than hers, a lot of them, and the challenge of rising up to that level did appeal to her, but she sensed she wanted more than that.

And it wasn’t a guy. She could have as many guys as she wanted, and that kind of ruined the appeal right there. She might be sexual, but she hadn’t had sex since the maturia and planned to keep it that way. Too many people she’d followed had gone off course once they’d coupled with someone, and her maturia training had made it clear that maintaining one’s individuality was key to achieving self-sufficiency.

That was her primary goal, and anyone who thought otherwise was just plain stupid. But there was something else nagging at her, and though she had a well-defined schedule ahead of her plus next year’s concerts to choreography and a list of other important to-do items, Mina felt like she was treading water and not really headed anywhere. That thought kept nagging her as she soaked in the jacuzzi, with her dipping her head under the water and coming back up into the cooler air with a sense of aloneness.

Her team was just below decks, meters away if she needed them, but it finally dawned on her that they were all here for the job and not her. They were her friends, for sure, but if she stopped singing they’d move on to assist others and that’d be the end of that. Mina was around people constantly, so much so that she’d never really felt alone, but now that her maturia classmates had gone on to do whatever with their lives she’d been so busy with building her career she’d never thought about it.

With trillions upon trillions of people in the ADZ she didn’t matter. If she quit singing and just disappeared a lot of people would be upset, but they’d move on. No one really knew her as a person, just a celebrity, and for the first time she really felt the aloneness…and the fear that came with it. The fear of no safety net and the galaxy being wide open before you. The openness was more intense than her first nude concert and it made her feel truly exposed and alive.

It was scary too, but she wasn’t going to turn away from it. Even though she had people around her constantly, in truth she was alone navigating a sea of strangers and she wasn’t going to let her mind veer from that into the delusions that the masses lived their lives by. Mina clung to the feeling, essentially placing a wedge in her mind to keep that viewpoint open as she sat up, bringing her small but chiseled breasts up above the water line and looking around as the cool air hit her wet flesh.

There was a sound dampener on the doorway so she couldn’t hear anything from the rest of the ship, so aside from the sound of the water and her breathing there was nothing else to hear…which was why she belatedly realized she liked it so much. It was a sanctum away from the hive mind of society…but that hive mind was an illusion that she was now able to see through. Even with people around her she was always alone, and that epiphany was not something she was going to forget.

Mina settled back down into the water as the tiny pinprick of light ahead of them began to grow into the silhouette of her jumpship, but even the sight of it didn’t strike her as ‘home’ anymore. It was a place she stayed and worked out of, traveled on, but her real home was her body. Wherever she went she was home within the confines of her skin.

No wonder she liked disrobing so much. The clothing was essentially a hitchhiker on her journey through life.

She continued to ponder her new insights as the jumpship grew outside the clear canopy. It wasn’t as large as the Star Force models, nor as fast, but the Kefron produced Nightstalker model was more than sufficient to get her from system to system in a timely manner and avoid the hassles of having to book transit on the ADZ grid. It was her private possession, and since Star Force owned all property on planetoids the only way you could get your own bit of turf was by building it in space. Stations required permits and were harder to obtain, but buying a ship and moving about gave you a little island of your own where you could do your own thing.

There were no monitoring devices in the corridors like in the Axius colonies. Star Force might respect a person’s privacy in their own quarters, but public movements and actions were always monitored so they could track down problems after they happened by going back through the exhaustive records…and it worked too, with almost no violations whatsoever in the colony she’d lived in after coming out of the maturia. But there was something about being away from observation and on your own that was appealing to many people, hence the extensive ship building industry outside of the Star Force line.

But now Mina realized that even in the Axius colonies she was still alone. Watched via people and technology, but still alone. It was a very freeing realization that stayed on her mind as the jumpship grew to fill almost the entire forward half of the bubble dome over her jacuzzi and interrupting her bathing in the stars.

Knowing that they had only a minute or so before landing in the bay, Mina stepped out of the tub and walked down to the lower level of the dropship and the exiting ramp, dripping a trail of water all the way through the ship and out onto the jumpship’s bay floor that tracked across to the entry door before resolving itself down to a random drop here and there as her body slowly dried off. While her team dealt with unloading and other measures she headed off into her ship alone, always liking the idea of dripping as she went.

It was messy, but totally clean at the same time. It was just water. It would dry so no harm done, but it did seem to mess with the unspoken rules of society and she liked that, even onboard her own ship where she could set the rules however she liked…except she couldn’t, because her crew brought with them their own expectations and culture and whatever else you wanted to call the hive mind that society operated off of. Mina had always been slightly put off by it, and now even more so as she seemed to finally make the mental disconnect and realize what it really was to be an individual in both mind and body.

She walked through the ship’s corridors to her private quarters, dunking herself in a shower tub for the autowash’s scrubbing cycle that scoured off what grime the concert dunking and jacuzzi had left on her, then she walked into a drying tube that left her with a pine-like scent when she stepped out and into some silky soft pajamas. From there she headed over to the ship’s dining area and the chef whipped up an array of small portioned items that she favored in only a few minutes, giving her an opportunity to get into bed without much delay.

Mina fell asleep quickly, exhausted from this planetary stint and having already cycled the adrenaline out of her system. Dreams would ensue but she wouldn’t remember them when she woke, for she rarely did…not to mention the circumstances of her waking would wash away any lingering memory as sheer panic set in.

7

Mina woke to a loud bang on her door so intense and quick she wasn’t sure why she sat bolt upright in bed, thinking for a moment it was all in her groggy mind’s imagination until the second thud sounded. Then a third and fourth came in quick succession and she scurried out of bed and over to the door, pressing the button on the wall that slid the panel open into the midst of a scuffle between one of her security guards and a non-human…someone that was definitely not supposed to be on her ship.

She took a step back as they tussled, then the green-skinned biped that stood a good six and a half feet tall got her guard in a headlock and began choking him out with a knee into his back to keep him from wriggling away. Seeing that he was losing, Mina ran out the door and jumped on the pair of them, wrapping her own thin arms around the Fahmren’s neck and feeling its skin plates slice into her skin as she pried it back using her weight and her own knee in its back.

She succeeded in pulling it off her guard, but was pancaked as it fell backwacks and something in her left knee popped under the weight. Unable to move with the Fahmren’s mass on top of her she was pinned and could do nothing, hoping she’d done enough to help the guard get free as she still clung to the attacker’s neck.

The next thing she knew her head slammed into the ground again, knocking her half unconscious. The weight on her chest disappeared and she heard a plasma blast, feeling a trickle of heat wash over her before two more sounded and the Fahmren fell to the floor a meter past her feet...then the guard was standing over her and pulling her to her feet.

“Get back inside,” he ordered, standing over her protectively as she tried to step on her injured leg and yelped from the pain. He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her inside, tossing her on the floor as a red plasma bolt shot down the hallway and they both ducked inside her quarters. He shut and locked them in, then pulled her out of the way so he could have a clear line of fire.

“What’s going on?” she shouted, with the guard’s answer cut off by two huge bangs on the door. Instead he pulled out his stun pistol and pushed it into her hands.

“I hope you remember how to use this. That door isn’t going to last long,” he said, with his prophetic words being followed up with a glow mark popping up about a meter off the ground as it was hit from the outside with a plasma blast, quickly followed by many more as they began to burn their way through into her quarters.

Mina saw that he held some type of rifle she wasn’t familiar with, ostensibly the same one the Fahmren shot in the hall had been carrying. “How many are there?”

“At least three…probably more,” he answered as a small hole was torn in the door and a bit of red leapt across the room and into the far wall, thankfully below the skylight that led directly into space. Melt that and the whole room would depressurize and they’d be dead, though in theory it should be made of material more sturdy than the door. “We’ve been boarded. I don’t know how or why, but we should have jumped out and didn’t. I can’t reach the bridge and barely got to you before that bastard did. The rest of security is down or missing.”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked, wincing against the pain as she held the stinger pistol at the ready. All Humans had a decent amount of combat training in the maturia and she had always been a good shot, but she’d never expected having to put those skills to use onboard her own ship.

“Unless there’s somewhere to hide in here that I don’t know about, we just shoot as many as we can. They’re here for you.”

Mina swallowed hard as a fist-sized chunk of her door blew out. “I can’t walk on this leg.”

The security guard glanced at the door, then decided to make a quick change. “Grab my neck, I’ll swing you over to better cover.”

She did as told, making sure not to tip the barrel of her pistol into his head just in case the trigger got pulled. It wouldn’t kill him if it fired, but the last thing she needed right now was to stun her only protection. In truth he and the other six were here to guard her against rabid fans, but they’d all had far more extensive combat training than her for a situation like this. Mina just didn’t know if he’d be enough on his own and hoped the others were still alive elsewhere in the ship.

Swinging from his neck like a child, he walked her over to the other side of the main room and into a walk-in closet. She grabbed a hold of one of the shelves to steady her, then he left and headed over to another portion of the room and fired a shot back in through the door that was now more holes and smoke than a barrier. The red bolt hit what she didn’t know, for it was out of her line of sight barely, but anyone coming more than two steps into the room would be in her firing line. Holding onto the shelf with her left hand and aiming with her right, she stood ready on one leg to get at least a few shots off.

A sound of sudden cracking preempted her guard’s return shots and then all hell broke loose as two more Fahmren came into view, one falling over as he was shot by her man before he had to duck down on the other side of her bed for cover. She nailed the other one in the left arm, causing it to go numb and the next plasma blast to hit the floor as it suddenly couldn’t aim. Mina fired twice more, knocking it down before her view was obscured by black uniforms and more green flesh as she was hit in the face and her weapon knocked from her grasp.

Mina fell to the floor, her knee exploding again in pain, then suddenly she was spun over and face planted into the carpet as her arms were bound so tight she felt like her wrists were being cut off. A few more plasma blasts sounded then all was quiet, which was a very bad sign.

She was yanked up off the ground by her arms that were now locked behind her back, then she crumpled over again when her leg wouldn’t hold her. Mina yelled in pain, then was picked up and carried over the shoulder of one of her attackers out of her quarters with her able to catch a glimpse of the smoking corpse of her guard on the floor next to the bed.

After that it was a pain-ridden ride through the hallways, with most of her vision being of the floor and the backside of the Fahmren hauling her. They took her down several levels, then when the flooring changed and she recognized they were on the hangar deck she realized with horror that she was being taken off her ship. Not knowing what else to do she began bucking and kicking with her good leg, but all it did was make the thing mad enough that he tossed her down to the ground and grabbed her by the neck, dragging her forward and out of reach of any of her kicks.

She could barely breathe in his grip, but she had to do something. If they were willing to kill her people to get to her then there was no way of knowing what they’d do to her.

The pressure on her neck disappeared a split second before several ‘pings’ filled the air, followed by dozens of plasma blasts crossing over her head. She was laying on her back, hands bundled up between her and the floor as the red and pink crisscrossed over her head for a moment before another Fahmren grabbed her and dragged her over to the doorway of a ship she didn’t recognize…only to get hit in the chest with a pink glob of energy and fall face forward on top of her.

Mina had no vision and had to twist her head to the side to get any air as she was once again pinned down, but she knew there was another firefight going on and those pink blasts weren’t the stinger pistols that her crew carried. She was left there underneath the body of one of her attackers for what felt like an eternity until it was rolled off and she was looking up into the faceplate of a dirty white armored Human that she knew was from Star Force security.

“Relax,” he said through the external mic as he sized her up then turned her over so he could get to her bound hands, “you’re safe now.”

“Thank you,” she said, crying with relief. A moment later her hands were free and she balled up on the ground, cradling her hurt leg and not even trying to stand. “How many…are dead?”

“We’re still searching the ship, but I’m staying here with you and to guard the hangar. Nobody is slipping back out.”

“They killed one of my security team. I don’t know about everyone else,” she said, letting the tears flow freely and not thinking she could stop them if she tried.

“If they’re here we’ll find them,” he said, but the angle of his helmet had his eye line on the surrounding area. “Do you know how they got onboard your ship?”

“I just woke up…I don’t know anything.”

“Your leg?” the commando asked.

“Something is broke. I can’t put any pressure on it.”

“We’ll get a medtech to you as soon as we can, but right now you’re just going to have to hold on. We’re sitting in stellar orbit and had to get to you in a puddle jumper. We’re just a reaction team and I can’t leave this position to grab a med kit just yet.”

“How many of you are there?” she asked, closing her eyes and wincing against the pain…which just squeezed out more tears that were adding to the puddle on the deck beneath her head.

“Two.”

Mina sucked in a quick breath, suddenly feeling at risk again.

“Relax. They can’t take us down with a few plasma shots. Not in armor. My teammate will clear the rest of the ship and I’ll be here to guard you and make sure nobody gets off until reinforcements arrive. We’ve got a ship headed to our position, ETA about 40 minutes, and no other hostile vessels in sight. We’re good, so just stay where you are and ride this out. They’re not getting to you again.”

“Thank you,” she repeated, but kept her eyes open and scanning as much of the hangar as she could, seeing the ugly transport sitting in her hangar bay next to her own dropships and the small, gleaming Puddle Jumper-class Star Force ship sitting just inside the energy field covering the hatch into space. That hatch should have been closed, making it impossible for anyone to board short of boring a hole in through the hull. How the hell did the attackers get onboard?

“Caught your concert via relay. You’re damn good at those vocal spikes.”

Mina laughed, a mixture of anxious breath and tears being blown out like a grenade explosion. “Thank you,” she said automatically, but it was obvious that she didn’t care about anything right now except her current situation.

“Have there been any threats recently?”

“No, nothing,” she said, trying to think and finding her head still swirling in panic. “Not that they told me.”

“There’s no damage to the exterior of your ship. And aside from the distress signal we received, there was no indication that this rendezvous was unplanned. Your ship held in stellar orbit and allowed this one onboard as far as we can tell. I hate to say it, but unless there was some technical wizardry going on this looks like an inside job.”

Mina’s eyes became lasers as she turned her head and looked up at his helmet, knowing in her gut that he was right but not able to suspect any of her team.

“We’ll find out one way or another,” the commando said, “we just don’t usually get hijackings inside a Star Force system when they know we’ll be all over them. The dumb ones usually try fast hit and runs before they’re caught, but boarding a ship takes so much time there’s no way to pull it off under our noses unless you have backup and a very good plan. Doing it in stellar orbit never happens.”

“Too much maneuvering room,” Mina said, remembering navigational lessons from the maturia.

“Exactly. Even if your hangar door was open you could still run and they wouldn’t be able to dock with this ship on the move. You just sat here and let them come over, and they would have got away with it if it wasn’t for your distress signal. As it was we got here about 2 minutes before it would have been too late. We still would have ran their ship down, but with you as a hostage it would have been a lot harder to deal with. We don’t give up on a mission, no matter how difficult, but whoever sent that signal saved you.”

“Can you put me on your ship?” she asked, almost pleading. “I don’t want to stay here.”

“I need to stay in sight of the door so none of them can slip back onboard their ship, but if you can hop or crawl over there you’re welcome to sit inside.”

“Give me a hand up?” she asked, tears still flowing.

With his stun gun in one hand the commando reached down with his other armored glove and pulled her up by the arm, letting her balance on her good leg for a moment before letting her go. She took a small hop, not touching her bad leg to the floor but sending a spike of pain up through her with the jolt anyway. Mina pushed through it and hopped across the deck all the way near to the exit into space where the Star Force craft was sitting, blocking as much of the blinding sunlight behind it as it could and just to the inside of the warning zone that amounted to a few meters of deck painted with no-go markings to keep people away from the field so they didn’t accidentally fall outside the ship.

Feeling a little leery about getting anywhere near it with her balance being so bad, Mina headed in as straight of a line as she could over to the open personnel ramp, then let herself collapse to the ground so she could crawl up it, keeping her bad leg on top as he pulled herself up the length and over the top bump, finding the bit of Star Force territory to be immediately welcoming and feeling safe.

She curled up there and waited, crying out more tears than she knew she had in her until the reinforcement team arrived and the medtech got to her.

Mina woke to find herself in a Star Force med bay as an armored hand shook her shoulder, snapping her out of the little nap she’d lapsed into.

“Hey, you awake Starchaser?” the commando asked, using her professional nickname.

She blinked her eyes open and saw him standing next to her, still wearing armor but missing the helmet. “Yes.”

“We’ve found some survivors. 3 in total. The rest were killed by the Kripcha.”

Mina coughed, both in relief and horror. Some had survived, but only 3?

“Kripcha?”

“They’re a known fringe unit, more criminal than mercenary. That’s who the Fahmren belonged to.”

“Why?”

“Not sure yet, but there was a fight on the bridge, we think prior to their arrival. Everyone was dead, four to poison and a fifth with a crushed windpipe. We’re guessing that was the rat who betrayed you, and whoever got the distress signal off got him before they finally succumbed to the poison.”

“Who was it?” she asked, sitting up and dragging her numb leg across the bed with her, for it was wrapped up in some kind of healing cradle that was locking her knee joint in place.

“ID matched to Iryna Chordag. No history of bad behavior or links to the Kripcha, but I’d put my money on him. Without any internal security cameras there’s no way to be sure, but we’re having an analysis team go over the ship thoroughly to see if there’s anything else to find.”

“Are you the one that saved me…back on the hangar?”

“Yes I am.”

“Come here please,” she said, motioning him towards her with two fingers.

He stepped closer and sat down on the bed next to her. When he did so she reached out quickly but gently and pulled his head to her, giving him the biggest kiss of her life before transitioning into a stranglehold hug overtop his hard armor and feeling like she never wanted to let go.

“Thank you,” she repeated in a whisper, with more tears flowing.

8

September 16, 2825

Epsilon Eridani System

Optimus

Mina laid out on the wide beach beneath a pair of sunglasses and nothing else, soaking in the sunlight and trying to burn away the nerves she’d had ever since the attack. With most of her team dead and her head a mess, she’d canceled her upcoming concert schedule and disappeared from society, heading to the tiny Australian piece of Star Force that had been quickly transforming into the commercial elite. If you had credits you could probably buy it here, including seclusion, which she desperately needed right now.

The beach she was on was half full of people, but all were guests of the resort facility she was living at indefinitely and none were adoring fans or murdering kidnappers. She’d booked her stay under an alternate identity and even dyed and cut her hair so she wouldn’t be recognized. As it was no one here was interested in anyone else, for everyone had bought their way into the resort to get away from the mass of people out there and didn’t feel like mingling or meddling.

Every day Mina would come to the beach, strip down, and lay out for as many hours as her skin could take without burning trying to make some sense of what’d happened. She was so lucky that one of her team had got that distress signal off, otherwise she would have been dead by now, or maybe worse, and she still couldn’t shake that sense of dread. The brutality of it all, her injuries aside, had stunned her.

They’d killed her people just so they could take her…and for what? Ransom or some perverted pleasure? She didn’t want to think about it but she couldn’t stop herself, making her days at one of the most luxurious resorts in all of the ADZ feel decidedly uncomfortable, but every now and then the sunlight would bake her into a numb drowsiness that would allow her a few minutes of a blissful nap…only to wake up and have the mental simulations resume.

Lots of people had offered her assistance afterwards, but she’d have none of it. Whether they were trying to help or push their own agendas she didn’t know, but she didn’t feel like talking to anyone or doing anything other than wrestling with these thoughts and nerves until she could get a handle on them.

Try as she did, she hadn’t been able to shake them for a month now and was worrying that she might never be able to. Not having a clue what to do, she just kept up her simple routine of coming to the beach, getting nearly burnt, then retreating back into the indoors for more time alone and constantly looking over her shoulder at every bend of the corridors. Mina tried to make herself stop, but she couldn’t help it. Everywhere she went felt like a trap was about to be sprung…save for out here in the open. Being so exposed seemed to negate the danger in some way that she didn’t understand, which was also why she came out here so often. Hiding in plain sight, her subconscious told her.

Today was no different, and when her body had soaked up all the radiation it was going to tolerate she forced herself to roll onto her knees and stand up, grabbing her clothes and pulling on a pair of shorts and shirt before grabbing her towel and sliding her sandy feet into a pair of sandals. Forcing herself to look around and see that there was no one following her, she spun a full 180 before walking up the shallow slope until she got to the soft walkways where the sand ended.

From there she headed left and walked a while, not wanting to go inside just yet and following the beach perimeter. Most of this planet was ocean, with only a tiny bit of landmass on its surface and nearly all of it having been given over to Australia centuries ago. There were Star Force cities out in the ocean, some even visible if you looked at the horizon really close on a clear day, but their denizens were banned from the Australian territory and didn’t migrate or mingle here save through proper channels that allowed the Australians to pick and choose who they let in…mainly those with credits to pay their way.

In compensation the Australians had made sure to make their accommodations far more luxurious than what Star Force offered, which was a tall bar to reach, but they achieved it through keeping a low population and giving everyone more room and resources than was standard in Mainline Star Force colonies, enticing people to migrate here and their other territorial possessions to boost their population and power within the ADZ.

This resort and others like it were even higher up the ladder, specializing in luxuries that Star Force never touched. Had she wanted to, she could have rented or purchased a set of quarters that was the size of a starship and had an interior waterpark. Mina didn’t want any part of that nonsense, so she’d taken one of the other options the resort provided…which for her was a small treehouse set inside one of their forested parks far away from everyone else.

There was a tunnel link underground to get to it, but no ground access on site, meaning unless you climbed a tree you couldn’t get up to where she was staying, keeping even the idle forest wanderer away from her, though there were no paths or other treehouses within 500 meters of where she was staying. But she didn’t want to go back there just yet and stagnate. In fact she hated that, for her mind would spin even more and bog her down, so she did the next best thing and kept walking, towel rolled up and pinned under her arm, and just wandered the spacious grounds.

She walked for so long that the sun eventually started to set, and with the rays no longer burning into her skin she worked her way to the northern beach and spread out her towel again as the other guests were leaving. She stripped down and laid out, forgoing the sunglasses and soaking up the slightly cool breeze coming in as she watched the sun start to dip below the horizon.

It felt more dangerous now, but she stayed almost as if to invite trouble. Part of her mind wanted it to happen now if it was going to rather than waiting for it to come later. Mina didn’t know if that was stupid or not, but she really didn’t want to go back to her treehouse so she made herself stay until the sunlight was gone and the stars came out.

Along with those stars were brighter dots on the ocean marking the location of distant cities. Behind her there were more lights breaking through the trees from the surrounding buildings and from the small security lights on the paths. Those were little more than glowing rocks and just enough illumination to see where you were stepping. No broad flood lights to break up the pleasant atmosphere. It was dark and was meant to be dark, but not so much that you’d go stumbling around not able to see where you were going.

Mina relished the change, wondering why she hadn’t done this sooner, but her thoughts wouldn’t settle down. She kept replaying what had happened over and over again, trying to find some mistake she’d made that could have averted all of that…for the last thing she wanted to be was helpless, and if she’d made a mistake that was something she could change, putting her back in control.

But she wasn’t. She’d been caught completely off guard and had only survived through a sheer stroke of luck. Star Force security had saved her, but they hadn’t prevented the attack from happening. For as large and dominant as their grip on the ADZ was, it was obvious that things could happen under their noses that they had no idea about…bringing her back to the fact that she was alone despite being around so many people.

But that exhilarating openness and fear had soured into panic and paranoia. She couldn’t go on like this, but saw no way out. It felt like she couldn’t bear five more minutes of this jumble of emotions and conflicting thoughts in her head, but the clock would tick on and she didn’t die or explode, she just suffered…and in a place where suffering was the last thing that should be happening. The guests here were happy and relaxed, but no matter how luxurious her surroundings were her threat was in her head and she couldn’t shake that no matter where she went.

When a wave of goosebumps hit her toes and traveled all the way up to her head she sat up, realized how cold it had gotten but she refused to put her clothes back on…then on impulse stood up and walked down to the water. She was scared of it, despite the fact that there were energy fields further out keeping the unwanted debris and critters out, but the claustrophobic and vulnerable position she’d be in in the water terrified her...but right now she had to do something, and stupid or not she was going to make herself freak out even more.

She walked into the edge of the gentle waves until it got up over her ankles, then sat down in the water and scooted herself out, arms and legs rigid with fear, and inched her way in deeper and deeper until the waves lapped up and tickled her chin. Mina sat there shaking, and not from the water which was warmer than the chilling air. The coiled fear inside of her was coming to the surface along with the threat the water posed and she kept expecting someone to push her head under and kill her right there.

It didn’t happen, but the fear didn’t diminish. She held herself there and eventually the tears started to flow again…the first time since the day of the attack. With them her walls came down and she felt everything fresh again, this time letting herself internally collapse into a wad of pathetic Human rather than fighting it all. She held her head up so she could breathe, but her will was gone and she just suffered through a few minutes until her arms got so tired of fighting the waves that her head dipped under enough for her to get a mouthful of water.

With that real threat manifesting she surged a little remaining energy and crawled up the slope until the water was only half a foot deep. She stayed there on all fours, head down and continuing to cry as the weight of the galaxy seemed to finally come off her shoulders and she realized just how messed up she really was. Accepting that and the truth that she had been denying the past month, Mina sat back on her submerged feet and looked up at the starry sky wondering why she was here.

Not here as on this planet, but here as in being alive. What was the point of it all? She was helpless, truly helpless. If certain people wanted her dead she couldn’t stop them. If a moon fell down on top of her she couldn’t stop that, or if her food was poisoned. She couldn’t check everything she ate. Every piece of clothing she wore…though there was an easy way to fix that. Every room she slept in, every shower she used, every bottle of water she drank.

Mina just had to admit to herself that she was constantly vulnerable, and there was no right way to do things to make herself safe.

Flipping over and pushing her way back up the shore a bit she laid back in an inch of water and let the waves wash over her as the tears finally stopped, and with them the thoughts as well. Everyone lived and acted like life was scripted and they knew what they were doing, but they didn’t. It was a giant delusion they were playing and clinging to. Pretending they were safe and that things like credits or family mattered most, but that was just a part of the delusion and a way to avoid looking at the harsh reality around them.

Mina didn’t know why she’d been born or what she was supposed to do here. She’d been winging it since day 1. Star Force had never told her why, nor pretended to know, telling her that she was alone as were all of them and that they needed to work together to help each other, with the maturia lessons being knowledge passed on from others that had come before for her benefit, but her path was always hers to figure out and that she should use what she learned as she saw fit.

Those lessons flashed back in her mind now with an entirely new meaning. There hadn’t been the danger evident back then, confined within a maturia and knowing nothing of the outside world, but now they rang truer than ever. The day she left the maturia and entered society there had been a different vibe, that of the delusions that people lived their lives by and it had crept into her somewhat. There was an apathy to it, a denial that bad things were or could be happening. Star Force had everything under control, and the few situations where something did happen were minor and didn’t affect you.

Well they had just affected her and now her eyes were open. She felt like she didn’t deserve to be rescued, like she should have been taken off her ship and faced whatever it was that was coming her way because she didn’t see it coming and prepare, but now she felt the opposite. Those commandos had saved her and given her another chance, stopping something horrible from happening not by predicting and preventing it, but by reacting and fighting when it did happen.

And therein lay her answer. She couldn’t stop people or things from attacking her, and it was possible that she could end up in a no-win scenario that she couldn’t get out of. All she could do was face what came her way and fight it however she was able, and she wouldn’t know that until it happened.

Mina coughed, feeling an ache in her chest that was more emotional than physical as she seemed to hack out some of the darkness hanging around inside her. She started coughing so bad she had to sit up and turn over face down until she cleared her lungs of whatever it was. When she finished her head felt clearer than clear and she realized she was still live.

Not alive, but live. If everything was a game she had just nearly lost, and it had felt like she had, but she hadn’t. She was still in the game and had been wasting time this entire month. She’d felt like the walking dead but she wasn’t. Never had been. Just a trick of the mind and her messed up emotions.

Mina slammed a fist down, splashing out a quick lived hole in the water and cursing herself for being so stupid…but rethinking her actions since that day she found that she really could find no fault with herself. Her head had been clouded, and honestly she didn’t know what had just changed now to clear it. Maybe it was just a cumulation of time or the fear of the water had kicked something into place, but whatever it was had pulled her out of a very dark place, and had she still been in it right now she didn’t know what she could have done differently than she’d been doing over the past month.

Her head was clear and she needed to keep it that way. That was her one priority right now.

Mina splashed at the water with her left hand, feeling it more than seeing it as her wet body began to thoroughly chill in the breeze. She relished the feeling, but knew she needed to take care of herself and not get sick…or sicker, for that cough didn’t come out of nowhere. Fearful that even moving might cause her head to fog back up again, Mina gradually crawled up onto the dry sand, moving slowly and letting her head adjust.

Fortunately the dark doors didn’t close back in on her mind and she decided to take her good luck and run with it, literally. She stood up and began jogging down the dark beach, not having had a workout since the attack and remembering all those maturia lessons about running and how it could be used as a reset of both your body and mind. She felt a little stupid, running around naked on the beach in the dark, but no one else was out here so she didn’t care. Running the full length of the beach and making a total of six circuits back and forth, Mina ran her worries about her mind closing in on her away for good and ended up back by her towel, dropping to her knees in the sand and feeling like she’d just dodged a huge bullet.

Those commandos had saved her, and while some people would say she needed to return the favor by helping someone else in need she immediately disregarded that. If someone was in need she’d help them because she could, not because she owed a favor. That was petty thinking. No. She had been the one that was saved and the emphasis was on her, not someone else. She may not have earned it, but she was still alive and needed to make use of the save rather than squander it away.

Now that her head was clear she needed to move, not away from the resort or even this beach but internally. She needed to heal and that fog in her head had been preventing that, but now she felt the blissful movement inside and knew she had to act on it.

Pulling on her clothes and grabbing her towel, sunglasses, and slipping on her sandals, Mina walked away from the beach and through the grounds until she got to the tunnel network that led to her treehouse, climbing the short ladder up to the door that led to a lift chamber. Once inside she locked the door with the keypad and the emergency barricade slat, ensuring that no one would disturb her privacy.

Mina walked into the lift and rode the slow ascent up until she was standing in the middle of her treehouse quarters. Walking around and locking every door out to the encircling balcony and closing the shutters on every window, she sealed herself in then hopped into the shower to rinse the sand and cold off her body. Not lingering there, she dried off after a few minutes and pulled on some pajamas before diving under the covers of her bed and pulling herself into a fetal position as she let herself begin to shake a bit as the lingering paranoia worked its way out of her body and the rest of the mental toxins she’d been accumulating did likewise.

9

When she woke up the next morning her nerves were settled and her body was, well, more tired than when she’d went to bed the night before, which she oddly took as a good sign. She felt alive again rather than in a perpetual stasis, and even the fatigue was welcome so long as it was real.

Mina ordered room service and had a tray of food arrive on a conveyor inside one of the cabinets within minutes. She ate a large, warm breakfast then immediately began packing up. Whatever she was going to make of her life going forward would be accomplished by action, not sitting on her ass. She wasn’t going back on tour just yet, but she needed to start recalibrating herself and that run last night had been a good first step…as well as showing her just how out of shape she’d gotten over the past month. She hadn’t put on any weight that she could tell, but Mina had definitely lost some of her well maintained fitness.

Accessing the computer in the treehouse she booked reservations at another Australian facility on a nearby island then called for a porter to get her bags down to the dock where she took a private boat over to the exclusive training facility. No one did training better than Star Force, but then again they never charged anything for access to facilities either. Everyone could use them and was encouraged to do so…which was a problem for people like her that needed to avoid crowds and the attention they drew. Like everything with Australia, if you had the credits you could buy an upgrade, and the same went with training facilities.

They had one reclusive one on Optimus, which serviced not just their own small territory in the system but everyone else as well. If you wanted to train in private, this is where you came. If you wanted to hire specialists to put you through your own personal boot camp that was available as well. Most people, if they wanted to advance their skills in a formalized way, enrolled in an advanced maturia but Star Force only trained in ‘responsible’ ways and some people wanted to do something more reckless, like losing 50 pounds in 4 weeks or body building for appearance rather than skill and power.

Star Force was no nonsense when it came to training and, basically, everything else. For those individuals who didn’t like that approach and wanted other ‘variety’ there were corporate options for that if you had the credits and Australia had surged to the forefront in that subcategory as well. Though they were very much a part of Star Force they’d emphasized their differences whenever possible and today Mina was glad for that, for when her boat arrived she was greeted with a personal attendant that took her inside the mountain-like complex and directly to her quarters without having to see or hear from any of the other guests.

Mina had booked the most expensive training suite, which gave her basically an entire mini facility on the island to herself. It had a track, pool, obstacle courses, fitness rooms, sparring equipment, and various challenge scenarios similar to what Mainline Star Force used. She hadn’t wanted any formalization, so once the attendant dropped her off and made sure everything was in order, Mina was left to herself and she got to work right away with a stretching regimen followed by a few swimming laps in the long pool.

Those were far more taxing than they should have been, plus she was having to fight some claustrophobia from being in the water again. It wasn’t so bad as before and mostly wore off by the time she finished, but she was thoroughly drained by the time she was done and that disappointed her. Normally she could have done a lot more, which testified to just how out of whack she was.

Mina took a crash nap, then ordered some room service that included a stack of pancakes and colored nutrient drinks. She’d save the sugary stuff for later after she did a second workout in the day, but while she digested she took a dip in her own hot tub and tried to work out some of the soreness from the prior night’s run.

After an hour there she tried some light weights but didn’t make more than 10 minutes before she had to quit for the day. Mina had no energy, but at least her head was still clear. She retreated back into her quarters for another nap then allowed herself to wander out into the commons area of the facility and took a perch on a sunroof where she stripped down and worked on her tan a bit more with a handful of other people doing the same.

They didn’t talk to her and she was glad for that, but over the following weeks as her energy level slowly came back up to normal Mina continued to mingle in the commons and even got into a few conversations with people that seemed not to know who she was. They were here to train as well and that offered a common topic of conversation. Most people here were Human, but a handful of them were not and she was curious as to how they trained, especially one of the Bsidd that stood shorter than she was and looked to be a living bush.

Turns out he/it was a businessman that owned a shipping company than ran supplies between the various races on the Alliance worlds that were not part of Star Force. Apparently there was quite a market for independent shippers so long as they could undercut the prices on the ADZ transit grid. The Bsidd said that was easy enough so long as you owned your own fleet of ships, and therein lay the hard part. One had to have the ships to generate the credits…but you needed the credits to buy the ships. He/it had taken more than 80 years of doing other work to save up enough currency for his first purchase, then from there he’d made a living out of hauling cargo and expanded his operations as quickly as possible.

He/it was another entrepreneur like herself, self-made and taking advantage of the possibilities Star Force had sculpted within the ADZ. No one had to work to live, but if you wanted to prosper you had to work your ass off to do it. Didn’t matter what race you were, everyone had options. She knew that more than most people, having grown up in an Axius colony, but it was reassuring to meet someone else who was in a similar position to her.

Mina didn’t share any details about her recent history, and the two talked for quite a while about the idiosyncrasies of being wealthy within the ADZ and the unique perspective and challenges it presented, with her hearing similar ideas to what she’d already experienced personally and feeling quite relieved to have a peer, even if in a drastically weird sense. Person or not, the Bsidd was still a walking bush, so there was only so many similarities to draw, but in a weird way she could connect with him/it more than the Humans she encountered in the music business.

Mina actually made a habit of meeting with him and a few others on a regular basis, or irregular actually, given that they never planned any get-togethers. They just bumped into each other in the commons at similar times and she got to get their perspectives on a wide range of topics. The more she related to them and their stories Mina realized that she needed to get back on tour sooner rather than later. She was a singer and building her career, and one common theme amongst all of her new friends was that when they had trouble they didn’t quit what they were doing, but found themselves along the way as a byproduct of the struggles.

Mina realized she had begun to feel like singing was a petty thing after so many people’s deaths, but now she realized it wasn’t. It was what she did and a big part of who she was. Those commandos hadn’t saved her so she could wallow away and live half a life. They saved her so she could continue going on doing what she wanted, and Mina realized that she was just cycling garbage through her head. Probably stuff she’d picked up from others accidentally. She’d have to pay closer attention to her own thoughts going forward to avoid that again. Going with the flow of society was never a good idea, for there were always more stupid people than wise, regardless of the efforts Star Force made to give people the tools they needed to learn and grow.

Some people just didn’t want to, and those were now floating to the bottom of the tier 1 pool after the ADZ-wide restructuring. Here though, you had to have credits to buy your way in, and in such sums that you more than likely had to earn them and stupid people didn’t earn anything. They leached off of others in one form or another, letting Star Force take care of them and it seemed Star Force didn’t mind. They were now scooting them off into their own little corner along with the newbs coming out of the maturias, letting those who earned their way into better crowds.

Mina went where the credits were, so often her followers were amongst the ‘stupid’ but a good number of them were not, and in fact her upcoming tour…before she’d canceled it…had been going to more of the tier 2 sites than previously because they were considered higher class and, frankly, more profitable because those citizens had more credits to spend. She’d cut her teeth doing free or cheap concerts for anyone who would come, but now that she was established she was gradually moving up the status ladder and made a choice to, when she did go back, cut out the lower class performances regardless of whether it made monetary sense or not.

She’d never thought about it before, but now that she was actually hanging around with people that were more or less her peers she found that she felt more like herself. Even with her old team she never felt like one of them. They were there to service her as part of their job rather than being on par with her. When Mina put together her new team she was going to do it herself, no more label execs assigning people. She liked this feeling of having peers, and there were many musicians and support staff out there for her to choose from. There had to people out there of like mind, it was just a matter of finding them.

Her jumpship was her home after all, and if the rest of the ADZ was living with their ‘peers’ now and greatly preferring the change then she should probably give it a try herself. There was no rush getting back on tour and she could take as long as she needed assembling a new team…which she could start from here while she continued training. She needed to be in very good shape if she was going back to stripping on stage, which she used as her measuring stick to make sure she never lost her self-sufficiency. That was her true priority, with the public exposure being a way to make sure she never deluded herself into thinking she was better off than she was like many other people did who hid behind their clothes.

When she was walking back through the commons area one evening intending to get in one more short workout before bed she heard footsteps behind her in the hallway and glanced back, seeing a woman walking briskly whom she recognized as another of the guests but one that she had never spoken with. Mina moved aside to let her pass but as she did so the woman slipped her hand around her arm and latched onto her. In a fluid motion she pulled Mina into a side alcove and through a doorway.

Her feet caught and she tripped, but the strong arm kept dragged her along as she fought to push the other way. Suddenly she was thrust up against a wall and unable to scream, for her vocal chords refused to utter a sound as the woman pinned her bodily against the cream/white colored paneling beside a large potted bush.

“You’re in danger,” the woman whispered. “The people who tried to kidnap you before are in this facility and trying again. I’ve been assigned to protect you. Understand?”

The woman eased her grip slightly but did not let go, but Mina’s vocal chords were back under her own control. “Who sent you?”

I’m an Archon, the woman said inside her mind. “And we need to move now.”

Mina found herself pulled off the wall before she could respond, but she didn’t fight her. There had always been rumors about the Archons having special powers, but she hadn’t actually thought someone could speak mind to mind until just now. That was all the proof she needed, so Mina started jogging alongside her as the woman pulled her through the room and down another corridor. They were halfway down it when an alarm sounded twice, followed by a voice being transmitted everywhere within the training facility.

“All guests please report to your quarters and stay there for the immediate future. We have a security breach and the facility is going on lockdown until the situation is resolved. Do not try to leave, just get out of the hallways and let our security teams deal with the problem. Stay down, stay put, and stay out of the way.”

“Keep moving,” the Archon said, never having let go of Mina’s arm. The pair jogged down the hallway then as they came to a set of closed double doors the Archon pushed her out of the way and into the nook outside a closed side room just as the doors opened up and two Humans came through wearing Australian uniforms and carrying weapons.

The Archon moved so fast Mina couldn’t see what happened, but the two men were on the ground in a flash and their weapons were removed from them…then Mina was pulled off the ground by an invisible force and over top of them, landing in the open doors as the woman grabbed her by the arm again and forced her into another jog.

“Sorry about this,” the woman said, grabbing hold of Mina by the waist and wrapping her up in a hug a moment before she lost all coordination. Her body suddenly went twitchy and out of her control, and she would have fallen had the Archon not been holding her up. By the time her head came back into alignment and her feet responded the woman had already pulled her into another room, keeping them on the run.

Mina didn’t ask any of the questions she wanted to, recognizing the danger of the situation even if she didn’t understand it. She just kept moving as instructed and within a minute they burst through a small door and climbed up a twisting stairwell that led to a roof exit. The hot sun was gone, replaced by evening twilight and a cool breeze as the Archon shut the door behind them and pushed Mina across the roof towards the edge where several large trees were just poking up over the edge.

“Trust me,” she said as they got to the edge and Mina pulled up, then the Archon pushed her off the roof into freefall.

Mina screamed, but that invisible force pinched her around the midsection and slowed her fall into a gentle drop that her feet could have handled if she’d been paying attention. Instead she got dumped to the ground with a not so soft bump on her head, but at least she hit dirt rather than pavement.

Above her the Archon jumped, landing beside her in a crouch that rolled out into a somersault…then the woman was on her feet and pulling Mina to hers as they got back into a run again, this time heading off through the forested section of the island. When they came across a trail they sped up, with Mina running as fast as she could without tripping and the Archon finally letting go of her arm but staying right on her shoulder the entire time.

10

“Stop here,” the Archon said as they came to a curve in the trail and stepped off under some curling branches and mostly out of sight.

Mina coasted to stop alongside her, breathing hard and barely able to speak. “Who is…after me?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” the Archon said, casually standing next to the tree trunk and looking around. “Name’s Ginsi.”

“Mina.”

“Yes I know,” the Archon said with a smile.

“What now?”

“I have a few friends nearby. They’ll clean up the garbage while I keep you out of their hands.”

“How did you know I was here? And how did you know they were coming for me?”

“I’ve been watching you since a few days after you arrived on Optimus, and I expected they’d try again. Hijacking a ship is a big deal, and if they went to that much trouble to get you an infiltration job here would be a lot easier.”

“I used a fake name,” Mina said in mild protest.

“But paid with your own account.”

Mina squeezed her eyes shut, mentally kicking herself. In retrospect that was really stupid.

“Relax. You’re not used to doing this sort of stuff, and the name change was a good idea.”

“And you are?”

“I’m an Archon. I do lots of stuff.”

“Why did I rate an Archon…or anybody watching me?”

“We like to catch the bad guys before they can do bad things again…and I volunteered for the assignment.”

“Volunteered?”

“I like your music and wanted to meet you. Plus I didn’t want some Regular screwing up the assignment and letting them get to you.”

“Regular?”

“Someone who’s not an Archon or a Knight,” Ginsi said as a chirp sounded from her pocket. She pulled out an earpiece and slid it in on the right side of her head and listened to the message. “We’ve located their ship and I need to get to it before they can run.”

“Go ahead. I’ll hide here.”

“Like hell you will. You’re coming with,” Ginsi said, pulling her by the arm but Mina dug her heels in and wouldn’t budge. “I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise. Besides, I figured you’d want a little payback.”

“How?”

The Archon smiled. “Let’s see what we can manage, shall we?”

Mina hesitated, then gave in to the firm grip on her arm and the two of them started running through the trees again, this time off trail as they moved across about 300 meters of forest. There they came up on another trail but they avoided it, turning and following it a few dozen meters inside the trees as they headed towards the location Ginsi had been given. The trail led to a section of the island that was urbanized and had two large landing pads that were segmented into grids. Most were empty, but a handful of spots were filled with various dropships and aerial craft.

One of those spots had been filled recently, but was now missing its ship. A check of the navigational grid indicated it had not left the island vertically or horizontally, but where it had gone was much closer to the training facility and had put down in a clearing that was only a short jog away…ostensibly to stuff Mina in without having to carry an unconscious body with them any further than necessary. This was meant to be another smash and grab operation, and the longer they had between the grab and their escape the harder it would be for them to evade pursuit.

If they’d done it right Mina would have been gone without anyone missing her and the out of place ship being little more than a curiosity to the few sets of eyes that had seen it. The reason why Ginsi hadn’t revealed herself to Mina earlier had been because she wanted to bait the attackers in so they could capture them in order to find the source of these hits. The first group, or those that had survived the run-in with the commandos, had left some clues but didn’t know who had hired them. Ginsi intended to find a trail here and run it all the way back to the source, which was the only way that Mina would be safe, for there was no way she was going to personally guard her indefinitely. Her training was taking a big hit just being here, but this was a rare enough occurrence that she wasn’t kicking herself over it. This needed to be done and it was better for an Archon to do it than a security officer any day.

Ginsi could feel the mind of the ship’s pilot before the yellow/gray dropship came into view through the trees, with her stopping Mina behind a large one before they could be seen.

“Ok, there’s one guy onboard. Human. We go in, take him down, then wait and see who the cleanup crew misses and comes back here.”

“How? You’re not armed.”

Ginsi raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think I need to be?”

“Wouldn’t hurt.”

Ginsi smiled then turned her attention off through the trees. “I like you. Not the scared little girl most people expected.”

“I’m plenty scared, trust me.”

“But you’re not letting it overcome you. That’s the point. Now come on, follow me in and watch my back. I’ll take this guy down in under 5 seconds. Time me if you like.”

“Are all Archons this…”

“Impressive?”

“Not the word I was going for.”

“It just gives us something to do when we’re waiting on the action. Come on, I know what I’m doing.”

“Alright,” Mina said as Ginsi crept forward and she matched her footsteps as best she could. They wound their way through the trees until they came out into what was an outdoor exercise platform. Oddly enough it was in the middle of the forest with only trails connecting to it, which was probably why it wasn’t being used much. The Archon grabbed her wrist again and pulled her out of cover with the both of them running across to the side of the ship and skirting around it until they came to the open boarding hatch.

Ginsi held up five fingers and gave Mina a wink, then she grabbed the handle on the side of the doorway and swung herself inside. Mina followed her hesitantly, then heard sounds of a scuffle before seeing a body hit the floor in front of her just as she got in through the entry cupola and turned the corner into the central shaft that ran the length of the small ship.

“How long was that?” Ginsi asked.

“Under five,” Mina admitted a she stared at the man lying unconscious on the ground with a trickle of blood flowing from his forehead.

“Yeah, forgot to take the ring off,” Ginsi said, pulled off a relationship ring and tucking it into a pants pocket.

“I didn’t think Archons had boyfriends.”

“We don’t. But wearing one of these in public avoids people hitting on you, mostly, and my job here was to protect you, not pick up dates.”

“Thanks, by the way.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Are you really a fan?”

“I’m not a fangirl over anything, but I do like your music and your style. You obviously keep yourself in decent shape, and a lot of other musicians don’t.”

“Living forever has its appeal.”

“Damn straight,” Ginsi said, dropping down onto her heels and rolling the guy over so she could reach inside one of his pockets and pull out a datachip.

“What’s that?”

“Maybe nothing, maybe something. Have a seat, we’ll stick it out here and see if we can trap anyone else.”

“You mean you trap. I’m just the helpless observer.”

“You came from a maturia, right?”

“An Axius one, yes.”

“Then you’re not helpless either.”

“I can’t do that,” Mina insisted, gesturing towards their quarry that the Archon was now restraining using a small cord that she’d pulled out of another pocket in the civilian training garb she was wearing.

“What did I do?”

“You knocked him out.”

“And you can’t knock someone out?”

“I can’t hit that hard.”

“I’m a lot older than you. I wouldn’t expect you to. That doesn’t mean you’re helpless.”

“Feels like it,” Mina said, stepping back from the now restrained man and leaning against the sidewall and lowering her voice as she glanced out the hatch, not wanting to alert anyone to their trap if they did come back to the ship. “I couldn’t do anything the first time they attacked, and those weren’t even Human.”

“It wasn’t exactly a sparring match. They meant to hit you when you were off guard. Don’t let that convince you you’re helpless. Even I can be ambushed.”

“I can’t protect myself against this.”

“Some fights are like that, which is why you need help. I’ve been put into fights that I’d get my ass kicked in, and did get it kicked in, without help from others. It’s safe to assume that there’s always someone else out there stronger than you, and if you meet them in battle the key to victory isn’t in beating them, but surviving to fight another day. You’re alive, so you won that bout.”

“Doesn’t feel like it.”

“I didn’t say it was fun, but you made it through. That’s the point.”

“You my counselor now too?” Mina asked.

“Why, you need one?”

“Don’t know what I need. I thought this was over, now it’s happening again.”

“If we get the intel we need, we’ll make it the last time.”

“How do you know that? Everywhere I go, even under a fake name, they can still get to me. I don’t even know who wants me or why.”

“You’re not in this alone. We’re going to pursue this until it’s over.”

“Don’t you have something better to do? Not that I’m ungrateful, but there has to be a lot of people out there that need help.”

“There’s always bad guys doing bad things, but not that many try it in Star Force territory because they know we’ll come after them and won’t stop until we find them. They’re on our radar now, and that’s not somewhere they want to be,” Ginsi said, raising a hand before Mina could reply. “Get ready. Someone is coming. Get by that wall and when I signal you, I want you to stick your leg out across the doorway and trip them.”

“What!” Mina whispered.

“Just do it,” she said pointing to where she wanted her as the Archon pulled the body out of view and into the cockpit. “8 seconds.”

Mina didn’t know what she was thinking but she did as was told, watching Ginsi as she stood up and took position on the other side of the door. She held up her hand with four fingers, then pulled one down, then another giving Mina a countdown. When she balled her fist up Mina balanced on her hands and kicked both legs out sideways, making herself a barricade and feeling a foot slam into her right calf. Her legs got pushed over and she was pinned down for a moment as Ginsi’s head fell beside her as she tackled the guy.

“Nice job,” she said, rolling off the unconscious Human.

“He’s out?”

“Yep,” Ginsi said, getting to her feet and kicking the guy off Mina.

“What’d you hit him with?”

“A little Archon magic. He’ll be unconscious for at least an hour.”

“No really, what did you do? It looked like you just knocked him down.”

“No, you did. I just took him down the rest of the way and got my hand on his head,” Ginsi said, waving her fingers in the air. “Like I said, magic.”

“Telepathy or something?”

“Actually yes. I had to touch him to do it, but I was able to put him to sleep.”

“So why’d you hit the other guy with your fist?”

“They’re trying to kidnap you, and that ticks me off.”

“So you hit him even though all you had to do was just touch him?”

“Pretty much,” Ginsi said, extending her hand to Mina and helping her to her feet.

“You beat up people for fun a lot?”

“I beat up people a lot, and it’s usually fun, but it’s not for the purpose of fun so I’d have to say no.”

Mina laughed in spite of herself. She was still scared and aware that she was in way over her head, both with these attackers and this Archon, though Ginsi seemed friendly enough.

“Like I said, you’re young. I’ve had centuries to get used to this sort of stuff. You not so much.”

“Are you reading my mind?”

“Don’t need to. Your face is easy enough to read.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You wear your emotions on your sleeve.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“For an Archon, kind of. I can’t do it. I want to, but I’ve put on so much emotional armor that I have trouble taking it off. You’re totally out there, and even when you’re freaked out its refreshing to see that kind of openness. I envy you…a bit.”

“Wanna trade? Or can I buy that emotional armor somewhere?”

“You have to build it yourself, but I can let you borrow mine for a few seconds if you’d like.”

“What?”

Ginsi held out her hand. “Let me show you.”

“You’re going to put me to sleep too?”

“No.”

“Then what?” Mina asked skeptically, looking at her hand and recoiling a bit.

“Come on you wuss, just trust me. I’m trying to help you.”

“By holding hands?”

“I can’t access your mind without physical contact and I want to show you something.”

“Show me what?”

“What this looks like through my eyes. I think it will help.”

Mina bit her lip, unsure what to do.

“Do I have to quote your own song lyrics?”

Mina blew out an exasperated breath in surrender, then reached out and grabbed her hand. “I don’t think this is…” she said, suddenly having her mind alter. She didn’t understand what was happening, but suddenly everything looked different. The images she was seeing were all the same, the sounds were the same, the smells were the same...but they all felt different, as if in a different context. The dangerous situation she was in suddenly seemed routine and kind of pathetic with the fear being stripped out of her.

“This is how I see things,” Ginsi explained. “How are your emotions now?”

“They’re…gone.”

“Not gone. Look closer.”

“They feel gone…and I feel so badass, like I could take on the galaxy myself.”

“Close,” Ginsi admitted. “And what about your attackers.”

Mina looked down at the man she’d tripped, no longer seeing an overpowering monster but rather a poorly trained thug that was all weapon and little skill. “They don’t seem dangerous.”

“Because I know how to handle them. To you they’re an unknown, but sharing my, call it knowledge, you can see them in a different way.”

“This is so cool,” Mina said, genuinely thrilled for the first time in what felt like years.

“Think you can trust me now?”

“If you’re inside my head you already know the answer to that.”

“Say the words please, so you’ll remember them later.”

“I trust you,” Mina said, reveling in this…whatever it was. She didn’t even have a word for it.

“And just remember, I’m not the top Archon. So this isn’t as good as it gets,” she said, letting Mina soak in the sensations a bit more.

“I’ll take your word for it, because this is nutsy awesome.”

“Everyone lives in their own little ship otherwise known as your body and mind. You can customize and upgrade them in an insane number of ways. Some good, some bad. This is a peek at my mental customization. Take a good look and remember to trust me.”

“I’ll remember.”

“It’s going to change when I let go. So I need you to make a memory now that you can choose to trust in later.”

“Meaning what?”

“You feel and see through the customizations you currently have. Mine are going to disappear from your mind.”

“Five more minutes?” Mina pleased, looking around at the ship and everything, drinking in the context, for she even knew what all the little buttons and switches in the cockpit did.

Ginsi laughed and let go of her hand…with the world suddenly shrinking and becoming a lot less stable.

“Hold onto as much of it as you can,” Ginsi prodded as Mina stumbled a step with her emotions ramming back into the forefront of her mind. Everything around her also felt dull and colorless, with the badass feel gone. Looking down at the unconscious man she was afraid again, but just a moment ago she hadn’t been. Which was real and which wasn’t?

“Trust me,” Ginsi said, waving a hand in front of her eyes to get her to focus. “Remember? Even if you can’t feel it, choose to trust me based on the memory.”

“I trust you, I trust you,” Mina repeated unnecessarily. “What do you want me to do?”

“Quit worrying. We’ve got this.”

“But you don’t even know who’s sending them yet?”

Ginsi glared at her, raising her chin slightly but saying nothing.

“Trust…right. If the badass says so, then that’s good enough for me.”

“Make it happen, girl. Words are cheap. Put them to use.”

“How?”

“Start living and let me worry about your security. Seriously, don’t even think about it. Trust that I’ve got your back.”

“You won’t be with me forever.”

“I’ve got your back on this threat. The rest are yours to deal with.”

Mina felt something ironic with that statement, but the memory betrayed her and she couldn’t put her finger on it. Was it one of hers or something from Ginsi left over?

“That feels reckless, but ok. I’ll try.”

“Good,” Ginsi said, lightly kicking the guy on the floor. “Security team is on the way to pick them up. Should be here in a few minutes, then we’ll get going. Time to get you back on tour.”

“Tour? That takes more than a simple call to set up.”

“Never said it was simple. But it’s what you’re going to do.”

“Wanna come with?”

“Until we find the source of this threat I’m sticking with you.”

“Really?”

“It won’t take that long.”

Mina frowned. “Can you sing?”

“Not really. More of a yeller.”

“Yeller?”

“Yeah, like being loud and guttural.”

“That’s not singing.”

“No, but it’s useful in training.”

“It is?”

“Helps to get your combat emotions on your sleeve.”

“I thought you had trouble with that?”

“Combat emotions, no. It’s the rest that are locked down. When I’m fighting I’m loose and freely flowing.”

“Interesting.”

“How so?”

“Ever stripped in public before?”

Ginsi laughed. “No.”

“Scared?”

“Archons aren’t scared of being naked.”

Mina shrugged. “If you want to get your non-combat emotions on your sleeve, I’d suggest you start there. Sounds like you just need to get exposed. If you stick around long enough, come on stage with me and try it out. People would like to see an Archon naked.”

“I’m sure they would,” she said with a smirk.

“Just a thought,” Mina said, looking down at the unconscious man. “Can I?”

Ginsi nodded. “Sure.”

Mina took a step towards him and kicked him in the gut, then stepped back and did it again harder.

“Feel better?”

“Yes, thank you,” Mina said, trying to hold to her word and not worry anymore.

“You are an odd one.”

“Me?”

“Yeah you. You’re not what your publicists make you out to be.”

“Disappointed?” Mina asked sheepishly.

“Not a bit. You’re actually more intelligent than I thought. Still a youngling, but that will solve itself with time and experience.”

“How old do I have to be to stop being a youngling?”

“Ha…that’s a good question. Taryn still calls me a youngling sometimes.”

“Taryn?”

“The trailblazer.”

“What’s a trailblazer?”

Ginsi’s eyes went wide. “Wow. You really don’t know?”

“No,” Mina said innocently.

“The trailblazers are the first Archons and the ones responsible for building Star Force along with Director Davis.”

“Oh. Didn’t know they had a special name.”

“Damn, I’ve got a lot to teach you in the next few days.”

“Or you could just leave me ignorant.”

“Oh no. Ignorance has to be destroyed. Like Death Star destroyed.”

“What’s a Death Star?”

Ginsi face-palmed as footsteps became audible outside as the security team arrived. “Tell you what. I’ll help you get up to speed with what’s going on in the galaxy outside the civilian realm if you let me soak in your unrestrained emotions and work on loosing mine up.”

“Sounds fair. Boy you like?”

“No,” Ginsi said as a female security officer walked in on their conversation and she threw the Archon an odd look. “I just need to be able to relax on cue so I can be more efficient in my downtime between workouts.”

“That’s what they all say,” the security officer quipped.

“There’s another one in the cockpit,” Ginsi said, pointing as two more security officers walked into the ship. “Get them tucked away then get the ship impounded and searched,” she said, motioning for Mina to follower her outside.

She shared a smile with the security officer then followed the Archon out and the two began walking one of the trails back to the facility, with Mina having a small spike of fear at not knowing what was out there but making herself forget about it like Ginsi had told her to.

“Can Archons really get laid only once a year?” she asked after they were out of earshot.

“Ugh. How many stupid rumors like that are there?”

“Twice a year?” Mina asked.

“Archons don’t date,” Ginsi said simply.

“At all?”

“Nope.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Long story.”

“My ignorance is calling,” Mina said, feeding into the playful conversation as a way of avoiding the lingering fear as well as toying with what seemed to be her new friend.

“Fine,” Ginsi said with a bit of mock disgust before beginning a long conversation explaining the realities of life and debunking the myths about Archons that had built up in pop culture over the centuries.

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1

February 17, 2826

Trium System (lizard territory)

Nefti

Krimja Hakti reclined on a small bench with his numerous appendages draped over the sides as he studied the tactical displays that detailed the progress of the orbital bombardment of the lizard world. The Bsidd monitored all 17 ships involved in the attack, seeing them firing their clear Keema beams down at the distant planet’s surface while numerous phaser beams were fired back towards the drones, though their range limits were passed and the enemy beams were losing coherency, meaning they did considerably less damage than normal.

But the shields on Krimja’s drones were still dropping, not that fast, but with the amount of time it was taking to punch through a lizard shield plate there was no way one drone could sustain that much cumulative damage. That meant standard rotational patterns had to be employed with the Bsidd remote pilots cycling the drones in and out to maintain a constant rate of fire while not losing any of their ships.

The Bsidd Admiral preferred to be on the bridge as much as possible during the assault, but they’d already been at it 2 days now and had only destroyed a handful of colonies. The planet had hundreds of large scale cities and thousands of smaller settlements covering its surface, but the more they could take out from orbit the better to not expose their ground troops to any unnecessary fighting…the downside was these orbital assaults took forever because there were only so many drones equipped with Keema strong enough to outdistance the lizard planetary defense phasers, with the rest of the drones and even the jumpships sitting back and waiting patiently while a handful of Star Force ships ate away at the lizards with impunity so long as they kept the shield rotation strategy employed.

But this is what had to be done. No longer were they assaulting expansion colonies, but worlds that the lizards had been on for a very long time and developed in depth. That meant heavier defenses, and aside from the newer planetary defense guns there was a whole lot of nasty stuff on the ground should they need to invade and take out the rest of the cities the hard way. Krimja’s troops could do it, he knew, but only if they had to. The lizards had to be purged from this world, but it wasn’t worth a single limb off of one of their ground troops to get in a rush. They had time and would use it, while the lizards had to sit and wait while their civilization on Nefti was taken apart piece by painstaking piece and made all the longer due to their continual shield upgrades. They weren’t enough to stop Star Force’s weapons from eventually breaching and destroying the emitters beneath, but with every new model employed it took them longer to do so.

Krimja expected this orbital assault to last months at the minimum, but he still wanted to be overseeing as much of it as he could just in case something went wrong, and with the deviousness of the lizards that was always in play no matter how controlled a situation looked.

On the status boards before him the Alpha watched the firing status of the Battlecruiser-class drones. The Keema built into them could be fired indefinitely so long as power was available, unlike plasma weapons that required a matter component in each charge, and these drones had been doing so non-stop save for swap outs. Right now there were two additional ones sitting back out of range recharging their shields while the 17 currently engaged were hammering away at one colony in particular with individual batteries, for each battlecruiser could only hold 1 Keema.

That was because the range needed had required a massive battery to be built, and even it was too large to fit on the heavy cruisers. A new, larger class of drone had to be created, with adjustments made to the carrier jumpships in order to fit them inside the hold for they were longer than it was deep. These had been carried horizontally rather than vertically, then stacked over the top of with additional drones. Each battlecruiser was 3 times the size of a heavy cruiser, making them almost too big to be classified as drones, but fortunately the size of jumpships they were using nowadays allowed for them to be fit inside regardless.

Krimja saw each of the batteries charging and discharging as expected, knowing that these few weapons were the only way to take this world without excessive loss of machinery through a typical orbital assault, blasting away with a large drone fleet and in return losing many ships to create a hole in the planetary defense grid. They’d then take out the cities via a ground campaign and remove this infestation the hard way, as they’d done many times before, but these handful of battlecruisers were allowing them another route to victory and that made Krimja want to keep an eye on them constantly, even if there was no obvious concern.

With his main two legs straddling the bench, Krimja used his other appendages to manipulate the control boards as needed, though most of what he was doing now was just oversight and that required watching rather than acting. He was an Alpha-variant Bsidd, which meant he was their ‘standard’ variety and stood just a little shorter than a Calavari. His musculature was average and his appendages numbered only 14. Most of the naval division was comprised of Epsilon and Theta variants, with him being one of a small minority of Alphas to rise through the ranks of the smaller Bsidd to become one of the 378 Admirals in the current fleet.

Bsidd population was managed by the Humans, with them determining how many of each variant to hatch per year, and Alphas were low in number. Most of them found their way into niches dominated by other variants with none to call their own. That didn’t matter to Krimja because Star Force was designed around the individual rather than groups and allowed him to go wherever he could earn his way. A lot of Alphas went straight civilian, but he’d wanted naval because the war against the lizards was largely being fought on that front…and if they ever lost their advantage there it would doom Star Force into turtling up and holding onto the systems they already had.

That would be a win for the lizards, with their only hope at defeating them coming through conquest of those systems they already possessed. The Bsidd and their Star Force allies were busy cutting out a whole new region of territory for their empire and they were doing it strictly out of lizard systems that the old Alliance wouldn’t have dared to touch. That’s why the density of the targets was increasing, along with their difficulty to take, but with each victory came another world, another system for Star Force…and with the Bsidd able to reproduce so quickly, so long as they had sufficient material resources they were populating a lot of those worlds themselves while acting as caretakers and watching over the empty ones.

The Bsidd Region was quickly going to outgrow the ADZ itself, but they were still a long way from the lizard core systems that had an equally impressive number of conquered systems on the far side. Lizard territory was huge, and that wasn’t even counting all their conquests from the Skarron empire and everything coreward of Star Force. Krimja knew the key to victory lay in taking it one invasion at a time and denying the enemy their prizes while Star Force grew ever stronger, with the Bsidd taking a greater and greater share of the workload with their surging population.

Krimja took pride in that, but knew that the Humans were the key to it all. They were the ones who had rescued the Bsidd and gave them a place in Star Force, along with many other races, and they were fighting to protect everyone they could. Had it not been for them the ADZ would not have existed and all those who had taken refuge there would have been wiped out or forced further on, trying to stay ahead of the lizard advance for as long as they could.

Unfortunately not everyone in the ADZ felt that way. Krimja wasn’t well connected to the non-Bsidd portions of Star Force territory but all were interconnected through the relay grid with communal information databases and news services, so he had some idea of what was happening elsewhere and had studied the other races with interest, especially those that had taken refuge within Star Force’s boundaries without joining them.

A great many of them were ingrates, complaining of this and that but offering no solutions themselves. Almost all of it centered around a lack of control, citing that Star Force and the Humans had too much and the races under their ‘care’ had no say in their own future. Krimja knew that was absurd, for those races hadn’t earned a say. If simply having population numbers gave you authority then the Bsidd would rule everyone else. It didn’t work that way, and the reason the Humans were in control was because they had responsibility for everyone and had seen to it that they not only had sanctuary from the lizards and other threats, but an opportunity within the Star Force economic system to grow and advanced as they were able.

Did the Humans rule? No, they didn’t. They led, with the difference being that they allowed freedom that many of these other races wouldn’t if they held dominance. Star Force set some ground rules, and many people didn’t like those, but beyond that you were free to do what you wanted. No one was entitled to success, only life, for which Star Force provided a comfortable existence. Anything beyond that you had to earn, whether you were an individual or a race.

Some didn’t like that, wanting to be given status and resources that they hadn’t earned simply out of birthright or because they thought that protesting would entail them with appeasement. Both were laughable, and at the end of the day anyone who didn’t like being a guest of Star Force could leave their territory and take their chances elsewhere.

Almost all of them chose to stay, however, so their mindless protests had no real merit. Star Force didn’t censor them, and there was almost constant news coverage of discontent here and there in the non-Star Force races, but those people who had earned their way didn’t care. The whiners would whine and the protesters would protest. If they went beyond speaking their mind and into disrupting traffic or vandalizing they were shut down instantly by security…with more complaints about the militant attitude of Star Force.

Stupid people. The reason why they were alive was because Star Force was militant. People used that word as if it was a negative but here, in orbit of a lizard world that they were in the slow process of retaking, ‘militant’ was a prerequisite. Pacifists held no power, and anyone thinking to negotiate or appease their way out of the lizard threat were fools. You either stood up to them and fought, or you were run over and obliterated.

Unfortunately that attitude wasn’t only present in the lizards, and had Star Force not been so dominant some of the races under their protection might have been doing similar things to others. Some people wanted their way no matter what, whether it was logical, reasonable, or true. They would fight, cheat, con, and kill their way into dominance…then when they lost they cried foul and tried to demean the responsible ones who stopped them.

Krimja was glad that the Bsidd were a Star Force race, for he could see the vast difference between what he grew up in and what else was out there…and he knew it was probably worse outside of Star Force territory. That only went to prove that it wasn’t your race that dictated your behavior and potential, it was mainly your culture. Nobody chose when or where they were born, but those lucky enough to be born into Star Force had a huge advantage over everyone else, for their training programs were so advanced that Krimja couldn’t understand those that had been born outside them. They were everything to him and the others, and as a result the culture within the Star Force races was so much more unified than the others.

And Krimja knew that was because they had each been told the score and earned their way, like he had all the way up to a position of Admiral. That journey of advancement through merit, not appointment or promotion, gave him and the other Bsidd, as well as the other Star Force races, a sense of kindredship above and beyond them being in the same empire.

It was a major advantage that Star Force had, but the lizards likewise had their own unity…and since theirs was accomplished through restrictive means it was far stronger. Not better, but stronger and seemingly without deviation. The lizards fought as one team, sacrificing themselves for their race’s goals no matter how small. They’d die just so their civilization could test a theory, and that bond was not something to underestimate. It was wrong, but it was impressive none the less.

As the bombardment continued Krimja’s comm officer was periodically repeating an offer of surrender to the lizards every hour during times like this and more often than that during heavier action. So far in this assault they hadn’t received a reply back, and in all the other campaigns he’d been a part of had been the same. Surrender wasn’t an option. They would win or die, and they were all of the same mind.

Star Force had people that didn’t agree, wanting to do things differently and often stupidly. Rather than suppress them through various means of control they were left alone, with those like Krimja having to earn their way into the ranks of those that held the power and responsibility. In that way those within his fleet here were just as united as the lizards, leaving the dissenters back in the civilian wings of the empire.

But there was one other factor to consider, for while the lizards rightfully appeared to be superior as far as unity was concerned because they didn’t have a portion of their population that wasn’t in sync with the rest, they had a high turnover rate. Star Force, because it stressed individual advancement, had the luxury of self-sufficiency. That wasn’t something that could be bestowed upon someone, it was something that had to be earned. Those who achieved it outlived those who did not, with the dissenters’ ‘opinion’ amounting to nothing. Reality was not based on opinion or point of view. You were either right or you were wrong, and in the case of self-sufficiency those who were wrong didn’t sustain themselves and died out, leaving larger and larger numbers of responsible people behind.

That was a sad reality, but one that Star Force was built upon. Everything was geared towards the objective rather than the subjective so people could measure and learn the truth. Opinion for the sake of opinion was pointless and worthless. The truth mattered, and anyone who had attained self-sufficiency understood that.

As far as Star Force knew the lizards did not attain self-sufficiency. Little was known about their inner society, but their computer systems had been hacked enough times to gain some knowledge of how they operated and there was no mention of self-sufficiency or its equivalent. Strength seemed to be based off of natural attributes and the only training they did was to maintain their abilities rather than enhance them.

Of course when you spent personnel so freely the idea of trying to extend your life was somewhat counterproductive. Theirs was a civilization that grew the society rather than the individual, whereas Star Force was a civilization that upgraded the individual in order to expand their society…and therein lay the conflict between the two in a nutshell. The lizards would attack without concern about losses, but Star Force wouldn’t allow so much as one death if they could prevent it, for the longer their troops lived the stronger they would get, meaning it was better to let go an immediate objective in order to play for future gains.

Star Force didn’t like losing, but knew that the death of a soldier was its own defeat and that trading one life for another was insanity. Star Force fought for everyone and sacrificed no one. That more than anything gave them a type of unity that the lizards would never have, and coming from a race that reproduced just as fast, Krimja was very fortunate that the Bsidd had found their way into Star Force rather than taking on the expendable philosophy that would have probably seen him dead long ago.

One of his status boards pinged with a visual marker as a new ship entered the system. It was one of theirs, a jumpship that had been on scouting duty further into lizard territory ahead of their invasion corridor. It was cycling back to rejoin the fleet and report, though it was odd that it was coming here rather than to a world on the grid so the info could be sent out immediately.

Krimja got his answer a few minutes later when a message from the ship crossed his console. It wasn’t directed to him specifically, but to the invasion fleet. He was in command at the moment so he read it, seeing the reason for the scout ship’s diversion. One of the systems they’d been sent to explore was not lizard territory…at least not yet, for it seemed there was a race there that had not yet succumbed to their attacks.

2

Krimja tapped three of his appendages together in a cyclical pattern making rhythmic noise as he read. This unidentified race was occupying a major system that contained 18 habitable planetoids. It appeared that six of them had already fallen under lizard control and there was a fight still progressing over the remainder. The natives still had a naval fleet in play with a number of large defense platforms ringing the worlds they possessed, though one of them was right now under assault…or rather was when this scouting report had been made.

The Admiral looked through the recordings, seeing that the natives were using a form of mauler point defense system. It wasn’t the telltale blue that Star Force was used to, but the sensor readings confirmed it was a derivative and the long range beam weapons were a spot on match for sammies, which made sense given that they were somewhat linked to the maulers, physics wise. That meant this race had tech still superior to the lizards, for while their phasers were considerably more advanced than plasma they didn’t pack the punch of the weapons they were squaring off with, though it did appear that the native’s versions were less potent than what Star Force used.

Krimja pulled up the few recordings taken of the fighting, seeing the distinctive yellow/tan cruisers of the lizards en mass assaulting a native station that was black as obsidian save for the weaponsfire. It was a mess of curves, more artistically designed than functional, but it was putting up one hell of a fight and it looked like the natives had at least 300 of the stations in orbit around this planet to supplement their defense fleet. Those vessels were angled blades, each at what looked to be just over a 90 degree bend forming stemless arrows. Rather than obsidian those warships were the stark opposite, looking like pale white stone and showing up easily to the eye even without their weaponsfire.

As usual the lizards had numbers on the defenders but the natives were sticking it to them, and given the location of this system they had to have been doing so for centuries. If all they’d lost in that time were a handful of planets then they were holding out better against the lizards than anyone had save for Star Force. Then again, if they’d been holding out all this time and the phaser upgrades had tipped the balance of power this race may have been looking at a losing curve, but still they were so well fortified that it was going to take the lizards a great deal of time to conquer them.

Krimja looked over their numbers, seeing a considerable fleet but with no major chess pieces. Was that because this location wasn’t important enough to warrant them or because these natives had a way of getting to them? He would have loved to have a full history of this war to study, for to date no one else had fought them, conceivably, this long and survived. The H’kar were the closest, but they’d gotten their asses kicked and their empire conquered before running to eventual sanctuary with The Nexus. These natives were an entirely different matter, especially because this appeared to be a single system civilization.

Then again that could just be an assumption. The surrounding systems were all lizard or unoccupied according to the scouting reports, but not all empires kept to adjacent systems. This race may have dozens of systems scattered throughout lizard territory or just this one…and all this time they thought that the mass of lizard-occupied space was completely dominated by them. Krimja wondered if this was just an anomaly or if there were other holdouts out there that weren’t bowing to the lizard fleets, having been swallowed up by their empire as it expanded around them, but refusing to be conquered themselves.

This one was fighting hard, but as far as the ground war was concerned he didn’t have any data. The scout ships had stayed too far away to get anything useful, but there were position plots on the contested planets and the lizard occupied ones indicating weaponsfire. From the look of it the lizards hadn’t been able to fully pacify their conquests in the system, leaving them still in contention, or perhaps rebellion. It was impossible to know from these records, but there was fighting still going on in a big enough way for spacebound craft to recognize and from the yields being measured there was an enormous amount of carnage taking place in there.

As he continued to pour through the records he did find several instances of starfighters being used, something that Star Force strictly banned. Even the lizards didn’t use them, though not for the same reasons. Star Force didn’t risk personnel needlessly, and in space combat starfighters were easy targets. The lizards used their cruisers as their naval backbone, reserving their wisps for atmospheric combat where they would be effective, but this race was using the fighters in space combat and apparently doing well for it. There were losses noted in the records, but whatever type of craft they were using was showing to be effective against the lizard cruisers.

“Busy morning?” a voice asked from behind him.

Krimja half turned around on his bench, with virtually every appendage he had bending in response to the surprise presence behind him. “You are far too quiet when moving.”

“I only have 4 limbs to worry about,” Mike-448 said as he walked up beside the Admiral and noticed some of the battle recordings he had displayed. “What’s this?”

“A scout ship dropped this data packet off two hours ago, I was just reviewing the contents.”

“Where is this?”

Krimja poked and prodded several different control buttons designed for his fingerless physiology and brought up a starmap showing the system in question only 39 lightyears from their current position.

“Who’s winning?”

“The natives still hold the majority of the system, but if they’re fighting now then that probably means they’ve been winning for a long time.”

“Send it to my console,” the mage said as he walked over to his commander’s chair and sat down with a plethora of data being shunted over to him as the all Bsidd crew continued to go about their tasks with shipboard operations and the planetary assault. In fact, Mike was the only Human onboard the ship that had been designed specifically for Bsidd physiology, but there was enough redundancy to accommodate all the Star Force races if necessary and he had a set of quarters designed for Human use along with a few spares in case any others came onboard.

All together there were 51 Archons in this invasion fleet and two Calavari, the latter of which were squadron commanders in the aerial division. The rest of the 569,000 troops were Bsidd, as were all of the jumpships and drones in the fleet. Any operation of this size and importance called for the leadership of Archons, but unlike a lot of other joint operations this one was entirely on the back of the Bsidd.

That went for every piece of equipment in the fleet aside from the Archon’s and Calavari’s armor, which they naturally brought with them. Everything else had been Bsidd designed and produced, though the jumpships were all standard models with slightly modified interiors. The drones were not the standard blocks that Mainline used, nor the spear-like designs the Calavari fielded, but rather thick discs that stacked on top of one another in cylindrical tubes within the jumpship. They were built of the same tech as the other models, but the Bsidd preferred the curves versus the angular lines of the blocks.

The blocks were stackable for maximum volume consumption, whereas the discs would always leave space in between the tubes due to those curves, but support apparatus was required for all drone models and the Bsidd had incorporated that into the gaps, meaning their choice of design left little wasted space. Additionally, those supports were mobile and could be arranged to accommodate different sizes of discs and even the other models of drones. The same went for all Star Force warships so they’d never encounter a situation of having to pick up and put a square peg in a round docking apparatus.

The jumpships could share drones if needed, but most used those that were built for them and all the drones in this fleet were the Bsidd discs. They were still in cutter, corvette, frigate, destroyer, cruiser analogs, meaning approximately the same internal space, engines, weapons, etc. The differences came in aesthetics and angular attack patterns, for like the Calavari drones the Bsidd had a narrow cross section to point towards the enemy if they were able, whereas the Mainline blocks were more built for omni-directional combat. All the drones were, but the remote pilots of the Bsidd discs like to bring them edge in against their targets to present as little surface area as possible for the enemy to strike back against.

The battlecruisers that were continuing the planetary bombardment were more like plugs than discs, but they held the same circular shape as the rest of the Bsidd drones while also being the widest. The smallest of them were the cutters and looked like game tokens they were so small and flat, but dock them together and interlink shields and you had a very strong defensive tactic to utilize. More often than not that ended up being a row of 12 or more cutters docked together being flown into enemy lines and surviving due to their linked shields, then breaking up and engaging individual targets, for while docked only their ridge weapons were given firing lines and that limited their damage potential.

That was just one little wrinkle in Star Force’s combat philosophy, and there were others for the Bsidd, not to mention the Calavari, Scionate, and every other faction. They all used common and compatible equipment but allowed for some diversity of design. That gave Star Force a few extra options in joint campaigns, as well as allowing for distinction and pride, with the Bsidd being quite proud of the drones they produced and the few extra tactics that they created.

Nothing in Star Force existed for tradition’s sake, with functionality and effectiveness always being the top priority, and that instilled an even greater sense of pride in a faction when something that was unique to them proved valuable. Paying lip service was a concept that had virtually disappeared from Star Force save for some of the civilian sectors, and everything that was built had a purpose. No pandering, graft, or waste. The Bsidd civilization had been built from scratch under the Star Force model and as a result, no matter how alien they physically looked to Mike, he always felt at home with them and had no trouble living on a ship with an entirely Bsidd crew. He was Star Force, they were Star Force, and they worked together seamlessly.

Mike was a member of Clan Meteor, which was Larissa’s Clan and therefore had the most Archons working with the Bsidd since she’d been the one to design their civilization and escort it through those first fragile years. Ever since then they’d maintained close ties and a good number of Bsidd were now part of the Clan themselves, for ever since Randy had taken a bazillion Kiritas into Clan Star Fox and claimed the title of ‘largest Clan’ by far, other Clans had been experimenting with recruiting non-Humans in far greater numbers than before, with most of the Bsidd going to either Clan Meteor because of Larissa or to Clan Ninja Monkey because Morgan was offering them a chance to fight immediately rather than doing mostly training and building like the other Clans.

Mike knew Clan Meteor was engaged in some of the invasions like this along with the Bsidd, but the vast majority of its members were working hard in either exhaustive training sessions or in constructing new colonies and upgrading the ones they already had. There was literally a mad rush on amongst the Clans that he’d never seen before and he couldn’t quite explain it himself, but everyone was prepping as if the V’kit’no’sat were coming back tomorrow…and it was theoretically possible that they would…but that had been true since the inception of Star Force and he’d never seen this kind of fanatical drive amongst them.

He didn’t understand it, but he did appreciate it. Everyone was psyched up and working harder than they ever had before, from Archons down to techs, to increase the power and prestige of their Clan…and when it came to prestige within Star Force, that boiled down to just one thing.

Responsibility.

Those who could handle the fights, the resource collection, industrial production, recycling efforts, colony construction, etc were the ones that had the power. Not so they could order someone else to go do it, but so they could do it themselves. The Clans wanted missions and to take on the toughest opponents, but only those who were capable within Star Force got those missions and responsibilities.

Back in the day before Star Force existed the word ‘responsibility’ was seen as a negative. Something that you had to do whether you wanted to or not. Now that was just the opposite. It was a privilege to be the one that others depended on, and you only got to be in that position if you were a badass, whether it be a faction, a Clan, a planet, a city, a group, or an individual. You wanted to be the guy in the hot seat when the time of crisis came, not the one running away from it and shirking the duty to give to another.

Likewise Star Force was responsible for the security of the ADZ and all the non-Star Force races within it. Why? Not because they’d been told to. Not because they were being paid to. Not because it was a burden they bore and didn’t want and couldn’t transfer to someone else. No. Star Force did it because it needed to be done and they wanted to do it. Not for reward or compensation, but because that’s what badasses did. They saved people, took on the challenges, and came through in the clutch.

That’s what it meant to be superior. You didn’t tell someone else to go fight your battles for you, you tell them to back off and let you handle it because you’re more capable. That was the proper place of the superior, on the front lines, not hiding behind a wall of ‘lesser’ valued personnel and planets.

And that’s what the Clans wanted. They wanted to be superior despite their small size. They wanted to matter when the times of crisis came rather than being stuck in the stands watching the action go down when the big dogs stepped in. The Bsidd were now one of those big dogs, and despite the skill level in the Clans being higher, their civilization size was far too small for them to handle more than a few ‘small’ missions.

The Clans wanted more than that, as much as they could get in fact, which was why they were pressing so hard. If the V’kit’no’sat came back 50 years from now, each of the Clans wanted to be the ones to engage them while others evacuated and ran, and there’d be a long line of volunteers for that duty, but only those most capable would get it.

That was the Star Force way. There were no sacrificial pawns like in chess and the disgusting warfare practices of other empires, with the lizards taking the prize as the most gruesome to date. Sacrifice was abhorrent, no matter how effective it might be in some limited circumstances. A properly outfitted and trained military would kick the crap out of any that used such darkside tactics, and with every year that progressed that military would grow stronger due to the fact that they wouldn’t lose people to attrition. Self-sufficiency was about more than just staying alive, it was the means to take the ordinary soldier and make them extraordinary over the course of centuries through a slow progression of skills and experience.

The longer that military existed and survived, the stronger it would become. That was why Star Force was now able to beat the lizards in virtually every battle and why their swarm tactics were becoming less and less effective. Technology aside, Star Force’s troops were just plain better and growing in skill with each passing year…whereas the lizards’ were dying off and having replacements grown, maintaining their current strengths and not advancing.

That was one of the many illusions in life getting busted in epic fashion. Many people thought that darkside practices were the way to greater strength, and that sacrifice on the battlefield helped the civilization by winning a battle on a single day at any costs…but the truth was the cumulative effect of keeping your people alive and training indefinitely pooled into some truly remarkable feats that were only now becoming evident.

And many races within the ADZ still denied what they saw, partly because they couldn’t understand it. A single Star Force commando with a few centuries of training to their name was now literally a demi-god when going up against ‘normal’ people, and even though a lot of what happened in the war against the lizards didn’t make its way into the news, Star Force security used commandos to deal with internal matters and those soldiers did interact with the ADZ races.

Many people claimed they were given cybernetic enhancements or other cheats, unable to simply accept the fact that being the good guys, while seemingly having short term disadvantages, gave you mind boggling power in the long term so long as you were wise enough to maintain and cultivate it over the progression of years.

To quote an old Star Wars philosophical debate, the darkside may have been the quicker, easier path, but at the end of the day the lightside was and always would be the stronger.

And what did the lightside badasses do more than anything? Save people.

“Admiral, cease fire and start loading the drones back inside the warships,” Mike said after giving the data packet a thorough look.

“We’re leaving?” Krimja asked for clarification.

Mike nodded. “The damage we’ve done here won’t be quickly erased, and either we or another fleet can come back and finish the mission later. Right now we have a more important task before us.”

“A rescue mission?”

“If these guys have survived this long, then we’re going to make damn sure they don’t get wiped out a few years prior to the safe zone reaching them. We’re skipping ahead and coming to their aid.”

“We don’t have any linguistics on them.”

“I know. We’ll have to make do when we get there, but once we start shooting the lizards I think our intentions will be clear enough.”

Krimja tapped one of his appendages against a console, giving a familiar signal to his bridge crew to carry out the order they’d just overheard. On his display screens the battlecruisers immediately stopped firing and began a slow retreat up to higher orbit as the lizard planetary defense batteries continued to paint one of their shields with diffuse beams.

“Drones are withdrawing,” he confirmed, turning around fully as he stood up and looked down at where the Archon was sitting reading through more of the scouting report. “Are we going in alone or calling for support?”

“Both. Dispatch a courier ship with an update and get this data back on the grid. If they want to send backup they can, but we’re not waiting. We’re heading straight there and taking pressure off these guy as soon as possible. If we can save lives by getting there a month sooner, we’re getting there a month sooner. Drop a few monitoring probes on our way out. I want to see how they respond when we’re gone. Schedule and log data retrieval before we jump out.”

“Gladly,” Krimja said as he walked back to his station and sat down, opening up the orders panel to craft and file the necessary requests to be sent back onto the Star Force grid with the courier as Mike continued to study the scouting report with great interest. Though the circumstances would have changed somewhat since the time this report data was collected and would change more during their travel time there he wanted to get well acquainted with the party the lizards were throwing for the locals before he crashed it.

3

February 22, 2826

Aphat System (Unknown race)

Inner Zone

The Archer 7 pulled away from its deceleration point in low orbit around the giant white star follow the pair of warships that had preceded it as the sensor feeds began to get returns. There was a small lizard fleet also in orbit around the star but some 36 degrees around the perimeter. There were many jumpships among them and Mike instantly knew this was either a troop or supply fleet holding station to resupply the lizard forces assaulting the system, for they wouldn’t leave empty jumpships just sitting around for months or years on end. They’d have a flow of supplies coming in, meaning these were probably at least partially loaded.

“Admiral, deploy drones and have the Archer 13 come with us and do likewise. Primary target is that nearby fleet while the rest of ours covers the entry point. Bring us with the drones, we’re going to need the heavier weapons.”

“Navigator, plot and execute course correction,” Krimja said as the Archon let him handle the details while he studied the updating battlemap. “Drones stand by to detach after we gain momentum. Comm, signal the Archer 13 to do the same and link them in with our navigational control. I want a simultaneous jump and us riding even with them. No lagging. The more time we take the greater the chance of those ships running.”

As the Bsidd sat down at his command station the bridge crew got to work carrying out his orders. Two decks below them there was a huge chamber filled with individual stations that half of the drone controllers now sat in. The other chamber was located a deck below and both were safely inside the central mass of the ship and very difficult for weaponsfire to find. Every station in both chambers was filled with Bsidd of varying types, all of which were soon to be assigned to some task.

Who went where and got what assignment was the purview of the bridge crew who, as soon as the issue to deploy came, assigned a pilot to each drone while another began feeding them navigational coordinates so they could get underway. The ‘coin racks’ in the back half of the ship began releasing the disc-shaped drones one at a time from each stack with them dropping below the ship and easing away into widely spaced escort slots as the Archer 7 made a fast transition around the star by enhancing its gravitational pull in order to facilitate the tight curve as they accelerated laterally.

The drones had to do so as well as soon as they left the inertial dampening field, but the bridge crew knew better than to try to fly a curved course during release and risk collisions when they passed through the barrier of the IDF and physics took over, so when the time came to release the jumpship’s engines went dark and the warship coasted in a straight line until all were out, then as a group they’d resume the curved trajectory around the star and up to the position of the lizard fleet.

The Archer 7 had a total of 56 drones onboard, including two of the battlecruisers. Those fell to the back of the formation and got a wide spacing before the course alterations began that resulted in all the ships spreading out as their individual engines and navigation calculations put them back on course. Once they were all pivoting on the star’s gravity well they eased back together, pulling navigational information from the jumpship to coordinate a somewhat precise arrival while other bridge crewers were handing out remote piloting slots.

The pilots in the two bays below the bridge were all waiting at their stations until a prompt would come up requesting that they take a control slot. If the pilot accepted then a function on one of the drones would be routed to their station. Helm control had already been divvied up before they left the confines of the jumpship, but now the weapon batteries, shield control, and auxiliary tasks were being handed out with many gunners getting two or more weapons each. How many tasks went to an individual pilot was a factor of how many drones there were for the total number of pilots available and what each of their ratings were.

There was a complex ranking system involved that was run by computer and allowed the bridge crew to hand out assignment in batches or individually as they chose, not having to know the history of each pilot but by selecting ‘best available’ for certain tasks. How much a pilot could multitask was also figured in based off of training scores and combat experience, with those more skilled being given multiple jobs so the less skilled could focus on one or two things and become more effective at them. The less one had to do in battle the more likely that they wouldn’t get overwhelmed. Each of these pilots knew their task and their task alone, for not one of them was assigned tasks on different drones simultaneously.

Each pilot was mentally on one ship, either through a neural interface or the holographic pocket of displays available to them in their little control nooks. They only knew what was happening to their ship, and often not even the whole thing if their attention was on a particular firing line. It was better if they knew what was happening directly around them, but more often than not the gunners didn’t just fire randomly at nearby ships. The bridge crew was also able to assign targets, whether they be individual ships or specific locations on those ships with battlemap markers.

Those virtual orders could also come from the ship’s Captain, the Admiral, or an Archon in a nexus. The gunners often didn’t know who the order was from, they just saw a glowing marker beacon on their displays to tell them that this was a priority target, then they’d decide what to shoot and when, for most of the time they’d have a slew of targeting markers to choose from that were color coded. Pulsing red was the highest priority, with red being very important and orange and yellow below that.

If something was worth shooting, like a comm array or shield generator, it would be marked purple so the gunners knew where to look without having to search themselves. If a marker went yellow that meant it was preferred that they shoot that one over the others. Orange was greatly preferred while red was ‘shoot it now.’ Pulsing red meant to ignore everything else and blow the hell out of whatever was marked as fast as possible.

But there were also other markers, with blue meaning ignore and green meaning don’t shoot at all. Allied ships shown with a green halo, while if a certain section of an enemy ship had something valuable onboard it’d be tagged with green, like the cargo you were trying to steal. If a ship was fighting as a diversion the bridge crew would mark it blue so the gunners knew it was still an enemy, but a waste of shots even if it was flying right in front of your guns.

The color system was different for each race and the control stations were modular so that if, say, a Human needed to replace a Bsidd all they had to do was hit a few buttons and everything from the holograms to button layout to seat shape would alter to match the individual logging into the system. Right now there were only Bsidd, but different variants had different sized bodies, so while their holograms remained the same their seats and button layout did not, for the small Eppies couldn’t reach the farthest buttons on an Alpha’s control board, and an Alpha couldn’t tag the small buttons as easily as an Eppie could.

Star Force had taken all possibilities into consideration, even changing some of the holographic color schemes into wavelengths of light that Humans couldn’t see because they stood out better for other races, and vice versa. The Bsidd had produced this warship, but since it was Star Force any race could use it, and use it on a moment’s notice. All the remote pilot had to do was log in and his or her presets would automatically update, including customized button layout, or they could choose from several default standards.

As these Bsidd controllers got their assignments their screens lit up with localized sensor feeds from the ship they were virtually on as well as having a panel where written orders could be displayed. In addition to that each controller had sound cues to give them additional data and even that very rare vocal communication from someone on the bridge. Each little nook they had was sound dampened via an energy field that allowed them to hear outside their little bubble of reality, but with reducing those sounds to a loud whisper so as to not drown out the various pings and warnings of the ‘gaming system’ they were using.

Every little detail mattered to the battle, and the remote pilots knew better than to get sloppy. If they couldn’t handle all the tasks requested of them they’d only accept the ones that they could, and if they got overloaded they could remit one or two back to the bridge where they would find another pilot to take on that duty…though in battle when you were losing ships the greatest workload would come at the beginning, for so long as a jumpship wasn’t lost you weren’t going to lose remote pilots and they’d share more and more of the tasks with the pilots from destroyed drones as time progressed, increasing overall efficiency as the workload was spread out.

When the pair of warships finally ended their tug on the star and leveled out they began decelerating on approach as the lizard fleet picked them up and a few of the ships began to move. As soon as the jumpships were within range they both launched bloons at the same target, with the glowing capsules carrying IDF-laced goo that hit and spread over portions of the lizard jumpship. More bloons followed, blanketing several ships as the others began to run. Even before the drones could get to them more bloons fired off, tagging and disabling ships for a short period of time so long as the IDF field covered all the internal gravity drives. Even one remaining active was enough to allow a ship to move, with several lizard vessels limping off in just such a condition.

A few large Keema blasts shot out across the gap, nearly invisible coming from the battlecruisers, and punched through the shields of the jumpship they hit. The batteries meant for surface bombardment worked well enough against the huge jumpships, but the handful of cruisers with them were too small and mobile to adequately target until the drones closed range…but by that time most of the lizard jumpships had flashed out, making emergency jumps elsewhere in the system to avoid the slaughter that they knew was coming their way.

The two warships and their drones closed with the six jumpships that were left behind as the bloon launchers continued to bathe them in the disabling goo else it’d expire and they’d be free to move again. Even the cruisers knew what was coming and had ran, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to do any damage to the Star Force ships with such small numbers, leaving the caught jumpships to their fate.

However, these ships were tens of kilometers long and didn’t explode with the push of a button. The orders going out to the drones were to disable, not destroy, so the bloon launchers wouldn’t have to sustain continuous fire to keep them in place. That meant first breaching the shields, with the battlecruisers handled nicely in conjunction to the heavy medium-ranged Keema batteries on the warships, then coring into and destroying the gravity drives no matter how deeply buried inside the ship they were located.

Other targets were the weapons batteries, which a portion of the drones went after so they didn’t whittle down the Star Force shields and cause damage during the long process that killing a jumpship took. As usual, Mike sent out an offer of surrender to the jumpships that they obligingly didn’t take. Though he didn’t like killing other starship crews, he didn’t want to be burdened with prisoners on a mission like this. They needed to hit hard and fast, though poaching cargo ships was still a bit distasteful for such an operation.

Fortunately slowing down Star Force with prisoners wasn’t a tactic the lizards had used yet, so Mike’s pair of warships held in place and slowly tore apart the 6 lizard jumpships until they were fully disabled and no more than helpless space stations floating in orbit. They didn’t bother to stick around to pulverize them, rather meeting up with the rest of their fleet that had arrived and proceeding further into the system where the bulk of the enemy forces were.

Mike studied the updating battlemaps as a few drones were sent to every planet for intel purposes. There were no active naval battles at present, but a huge chunk of the natives’ defenses had been wiped out of orbit around one planet and had a very large lizard fleet sitting in the rubble while the planetary defenders were taking refuge alongside their existing battle stations.

Admiral, have a look, Mike said telepathically through the wall from the nexus and onto the bridge as he sent a location ping to Krimja’s station showing him the location of that particular lizard fleet, though there were thousands of ships elsewhere in the system working on other targets and covering the ground troops they had on the semi-conquered worlds.

The Bsidd activated the comm back to the nexus in lieu of the telepathy he didn’t possess, nor any of his race did. That was another reason why the Humans were so suited to being the core of Star Force. The powers of the Archons were beyond impressive.

“A lot to chew, but I think we can handle it without losing too many drones. If they reinforce it’ll tip the scales and we’ll be in a messy fight.”

“I agree,” Mike said, sending the official order out through the nexus. “If the natives jump in we’ll coordinate as much as possible, but let’s assume we’re going at it alone for now.”

“I’ve got a designated comm officer standing by in case they try to make contact. Hopefully we can establish some rudimentary shorthand if they do.”

“I wouldn’t count on that, but try anyway,” Mike said, knowing that language differences didn’t only exist in spoken words but in computer systems as well. “Lizard would be the best bet if they’ve been fighting them as long as we think they have. Work it from there, but I’m not expecting anything so soon.”

“I hope to surprise you.”

“Please do. In the meantime, let’s work on the Bsidd’s kill count. Lots of ships out there to deny the enemy the use of, and in doing so let’s hope we make some new friends.”

“And if not?”

“We killsteal and run. Enemy of my enemy isn’t always my friend, but we can still help these guys out regardless. Just watch our back in case they don’t take kindly to us being here either.”

“I’ll put a man on monitoring them while you go to work. If they head our way I’ll ping you well before they get within weapons range.”

“Thank you. Let’s get busy,” Mike said, cutting the comm and focusing as he linked fully with the nexus and immersed himself in the fleet. Krimja knew he’d communicate with him through the system unless something warranted spoken words and the Bsidd knew to reciprocate, for the less distracting the battlemaster the better. While his crew of remote pilots were damn good, they always fought more effectively with an Archon guiding the flow of battle and he didn’t expect today to be any different.

Settling himself on his bench he began setting up his control boards so he could also issue selective commands with a touch of a button rather than verbally shouting to his crew. When a Star Force warship went into combat the bridge didn’t get noisy, leaving everyone without exterior distractions so they could focus on their small part of the overall battle.

The Admiral’s role was that similar to the Archon’s, and he’d be backing him up mostly while looking for adjustments to make when necessary. Some Archons preferred to let their Admirals fight the battle and make tweaks, but Mike did not. He wanted to be in the hot seat from the beginning, which meant Krimja would be carrying out his general orders and adding the detail necessary so the Archon wouldn’t have to.

To that end he received his first vector allotment, indicating that Mike wanted three prongs to the attack, and the Admiral went about assigning warships to each with theirs being added to the central group first off.

4

The left prong to the Star Force attack skirted well wide of the lizard formation as it broke from its holding orbit and rearranged itself into swarm mode, clumping the cruisers together so they could mass fire on the drones. If they didn’t they’d get picked apart too easily, plus it would make it harder for ramming countermeasures to come into play. When necessary the lizards were still attempting to go kamikaze against ships though they didn’t try so many times against the jumpships knowing they had dampening shields that could slow their momentum or stop it entirely before reaching the proper shields.

The drones were a bit different, being much smaller and not so equipped, but the shield matrixes they carried were variable and could be retasked to emit the dampening fields in front of a target. That would leave the drone without shields itself, but there was only so much room inside their disc-like volume to accommodate weapons, engines, power cells, etc. Choices had to be made, but if a ship looked to be the upcoming target of a kamikaze attack the drones could be deployed into defensive alignment and blanket the trajectory with the dampening shields…which would act as a momentum slower and structured in a similar manner to the Archon’s Lachka ‘crash bags.’ They didn’t structurally link back to the emitters, rather laying down a cloying energy field and sustaining it to achieve the desired slowing effect.

In the clutter of a heated battle the drones were essentially vulnerable to lizard ships ramming them, but when those impacts occurred they were not at very high speeds and most likely would only diminish or breach a drone’s shields in addition to knocking it out of place. That would open it up to hull attack by the others around it while pancaking the much less sturdy lizard cruiser and it was a technique that was used on occasion, but with so many drones in play it almost seemed pointless because the drone in question would almost certainly withdraw, recharge its shields, then cycle back into the battle.

Whether or not that happened today wasn’t known to the remote pilots flying this prong of the attack, but they knew that keeping the enemy off the jumpships was the priority and unlike in previous eras the jumpships were most definitely coming into the battle rather than staying far beyond it, earning their titles as ‘warships.’ They were not glorified carriers, and had on them some impressive weaponry in addition to the bloon launchers.

Some of that weaponry launched out prior to any of the three prongs getting to target. Some were compact bloons mean to cheat the range limitations and get some mauler blasts on target, which in this case was just firing into the moving swarm of cruisers because the large core of lizard capital ships were lagging behind and letting the cruisers get in position to take the brunt of the assault, knowing that Star Force could smoke the bigger ships right off if they led with them.

Along with those bloons came a series of missiles, some small, some large, and all shielded. A hail of anti-missile phaser fire filled the area ahead of the missiles but a few hits weren’t going to be able to take them out and the missiles were being fired in groups with the leading few acting as shield ships to protect the ones with the payloads. As a result most of them got through to the inside of the lizard formations then found ships to detonate against.

When they exploded they didn’t damage the lizard ships, rather mushrooming out in gigantic energy fields that interacted with the lizard shields and drained them, some to the point of breaching the matrixes for those closest to the detonation points, in preparation for the incoming drones that entered Keema range within the next handful of seconds.

With the battlecruisers already firing their heavy, long range versions the medium Keema batteries opened up across the fleet as they coasted to a stop, intent on just poaching the lizard ships while staying outside their phaser range. That didn’t stop the lizards from returning fire, but when their phaser beams reached the drones they were diffuse and disintegrating, for like the Keema they were unstable upon release and didn’t continue indefinitely like a laser.

Though like a laser they did fan out, spreading their damage over a wider area rather than a pinpoint strike that would have the best chance of momentarily breaching a shield. As the lizard ships surged ahead to cut the distance the beams from both sides got stronger, though the Star Force Keema quickly peeked out and had them tagging the enemy hulls with shots powerful enough to breach through their yellow/tan armor plating with a single hit.

Once the lizards got within their prime phaser range the Star Force drones accelerated again, jumping across the gap to bring their short range weapons into play. Those were comprised of a few maulers and sammies but most were now Ta’lin’yi, with years of technical advancements making those weapons smaller and more potent, enough that most drones carried at least two. Those drones targeted the shieldless lizard cruisers, with their shield columns touching hull and blasting it away with fireworks-like results when the white/gold sparkling energy surge hit. All it took were a handful of Ta’lin’yi hits to take down a cruiser, allowing even a single drone to chew through one in under 12 seconds if the shields were already down.

But there were a lot of targets to choose from, for there were thousands upon thousands of lizard ships just in this one tendril that they were sending against the leftmost prong. That was typical and nothing the remote pilots hadn’t seen before so they didn’t panic, knowing what they needed to do and listening to the prompts their controllers were giving them, whether they were a crewer on the bridge, a ship’s Captain, or even the Admiral or an Archon. When they told them to do something they did it immediately, then filled in the blanks themselves when left alone amongst the fray.

That included everything from deciding which target to fire at to maneuvering the ship around the enemy vessels to get better firing lines, for the ships didn’t just sit still and shoot at each other. That would have been a death sentence for the lizard cruisers who didn’t have the armor, shields, or firepower for that kind of a slugging match, so they acted more like a slow flock of birds swirling about to deliver a few good salvos before running off to live to recharge their own shields.

Trouble was starships weren’t all that fast and the Star Force drones were faster, so it wasn’t uncommon to see the drones breaking formation to briefly chase down a ship and make a kill then circle back around to the group they were in. If you could stay with the flow you’d dominate, but let the lizards create a current of ships passing by you and they’d pummel you with weaponsfire you could not stop, for even if you destroyed a ship its debris would fly on by and there would be intact cruisers coming at you the next second, every second, as the mass of lizard ships acted in unison to try and take down individual drones.

The naval power scale had tipped so much in the past few centuries that the lizards were considerably outclassed at this point and even a cutter could take on two lizard cruisers and reliably win. That kind of dominance was countered with massive numbers, but the Bsidd fleet wasn’t going to let them use that advantage to its fullest. One reason for the three pronged attack was to spread their fleet out, but when the left prong engaged it fanned out even more taking small clusters of drones out at different angles and trying to get to the edge of the lizard formation. If they could do that then they’d essentially have their rear angles clear of enemies and be able to shift shields towards the incoming firepower and make themselves that much harder to kill.

The lizards knew this and always tried to keep ships surrounding the drones…but that also drew them further and further apart. It was a numbers game and if Star Force could spread them out enough they’d win handily. If the lizards were able to stay clumped up enough and still surround the drones then they’d have the advantage of attrition with the Star Force ships having to retreat and recharge or stay and risk destruction in order to rack up a kill count.

As it was they didn’t always have that choice. The remote pilots were good at anticipating when to pull back, and their controllers would ping them if they thought they’d overstayed, but there were never any guarantees and the flow of battle could change instantly. That was another tactic the lizards used, with multiple ships attacking different targets in a seemingly predictable way then all changing to a single target in the hopes of getting through its shields before it had a chance to pull back and retreat.

So not only did the remote pilots have to worry about who to shoot and when, they also had to look at positioning and try to avoid giving the enemy too many proximity possibilities to counter them with. That responsibility lay with the pilot of each craft and the controllers orchestrating the overall battle, and the ones the Bsidd had sent with this invasion fleet were all experienced in lizard combat so most of the predictable tricks didn’t work on them.

But they were always trying new ones, and it was Mike’s job to smoke those out and see ahead to any possible traps or opportunities from his position in the command nexus. He knew his troops would take care of the minutia of battle, as well as being consumed by it and unable to notice what was happening elsewhere. As the Admiral handled a lot of the duties coordinating the central prong of their attack that was heading directly for the larger lizard capital ships, Mike kept making alterations here and there but wanted to keep a clear head for the overall battle. Dive in too deep to micromanaging one piece of it and he’d lose perspective…which was the primary task he had and that others were counting on him for.

It was that big picture approach that allowed him to see the multiple jump signatures of ships entering planetary orbit as soon as they manifested themselves into strings of lizard reinforcements coming in from other fleets. They couldn’t jump en mass, fortunately, and these were not coming by jumpship either so they had some time, but on the larger battlemap there were strings of the ships arriving and maneuvering around planetary orbit while the main battle was underway. The lizards knew they had to keep their numbers up or they might as well retreat and it looked like they planned to do just that rather than concede Star Force this planet’s orbital swath that they’d taken from the natives.

Mike also noticed deployments from the native fleets, not heading for the huge battle that he was currently sitting in the middle of but the wide V-shaped ships were making slow course corrections from their current positions and heading towards the jumppoints the lizards were using, ostensibly to attack those reinforcements. The natives were still a wildcard in this, but he was glad that they noticed the opportunity for what it was and were throwing in at exactly the points needed while keeping their ships away from his own given their lack of knowledge of each other.

Mike had a limited knowledge of their capability, based off the scouting reports and snippets of battle that he’d observed, but he had no way of knowing how many lizard ships were incoming and how the natives would fare against them. He thought they could handle a good number of them but hoped they weren’t desperate enough to engage in reckless engagements. Mike’s Bsidd fleet could kill all the lizards in the system given enough time, they just had to be smart and cagey about it and not rush in head on to their numbers, splitting them up and whittling them down by using Star Force’s strengths against them and denying them the swarm tactics that the lizards relied upon.

But there was no way for him to communicate that to the natives, so all he could do was hope they knew what they were doing and didn’t let their desperation to aid in this seemingly victorious unknown raid cause them to lose a chunk of their fleet that they’d kept intact this long. He wasn’t sure how it looked on the outside, maybe the natives thought his ships were losing, for after all these centuries of fighting the lizards Mike could look at an engagement and size up the tactics of it instantly, both because he was familiar with his own fleet and had so much combat experience against the lizards.

Regardless, the natives were coming to the aid of Star Force and going to try and ambush the reinforcement fleet as they came into planetary orbit piecemeal. It was definitely an opportunity to exploit, but it was going to take some time for them to get there and they weren’t moving as fast as Star Force’s ships were capable of. That said, this battle wasn’t going to be over anytime soon given how much tonnage was in play and how long weaponsfire took to tear through hulls, armored or otherwise.

But unlike in the movies, when a starship was destroyed it didn’t vanish in a cloud of vapor. Every molecule was still there, broken apart or maybe in altered forms, but the mass didn’t disappear. That meant that with every lizard ship killed there was junk now floating in the battlefield and the lizards weren’t retreating from that mess. Mike knew that was on purpose because they wanted the wreckage to offer them cover to pin down Star Force’s movement options more than to block incoming weaponsfire. They needed the drones to be in one spot in order to mass a swarm of ships against them, so the more pinned down Mike’s ships got the better it was for them.

The mage sent a mental order to the Admiral and suddenly the Archer 7 accelerated up into the lead of the central prong, widening its forward shields and altering them into a physical plow while a secondary shield blocked the phaser beams that passed harmlessly through it. That umbrella caught and forced aside the growing debris, whether it be chunks of ship or pulverized hull plating that was now the consistency of sand floating ahead of them. Behind them the drones pulled in, traveling down the clear road as the jumpship began taking more and more hits from the surrounding cruisers.

Those were added to by the larger capital ships that Mike was pulling the central prong towards. Against Star Force those ships were not very effective, for their increased weaponry and armor aside, they didn’t stand up well in a slugging match, ironically making the cruisers better suited for handling the drones. The larger ships weren’t produced in numbers to successfully swarm opponents, and their larger size only made them easier targets per equal amounts of mass than a fleet of cruisers.

But they weren’t here to fight Star Force, they were here to conquer the natives who had a radically different fleet structure…which was why the lizards weren’t putting those warships into their front lines and trying to preserve them for cleanup if the cruisers were able to inflict enough damage.

Mike wasn’t waiting though, so with the jumpship plowing the road of debris and a few cruisers that refused to budge out of the way, he brought the central prong directly to the larger lizard ships only to have them scatter and run…at which point Mike tagged drone clusters and had them race ahead, ignoring all the cruisers and putting damage into the larger capital ships.

Meanwhile the cruiser swarm fell in on them, encircling the entire central prong and leaving the six jumpships in it surrounded enough that sensors couldn’t see much outside the cloud. If it hadn’t been for comm redundancy they would have been almost blind as to what was happening elsewhere in orbit, but Mike’s nexus links kept him in contact with all their ships and their non-clouded sensors, sharing data and keeping him in the know as he reformed the warships into a cluster of their own and created a pocket of ‘safe’ space between them where the damage drones were now rotating into since the edge of the enemy fleet was no longer accessible to retreat to.

5

Mike guided the battle in all three prongs from the nexus as well as watching the intervention of the natives on the reinforcement threads pouring more ships into the main battle. Until they got to those jumppoints the lizards had been gaining an advantage in that the cycling rate of the drones was getting higher and higher. When that happened there was a point of no return where ships would have to be brought to the front lines with full shields to replace those that were retreating, except that they hadn’t fully recharged themselves. At that point it was a grinding game with the drones’ extensive armor taking the hits, and it wouldn’t replace itself going forward like shield energy would.

So far they’d only lost two drones, both cutters that had been ambushed in directed attacks without enough time to peel off. The lizard ships that had stuck around long enough to kill them were likewise taken out in an exchange of 40 or so for 2, but it was mostly a desperate attempt on their part to take out any of the Star Force drones. With them gone Mike had slightly less firepower to work with, but it wasn’t significant as the rotations continued and it being a shield war at the moment. The lizards would have to burn through a lot of ships to get the drones down into the kill zone, for Mike wasn’t going to let a few more get killed in order to set up takedowns on groups of others given the need for all his drones going forward throughout this mission.

The lizard reinforcements had made things a bit iffy, but once that flow of ships was cut off Mike had fixed numbers to work with and saw that he had a narrow advantage. Keeping the ships moving and alive and only burning shield energy worked in sustaining them, then saw a reduced amount of incoming firepower as more lizard ships were killed continuously. He could have destroyed them quicker by just turning all the drones loose on offense, but he would have probably lost a few in the effort and damaged many others. The mage knew he had to be patient and the natives were giving him the time necessary to safely whittle down the lizards.

Mike kept a keen lookout for more ambush moves, preempting some and reacting quickly to others by sending in relief ships to literally surround the targeted vessel with their hulls to soak up damage and escort it into a ‘safe’ zone. He was holding off on using his few support ships and just working through rotations in order to preserve his fleet’s longevity. With every minute that passed the numbers tipped Star Force’s way and eventually a critical point came when the battle was clearly not going the lizards way and it looked like they weren’t going to be able to kill another ship, for the jumpships were soaking up so much firepower in the battle that they were essentially giving the drones pseudo shields by keeping the enemy sights square on them as they actively hunted down cruiser packs and disrupted their movement patterns.

Then the moment came when the lizard fleet altered its swarm disposition and sent out streams of ships away from the drones, running elsewhere in the system to regroup with other fleets rather than stay put and waste their remaining vessels only to burn away Star Force shield energy that would be fully replaced within half an hour.

But Mike didn’t just let them run, instead sending out a flurry of orders and tagging enemy ships to pursue in the hopes of making a few more kills before they could get to a jumppoint. He also sent drones out to the ongoing confrontations between the natives and the ships they’d drew off at the reinforcement jumppoints, for they were still engaged in battles that were not entirely in their favor and there were still lizard ships coming in. Mike expected that to end as soon as the lizards’ comm delays caught up and they knew that the battle was lost, but until then they were still a threat.

To their credit, all of the fleeing ships did not head towards those jumppoints. He expected that was because they wanted to kill some more native ships and didn’t want to draw Star Force’s fleet over to them before they could do that. Already Mike had seen some of the native ships get destroyed in the fighting and he wanted to minimize that as much as he could, especially since he’d been the one to start this fight and the natives were throwing in to help them out.

It took him a few seconds to get all the ships in his fleet tasked even with the neural interface, then the clumps that were the three prongs began to splinter with small groups headed after the fleeing ships and chunks of the fleet centered around the jumpships moving out towards the ongoing orbital fights. If that wasn’t enough to tell the lizards that Star Force was claiming domain over this planet’s orbital tracks then the battle song that he had all the jumpships and drones in the fleet begin broadcasting over numerous frequencies, including those the lizards used so he knew they could hear it, made it clear that this fleet wasn’t sitting put and relishing the beatdown they’d just issued, but going on full offensive and hitting everything lizard around this planet that didn’t pull out and run immediately.

The standard offers for surrender ended and the classic song ‘We will rock you’ replaced it playing on infinite repeat, with the Star Force fleet groups leaping across orbit pulling navigational feats that neither of the other two races could hope to accomplish and arriving on site within minutes rather than the 20+ it would have taken for the lizards to make the same trek.

As the Archer 7 came out of its microjump Mike’s foot began tapping with the rhythm of the song as he assigned targeting priorities with a few quick thoughts and grabbed control of the jumpship’s own main Keema battery for himself, targeting a very tricky shot between two native ships to hit a lizard cruiser and cut a trench down half its length that gutted the ship and turned it into a mostly dead hulk that acted as a shield for the native ships in the short delay before a Star Force destroyer slid into that spot and extended its shields out in a disc to block weaponsfire hitting around it and sparing the native vessels that were already showing hull breaches while it also fired back and pounded the nearest lizard cruisers.

Mike released control of the battery back to the remote pilots and tweaked a few alignments going forward, but by then it was pretty much automatic. His people knew what to do so he just mainly watched and waited for an opportunity to make changes if needed, but the short trip over to this location and the others for the various splinter groups had allowed them to partially recharge their depleted shield matrixes, virtually insuring that none of the drones would be destroyed short of their deployments getting sloppy or the lizards pulling some brilliant play.

Preventing both of those was Mike’s primary role here but none was to come to pass. The lizards’ ships were destroyed as they ignored the Star Force drones and focused exclusively on the natives, for those were the weak targets that they wanted to take out. For every one that they destroyed they could bring in more reinforcements later to compensate for any losses, so the emphasis was on doing damage and not the cost to the lizards, which was catastrophic for this small fleet of enemy ships.

Mike’s forces managed to keep all but one of the native ships intact once they arrived. That one had already been damaged prior to the arrival of the drones and a kamikaze cruiser got through the blockade and rammed it, bumping two drones aside in the process just to get the kill. As soon as the last active ship was destroyed or disabled Mike sent orders for rescue crews to get to the native ships and recovery crews to the remains of their two dead drones. It was unlikely that someone could reverse engineer them given the tech level Star Force now had, but they didn’t want to get sloppy with their trash and end up making someone a lot more powerful through negligence.

As soon as he sent the order he knew there was going to be issues with the recovery. The natives were an unknown, as was their biological needs. He didn’t even know if they could breathe the same atmosphere but he wasn’t going to risk someone dying from delay while they tried to establish some form of communication with the natives.

“Admiral, you have command,” he said through the comm as he deactivated the nexus after sending one last order for the other Archons in the fleet to assemble for possible recovery operations. “If we’re going to have a first contact situation we need my telepathy, so I’m heading to the hangar bay.”

“Understood. Still no response from hails.”

“Keep trying and cycle through all languages we have in the database. Maybe we’ll get lucky and hit on one they’re familiar with.”

“That’ll take a lot of time.”

“We just bought them time.”

“True. What are your standing orders?”

“We own orbit. Keep the lizards out but ignore the rest of the system save for recon until I say otherwise. I’ll be on armor comm in a few minutes if you need to reach me.”

“If you find survivors, will you be bringing them back here?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ll play it by ear. Prep various atmospheric containment pods in one of the hangars and get the medtechs ready to adapt. If we can buy a few minutes with some prep I want them.”

“At all locations I presume?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll make it happen and have a dropship standing by when you reach the hangar.”

“Keep an eye on the lizards and feed me updates. The dropships are going to be soft targets.”

“We’ll keep them out of reach.”

“I’m off,” Mike said, fully deactivating the nexus and turning about and into a run as he reentered the bridge and crossed it heading for the interior of the ship where his quarters were. When he got there he found his dark blue armor, or rather one out of three sets that he had onboard ship, and stepped into it within a few seconds. His feet went into already intact boots and his arms went into already intact gauntlets held in a statue-like pose with the rest of the armor being peeled apart in segments that included the helmet.

A mental command saw it all close up around him and lock into place. He sent another mental command to retract the helmet, sensing a 3 second holding ‘aura’ with in his mind.

“Retract helmet,” he said, enabling the safety protocol to release. His helmet split apart and the segments slid back down around his neck and behind his head, leaving him breathing free air and able to twist his neck side to side and backwards without being hindered, but with the segments piled behind his neck and acting as a bit of protective collar triggered with the binary command so that a rogue thought wouldn’t see the helmet splitting apart when one was in, say, a toxic atmosphere or no atmosphere at all.

The same protocol was in effect for the rest of the armor, but the quick in-and-outs were worth that little speedbump, though he had to telekinetically smooth his pant legs down inside to get some wrinkles in his casual uniform out. Another mental command crunched the armor down around feet, shins, thighs, waist, and every other part of the armor that had been designed to give him some room for internal movement. When it contracted down to his predetermined body form he felt himself mentally slip into battle readiness with his feet gripping the ground and able to twitch in any direction necessary in a split second. He didn’t have Kex like Jason did, but he could launch himself into a full aerial flip with barely a split second of preparation in order to jump over something flinging at his ankles…which was hard to do with loose boots.

As soon as he got his armor locked into place he headed out through the ship and to the hangar bay, finding a dropship waiting for him with a small crew of Bsidd all in either combat armor or envirosuits, some which appeared to just be getting to the ship a few seconds ahead of him.

“Ready for departure, Archon,” one of the Gammas said, standing next to a pair of Alphas in combat armor and a few other of the slightly larger ‘workers.’ Mike knew the Admiral had sent them here because they were the strongest of the Bsidd…not taking training into consideration…and could lift or pry apart debris and carry modular equipment better than any of the rest of the ship’s crew. The Alphas were armed, lightly, and were both Bsidd commandos there for security to watch Mike’s back and those of the other Bsidd just in case something went awry…like a group of lizards showing up or the crew turning on the rescuers.

Mike took a quick glance, confirming that they both had one lethal and one stun weapon, keeping their options open to deal with the unknown.

“Let’s go,” he said, walking through the small Sparrow-class dropship and into the cockpit.

“Where to?” the Epsilon variant pilot asked.

“Any of the tagged ships that their own vessels aren’t at.”

“Do they have rescue parties deployed?” he asked as they lifted off the deck and drifted towards the energy field separating the bay from space as the heavy blast door over it slowly retracted with a bright splash of sunlight shooting inside the crack.

“Not as a few minutes ago, but I hope we’re not the only ones picking up people. Get me within 400 meters of the hulls and I should be able to sense if there are living crew inside.”

“Really?”

“Archon magic,” Mike said, referencing a term that a lot of others had come to use when they didn’t feel like explaining something. “No point wasting time searching empty debris.”

“Proceeding to the nearest target,” the Bsidd said, setting a course around the various debris chunks and getting a few pea-sized hits as soon as they left the jumpship.

Mike took a deep breath and centered himself before extending his Ikrid out in spherical mode well beyond 400 meters. Technically there wasn’t a fixed ranged, for the ability kind of acted like a rubber band in that you could stretch it out via cone mode and the tighter you restricted the cone the further it would reach. He wanted the dropship close enough that he wouldn’t have trouble searching the ship segments, as well as being able to pick up faint lifesigns that could be missed at the outer edge of his range, for unconscious minds didn’t register as well as conscious ones.

The first chunk of ship they passed Mike scanned thoroughly but there was nothing living aboard. He had the pilot tag that piece on the battlemap as having been searched and then they moved on to the next ‘needs to be searched’ tag. They passed by five of them before he picked up a group of closely packed minds in the right ‘wing’ of one vessel that had been chopped in half by weapons damage or an internal explosion.

“Stop here,” Mike said, focusing his Ikrid tighter so he could squeeze out a bit more detail. “There’s at least 20 holed up here. I think…I think they’re stable but it’s hard to tell.”

The Bsidd in the pilots chair glanced up at him in question.

“Never mind, just find us a way onboard,” Mike said as he turned around and went into the back of the ship with the six others. The pilot would be staying here, but the rest were coming with him.

“Pack up, we’re going over,” he said, keeping his own hands free as he took position by the rear hatch. The Bsidd picked up a lot of equipment and waited behind him, each of them towering at least a foot taller than the Human and wearing purple/black armor. Their battlecasts were more flexible than the Archon’s, in that their hard plates only covered select portions but the ‘soft’ pieces were still more resilient to weaponsfire than the original Archon armor had been. Add on considerable shield strength and the Bsidd were anything but weak, and the envirosuits themselves were lightly armored so as not to get pierced by debris or low level weaponsfire.

Mike wouldn’t have been bringing men wearing those over if there were any suspected lizard activity, but only the soldiers had combat armor sculpted to their forms and he needed the jumpship techs to handle the bulk of the recovery operations. He stood at the ramp until he got a confirmation from the pilot that they were in position, then hit the door controls and an energy shield snapped into place a moment before the ramp cracked open and lowered to reveal an internal deck of the derelict chunk of ship that was now open to space.

“Me first,” Mike said, jumping through the shimmering blue field and into zero g for the two meter coast that ended with him getting his adhesive fingertips on a severed structural beam, then he turned around in the void of space as his armor switched over to internal oxygen. “Safety line.”

One of the techs threw an object through the field and Mike pulled the toss to him telekinetically, attaching it a few meters in so they’d have a firm line to hold onto and wouldn’t risk careening off into space if something went wrong…and in the Bsidd’s case ‘holding on’ involved wrapping two appendages around the line like a hoop, insuring that they didn’t float off, for the artificial gravity was out in at least this piece of the ship.

“It’s fixed. Let’s go,” he said, moving on into the exposed corridor and pulling the line with him.

6

Mike attached another nub some thirty meters down where the corridor made a sweeping turn up and to the right. That provided a solid point for the line to feather to, letting it stay slightly loose in between as the mage continued to lay cord down as he bounced his way from one wall to the other and up the corkscrew tunnel. The minds that he was sensing were nearby and all clustered in one area, but since he didn’t have a schematic of the ship he was just guessing which way to go aside from a little Pefbar help.

There was no grid-like pattern to the corridors so he just strung line where he went and left it in place when he had to backtrack, starting a new line inches from the old and heading off in another direction until the chamber the minds were in came into Pefbar view. From there he was able to see the route necessary to get there…along with the emergency blast doors that had cut off the survivable section of the ship from the decompressed areas.

There was no power here so he and the Bsidd were having to work their way through using nightvision and some tiny lights being emitted from their envirosuits and armor. Mike didn’t need his, for he had his Pefbar, and when he came up to the blast door he saw that it was more than a foot and a half thick using his psionic sense.

He waited for his team to catch up, then grabbed a piece of equipment from one of the Bsidd and helped him stretch it across the width of the corridor. It was a flexible hoop that both of them went about extending and melding to the floor, walls, and ceiling with some reliable adhesive, both to keep the atmosphere contained and to keep the mount from moving with the pressure. They put it two feet back from the blast doors then activated the portable shield generator and a blue film covered the corridor.

“What the hell…” Mike mumbled.

“What’s wrong?” one of the Alphas asked, with a pair of mandibles dropping over its stun gun.

“These minds are familiar. I think this is a race we’ve encountered before.”

“Which one?”

“Give me a moment,” he said as he floated in place and lightly disconnected his mind from his surroundings as he reached out to one of natives ahead. He could pick up thoughts and voices, both of which were not in any language he recognized, but he was able to hack into one of their bodies and see through their eyes.

The room was dark, for apparently the entire ship had lost power save for some few emergency systems. Mike saw a few status lights in the dark, but what drew his attention immediately were the faces and hands of the crew…for they were glowing a mixture of red and green. That was the wrong color, but there was no mistaking the body structures, including the hard carapace covering their heads and running down the back of their necks and beneath their uniforms. It was the telltale partial exoskeleton that, combined with the glowing skin, told Mike who this race was.

The Archon activated his comm, but also opened a channel to let his team hear his conversation so he wouldn’t have to repeat himself. “Admiral?”

“Here.”

“We haven’t met face to face yet, but the survivors on the other side of the blast door are some variant of Protovic. Dig up all known variations of their language and see if one is compatible with the natives.”

“Protovic? How?”

“I don’t know, but these have red/green skin instead of purple/green. I think we’ve stumbled onto a mystery that a lot of people are going to want to know the answer to.”

“If you haven’t seen them how do you know what color they are?”

“I managed to pull a feed from within the room they’re currently in. They’re just about the only thing glowing, so I think it’s safe to assume most of this ship is dead. Send over a shipment of envirosuits compatible with Protovic physiology.”

“Human sizes?”

“Basically. If they don’t have any of their own we’re going to need to get them out through vacuum. Have the other rescue teams similarly equipped. If you get even a hint of a comm line to the natives I want to know immediately.”

“Understood. Anything else you need?”

“A lightsaber would be useful, but other than that, no.”

“Team 4 has arrived on site and is attempting to recover three survivors.”

“Get as many as you can. Have the Protovic ships moved to recovery positions?”

“They’re sniffing around, but haven’t made any real attempts yet.”

“Give them a wide berth, but if they get near one of our teams have an escort drone standing by in case we need to peel.”

“Already on it. We’ve got your back.”

“Copy that. Keep me updated,” Mike said, cutting the comm and returning to his team’s frequency. “You get all that?”

“What eyes did you have on the other side of the door?” an Alpha asked.

“Telepathy.”

“Can you use it to contact them?”

“I can do better than that. In the meantime get some atmosphere on the other side of the shield,” he said as he went meditative again. One of the Gammas pulled himself past him using the ceiling line and deposited a canister on the other side of the energy shield, hitting a button and holding it steady so it didn’t blow itself out of the contained space as it released its solidified gases. Per its design it consumed the fuel reserve it had up until the atmospheric pressure reached desired levels, then it stopped releasing nitrogen and oxygen and began swirling around what was there through an intake vent and heating it towards room temperature rather than the frigid cold that it now existed at.

Mike let the Bsidd watch his back as he connected with the crew again, finding one of the healthiest ones and taking over control of his body. The Protovic slipped into a state of sleep that made it very suggestive and allowed Mike to order him about without having to worry about controlling every single muscle contraction in its body. He heard questions from the others as the Protovic moved out of the room, then he thought better of it and took a moment to knock all of them unconscious before taking his puppet out through the corridors and over to the far side of the blast door.

The emergency system still had power, and through the knowledge that this one contained he was able to identify the override sequence necessary to open it. The Protovic did the button pressing while Mike did the coaching, then when the thick doors split and retracted into the walls there was a bit of atmospheric bump as the two sides mixed, but the energy shield held without incident.

Mike pushed his way past the Bsidd who was putting away the partially depleted canister and gently shot himself through the door and over to the glowing face and hands inside a white uniform that clashed with the dark green of the corridors…or it would have if they had been able to see them, but the Archon knew what the interior of the now dark ship was supposed to look like, for he was still in this one’s head.

He gently withdrew his presence, letting the Protovic wake up slowly while he pounded him with reassurance and impulse of ‘ally,’ ‘friend,’ and ‘rescue.’ That said, the Protovic jerked fully awake when he finally saw the similar silhouette of the Human and the totally bizarre silhouettes of the Bsidd.

Mike spoke to him telepathically, not knowing the right verbal words, and eventually was able to settle the male Protovic down. Instructing him as to what to do next was a long 15 minute process, but eventually he was able to establish a rudimentary language between the two of them and decided right then and there to keep this one with him to act as emissary to the others they were hopefully going to rescue after this group.

With a wordless understanding reached, Mike and his new best friend floated through the dark hallways with the Protovic functioning as a mobile flood lamp and spraying red and green light wherever he went. When they got to the single room with the others inside the Archon let the Protovic go in first as he gently woke the others, then let him explain what was going on.

That took less than 30 seconds before what was left of the crew came floating out eager for rescue and knowing that these people were the ones who had come to their aid in the space battle. Apparently that was enough to establish trust…along with the fact that the air was getting stale and without at least moderate repairs to the ship they’d all suffocate or freeze to death, though Mike did see what looked like portable equipment, possibly heaters, set up in the room they were exiting.

One of them was missing an arm and a good portion of the skin over the right side of his face. The tissue underneath did not glow, nor did the blood that looked dark where it had dripped over his illuminated skin. The others had burns and gashes from what looked like fragmented debris strikes, with only about a third of them that appeared undamaged, though their mental states were considerably distressed.

With the help of his emissary they got them all into Human-sized envirosuits and onto the hand lines with the Bsidd escorting them out to the exposed hull and across the short gap to the waiting dropship. Mike had already called for another, for there were 34 Protovic survivors and they weren’t going to all fit in the sparrow. Once it was loaded up and the tether line disconnected it flew off, with another dropship, an Eagle-class this time, coming in and taking up position to rescue the rest of the survivors.

A third dropship came to pick up Mike and his team and take them over to the next location where survivors had been spotted, for one of the other Archons had assigned himself to spotter duty and had been flying around mentally scanning all the debris to save the search teams time. He’d kept the one Protovic with him and used him as an intermediary with the few other survivors they found and got them off their ships, or what was left of them, without complaint. That said, there were a few groups that had been identified that lost people before the Archons and Bsidd could get to them.

One Protovic shuttle was seen moving about looking for survivors, but other than that there was no help coming from them. That bugged Mike a lot, but he knew that a lot of races didn’t care about rescuing survivors from debris. It was a difficult process if you didn’t have the right equipment and some people didn’t bother to try…while others did but at a leisurely pace that often saw people lost due to a lack of alacrity.

Regardless, by the end of it he and his teams spread across all the orbital battlefields recovered 389 Protovic, 32 of which were near death. Four of those didn’t survive the trip over to the jumpships, and even the crude regenerators that Star Force now fielded weren’t enough to revive them. Had they a V’kit’no’sat model onboard that probably would have been another story, but there were so few of them in existence that even a mage of Mike’s standing didn’t rate one being sent with this invasion force.

The Star Force version didn’t melt, but was shaped like a mechanical mushroom that unfolded into bands and plates that cradled the injured part of a person’s body and set to stoking the natural regenerative processes. It was appropriately colored green and referred to by many Archons as the ‘extra life,’ and thanks to the Protovic sharing a physiology that was already logged in the Star Force database the units this fleet carried were already capable of fully treating the wounded, including the regeneration of severed limbs. That would take days, if not weeks to fully accomplish, but those Protovic that they got back to the jumpships still alive would all make full recoveries going forward. Those that had missed their window of opportunity had been mere minutes shy of making an eventual full recovery.

That was why rescue operations couldn’t be delayed and why Mike had ordered them immediately. Fortunately the lizards didn’t try any shenanigans in planetary orbit while the operations were going on, but he learned they were doing quite a bit of relocating throughout the rest of the system now that they knew there was a Star Force fleet in play. They needed far more ship concentration than they’d had here to deal with his drones, and by pulling ships in from multiple other locations they were assembling a big enough armada that Mike’s troops might not be sufficient to deal with them.

That meant there was a lot of strategy needed going forward and the lizards weren’t going to make it easy on them and keep themselves spread out enough to get picked off in smaller engagements such as the one they’d just fought and won. Mike didn’t have the ships he needed to quickly cleanse this system of the invaders, but he could still do it if he took the patient approach. In lieu of reinforcements that he didn’t have coming that was how he was going to have to play it, but for the moment establishing communication with these Protovic was his top priority after ensuring they got all the survivors recovered.

By the time Mike got back to the Archer 7 there was still no reply from the Protovic in response to any of the languages they attempted, which was understandable given that these Protovic were obviously not the same as those they were allied with…unless the red coloration was some secret that Star Force had never been told about. If these Protovic had split off from the others a very long time ago then they might not share a similar language now, but it had been their best bet other than lizard, to which they had not responded either.

So Mike took his Protovic emissary with him to a room on the jumpship that had database access and pulled up the visual information about the other Protovic and tried to translate as much nonverbal information as he could to him. He could clearly sense his shock at seeing the photos, as well as the satisfied conclusion that if Star Force was allied with the other Protovic then that made them allies of theirs as well, which was why they’d come to their aid.

That wasn’t true, for he’d had no idea this system contained Protovic, but given the lack of translation he wasn’t going to bother trying to explain that bit of detail, especially when it seemed that this one was slipping into the role of ally almost automatically. That was a big step, especially if his kin would reciprocate, but without a reliable means to communicate with the natives any combat coordination was going to be limited going forward and Mike knew he couldn’t just let the lizards have oodles of time to reposition and prepare for the beatdown that was coming their way. If he made a misstep they’d make him pay for it, and their victory here was not a sure thing…though he knew if he handled it correctly the lizards wouldn’t be able to stop them.

How many Protovic they killed before then was another matter, for there were still ground campaigns ongoing. Mike didn’t like the idea of setting down troops without the ability to talk to the Protovic, for the chances of misunderstandings or paranoia were high and he wouldn’t stand for a single soldier of his to be killed because of it.

He also wasn’t going to let the lizards have time to kill Protovic while he twiddled his thumbs in space either, so he had to come up with something.

After several hours of tedious telepathic chats with his new friend whom he’d dubbed ‘Candy Cane’ he let the man return to the rest of his crew that were going to remain on the jumpships until they healed. He ordered the Admiral to give the man comm access so he could try and talk to his own people, that was, if they could receive and decipher the Star Force transmissions. If their computers talked in a totally alien language as well then that was going to be a no go, but they had to try regardless.

Meanwhile Mike caught a quick nap for a couple of hours then took a short run and headed back to the command nexus to begin working on his next move…and seeing what the lizards and Protovic were going to make theirs.

7

March 3, 2826

Aphat System

Jmry

Mike sat hunched over inside the cockpit of his skeet, his Archon armor sliding into grooves in the seat designed to match it perfectly and give him a relaxed pose even while leaning forward and essentially resting his chest on the angled padding. His hands and feet were leveraging manual controls while his mind was partially linked into the neural interface and giving him the sensor feeds directly rather than relying on the holograms surrounding him. His eyes were closed to slits with him barely seeing the images around him through his own visual senses, though he was very aware of his body as he feathered the controls and eased his aerial fighter down beneath the ridges outlining a valley where a Protovic outpost was under siege.

In the days that followed the first orbital battle there had been no progress on finding a common language, or even roots of one, but an agreement had been reached on landing troops to fight the lizards on one of the 4 held planets with advancing lizard incursions on them. It was more of a point and nod ‘yes’ exercise than an actual agreement, but the Protovic knew Star Force was coming down to aid them in the fighting and that was pretty much all they had to go on.

Leaving the Admiral in command of the fleet after considerably thinning the lizards’ system ship count, Mike had come down with the ground troops and helped rout an invasion of a city. Trouble was, Protovic cities weren’t self-contained. This one had buildings sprawling across a wide area in splotches without a defined perimeter. Some lizard troops had gotten into sections and dug in, but Mike and the Bsidd had kept most of their troops blocked from ever getting that far, then he had gone in and helped locate and eliminate the interlopers less than an hour ago.

Once finished there he’d ordered his troops out to other locations and hopped in a skeet enroute to another front. This section of Jmry was falling apart under the lizard assault and he didn’t have time to waste transitioning from one to another. He was tired, but sitting in a cockpit wasn’t going to stress him much, prompting him to put off a sleep cycle until he’d helped his troops keep this military outpost from falling to the lizards.

Columns of infantry and mechs were making their way up the valley, already having cut off the lizards’ reinforcement lane here and attacking them from behind, but as was typical the enemy had multiple fronts and had encircled the Protovic in this very treacherous circuit of canyons with an uncertain amount of troops in play. Mike expected them to have been dug in by now, with him flying on ahead to scout the area.

His Pefbar did him no good at this altitude so he had to rely on the skeet’s sensors entirely to search with, but his gut told him there was trouble here and that he was flying into hazardous terrain. That proved true about a third of the way up to the Protovic bunker as a burst of anti-air fire came from a nook in the canyon. A few splinters of plasma hit his shields before he was able to roll out of it, then he went evasive and drew fire from at least half a dozen more hidden weapons batteries.

Which is what he had hoped would happen. Better for the enemy to shoot at him than his troops, with him drawing them out of cover so that crew in orbit watching could tag the locations of the weapons hidden amongst the rocks. The lizards still hadn’t created a good replacement for their anti-air plasma weapons that utilized ‘fire and forget’ packages, and Mike knew well how to handle the glowing green splinters flinging up at him from seemingly everywhere.

Rather than flying up he went down, cutting under the firing cones of some of the batteries and letting his superior shields take some hits while he kept moving and dodging based off of the targeting tendencies he’d learned over the years rather than seeing and reacting to the weaponsfire that was far faster than his craft. He kept his speed up and hugged the terrain, eventually sliding up the slope and peeking over the far side and down into another valley, this one wider and more heavily forested. The entire area was choppy with washed out ‘roads’ that the infantry and mechs were making use of. They were visible from the air but the source of the anti-air fire was coming from the clumps of trees.

Mike saw them but couldn’t study their placements, running the gauntlet as long as he dared before pulling up hard and shooting straight up into the sky, taking some lucky shots to his right wing stub that didn’t penetrate as he got outside of their weapons range. The mage rolled his fighter over once high enough above the terrain that he didn’t need to worry, which was when he noticed a blot on the horizon to the west.

A quick check of the battlemap showed him that the blot was a lizard cruiser coming overland.

“Where the hell did that come from?” he wondered, setting a direct course for it while seeing a drone corvette heading down from orbit on an intercept course. It was going to be late, though, with the cruiser going to get to his ground troops before it could get shot down…and with various Protovic settlements spotting the countryside he couldn’t risk calling on orbital batteries to try and take it out. Even then there wasn’t much time to get the ships into position. The lizards had slipped a warship past them and it was going to be here within a couple of minutes.

Mike mentally tagged all the fighters in the air nearby to rally to him as he set course to intercept the cruiser at least a short distance away from his troops on the ground. There were 3 squadrons within range, each of which contained 10 fighters. The pilots were a mix of Bsidd Thetas, Eppies, and Zetas, all medium to small sized variants, and flying Y-shaped skeets known as ‘Behatis’ that were about 30% larger than Mike’s craft. They also had three engines, each on the ends of the spurs, but had a larger midsection bulge than the skeets did, which allowed even the largest Bsidd variants to pilot them if necessary.

When a smaller Bsidd was known to be the pilot, the cockpit was sectioned off and the excess space given to modular upgrades, including cargo compartments, additional fuel cells, a secondary shield generator, comm equipment, or a variety of other tech to take advantage of the size of the craft. It was a design concept built specifically for the Bsidd and only a couple of decades old, but the behatis had already replaced all other aerial fighters in popularity and was now the only design being actively produced.

Where the Calavari had their Valerie the Bsidd now had their Behati, but Mike was sticking with his skeet like the rest of the Humans, though his was the only one in the sky at the moment. There were also a few gunships of Bsidd manufacture to deal with lizard wisp swarms if they were to come their way, but so far that hadn’t happened. The lizards had air assets on the planet, but since they were the invading army rather than the defending one those numbers didn’t tilt into the insane and most of what was here had been chewed apart previously by the Protovic and their flying ‘Javelins.’

Mike was in his skeet to help identify and take out surface targets, as were the other fighters nearby, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t do what they were primarily designed for…which was taking down aerial targets, even if they were really big ones. His skeet had two mauler cannons and the behatis had one each, meaning that with enough hits they could disrupt the cruiser’s shields and get some hits into the hull. Problem was they needed to take this thing down quick before it had a chance to pound the infantry.

Mike had mechs in play on the ground that would add considerable anti-air fire, not just from typical anti-air batteries but from all their weapons, for you didn’t need any specialization to shoot up into the air at a slow moving target. To that end he accessed the battlemap and fed commands out to the mechs to fire every missile they had at a point he then specified, splashing a virtual marker on the quickly approaching cruiser.

A moment later little plumes of fire leapt up from the ground at multiple locations down in the one canyon and arced over to travel horizontal to the cruiser. There was a slight delay, then a billowing cloud of fire and smoke built up on the leading edge of the enemy ship that it kept trying to push its way through, eventually succeeding but coming out of it with weakened shields…albeit temporarily.

Mike shot his fighter ahead at the best speed he could manage, getting into mauler range before the behati squadrons and pulling the trigger after selecting a double linked blast from his customizable control board, sending two blue blips of shield-disrupting energy at the front edge of the cruiser.

Klakten was with a group of Betas down on the canyon floor when the overhead sun was eclipsed by the front of the lizard ship as it appeared in the sky above them, crawling out over the rocky ridgeline and firing a pink phaser beam down at a madcat. It hit the left missile box and nearly penetrated the mech’s shields, but the Bsidd walking machine did what it did best and leapt ahead into a running gait as it turned its weapons skyward and added to the other streaks and orbs of weaponsfire reaching back up towards the cruiser, making the next phaser burst miss by a couple of meters as the madcat pilot juked the mech around in a randomized pattern.

Apparently the lizard gunners weren’t that good, but all it would take was one shot to kill Klakten or any of the other infantry. Their armor and shields couldn’t stand up to that kind of firepower, and there were already waypoints leading to places in the canyon that would provide some cover in the terrain, though he knew the trees wouldn’t do much to protect them. He sprinted with the others nearby over to the edge of the canyon, putting as much angle as they could between them and the rest of the enemy warship as it continued to creep out overhead and expose more weapons batteries to the troops below.

More and more pink rain followed, but at least it seemed to be targeting the mechs rather than the scattering infantry. Klakten kept his rifles silent, knowing that shooting up at the big ship wouldn’t do a damn bit of good and could alert them to his position. When he got under the tree cover he weaved through the thin trunks and found a bit of rock to hide behind, but he could still see the yellow/tan hull above him through the breaks in the leaves.

Suddenly his battlemap lit up with proximity warnings in the direction of the distant Protovic outpost, indicating that there were enemy ground troops approaching.

Figured. Bring in the warship overhead and flood them with a wave of infantry for double trouble. Oh well, at least now he’d have something to shoot at.

The Bsidd soldier variant pulled out one of his rifles and took up a better sniping position as those around him were doing likewise just as the first little green bastards appeared running up the center of the canyon out in the open…by the hundreds. They flooded out around the feet of the furthest mech that was shooting at the cruiser, then the eight-armed ‘Docite’ wheeled around and punched two of them into the ground, mashing them to their deaths as point defense weapons on the other arms began chewing the lizards apart by the dozens.

Infantry weapons began to spew tiny blue plasma streaks and sammy sniper bursts from both sides of the canyon, taking down more of the lizard infantry that was only armored with a light protective vest that had never done well against Star Force weapons. It might block a shot, or half of one nowadays, reducing damage done but not preserving them as proper armor would, so they went down easily, with many more coming up from behind those falling to replace them.

With the locations of the Bsidd infantry noted, the flood of lizards fanned out towards the sidewalls and Klakten knew it was go time. He kept firing as he lit his six plasma rods covering the end of some of his appendages and launched himself out of cover along with a few of the others. He ran four steps, shooting one lizard in the head before poking another with one of his glowing limbs. The blue tip discharged, blowing a hole into its head before he swung the same rod to the side and discharged from another segment into the arm of a second lizard.

With six rods to work with he was hacking through the lizards with ease while still shooting some with his rifle, throwing down so much firepower that they didn’t have a chance and the other Bsidd were no different. Unless the lizards could get enough hits to get through both his shields and his armor they weren’t going to be able to stop them, though there was an ammo limit on his plasma rods and rifles, but they’d taken that into consideration before they’d mounted this assault and had plenty of backup ammunition for the latter.

Just then a huge pink blast landed to his left, vaporizing one of the Bsidd there and at least a dozen lizards along with it. The superheated air pushed out and knocked Klakten off balance while leveling the lighter lizards. With horror flooding through him he stood up and kept fighting, using the momentary opportunity to jab the lizards closest to him that were on the ground and starting to jump back up onto their feet after scrambling for dropped weapons.

Just then another huge mass appeared underneath the lizard cruiser, with the Bsidd drone disc sliding in over top of the mechs and into the gap, providing them cover while firing at point blank range into the now shieldless underside of the enemy ship. Several huge bangs sounds, though the infantry couldn’t see what was happening from their vantage point and the fact that they were too busy fighting to look, but those that could steal a glance like Klakten did saw the lizard cruiser drop from the sky and land on the drone…with the drone responding and pushing back and to the side to dump the now dead hulk over the ridgeline so it wouldn’t fall on the troops below.

As it did a flurry of behatis and even a skeet zipped in underneath it and began strafing the lizard infantry with Klakten breathing a sigh of relief as he and the other Beta returned to fighting without the worry of being killed in a single shot from above.

“Admiral, where did that cruiser come from?” Mike asked as he pulled up out of a strafing run, having killed dozens of the lizards on that single pass now that they’d exposed themselves to rush his ground troops.

“Battlemap replay indicates it originated in one of the canyons beneath a camouflage canopy. Probably a forward operating base put into play during the initial invasion, which was why we didn’t detect it with our orbital scans.”

“Damn it. If there are others out there find them.”

“Already working on it. At the moment the skies are clear near your position. Not even any wisps in play.”

“If they can hide a cruiser they can hide a hangar,” Mike said warily. “This is exactly why not being able to talk to your ally sucks. How many infantry did we lose?”

“18 transponders are gone and two mechs are down. Both mechwarriors are intact.”

Mike bit his lip. “Score one for the bad guys. Status of the outpost?”

“Holding, but barely. The other attack groups are swarming them while this one slows you down.”

“Distractions, distractions. What’s the status of that drone?”

“Mostly intact.”

“Send it to the outpost to distract them.”

“There are still anti-air batteries in play,” the Admiral warned him.

“I know. We’re going to lose it. Do a lot of damage and buy the Protovic some time with it…and make sure it crash lands on those bastards.”

“Should we target the batteries themselves?”

“No, go for the troops. We’ll get the batteries from the ground.”

“Dispatching now.”

Mike cut the comm and wheeled his skeet around, zipping over the treetops and reversing course as he spotted the glint of something lizard in the sidewalls and intended to slag it before heading over the ridgeline and sneaking his way forward as close as he could to the mobile anti-warship phaser batteries set up near the outpost perimeter, another new trick the lizards had come up with in recent years. They also had plenty of point defense anti-air that would take him down if he got within sight of them, but he needed to poach what troops he could and buy his ground troops some time to get up to the Protovic and save them before they were overrun.

8

April 12, 2826

Aphat System

Jmry

Mike sat on a Protovic rooftop, taking the first bit of rest he’d had in over 36 hours of fighting. The city he was currently in had been hit by the lizards with overwhelming force, enough to defeat the local defenses and pull in numerous Protovic army units from the surrounding area in a hasty defense. Even then they couldn’t hold until Mike had rushed a few Bsidd units over, along with himself, to give them an added boost while everyone else he’d brought down to the planet was tied up in assaults elsewhere.

Even with Mike and the 240 Bsidd they should have lost the city, but they hadn’t given up and fought round the clock as more Protovic reinforcements gradually arrived and, in most cases, were utterly destroyed by the lizards. Mike hadn’t had his troops try and hold a secure location, for that would have been to the lizards’ advantage. Instead he let the locals try that pointless approach while he and the Bsidd roamed in hunter teams not interested in protecting infrastructure but in killing the enemy.

And they’d had to kill a lot of them before the city was at peace again. He hadn’t looked at any of the official estimates that were routinely compiled by the crews in orbit monitoring everything happening on the planet, but personally he guessed there had been at least a quarter million lizards, and as usual they had fought to the last man rather than retreat, doing what damage they could before they died.

And they’d done a lot. The streets were full of lizard corpses, but along with them were the fading glows of the Protovic, both soldiers and civilians. Lots of civilians had been caught unawares here and been mowed down. He’d had to jump over lots of them when on foot, but fortunately he’d come in with a jump pack and had done most of his long range movement over the rooftops and away from the gore.

There had been no trouble from the locals when they’d arrived. In fact they’d seemed overwhelmingly supportive and grateful…too much so in a few cases where a hidden civilian would run out and tackle one of the lizards near the Bsidd in an effort to help them and more than likely get themselves killed in the effort. Mike had caught one and used his Ikrid to make him stay put while he jumped in and fought a group of 30+ lizards in what probably looked like an unwinnable battle, but to the heavily armored, psionically laden Archon it was a piece of cake and he didn’t need help, let alone from an unarmed, unarmored civilian.

It was morning again, a few hours in, and the glows from the dead Protovic had mostly dissipated by now. Their bioluminescence would linger a while after they were killed, eventually fading down to white skin that had a scaly texture to it. That made the corpses looked even more disturbing, but at least they were no longer glowing like beacons marking the site of an atrocity. Many had been buried beneath piles of lizard corpses with only small holes that left glowing indicators of where they’d initially fallen before the snowstorm of dead enemies had covered them.

The Protovic had hover tanks that could float over the streets and buildings so only the infantry had been forced to trample the dead and blood slicks that had been accumulating. The smell had been getting constantly worse, but Mike had seen a collection team start to remove the bodies and clean the streets before he’d parked himself here so he expected the city to start to right itself, though he kept his helmet on to diminish the scent of the dead.

His Bsidd were waiting nearby in a couple of locations for pickup, equally exhausted but all still alive. Keeping on the move and not letting the lizards know where they were to mass against them had been a defensive decision as well. Both he and the Bsidd were chewed up with multiple dings in their armor and a few breaches. Mike even had a spot on his right arm that had gotten burned. Right now he could see the inner gel layer that had hardened over the spot and he was taking the moment to use a bit of Sesspik to goose the healing along while they were waiting for the dropships to arrive from orbit.

There weren’t a lot available, given that he’d deployed all his troops in order to make as much of a dent in the planetary invasion as possible, but it was just a matter of time until they rotated into availability and were sent down to him. He could have expedited the process and called for priority over other assignments, but since there were no longer any lizards in play here, for they’d searched the city thoroughly along with the Protovic units, there was no reason to make someone else wait when all they had to do was sit here and rest a bit.

“Archon.”

“Yes,” Mike answered the comm call from one of the Bsidd in the group behind his back to the north about 2 kilometers off.

“There’s something wrong here.”

Mike’s head came up a bit. “Wrong how?”

“The Protovic are…doing something. I think they have lizard prisoners.”

“That’s a very bad idea,” Mike said as he stood up and turned around, looking in the direction of the ID marker on his battlemap. “Where are they?”

The Bsidd answered with a waypoint another kilometer to the northwest of their position.

“Stay put, I’ll handle this,” he said as he forced his tired legs to launch him into a run across the mostly flat roof. When he got to the edge he goosed his jump pack and leapt across to the next building, continuing his run over the canyons of corpses below as he made his way directly to the virtual marker and bypassed the Bsidd evac point.

When he got close he could see a wide plaza that he’d done a considerable amount of fighting in over the previous day but gone were the corpses, replaced by a growing crowd of civilians and soldiers alike along with five pedestals that stood at least 10 meters tall. On top of them were, as the Bsidd had indicated, lizard prisoners. It looked like three each per pedestal and they were bound to central poles on the outer four platforms. The fifth was in the center and empty, with a group of Protovic walking up a circular staircase around the perimeter.

Mike leapt across to the last building on the perimeter of the plaza when that group stripped down and tied a female Protovic to the pole, with his gut suddenly telling him something was very wrong here. He stopped on the edge of the building, giving him the best vantage point as he reached out with his mind and sampled some of the thoughts in the crowd.

Some of them noticed him on the rooftop, with their reactions being one of welcome and thanks as the five pedestals suddenly lit on fire and began to burn the lizards and Protovic woman alive.

Mike immediately jumped off the building and drifted down into a gap in the crowd, at which point he began running forward bumping people out of the way. When they got the idea that he wasn’t here to observe the ritual they began blocking his path and trying to grab hold of his arms and legs, to which the mage lividly let loose a Fornax field and dropped everyone around him to the ground as he sprinted over the crumpled and twitching bodies.

When he got close enough he reached out to the lizards on the nearest pyre and hacked into their minds, dulling their senses and blocking out their pain as their bodies were rapidly disintegrating. Enemies or not, no one deserved this. The more he ran the more minds he accessed, stretching his multitasking abilities to their max to get them all while maintaining the Fornax field while he ran towards the central pedestal, making one huge jump pack-aided leapt up to it just as he felt the Protovic’s mind disappear from his grasp.

Mike landed in the column of green fire that extended some 8 meters up into the air, turning the elevated pedestal into a candle visible to all the thousands of Protovic standing around watching. Inside he saw the quickly shrinking remains of the Protovic, now stripped of flesh and with the muscle and blood boiling off the skeleton rapidly. She was dead and there was no way he could save her, likewise the lizard minds quickly slipped from his grasp as they too were killed.

Mike stood in the flames as his shields were quickly dropping in power. Before they could breach he used his Pefbar to look down inside the Pedestal and found something to telekinetically grab. He twisted the metal tube, wadding it up and choking off the fuel to the flame. It disappeared and left Mike standing next to the charred skeletal remains of the woman as the four other pyres continued to burn the lizard prisoners.

The crowd just stood and watched, with a handful of soldiers moving towards the base of the central pedestal to get to Mike. They were outraged, he could sense, at him having interrupted their ceremony. The others just watched. They watched as people were burnt to death and no one had bothered to stop them. They had all gathered here to watch this sickness, which made them part of it.

Mike had pulled his invasion fleet off mission to come here to save these people, but now he realized they weren’t the Protovic he knew, nor were they victims in need.

They were another enemy.

With an anger flooding through him greater than he’d ever known before, Mike stepped off the pedestal and dropped to the ground just as the guards were climbing the stairs to get to him. They backtracked and joined in with others as they swarmed him, but he didn’t care. His mind was focused on the handful of Protovic that had escorted the woman up and tied her to the pole. They were nearby, with an ornately dressed one backtracking into the crowd.

Mike took down the guards around him with another Fornax field and dashed ahead, chasing the one Protovic into the crowd and picking him up from afar with his telekinesis and jerking him back through the air towards him. Mike jumped forward and hit him with one very hard punch in the chest, breaking bones and internal organs alike before he released him to drop to the ground in a crunch, then the Archon pulled out his plasma rifle and shot the Protovic in the head.

Seeing that the guards and the crowds were stunned for a moment, then a rage built in them and they all rushed him, armed or unarmed it didn’t matter, they all moved with a single impulse towards the defiler…which was just as well as far as Mike was concerned. He shot off in another direction, tracking down the other two of his primary targets and killing them quickly with his rifle before slinging it onto his back rack and letting go of his Fornax in favor of just using his armor and muscles to beat down any and every one that came after him.

The three he had killed had strapped that woman to the pole so she couldn’t escape, meaning they deserved to die. The crowd he couldn’t say the same for though he expected the same, so while he wasn’t going to start shooting everyone in sight as a part of his mind really wanted to, he wasn’t just going to run away from this. Anyone in the crowd attacking him was declaring themselves an enemy and that was good enough for Mike. He wasn’t going to shoot them, but if they died from the beatdown he was going to lay out so be it.

So the mage held his ground and punched, kicked, and bodily rammed down every Protovic that came at him. He could feel their bones snapping and could see the blood splatters with every hit, but he didn’t feel sorry for them. Attacking a fully armored opponent with nothing but clothes on was beyond stupid, with many of these Protovic running straight into their deaths, but Mike knew and could even sense on their surface thoughts a shared insanity. They didn’t care or think about anything other than getting to him and taking down the man responsible for saving their lives, for he had gone from exalted hero to the worst of the worst as far as the Protovic were concerned, and there was only one answer to that.

And that answer was blood.

But they weren’t going to get any of his, for he was far too powerful for even the armored guards that showed up after a few minutes. Those put up more of a fight but had no chance against the Archon. Still they didn’t stop, with him being one man amongst an ever-growing sea of people beginning to flood in around him in the hopes of choking him out with too many bodies to hit. Against other opponents that would have worked, but with Mike’s psionics he could make an escape hole whenever he wanted.

Right now though he had no intention to leave. What they had done could not be let to pass, and as long as the sick bastards wanted to fight him he was going to oblige…but he wasn’t going to put his troops at risk, so in between punches and kicks he activated the comm to his local units with a simultaneous connection to the Admiral in orbit.

“I need…an…emergency evac…now. This location…first,” he said, ducking under a flying body as one of the crowd was somehow launched up and over the others at him. “Don’t worry about…me…get my troops out. The Pro…the Protovic are hostiles…no time…to explain…pull out everyone…on the planet…back to orbit…I’m last man out…and busy…don’t come to me…turtle up and aw…await evac…I’ve got asses…to kick,” he finished, turning off the comm and continuing to beat down the swarm of glowing bodies around him, for a lot of the Protovic were barely wearing any clothing.

They were not going to chase him off, no matter how many of them wanted to sacrifice themselves to take him down. His tiredness was now forgotten with the memory of the mental contacts he’d made with the now burnt prisoners echoing in his mind. This injustice could not be tolerated, and he was going to destroy every bit of their darkside ceremony as he could.

After thinning the crowd and leaving a trail of dead or heavily wounded bodies behind him as he roamed the plaza with the beehive of Protovic following his every movement, Mike knocked them back with another Fornax field and took the pause in the bone breaking to jump up onto one of the outer pedestals that was still on fire. He flicked his shields back on and went into the flames, seeing that only a few small bone fragments were left of the lizards. Everything else had been incinerated and vaporized by now, with the flames being a testament to this horrific ceremony that he was now going to smother.

He telekinetically reached inside and cut off the fuel supply with another crunch of the pipes. When the green flames dropped around him he jumped down into the crowd, landing in a pile of twitching bodies thanks to a preemptive Fornax blast, then hopped off that spot and up into the flames on the next pedestal. One by one he snuffed them out, then he dove back down into the angry mob and met them with an anger that outscaled theirs.

Mike was literally glowing with righteous fury and continued to beat down everyone that threw a blow at him until he got a battlemap ping from his Bsidd units indicating that they were all aboard and ready to depart. They were wondering if he was coming with them but not going to interrupt him, with the ping letting him know there was a way out if he wanted it.

“Go,” he told them, just noticing the approach of a second dropship to the other evac site within the city. “I’ll call…when I’m…done here.”

He didn’t receive a reply, perhaps due to the sound of his voice, recognizing that he was still in heavy combat. The Bsidd knew better than to second guess his orders, for he was an Archon and far wiser and more powerful than them, so if he said to go they would go and not think much of it. Archons knew when to fall back and survive, and right now this sick rabble wasn’t a threat warranting that.

Mike stayed there and continued to fight until there was no one left to hit. When the last of them were gone from his immediate presence he pushed out his senses and looked around, seeing a field of bodies across the plaza, some of which were moving or limping off, but just as many that were unconscious or dead.

Those who survived would have a chance to realize they were Sith scum and change their ways, but that wasn’t why he had left some alive. He wasn’t going to go around and kill those who were still alive, but anything that attacked him was going down and he honestly didn’t care if they died or not. The idea that this ceremony was legit and he was just protesting it with his beatdown had to be squashed immediately. They were in the wrong and this was the rectification. He wasn’t delaying the ceremony, he was destroying it.

To that end, with no more infantry or crazed civilians to hit, he went back over to the nearest pedestal and leapt back up on top and proceeded to start demolishing it bit by bit, first with telekinesis, then with his muscle and powered armor. It took time, but he was able to shred the pedestal in visible defiance to anyone watching. They would not and could not stop him, which was what he was trying to intone with his actions above and beyond just being Hulk-esk mad.

The darkside could not be tolerated or ignored, and as such he took the time to shred all five pedestals before calling for a dropship to meet him outside the city to take him back up to orbit.

9

When Mike got to his dropship he boarded it in a field outside the city and found only the pilot inside, but as soon as it lifted off he got a comm from the Admiral.

“Archon?”

“Go ahead,” he said as he sat down on an empty bench in the compartment behind the cockpit.

“Evac is proceeding in all areas save for one. Our troops on the southern continent are engaged in heavy action at the moment and cannot withdraw immediately.”

Mike frowned and pulled up his planetary battlemap, zooming in on the area that he was well familiar with. He’d fought there a week ago, securing a trio of cities against a lizard advance that had then turned into an assault against one of the enemy’s landing zones. That’s where the troops were now, and by the number of enemy contacts on the map he could tell that something was very wrong.

“What happened?”

“Subsurface bunkers, we think. We’ve only had a few minutes to analyze it, but the lizards got a lot of reinforcements all of a sudden. Our troops have taken up defensive positions within the enemy base and are unable to withdraw at present. The enemy has also deployed considerable air assets to keep our aircraft away.”

“I can see that,” Mike said, blowing out a slow breath and starting to realize just how tired he was now that his anger was coming down from raging levels.

“With your permission, I’d like to divert a portion of the evacuating troops to help pull them out.”

“Do it. I’ll head there on the ground and we’ll be the last ones out.”

“What do you want me to do with our guests?”

“How many are still onboard?”

“Six in medbay and your liaison.”

“They’re coming with us.”

“As prisoners?”

“No, they’re just coming. Don’t let them leave the ship, but otherwise don’t confine them. I’ll deal with them personally once I’m onboard, but don’t let them have comm access until then. And move the wounded onto your ship. I want them all in one place.”

“What happened down there?”

“I’m not entirely sure. Some sort of sacrificial ritual where they burned a group of lizards prisoners and one of their own alive in the city square with a crowd watching,” he said as he got up and moved into the cockpit.

“I honestly don’t know what to say to that.”

“Coordinates,” Mike said, talking to the pilot as he relayed them to his console via his helmet battlemap. “Just get me close and I’ll take it from there.”

The Bsidd wordlessly agreed with a head twitch that was the equivalent of a nod and adjusted their course away from an orbital trajectory and into a globe spanning jaunt through the thin upper atmosphere.

“It’s an abomination that cannot be tolerated,” he finally answered the Admiral. “I’ve seen plenty in my life, but this is among the worst. I imagine it’s not something you learn about in the maturia.”

“No, but I thought I’d seen enough lizard combat for things like this not to surprise me.”

“The darkside comes in many forms, unfortunately.”

“But why? The lizards are dishonorable, but there’s always a tactical element involved.”

“That’s what our guests are going to tell us eventually. We’ll take them back to the ADZ for a proper language analysis and interrogation.”

“Are we taking the entire fleet back?”

Mike hesitated for a moment as he thought that through. “I’d like to get back to our original mission, but it’ll have to wait. I need to go back and I’m not sending you there without at least one mage.”

“We can resume orbital bombardment and hold on any ground action until you return.”

“I trust in your ability to get it done, but the lizards are devious enough I don’t want you going in without a mage in case they pull something. If there’s any rethinking to do on that point let’s save it until after we get everyone back up to orbit.”

“Agreed. Are you alright?”

“I’m not injured.”

“But are you alright?”

“No, I’m not,” Mike admitted. “There’s a system full of bad guys that we have been fighting to protect. I screwed this one up.”

“We fight the lizards wherever they are. The more of them dead, the better the galaxy is.”

“Except we pushed harder than normal in some cases to safeguard the Protovic and we lost people. That’s a sick feeling I don’t think I’m ever going to shake, nor should I. To answer your question, I’m more angry than unable. I’m tired, but I can handle another short fight to get our people out. I could use a few more senzu beans though. I’ve only got 1 left.”

“I’ll send a courier to track you down once you get there. How are you planning to get through their aerial blockade?”

“I’ll go ground. I don’t want to wait until our fighters clear the air.”

“Should I task a warship?”

“Not with their big guns still in play. How many do they have left?”

“We got 3 batteries, two more are left.”

“Have one standing by in low orbit just in case, but I’d rather not waste one if we don’t have to. Or are our troops there in desperate need?”

“They’re cut off, but holding ground.”

“We play it safe then. Actually, I’ll get those guns myself.”

“Do you want one of the other Archons with you as backup?”

“No, keep them with their present units. I’ll just take a quick nap enroute to recharge. Get that extra ambrosia there ASAP. I’m going to need it.”

“I’ll launch a dropship with it inside of ten minutes.”

“Good. Let’s get this done before anyone else dies,” he said, cutting the comm and walking back to one of the benches where he laid down and configured his battlemap to ping him when they got in proximity to a waypoint he added. With that last bit done he closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down and half fall asleep, keeping the remainder of his mental functions active so he could slip into a healing trance and make the most out of the travel minutes ahead.

9 hours later he and the last of the Star Force troops flew back onboard the jumpships, having successfully pulled out the besieged unit and destroyed most of the lizard base in the process. As the dropships came onboard and deposited him and a handful of others on the Archer 7’s deck the warships began recalling their drones with the massive discs sliding into the racks one by one as they made final preparations to leave with neither the lizard nor Protovic fleets getting in their way.

On Mike’s way out of the hangar deck Candy Cane found him and held up a hand for him to stop. The Archon clamped down on his renewed anger at seeing the red/green face and accessed his mind again, which allowed them to exchange some ‘words’ in a shorthand they’d learned over the past weeks.

Candy Cane wanted to know what was going on, for he’d been unable to communicate with his people and the few wounded Protovic had been gathered here from the other ships they had been still receiving treatment on before being sent back down to the planet or to a Protovic ship like the others who’d already been sufficiently healed to leave.

Mike considered what to tell him, but ultimately settled a hand on his shoulder and imbued the knowledge that he was going to be used as an emissary to the other Protovic in order to establish communication with them, as well as to teach them and Star Force about his people’s language and civilization.

He felt a brief surge of anxiety, for he was being told rather than asked, but that thought disappeared when he realized what an honor it would be. Candy Cane sent thoughts of agreement back to Mike and he decided to leave it at that, walking on and heading towards his quarters where he was going to crash while letting the Admiral handle getting them out of the system. Unless something monumental happened on their way out he was going off the grid for a long while, not only to rest and train, but to think this through and prepare a report for the trailblazers that would hit the grid in the first Star Force system they passed through.

Hopefully by the time he dropped off the fleet in the Bsidd Region and got his flagship back to the ADZ with their guests there’d be a response and course of action waiting for him.

Kip-022 was coming back into his quarters onboard his flagship after a very hard day of training while his combat fleet was in transit when he found the message from Jason at the top of his notifications list when he logged into his account. They’d been scheduled to pass through a system with a relay a number of hours ago, but this was the first chance he’d had to check for updates and he expected a lot of them given the amount of time his attack group had spent clearing out two planets in a lizard held system along the Calavari Region border.

Kip opened Jason’s message first, as he always did with messages from his fellow trailblazers.

I expect you’ll be getting this message on your way back from mission, and if my guestimates are correct there will still be time for you to arrive if you wish. There’s been a discovery of a splinter race of Protovic out beyond the Bsidd Region. Mike-448 was on a standard cleaning mission when a scout ship relayed the information of an indigenous race within lizard territory that was holding out against them.

Without knowing who or what they were he diverted his fleet to their aid seeing as how they were actively battling an invasion fleet. When he arrived he discovered that they were Protovic, red faced instead of purple for some reason, and commanding a very dense system of planetoids, most of which were still in their possession. He eliminated a good chunk of the lizards’ warships and put down ground troops to assist in the defense of several surface cities that were in danger of falling.

That was when something bad happened, and he filed a detailed report I suggest you read through carefully. It’ll turn your stomach. After successfully defending one city by a very narrow margin, the Protovic held a ceremony in a city plaza where they burned alive a group of lizard prisoners and one of their own people in some sick ritual. Mike tried to stop them but didn’t get there in time, then went Hulk on them and beat the crap out of the entire crowd who took offense at him interrupting their celebration and tried to stop him from stopping them.

He included his helmet cam data, and the natives literally went insane trying to stop him in a swarming, unarmed rush worthy of the lizards. I’m proud to say he beat the crap out of them rather than running away, then destroyed the sacrificial pillars and left the plaza full of dead and wounded barbarians. After that he immediately recalled his troops to orbit and left the Sith civilization to fight the lizards on their own, but he did bring back a handful of Protovic whom he’d had on his ship recovering from injuries. He’d pulled them out of wreckage from a naval battle and didn’t bother to return them when he left. We have them now and are learning their language and a lot of stuff about their sick culture.

And by sick I mean right up there with the Aztecs and Darth Sidious. We’ve got them on Mars and will be working through their interrogation for at least a few months, and by ‘us’ I mean myself, Greg, and Rafa. Given your history with the non-barbaric Protovic I thought you might want in on this. We’ve already agreed that there’s no way we can let this stand, and we’re not going to remove the lizards around these guys and let their sick civilization remain. Right now we don’t even know if this is their only system or not, nor do we know of their connection to our Protovic. There’s a lot of questions to be answered and not having a common language is a pain in the ass. The more psionic help we can get the better, so if you feel like stopping by Sol please do.

At the bottom of the message was a link to a copy of Mike’s mission report, which Kip read through next followed by reviewing the helmet cam images from him and some early shots from what looked like a group of Bsidd at further range as the Protovic tied up the lizards to elevated platforms. When he saw them tie up one of their own and then light the fires through Mike’s helmet his stomach sank into a pit of fury that was echoed in the images turning into a bloody beatdown of everyone in attendance.

Kip made himself watch despite the nauseating camera whips side to side as Mike had been fighting. It didn’t make for good watching, but he wanted every bit of information he could get and followed it through to conclusion, seeing the field of dead and wounded Protovic that the mage had left behind along with the wrecked incinerators.

When the recording ended he just sat at his terminal staring at the blank screen as his mind wheeled in thought. What they had done was…something that you didn’t do by accident. No one chose when and where they were born, but no matter the culture around you there was always your conscience, and Kip had learned that a conscience wasn’t just a Human thing, but something all races had. It was an innate understanding of right and wrong that didn’t result from learning, but rather a fundamental sense just like sight or hearing.

That sense could be clouded, distorted, even suppressed to the point where you became a living, apathetic zombie…all of which could be a byproduct of the civilization’s culture weighing on you, but your conscience would always  be there fighting back, perhaps losing, but there would always be internal conflict so long as you were a good person. Even if you were tricked into doing bad things, that internal resistance would always be there.

What Kip had just seen said that this civilization was so far gone that these savages not only participated in this sickness but reveling in it. There may be no real ‘Force’ like in Star Wars, but there was a lightside and a darkside, and this was chokingly dark. These people had given over to it willfully, and he knew that by their reaction to Mike. They didn’t stand by and do nothing, they went after him with a vengeance that defied reason or logic, whereas a conflicted person would freeze up and hesitate.

If these people had been good in the beginning, they were lost now. While theoretically no one was permanently lost to the darkside, coming back out of it required a person to want to…with those who were truly dark wanting to be that way and therefore irredeemable. As bad as the lizards were, this was worse. The lizards didn’t kill their own, save for imprisonment situations, and their sick sacrifices at least held a combat purpose. Sacrifices without function were reserved for the truly insane, and that’s what Kip saw here in the faces of the crowd that attacked Mike to their own demise.

This could not stand. Their civilization, little that he knew about it, was clearly an abomination that had to be removed. If you put a Jedi and a Sith into the same room only one would walk out alive, and the same was true in reality. The lightside and the darkside could not coexist, which Kip knew meant that Star Force was going back there at some point to deal with this, and the fact that three of the others were already working on the problem showed they understood how significant this was.

You didn’t leave the darkside alone to fester and grow, no matter whether it attacked you or not. It had to be destroyed, and in this case that meant this Protovic civilization had to be destroyed in some way, shape, or form, which is no doubt what Jason, Greg, and Rafa were already working on while they gathered information from the prisoners.

Kip keyed his terminal for a commlink to the bridge, given that he wasn’t wearing any armor.

“Captain, I want an immediate course correction. Inform the Admiral that he’ll proceed with the rest of the fleet as planned, but we’re heading directly for Sol…and goose the speed as much as you can. I need to get there as soon as possible.”

10

July 2, 2826

Solar System

Mars

“Thought you’d come,” Jason said as Kip walked down off the dropship in the reclusive spaceport that sat in the center of one of Star Force’s cities that was off the public grid. Most of the planet was civilian in some measure, but this was one of several that were reserved specifically for Star Force use and operated in a manner similar to the tier 3 cities save for the fact that there was no public access for visitors.

“How bad is it?”

“Very,” Jason said as he fell in step with his fellow 2 walking across the large internal hangar deck towards an elevator shaft in the far wall. “We’ve established enough of a base language to be able to ask questions and get answers, but the context is real screwy. Heavy use of metaphors we think, but we’ve been able to get a basic layout of the Protovic civilization.”

“How about a name?”

“Veliquesh. And they have more than one system. Five in total, though the one we visited was their largest.”

“Population?”

“Somewhere in the vicinity of 3 trillion, though losses to the lizards may have taken a chunk out of that number.”

“Are our guests cooperating?”

“That’s where it gets interesting. It seems our arrival was foretold in a prophesy, and that they’ve been fighting the lizards for more than 1000 years waiting for the day we’d come to save them.”

“Yet they went after Mike pretty hard,” Kip pointed out.

“There’s the thing, they may believe we were preordained to save them, but go up higher on the religious pecking order and they abandon the lower levels quite fast. Their burnt sacrifices are at the center of their culture and occur with every major event. A victory, a remembrance, a holiday. The Protovic that Mike saw burnt alive was one specifically raised to adulthood in a reclusive sanctuary designed to keep them pure of various imaginary stuff. They’re raised specifically to be sacrificed when the occasion merits it. That’s their place in the Veliquesh civilization, though there are other sacrifices made to gain favor, atone for an injustice, etc.”

“Peachy. Why were the lizards involved?”

“Part of their magic. They believe in a, and I hate to use the analogy, a living force that drives all life in the universe and that by conducting these sacrificial rituals they can alter their place in it. They believe that doing so all this time has allowed them to hold out against the lizards while everyone else they’ve known of in the region has fallen. They alone lasted, and continue to make sacrifices to preserve their ‘grace’ within the force. They call their force Nash’garmat’ecklima, so we’ve just shortened it to ‘Nash.’ And like all things fraudulent, it takes a high level of delusion to keep their beliefs in check. The six we have here are so disconnected from the concept of the truth it makes their minds a muddled mess I haven’t seen the likes of before.”

“Regimented?”

“That’s putting it mildly. This makes fascism look sane. If you even whisper anything contrary to their beliefs you’re executed, which then leaves no one but the crazies around. They figure they’ve got plenty of population, so they focus on the ‘purity’ of their race which involves some nasty Hunger Games-like stuff to weed out the younglings who are worthy and who are not. If you’re not drinking their kool aid you don’t get a chance to grow up. The ones we’ve got are a mix of loyalty, crazy, and skill. Normally a civilization like this would implode on itself, but it’s survived against the lizards due to this weird mix of comprehension and delusion they’ve got going for a cultural hive mind. They adapt to fight the lizards, reworking their tenets as needed to survive, but always drift back towards crazy when they have a chance.”

“You’re saying the lizards have actually driven a bit of sense into these barbarians?” Kip asked as they reached the elevator doors and Jason telekinetically hit the call button.

“Sad to say, but yes. These guys want to be darkside, but necessity has somewhat brought them to their senses. Like they’re sitting shallow in the ocean but never breaking the surface. They can see the light and orient off of it, but are never allowed to breathe the free air. There’s a twisted nobility in them that’s giving us unfettered access. They want to help us learn, thinking we’re their saviors from prophecy, and they’re also very keen to get to know our Protovic.”

“Have you brought any of them in on this?” Kip asked as the doors opened and they stepped inside, with Jason keying their destination within the city.

“Yes, and we had to almost restrain them at times from beating the crap out of our guests. They find their whole civilization repulsive, and their red coloration is getting under their skin…no pun intended.”

“Why?”

“They’ve never known of any red-skinned Protovic, and the mystery behind where these came from is something that is going to throw the purple-skins into a fit once they find out. Those we have here have agreed to keep things quiet while we get the information we need, but their government is already sending additional staff to help us with the interrogations. They want to know who these bastards are in a big way.”

“Have they been of any help yet?”

“Their presence gives us legitimacy, but without psionics we’re having to teach them the Veliquesh language as we learn it, so there hasn’t been much opportunity for them to do much questioning other than what they’ve fed through us. In that they’ve been helpful, and seem to know what psychological buttons to press and when.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“Outside of Star Force only the Protovic, and they’re limited to a few dozen individuals. The Protovic Chancellor is personally on his way here and should be arriving within a couple of weeks. He said he wanted to keep this quiet until they got a grasp on what was happening.”

“If these were Ter’nat I’d do the same,” Kip agreed. “What does Davis have to say about it?”

“Just that he wants information. He’s letting us take the lead on this.”

“Does he realize there’s only one solution to this?”

Jason nodded. “It’s the details that are in question…and right now there are a lot of unknowns. I’ve been taking 2 hours a day out of my training schedule to work with these guys. Adding another shift in will be a lot of help.”

“Why not call in a dozen mages?”

“Quality over quantity. Most of the mages haven’t been inside non-Human minds that much, and I don’t want to be dealing with their learning curve while we try and bridge the language gap. You’ve probably had more exposure to Protovic minds than anyone, I’d guess.”

“Haven’t dealt with them in a while, but probably.”

“Then you tell me how they feel before I bias you any further. Any objections to getting started now?”

“Nope. I’ll settle in later.”

Jason nodded and the pair rode the next few minutes in the elevator in silence before it opened up into a residential section of the city, which prompted an eyebrow raise from Kip.

“We’re treating them as guests rather than prisoners. We’ve emptied this complex save for them and they have the run of the place, but aren’t permitted to leave. We’re handling all interrogations here.”

“How many people did you have to boot out?” he asked as they began walking down a nearly empty corridor towards a checkpoint that had a pair of security officers standing guard in front of the main entrance to an upscale residential complex that contained quarters larger than the base units that all civilians were given coming straight out of the maturia. This region would have housed those individuals who had earned considerable upgrades that included multi-room quarters and a lot of other living space luxuries.

“About 200. There were enough nearby facilities that we were able to relocate them all into higher level complexes temporarily in exchange for the inconvenience. How long that will be is still in question, and I don’t think they mind if we take our time with giving them back their original quarters.”

“Archons,” one of the guards said respectfully as the pair walked by, with Kip and Jason nodding in return as they entered the promenade of the little city inside a city that was this residential block. It led into a bit of a park with potted trees and curving stairways that led up to the higher levels that included a cafeteria, some basic entertainment facilities, and a lot more quarters. Pretty much all standard stuff, with most of the denizens traveling a bit further into the city for specialized needs but allowing for midnight snacks and such within easy walking distance.

“And there we are,” Jason said softly as they approached an individual sitting on his knees in the park area. “They pray to synergize themselves with the Nash multiple times per day. They think it upgrades their karma.”

“Any truth in it? Psionic or other stuff.”

Jason shook his head. “Nope. Just pure, unadulterated bull shit.”

“Is he going to get ticked if I interrupt him?”

“Walk up in front of him, and if he feels like talking he’ll acknowledge you. If not he’ll just ignore your presence.”

“The damn red even makes them look like Sith,” Kip said, accelerating his pace until he passed between two low hanging trees and came up in front of the bench where the Veliquesh held his meditative pose murmuring something that sounded unintelligible. The trailblazer stood directly in front of his glowing red/green face, seeing that he wore Star Force clothing, ostensibly because he’d been taken off his destroyed ship without having a chance to pack.

The man didn’t move, nor open his eyes, leaving both trailblazers standing there looking down at his elevated sitting position as Kip reached out and began eavesdropping on his surface thoughts. Almost immediately he sensed a considerable deviation from what he knew to be a normal Protovic mind, which sent him on a hacking hunt as he poked around every facet of his mental structure without the man having any clue that he was inside his head.

You’re right. He is different.

How? Jason asked.

Culturally and structurally. It’s almost as if he’s more advanced, yet broken at the same time. Pieces of his mental structure are strong and efficient, yet there are just as many sections that are degenerate.

We think it’s the equivalent of crack babies. Their parents were so screwed up that a bit of their mental damage got codified into their genetics and passed onto their offspring. Factor in that only the ‘damaged’ ones would pass their sick upbringing and you get a snowball effect. That’s our current theory anyway.

We’ve seen bits of that in other races, Kip agreed, thinking specifically to the Lacvamat and how many generations it took to undo that excessive group mentality. It wasn’t gone now, just modified to be less burdensome, but the Archons knew well that genetic inheritance could be a blessing or a curse, yet always just a starting point. Though for those weak willed it stacked the odds against them righting themselves over the course of time. It was always easier to go with what was default and not think about what you were doing, but no sane person could live life without at least some curiosity prompting one to poke around a bit inside their own head.

If you had to fight your own programming things got bad, not so much because it was impossible, but rather because one didn’t know what to do and was learning everything as they went along. This Protovic was probably partly crazy when he was born, then willfully chose to feed into the instability rather than fight and counter it. No matter how messed up someone was there was always a path into the light through training, but someone like this who figuratively had been born with the crazy already in him would have to fight a long, hard battle just to get to ‘normal,’ and in Kip’s experience he knew that most people were not up to that kind of a fight, especially as younglings, and just acclimatized to their current situation…which in this case, given their cultural counterpart, was to willfully go darkside.

As disturbing as that is, it’s the more advanced parts that interest me. Why are these Protovic ahead of the others? Kip wondered.

We haven’t gotten into a lot of their lore yet, both due to time and the fact that we only have a limited vocabulary. They may know of a split that our Protovic don’t.

This one doesn’t know about what Mike did?

None of them do. They were in orbit at the time and we cut off comms before anyone could tell them.

Good move there. Don’t want them clamming up and making this harder than it already is. What kind of schedule do you have them on?

We keep them busy. Four hours in the morning, four in the evening. He’s on his midday break.

Do they train?

They have cleansing rituals that amount to some light cardio and flexibility work. Maintenance stuff, really. From what we’ve learned they have fairly short lifespans, sacrifices aside. They also have a forced reproduction edict, given the turnover of ‘failures’ in their younglings. They’re working off of default strengths more than anything. Our Protovic would kick their asses handily.

So how are they holding back the lizards?

That’s a question I’ve been asking since I got here. Their tech level has a lot to do with it. Beyond that we’re not sure yet.

Kip knelt down until he sat on his ankles and stared up into the glowing face, daring him to look back but he wouldn’t. He just sat there mumbling, either unaware of Kip being inches away or deliberately avoiding acknowledgement.

Well, as long as he’s sitting here I will too, Kip said as he stood up and walked to the opposite bench and had a seat. I’m going to have a thorough look around his head, then meet up with you guys for the next interrogation session. You up or someone else?

Mike is. His psionics aren’t that good, but he’s got a personal stake in this. We’ve also got a couple of Ikrid specialists to help out. I had my shift this morning. Greg will take the last of the day.

You heading for a workout?

I was going to get you up to speed first.

Go ahead. I’ll find my own way from here.

A bit of advice, Jason warned. Don’t do anything to tick them off, no matter what kind of memories you stumble across.

That bad?

Sick is the word. I don’t like digging through that crap, but we need intel. Don’t let them see you get angry. They still think we’re here to save them.

Understood.

Jason walked off and left the two of them alone, still with no reaction from the Protovic, as Kip began a memory search. The different mental structure took him a while to adjust to, but after that it was no different than the memory searches he’d made of ADZ Protovic in past years. That familiarity let him dig deeply right off the bat, though without a language translation a lot of the man’s thoughts were a mucky mess.

Some of the first memories he went to were of the sacrifices, wondering what this one thought about them. Kip saw him observing many from his place in a crowd, and the feelings that accompanied them turned the Archon’s stomach. He was actually convinced that the horrific pain and agony of their deaths was a good thing, upping the Veliquesh’s standing in the Nash, and that the more resistance an individual gave, the more intense their destruction, resulted in a greater reward.

This Protovic actually relished in the agony and betrayal of those he witnessed being sacrificed, all the time knowing that it could happen to him to at some point. Rather than see that as a problem this one ignored it. He was one of the people benefiting from their demise, and it was almost a joke to him. The people he was seeing sacrificed had thought it would never happen to them, and now it was, with that horrific response all the more savory. He actually relished their screams and the scent of their incinerated blood and flesh, for what was a person had now been taken and consumed like fuel…and that visceral trade that he knew by nature was not supposed to happen, that was fundamentally wrong, would be compensated by a blessing in the Nash.

A wrong had to be done in order to receive the counterbalance, and the more wrong they could heap on the sacrificial slaughter the sweeter the recompense.

Kip realized that the ones groomed from birth to be the purest of sacrifices were not told of their purpose, so that when it did come the outrage and defiance would be intact and they’d go to their deaths in the utmost betrayal in order to fuel their position in the Nash with the greatest compensation.

Jason was right in that Kip wanted to Vader choke this bastard right here and now, but the Archon steadied himself and forced his emotions within the barrier of his skin, not letting anything show on the outside as he continued to dig into the man’s memories until he could stomach no more and had to take a break.

When he stood up the Protovic finally opened his eyes and looked up at him, speaking to him in words that Kip could not understand.

Channeling his anger into irony Kip turned back and looked at him, smiling and speaking in the nicest of tones.

“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You’ve killed far too many people, and now that we know where you and your Sith buddies live, prepare for your entire civilization to die.”

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1

March 12, 2827

Solar System

Mars

“Play it again,” the Protovic Chancellor said, not fully comprehending what he’d just heard.

Kip reset the hologram back to the relevant beginning of this interrogation snippet from the Veliquesh called Nifron who was still supplying information freely, thinking that Star Force was an ally of his race rather than a newly minted enemy. Over the past few months a computer translation program had been constructed for the Veliquesh race, allowing anyone to talk to the 7 prisoners they’d brought back with them.

“Our origins are not clear, but we do know that there was a great cataclysm that fragmented our race. We won a war, but in doing so were all but destroyed ourselves. In order to survive we were split into seven fragments and scattered across the galaxy. We have never known what happened to the others until now, but we do know of them. Each faction of the old empire had different coloration. Ours was tasked with Purity. The others were Unity, Trepidation, Origination, Equity, Contention, and Understanding. The purple visage signifies your allies as Origination, those who were responsible for the beginnings of life.”

“They are the first of the factions that we have known to survive aside from ours. It was said that we could no longer function together, for our enemies were too vast, so that to survive we must disappear into remote corners of the galaxy. Where the others went we did not know so that we could not compromise them. We did not think Origination could be so close to ourselves, else we would have sought them out. The days of the empire were so long ago that our records do not stretch back to its occurrence, nor do we have any estimates.”

“What we know of concerns more recent history. We branched out from our point of refuge to encompass 9 star systems, never overreaching or invading to claim what we wanted. We sought out worlds that were totally uninhabited so as to not draw attention to ourselves. We knew that we had to grow our power or fall victim to those we originally fled, but we had to do so carefully. Ironically an enemy came to us that was new, and the Li’vorkrachnika did not even know we existed. They were conquering everything across a swath of the galaxy that was unfortunately inhabited. Our neighbors fell, but we did not.”

“Primitive as they were we could not defeat them. They were far too many, so we simply kept to our borders and defended them. Over the years the enemy grew in strength and began to test our limits. We lost ships and structures with each attack, then rebuilt. Over time the enemy’s attacks grew more powerful and we lost enough to jeopardize our defenses, so we decided to evacuate 4 systems so to reinforce the others while we waited. A prophecy of your arrival had been foretold, so we were content to wait and survive until, in recent years, the technological power of the enemy increased greatly.”

“They have been using that advantage to make gains within our systems. None have fallen, but we were losing until you arrived. We have done our duty and survived until your arrival, but much has been lost over time. The reunification of the empire can now begin with Origination having been found and your aid to us. Together we will grow strong again, enough to one day defeat the Li’vorkrachnika and begin to search out the fate of the others. With each one we find our civilization will grow stronger, for isolated we are weak. We are built to function as one, and once we are again the galaxy will submit to us as it once did.”

“What do you know of this great war?” Mike’s voice asked from off camera.

The Veliquesh frowned, its glowing facial markings reshaping as it did. “Very little. It was an indomitable enemy that we succeeded in neutralizing, but the effort was too costly. When the main threat was gone the lesser ones rose up to destroy us, hence our need to flee and rebuild in isolation.”

“Why the split?”

“If we were one we would not submit to others. We would fight and be destroyed. We had to become components that could be recombined later, when the time was right. We know that we are not whole, so it keeps us from being true to form. Our mission is to grow and reassemble…nothing more. Once complete again, that will change.”

“Change how?”

“We do not know for certain. There is a void in us that the others were meant to fill. When we are together again we will be whole and know how to proceed. Until then we cannot know for certain.”

“Do any relics from the old empire still exist? Or merely stories passed down through the years?”

“Unfortunately nothing remains,” Nifron admitted. “The Nash’garmat’ecklima favored us to survive, but little more. Our faction’s transition to isolation was a tumultuous one. We did not function correctly without the others and great sacrifice was made to preserve ourselves in this current form. Many died in the early years, and with them went the records of such. We only know of the loss without detail and the mission before us. What do your allies know of this? Have they spoken of it? Any knowledge of those days or before is invaluable to us, no matter how small. We have nothing left of them.”

“You will be able to speak with them in time,” Mike promised. “Right now we need to record as much information as we can. They will be viewing these holos, so any information you can provide them for comparison sake speak now even if you do not feel it relevant to us.”

“What is your standing with them? You have stated you are allies, but how this is possible I do not understand. We have no peers.”

“What did your prophecy say of us?”

“It was said that you would be as if a force of nature that would consume the enemy and free us of our imprisonment. It made no mention of the other factions or your bond with them.”

“The Protovic are our ally, a lesser peer in both numbers and technology, but a trusted friend.”

Nifron frowned again, not understanding. “You claim superiority?”

“You saw us fight. Why do you disagree?”

The Veliquesh considered that, with his thoughts so muddled it was as if he was forced to use his brain for the first time to conceive something beyond tradition.

“Perhaps we have lost more than we realize. In our true form we have no equals.”

“What of this enemy you neutralized. Were they not an equal?”

“They were defeated. We were the superior.”

“But you were forced to disband and flee. That was also a defeat, was it not?”

“It was a necessity. It will only be a defeat if we fail to recombine and resume our place as the galactic lords. Has Origination spoken nothing of this to you?”

“About being galactic lords? No, they haven’t. And your level of technology isn’t superior to a lot of races out there. Did you lose a lot of it in the fracturing of your empire?”

“We do not know what has been lost. Are there races with technology superior to yours?”

“Many, yes.”

Again, the Veliquesh frowned and thought. “We will not know until we are reunited with the others. Until then we must persist. We are but pieces of the whole, and cannot know our true intent as we are now.”

Kip paused the holo there, for Mike had pressed other subjects thereafter. “Anything?”

“You said they were insane. Correct?”

“Sometimes even insanity is built upon fragments of the truth. What did he say?”

The Chancellor bowed his head slightly. “We have no knowledge of these origins whatsoever, and though I still do not understand what he says about reunification it brings to mind an uncertain memory. I will have to confer with my geneticists, but I seem to remember some mention of dormant, incomplete code segments. The missing pieces were not present in our genome at all. A bit of a lingering mystery, if I recall correctly. I doubt it has any relevance, but it is the only connection I can make. Everything he says is completely foreign to me.”

“What’s the furthest back you have records?”

“Nothing that predates our homeworld, nor any mention of other factions. His red coloring is not something that is present in our genome, active or otherwise.”

“Now that is interesting,” Kip mewed. “We need to do a full analysis of their genetic code then. Maybe they do have some of your missing puzzle pieces.”

“To what end?”

Kip shrugged. “I don’t know. I was hoping some of this would make sense to you.”

“Unfortunately it does not, and I reviewed our records thoroughly before I came. Have they met with any of my people yet?”

“This one hasn’t. Three of the others have. We’ve been keeping them isolated from one another for the most part through scheduling. We’re not treating them as prisoners per se, but we don’t want them sharing what questions we’ve asked and syncing their answers. Most of their days have them going through various forms of training to become familiar with Star Force, then a session where they teach us about the Veliquesh. They see each other passing in the halls, but other than interrupting their sleep cycles they have no spare time to congregate…and when they do we monitor their conversations.”

“Have you picked up on any duplicity?”

“No, but if you noticed in this recording they are very unused to thinking. Present them with a scenario that requires them to come up with a solution rather than just repeat rhetoric and they are extremely uncomfortable. We’re breaking these of that habit slowly, but I think it’s symptomatic of their civilization. Everything is rigid with deviations resulting in executions.”

“What do you plan to do with these 7?”

“We’re not sending them back. What they’re learning from us could get them killed.”

“Do not send them to us.”

Kip raised an eyebrow. “I expected you’d want them.”

“What they are, according to your information, is abhorrent. They are not Protovic, they are barbarians.”

“Agreed.”

“They are a poison that I do not want to subject my civilization to.”

“But you still want to learn about them?”

“Of course we do. We just cannot tolerate them as they are.”

Kip nodded. “Ok. They can remain with us.”

“You disapprove?”

“No. Just because you are the same race doesn’t make you the same people. It’s no different than you not wanting the Calavari living with you.”

“The Calavari do not burn people alive.”

“True,” Kip admitted.

“What is your aim in this?”

“We cannot allow this type of civilization to exist…anywhere. It has to be ended.”

“Ended how? Allow the Cajdital to remain in that region until they destroy them?”

“We’re certainly not going to protect them again, but I don’t think they’re going to fall anytime soon. And we’re not holding back our push into lizard territory. We’re going to deal with the Veliquesh ourselves, which is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“We won’t oppose you,” the Chancellor said firmly. “They’re not our people.”

“We offer the Cajdital the option to surrender in every engagement, an offer they never accept. Only then do we kill them, for when we’ve captured them they try to kill themselves in confinement anyway. Do not mistake our war with them as an inclination to wipe out our enemies. We don’t plan on killing the Veliquesh. We plan on annexing them.”

The Chancellor took an involuntary step backwards as he stared at Kip. “Bringing them into your empire would be a grave mistake. They are a poison that goes against everything you stand for.”

“Which is why their civilization has to be destroyed,” Kip explained. “That doesn’t mean the people have to die…or rather it doesn’t mean they have to be killed. This isn’t our first time doing something like this. Every race that we’ve taken into Star Force has had their culture eradicated, save for any valuable pieces we preserved.”

“You wish to save them? Is that what you’re saying?”

“More or less. Is that going to be a problem?”

“You’re welcome to try, but I don’t want them anywhere near our territory.”

“Relax. What they are now will be destroyed, I can guarantee you that. Those younglings being born in the years to come will know nothing of this abomination. They’ll become part of Star Force, at which point I hope you choose not to shun them.”

“So long as we are in agreement that they will be part of Star Force and not the Protovic.”

“This is on us,” Kip made clear. “I just needed to know what part you wanted to play in it, if any.”

“Unless you’re going to kill them, we’d prefer to stay out of the affair.”

“We have a number of Protovic in Axius already. Are you going to object to us using them?”

The Chancellor sighed. “We don’t like anything about this, but so long as you keep this outside of my territory you can do as you wish. We do not give our blessing, for we think they should be destroyed, but we will not try to stop you if you want to try and save them from themselves. Just do not let them persist as they are now, not even in the slightest way. Ideas have a way of infecting others, and their culture is a poison I would suggest you do not toy with.”

“Truth kills lies, Chancellor. This is something we learned a long time ago, which is why we do not suppress information. If there’s something dangerous we confront it head on rather than trying to bury it away where no one will see.”

“I do not think this is wise, but it’s your empire. Do as you wish.”

Kip looked at the ceiling. “I was hoping for a little more optimism than that,” he said sarcastically.

“If these were Humans, how would you react?”

“Honestly it doesn’t affect me anymore. I look at you and I see a person. I look at Humans and I see a person. The race doesn’t factor in unless it’s a new one that I haven’t learned the idiosyncrasies of.”

The Chancellor raised an eyebrow. “A side effect of your Axius?”

Kip smiled. “Perhaps.”

“Our civilization is still only one race, and no matter how close our ties are with Star Force you will always be an outsider. That is not a negative, and please do not take it as an insult, it is just a reality of life.”

“Those you keep company with are the familiar, others are the outsiders. The biology doesn’t really matter. If you’ve only lived with other Protovic I understand how you can’t see that. I will admit that there are some compatibility issues, but a lot of my friends are Protovic and I don’t see them as outsiders. And most of them are not part of Star Force.”

“I will grant you wisdom there, but where Star Force is clear about who and what you are others are not. They feign to assimilate and seek to assert their own culture over that which they live in. That is why we keep to ourselves. Our affiliation with Star Force is the only exception. I am told even that was deemed dangerous, though you have proved a reliable ally over the course of time. You stated, arrogantly so, that the Protovic had to adhere to a set of your rules. We were already in compliance with most of them, and the remainder had been proposed internally before you issued your mandate, but we were rightfully concerned that it wouldn’t end there and that additional demands would be made later on.”

“Unfortunately the galaxy is full of liars and cheats.”

“But not you. You held to the mandate and did not alter it one speck over all these years. You have left us alone so long as we adhere to it, and that has allowed the interconnectivity that has bonded our civilizations more than we ever thought possible. I fear that if you annex these barbarians that it will alter Star Force, and through you us. Yet like you said, you have successfully annexed other races before, though none on this scale?”

“Not in these numbers, no. But the Calavari were a much more prominent race before their near destruction.”

“They are stronger now than they ever were before, which is credit due to you. I do not see it happening with the barbarians.”

“Once part of Star Force they will be allowed to travel throughout our territory as all others do, but their populations will not be relocated to the ADZ. Our borders are continuously expanding, and the Veliquesh will remain in the approximate region they are now. They will not become part of the ADZ community in any meaningful way.”

“And if you fail they will remain isolated and able to be severed once again?”

“We won’t fail. It’s simply a matter of denying the younglings any connection to the old culture from birth. Unless Protovic have some genetic memory that I’m unaware of?”

“All races do, but if you’re referring to the more impressive ones then no, we do not. You should already know that given your Axius Protovic.”

“Do I detect some dissatisfaction there?”

“They chose you over us.”

“Team pride?”

“Something like that. I do not think it is any different for you.”

“Yeah, we don’t like quitters either. But we always leave the door open for them to come back.”

The Chancellor cracked a smile. “Always a competition with you.”

“Friendly competition. And once I get past the horror of the Veliquesh I see them as a challenge, not a poison. I ask that you abhor what they are now, but wait to pass judgement on what we will make of them later. If we succeed I don’t want you carrying a grudge against people because of who their ancestors were. And if you do, then you’ll have to start hating yourself because it looks like you have the same ancestors as them,” Kip pointed out.

“Am I free to hate the ones living now?” he asked sarcastically.

“Yes. Their actions and mindset are deserving of hate. Those yet to be born are not yet poisoned by it. Make sure you differentiate between the two.”

“I take your meaning, but if your goals are for their offspring then what will you do with the 3 trillion bad ones now?”

“Keep them contained and away from everyone else while providing a difficult, but not impossible, path for individuals to work their way out of that mess. In order to do that they’ll have to essentially kill their own culture, which I doubt very few will, but we’ll offer them the possibility regardless. As for the rest, they haven’t attained self-sufficiency. Unless they change and learn, time will erase them from the galaxy.”

“A far more pleasant demise for their civilization than they deserve.”

“Probably true, but this way we don’t accidentally kill someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

“I still have my doubts. Feel free to impress me.”

“Watch and learn, youngling.”

The Chancellor blinked his glowing purple eyes, covering them briefly with glowing green eyelids. “How old do I have to get before you stop calling me youngling?”

“Tell you what. When you hit 500 years I’ll stop.”

“I’ll hold you to that, Archon.”

2

May 5, 2827

Solar System

Earth

Paul swung his double-bladed stun sword through a left to right slash, hitting and deflecting a thud up over his head before dipping the left side of his sword down to get another heading for his legs. He reversed the slash and brought the right side around to pick up another near his face then continued in a back and forth motion picking the little balls out of the air as a couple of padawans did likewise beside him in the training chamber.

All three of them were weathering a storm of thuds being directed their way from omnidirectional points and using battlemeld to see if they could effectively cover each other in close quarters without letting any through or getting their blades crossed. The two padawans had single blades, with Leona-11932 carrying a pair. Those were the three sword options available in Star Force, aside from the shorter stun sticks, and gave all three Archons a different feel for the combat…which all of them could sense through the battlemeld.

As Paul worked his way through the thuds heading towards side his of the small circle he tried to get as many as he could to minimize what the other two had to deal with, including those coming down from above with him whipping his sword around and over their heads often to pick up a few. He had two edges to work with, as did Leona, but Jackson-12431 only had a single. That meant he had less picking up capability, but should have had better movement speed. This was the third day that Paul and the pair in the advanced training group had been working on this, and honestly it was still a bit clunky.

Paul was so much faster than them that he’d had to adjust his battlemeld pacing accordingly. Operating at his Sav-enhanced rhythm while monitoring their normal speeds caused him to either lose the feel for them or to start operating at their speed. Often with the battlemeld a sync was formed one way or another and part of this drill was for him to learn not to do that. Training with Jason or one of the other trailblazers was easy because they were on the same level, but these two padawans were not.

And the reverse was also true, in that Paul’s Sav-enhanced mental status would overwhelm the padawans and they’d lose some amount of connection with him. They were having to learn to filter out what he was transmitting to them because their minds literally couldn’t keep up with his. There was a way to do this, Paul knew, but it was going to take a lot of work to figure out…which was exactly why there was still a permanent advanced training group. They’d do the head scratching and experimenting, then figure out how to accomplish whatever was necessary and codify it in the Star Force database for other Archons to learn from down the road.

The trailblazers always kept a minimum of three here at all times, plus a group of between 30-500 other Archons working on various things. Vermaire was almost a permanent resident aside from his time spent training the Arc Knights, and he was even more of a monster now than ever before. If not for the advanced psionics the trailblazers had there was no way they could have taken him on hand to hand. He was setting the benchmark in that subcategory with Paul and the others trying to keep up, though the size differences involved did have a huge impact on their effectiveness.

Archons were smaller and usually faster, while Vermaire and the other Knights had the greater mass and usually lesser speed, except the Black Knight’s agility was so great now that his size wasn’t a liability. That’s what made it so hard to fight him, for no matter how strong Paul or the others got Vermaire always had a muscle advantage.

Paul appreciated that, glad that there was someone above him in that subcategory for him to watch and learn from…but he didn’t like getting beaten any more than the rest of the trailblazers, or Archons for that matter. With Sav Paul could still move faster than the Black Knight, barely, and that allowed him to stand his ground in sparring matches, but he couldn’t beat him often. Usually it involved a momentary opportunity that Paul took advantage of, then Vermaire would learn and close the door to that method of attack.

The more Paul and the others sparred with him the tougher he got. Morgan could take him easily using her Jumat, and Paul was very interested in seeing the day when they found that ellusive trigger and gave Vermaire the concussive energy, for that was something he desperately wanted to see the effects of on the man’s combat potential.

But for now the trigger hunting was at a standstill. Most of the tier 2 triggers had been found with those still remaining being very buried…or perhaps they were just going about finding them the wrong way. They had no guides to work from, and the accidental discoveries were growing more and more rare as time went on. Rio gaining Ubven had been a major boost to their efforts, but so far that trigger still eluded them as well and the fact that a few tier 3s were being accessed before all of the tier 2s suggested that some of them had to be buried in different locations than they were probing.

And by probing he meant fumbling around in the dark. After all this time no amount of gravity training had given anyone else Jumat, so what it was that pushed Morgan to that trigger was an ongoing mystery. Paul and the others were no longer looking for triggers, but rather just trying to expand and learn their new potential while hoping to accidentally stumble across them. It had happened enough already not to be inconceivable, but the fact that they didn’t have a plan to reaching them other than pure luck annoyed Paul enough that he just had to let it go and look at them as bonuses rather than goals to attain.

There was a lot of information in the Zen’zat files regarding their fighting style but Archon combat was a bit different, and not only due to their sizes. Zen’zat fought with many exotic styles while Archon combat had been created by the trailblazers themselves through them just experimenting and seeing what worked. There wasn’t any flair in it, just efficient knockdown power. The Zen’zat had techniques that favored a certain angle and amped it up greatly, like their Namen’trist. That style of hand to hand combat saw the use of the arms and hands as secondary and used only to facilitate setting up body blows thrown from the torso.

Even their kicks were supplementary, with the idea being to get a hip or shoulder into the opponent and use your mass and momentum to deliver kinetic force to momentarily stun your opponent enough to get a loose grapple with a foot or leg enough to pull them back to you for another body hit. The technique was effective, but narrow minded. Archons wouldn’t stick to one technique, rather they saw all techniques as tools to be used when there was need, which had them basically fighting and making it up as they went along.

The Zen’zat did not fight that way, which was why the Archons couldn’t just use their playbook and had to write one of their own, with this battlemeld swords chapter having to be written by those developing it. When completed they’d be able to link up with others, regardless of their rank, and effectively fight together as one mind rather than two competing individuals crammed into a confined space.

That space was marked by a small circle on the floor for this drill, and any of them stepping outside of it would end the challenge in failure. Every hit on their bodies was 10 points to the negative while every successful deflection was +1. There were bonus point receptacles placed on the walls for them to aim their deflections at but today they didn’t have that luxury, for the thuds were coming at them in too great a number to try and pick up any of the bonuses. Paul had to work his ass off just to keep himself and his teammates from getting hit.

He saw everything they saw, not to mention with his own Pefbar active. That was one sensation that the others had to learn to block out, relying on Paul’s vision and their own Pefbar to see everything around them. His sight was necessary for the colors and context, but add in his own superior Pefbar on top of theirs and it’d provide even more data to their minds…which would be too much for those without Sav to handle. A three-way meld was more burdensome than a pairing as it was, so a significant part of this swords exercise was in learning to pick and choose which pieces of the battlemeld you wanted to utilize, which had to be done by the receiver.

Paul’s battlemeld ability was transmitting everything automatically and rather than trying to create a custom link the Archons were learning to just filter out parts of it. Paul was learning too, though he didn’t need it for this drill. He could handle everything the two were feeding him and then some, it was the constant thud blocks that required his body to be moving so fast that the physical processing was overloading his mind and making him veer into numbness as he tried to overcompensate to take pressure off the other two.

As with most training drills in the advanced training group, this one was not meant to be beaten, but rather to have your limits pressed and surpassed, showing you where you were weak and giving your subconscious mind a taste of failure to adapt to. Paul never accepted that, but with so many thuds coming in at a slowly increasing rate there came a point where they were losing more points than gaining them. The challenge continued until their score eventually dropped to 0, then the thuds suddenly shut off as Paul blocked one last one into a bonus receptacle on the wall to his left, but it was too late to count.

All three of them stood there dripping with sweat as Leona released her part of the battlemeld, with Paul doing likewise a moment later. That had been a solid session regardless of what the stats eventually said. He didn’t know how long they’d been at it, but they’d gained enough experience points out of this to trigger a good adaptational training surge. Their bodies would adjust to the demands, as would their minds, and the next time they came back to this they’d be a little bit better at it…and from that they’d press even further.

“My arms are so dead,” Leona complained, having had to wield each sword with only one arm while Jackson had two-handed his single blade the entire time.

“Do you need the extra length?” Paul asked. “Switching to stun sticks would reduce the weight.”

“I don’t know, most of the thuds I’m getting on the bottom two thirds, but I’d be missing some if I made the switch. Not sure if it’d be a good tradeoff.”

“Has anyone build any novelty weapons?” Jackson asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Like blades attached to a gauntlet or throwing knives or such?”

“Fixed blades are a disadvantage save for leverage. They wouldn’t help,” Paul explained. “I’ve looked into variations, but the three we’re using as the best we’ve found.”

“Why don’t more Archons use the swords in combat?” Leona asked.

“They’re more of a badass weapons. You have to get melee close, and most stunning missions make use of ranged stuns or psionics. As far as kill power goes, the plasma swords have a very limited use. It’s more of a utility item than a main.”

“And why don’t they cut?” Jackson asked. “I mean, instead of delivering a point blast.”

“Because they’re not a lightsaber. Jason and I have been working on some prototype blades with some new tech, but not for combat. We’d like to have something to cut through doors or armor plating with, but to set up a blade like that it almost has to be flat. Combat needs the blades to be rounded, hence the explosive touch rather than a fine cut.”

“What about throwing knives?”

“What’s the purpose?” the titan countered.

“To look…cool? I don’t really know.”

“Our weapons are designed not to leave shrapnel behind, so sticking a blade into a body isn’t one of our goals. We can deliver remote grenades, like the Kiritas variety, but there’s no point in making them pointy.”

“So that’s why you switched from hard casings to gel?” Leona asked. “No more shrapnel.”

“Just a concussive energy pop,” Paul agreed.

“I guess I was just thinking that with psionics we could retrieve the blades so there wouldn’t be an ammo issue,” Jackson explained. “Throw and pull.”

“Tell you what, hit the showers and meet me topside in half an hour. I’ll grab some snacks and we’ll go on a little field trip.”

Leona raised an eyebrow. “Field trip?”

“You’re starting to think a like a trailblazer now, so why not show you some of the stuff we’ve made that hasn’t been very good. We keep it in a place called the Vault. It used to be stored in multiple places but we moved it to one facility here on Earth. There are a few combat items you might like to see.”

“How much training time are we going to lose?” Jackson asked.

Paul raised an eyebrow at him, but didn’t say a word.

“If he’s suggesting we go, the answer is none,” Leona said.

“Smart girl. We’ll take a break then extend the afternoon session to compensate.”

“What exactly do you have in there?” Leona asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“No reason you should have. It’s just kind of like our storage locker. I think it’ll answer your blade questions better than I can,” Paul said, retracting his doubleblade sword down into the extra-wide hilt before throwing it towards a wall rack and sliding it in telekinetically. “Half an hour,” he said, heading for the door, then he turned the corner and was gone.

“What was that about?” Jackson asked as Leona retracted her pair of swords and put them back into the wall storage rack before he did the same and shut it.

“I’m not sure, but it sounds interesting. Something the other Archons have probably never seen.”

“So why does he want to show it to us?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We’re just padawans, and we’re not even in Clan Saber.”

“We’re working out here, so that makes us kind of special. Who knows, he offered and we’re going. Save your stupid questions until we get there.”

“Fine,” Jackson scoffed. “You’re not sharing a shower with me today.”

“Never do,” Leona mocked as she headed out a step ahead of him.

It took them sixteen minutes to get to the nearby equipment room, shower, and change into a fresh set of clothes, then another seven to move through Atlantis’s internal transit systems and up to the top deck of the city. Paul hadn’t said where to meet him, but there was a pad reserved for Archon craft and that was where they found him a few minutes later carrying a satchel and chewing on a sugar stick as he headed for one of the smallest mantises.

“Let’s go,” he said with his mouth half full as the padawans were just standing there, then he boarded the small aerial transport and headed for the cockpit as they followed him in. He sat down at the controls and powered the craft up as the two Archons parked themselves on the bench behind him.

“How far away is it?” Leona asked.

“About 20 minutes.”

“What city is it in?”

“It’s a standalone facility,” Paul said as they lifted off and coasted on anti-grav out into the sunlight from the concealed hangar and gained altitude. He extended the 4 wings from the craft’s upper housing and shot them off across the Pacific Ocean at low altitude while quickly gaining speed. Leona and Jackson held off further questions until they arrived, seeing nothing until Paul brought them to a standstill over an empty bit of ocean and just held them there, doing nothing.

“Is there a problem?” Leona asked.

“This is kind of a secret. So this stays between us, alright?”

“Ok,” Jackson said, with Leona nodding her agreement.

“Pinky swear,” Paul said deadpan as he held out his right hand.

Leona laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Totally. You don’t mess with the pinky. You in or not?”

Leona didn’t know if he was joking or not, but held out her hand and looped her pinky finger around his, which he then latched onto in a firm grip.

“I swear never to reveal the most awesome place in the universe.”

Leona couldn’t help but smile. “I swear never to reveal the most awesome place in the universe,” she repeated.

Paul let go of her hand and spun back around to his controls.

Jackson frowned. “What about me?”

“You’re a guy, why would I want to hold hands with you?” Paul asked, tipping the mantis’s nose over and sending them straight down into the water.

3

“Where is this exactly?” Jackson asked. “There aren’t any cities here that I know of.”

“It’s below the seafloor,” Paul said as they slowly trolled through the water with the sunlight disappearing with the depths. “And it’s not on most maps. Just a little hideaway we made.”

“You have a lot of those?” Leona asked.

Paul smirked. “Depends on your definition of ‘a lot.’”

“Worried about a security breach?”

“Privacy has its advantages. Someone doesn’t know to look for something if they don’t know it exists. Nor can they complain about not getting access to it.”

“It’s that cool, huh?”

“You wouldn’t believe how many times people have asked me to see the X-wing after Mark blabbed that we’d built one.”

Jackson’s eyes widened. “An X-wing? Like, from Star Wars? That X-wing?”

“Case in point,” Paul said as a blip came up on his sensor board indicating a short range beacon. “There we are. Gotta get close to pick it up…and have the access code.”

Leona saw him type a series of numbers into a keypad, but other than that nothing happened as far as she could see, though they were still a ways off the seafloor. “Is anyone down there?”

“I doubt it. Just a big storage locker we stuff stuff in.”

Leona and Jackson remained silent for the rest of the short trip, watching on the display screen as they approached a small crack in the seafloor roughly four times the size of their mantis in width. The depth was deceiving, for when they entered it they realized just how big it was…and saw the hangar built into the sidewall. Paul flew them inside the open doors and through the energy shield holding back the water, finding a nautilus also sitting on the otherwise empty deck.

“That’s a spare,” Paul said before they could ask about the hybrid aquatic/aerial craft. Like the mantis it could travel through both but was suited more for the water than the air. “We’re the only ones here. And I must remind you that all visitors are required to keep their hands to themselves and off the exhibits, we wouldn’t want to get nasty fingerprints on the cool toys.”

With that Paul got up and headed out of the mantis, leaving the pair of padawans a bit perplexed at his attitude. They weren’t sure if he was messing with them or what, so they just followed him out and across the empty bay to the only door into the facility. When it opened they were hit with an ambient white light that shown from the smooth walls, making the hallway look telltale Star Force but something out of the future…or maybe distant fictional past.

“Follow me,” Paul said as he walked down the long hallway, bypassing many side doors until he came to the unmarked one he wanted. With the press of a button it retracted into the wall and allowed them to enter a gallery of display cases that held a variety of exotic weapons.

“No way,” Jackson said when he saw a series of Covenant firearms. “You built Halo weapons?”

“As you can see we built a lot of stuff. It all works but most of it is inefficient crap, otherwise we’d be using it in the field.”

“Gunblade?” Leona asked.

“Only has 6 rounds, which is pretty useless,” Paul said as she looked at the sword that doubled as a rifle. “This is one of the more recent ones,” he said, picking up a short stick and holding it in his hand laterally. With a press of a button a neon white blade materialized over his knuckles, giving him a Covenant energy blade.

“I thought you said you didn’t have any narrow cutters yet?”

“No reliable ones,” he said, swinging it through the air a few times just to get the feel. “This is plasma contained within an energy shield, same as the stun swords, but the more you swipe it across a target the more damage is done. It’s more like a tactile bomb than a cutter, and the recharge rate, while very fast to make it effective, drains the battery so quick you get maybe a minute of decent damage. And you can’t parry, because the blade is just energy. It’s more like a plasma paintbrush. Plus this handle hold is crap when you actually try to work with it. Hence it gets thrown into the cool relics storage you see here.”

Paul deactivated the sword and tossed it to Jackson. “Don’t blast yourself,” he said as he walked down the row until he hit a cutout and crossed over six more, coming to a specific display case. “As far as throwing knives go, I think this is about as close as we’ve gotten.”

Leona looked where he pointed, seeing a deck of cards. “I don’t understand.”

“Jackson, you get it?”

The padawan stopped swiping the energy sword through the air and glanced over, looking at the thick deck. “Afraid not.”

Paul smiled and picked up the deck, holding them in his left hand while sliding a control ring over his left ear. “Mentally activated,” he said, whipping his arm around and releasing a single card through the air toward the nearest wall some 30 meters away. It flew straight with a neon red glow then impaled the wall and stuck there.

“What the hell?” Leona asked.

“It takes a lot of practice, but you can chuck these pretty fast,” he said, spinning around in a tornado twirl and releasing a card with each rotation. They impacted forming a pretty damn level line on the wall, all still glowing red while the deck in his hand were not luminous. “With a thought I can make them discharge, but I don’t want to blow up the wall,” he said, recalling the cards to him from across the room. They flew at him one at a time and returned to his left hand, settling into the deck.

“How?” Jackson asked.

“They’re not rigid. The material bends into a clinging goo on impact,” Paul said, chucking a glowing red rectangle at the padawan and having it seemingly impale his chest, but the material had simply mushed around the impact point instead. A second later Paul recalled it, then held it up for him to see that the rectangle had reformed itself.

“They’re grenades?” Leona asked.

“Can be. We’ve also been able to load them with stun charges, chemicals, even surveillance equipment. Their flight is kept level through a little telekinetic control, as is the recall. My arm strength gives them most of their speed and they need a decent hit to trigger the melting and sticking process.”

“Where did you get the idea for these?” Leona asked.

“Same place we got the ideas for most of this stuff. Movies, TV shows, video games, books. We tried a lot of stuff, just to see if we could, and some of it panned out. We use it now as standard equipment, the rest is stored here for nostalgia sake or just in case we find a use for it…or think of a way to tweak the design and make it viable.”

“So give me that,” Paul said, motioning for Jackson to return him the energy sword, “and have a look around. We’ve built just about everything we could think of. If you still have any ideas for melee weapons afterwards please feel free to share. As you can see, we don’t have a problem stealing ideas.”

“And then can we see the X-wing?” Jackson asked.

“I’m not taking you through every room, but we’ll hit the aircraft hangar on the way out.”

“Cool,” Leona said, walking down the closest row of display cases. The room was huge and there were literally hundreds of handheld weapons here, some of which she recognized from lore, but most were unfamiliar to her. After about a minute of searching she stopped when she saw an actual knife, or rather more like a dagger. “I thought you said you didn’t build any knives?”

Paul walked over to her position and saw the green/gold/black/silver dagger and smiled. “That’s one of Morgan’s and is still a work in progress.”

“What are the buttons on it for?”

“One is to activate the plasma sheath, because it works like a plasma sword, but its main function is a…car key. The buttons are what you would call an input code.”

“Card key for what?” she asked while Jackson was half a football field away looking through other items.

“I said ‘car’ key. Before you were born there were physical keys that had to be inserted for a vehicle to operate. This one doesn’t have to be inserted, it’s just a metaphor,” he said, passing his hand through the static field meant to keep dust off the displays and picking it up. Paul raised it to his lips and blew into a slit on it while pressing a series of buttons that resulted in a music tone.

“Audial recognition?” Leona asked, not understanding.

“No, just a bit of theatrical awesomeness. When you hit the right tone a signal is sent out activating your…car, which is what we’re still working on.”

“What kind of car?”

“When we get back to Atlantis do a search for ‘Power Rangers’ and ‘Dragonzord.’”

“Ok,” she said, walking on while Paul wiped a bit of spit off the Dragon Dagger and put it back in its ornamental resting place.

After Paul got back to Atlantis and finished his day’s training he returned to his quarters and logged onto his comm terminal to check his messages, finding one from Jason and a rare one from Cal-com. He opened the Voku’s first, for he hadn’t heard from him much since he’d redeployed himself to the middle of lizard territory and outside the relay grid. Any messages coming to Paul had to be carried via courier ship, meaning there wasn’t a lot of communication between the two nowadays. They’d handled their planning phase in the past, with events going forward holding course and not requiring any major overhauls or meetings.

Normally messages from Cal-com were short or contained attached files, but as soon as Paul opened this one he saw that it was incredibly long in addition to having attached files. The trailblazer read through it quickly, seeing that his Voku counterpart was setting up the foundation of a defense pact on the far side of lizard territory. The difference between this pact and a formal alliance was that there was going to be no interconnectivity other than shared intelligence on the lizards, making it a shared mission rather than any bonds of unity.

Star Force’s relationship with the Voku was a great deal more than that but Cal-com wasn’t interested in gaining friends, only organizing the locals to better defend against the lizards. A lot of what he was proposing was intelligence based, with the lesser races pulling scouting missions rather than combat so they could detect where the lizards were so that they could be contained. A few of the races he mentioned were capable of fighting the lizards and winning battles, but there was one in particular that he went into great detail on.

They were called the Preema, and were arguably stronger than the Voku. That piqued Paul’s curiosity immediately, then went even further when he detailed their placement and numbers. They had a huge empire spinward of Star Force and lizard territory in the same galactic arm, with attached files of what little Cal-com had learned as of yet. Most important thing was they recognized the long term threat of the lizards and wanted to aid in their preemptive defeat…but they didn’t want to be responsible for claiming territory beyond their own.

That was a bit odd, but understandable given the additional information Paul ran through. Cal-com’s intelligence indicated that the Preema were solitary and that their empire was extremely dense, preventing others from having any clue what was going on inside it. They operated with fixed borders and rightly understood that defeating the lizards meant denying them the ability to colonize new worlds or to recolonize those they had been kicked off. You couldn’t do that from afar, so it seemed that they were going to offer their services in the ass kicking department while relying on the Voku and others to hold and deny the lizards territory that they cleansed them from.

That was a huge task, as Paul and Star Force well knew, for they were already monitoring a lot of empty systems that they had no immediate wish to colonize. Putting relays in each system was necessary, but that was a slow process because they had to be properly defended. Lesser systems were being used to link the conquered territory and provide some surveillance, but patrols had to be routinely sent out to every system to check on them and the local monitoring drones.

The best way to deny the lizards territory was to inhabit it after they kicked them off, but there were so many lizard systems that that wasn’t going to be feasible, and just handing out planets to anyone who came looking for them was problematic for a number of reasons. It seemed that Cal-com was organizing the locals on the far side into holding their own territory and being responsible for patrolling the immediate region around it, constructing a puzzle piece border zone to stop the spread of the lizards, or at least to detect their incursions so they could be targeted and destroyed by the Voku or Preema once they eventually arrived.

It seemed they were setting up a semi-permanent staging base in the new Voku territory and would be spamming their navy out of there. He said that given their strength they’d be able to kill the lizards with reliable certainty, it was the aftermath that was the challenge. He intended to secure his new border region first, then press across the middle of lizard territory up to the border he’d negotiated with Paul, leaving Star Force the task of conquering the remaining lizard systems up to that.

But the most important part of Cal-com’s message was the fact that the Preema were telepathic and had raided his mind briefly before he got outside of range. During that moment they had found the memory of Humans and reacted to it with keen interest. They wanted to meet with Star Force and Paul had a sinking feeling in his gut that quickly manifested itself into an epiphany that had him pulling up the Star Force copy of the pyramid database and going through the V’kit’no’sat race list.

The location of the Preema empire was beyond the old borders but not by much, and some races that the V’kit’no’sat knew of or had contact with had been plotted in an auxiliary file due to the fact that they were rumored rather than confirmed locations. Paul’s mind told him he’d come across the Preema before, but it took him more than three hours of searching before he finally was able to find a link.

The V’kit’no’sat had another name for them, but the biological files were a match. The Hamach were a race that had made diplomatic contact and had not been deemed worthy of eradicating. They were fairly advanced and not interested in more than greeting their neighbors. The V’kit’no’sat exchanged information with them then wanted no further communication, which the Hamach had obliged. The location of the Hamach was within the current borders of the Preema according to Cal-com’s map, which is why Paul thought he’d remembered them. He’d done a search through the database before looking for races in this galactic arm with a certain technological level and had come across them before, only the name had changed since they’d made contact…which was well before the fall of Earth.

So it was likely that they knew what the Zen’zat were, and from Cal-com’s memories had identified Star Force as being Zen’zat…but Zen’zat that were not part of the V’kit’no’sat. If they knew anything about them they’d know that that was not tolerated. The question was, did the Preema still have contact with the shrunken empire and could they tip the V’kit’no’sat off to their existence?

Paul had to find out one way or another, so he skipped going to bed and instead headed over to find Davis to fill him in, then he transferred to a warship in orbit and left Sol heading outside the ADZ to cross lizard space and find Cal-com so he could arrange that meeting the Preema wanted.

After that Paul didn’t know. He’d have to play this by ear and hope their luck held out.

4

June 28, 2827

Shaleth System (Voku territory)

Inova

Cal-com walked up to the guards outside his private oracle only to have them tense up when they saw the Human behind him. He put a dissatisfied look on his face and shook his head. “Relax. If this one wanted to kill me he would have done so long ago.”

The guards shrank bit as Cal-com passed them a step and opened the door, with Paul looking up at the much bigger Voku with a stern expression on his face. “Don’t relax too much. I could still try to kill one of you.”

That resulted in a stare down for a moment until Cal-com walked inside and Paul followed, then the door sealed and the two warlords had a secure location to themselves. “What’s so urgent to bring you out here in person?”

“The Preema,” Paul said as he casually walked around and took in the layout. It wasn’t much different than what Cal-com and him had worked in before, save for the displays were concerning a different section of the galaxy with unfamiliar starmaps. “I think they know who we are.”

“What do you mean?” Cal-com said, leaning against a wall as Paul stopped near a table sticking out of the bulkhead that had numerous holographic icons representing ship placements suspended above it…and the remains of one of the Voku’s snack bars. Nasty stuff. Tasted like coffee.

“The enemy in the core that I never told you about. They’re called the V’kit’no’sat. My race is part of them. We’re called Ter’nat, or rather the low breeding stock are. They recruit elites out of the Ter’nat and transform them into Zen’zat. Warriors who serve the overall conglomeration of an empire whom your elders created and were subsequently kicked out of.”

When Paul saw Cal-com stiffen he waved a hand through the air dismissively. “Yes, I probably should be keeping this secret but at this point I don’t care. My home system was one of the most distant colonies of the V’kit’no’sat that was lost during a rebellion by one of the member races. The empire shrank thereafter and it was abandoned along with a lot of other worlds in this galactic arm. All were presumed dead in the fighting that took place, I assume, but apparently a few Zen’zat were left behind. My race are the descendants of those Zen’zat, and if the V’kit’no’sat ever learn of our existence they will stop at nothing to annihilate us. No one can leave the empire. When your elders did they fought a war that all but killed them off.”

“And you know this how?”

“We have a very important piece of V’kit’no’sat tech on Earth that contains their database as of the time of the planet’s abandonment. History, tech, training, almost everything they had save for their closest secrets. Your elders, who are called Zak’de’ron, or we just call them ‘dragons’ because that’s what they are, helped us unlock the restricted files a while back as a favor for waking them up. Seemed there was only one left alive, in stasis, watching over a bunch of eggs. We found them during a battle, revived him without knowing what he was, and got the story thereafter. The Zak’de’ron were defeated by the V’kit’no’sat, with this being a backup plan in case that happened. That’s why your elders went missing for such a long time. They were all dead save for one.”

“I hope that will impress on you the gravity of the situation,” Paul emphasized. “Your elders founded the V’kit’no’sat with a handful of other races to battle an enemy at the heart of the galaxy, to keep them in check because they cannot be defeated through conventional means. They are called the Hadarak and live within gravity wells where the V’kit’no’sat cannot go. Without them keeping the menace in place, it would spread throughout the galaxy doing lots of unknowable damage, yadda, yadda, yadda. The V’kit’no’sat developed a bit of an ego, necessitating the equal submission of every member race to the collective, which your elders did not hold to. That rift eventually led to a war that destroyed them. Backstabbed by their own creation. The V’kit’no’sat tolerate no deviation. Anyone who does is dead, which is why it is imperative that they do not find out that we’re alive or they’ll come for us en mass and with far greater technology than we now wield,” Paul said, finally finishing and crossing his arms over his chest.

“That explains a great many things,” Cal-com said slowly, soaking it all in. “And your current relationship with the Elders is what, exactly?”

“We did each other a favor once, but that’s it, officially. They did send you to watch our backs though.”

“You do not serve them then, as you did within this empire?”

“No we don’t. We’re an anomaly that wasn’t supposed to exist. Zen’zat are forbidden from breeding, due in no small part to the psionic abilities that we have been given. So many generations have passed that those latent abilities grew dormant and we have to wake them up in our own people, which is why not every Human can do what the Archons can.”

“And the further you extend your empire the greater the risk of drawing their attention?”

“That is the conundrum I have been living under for the past 800 years.”

“An enemy greater than the Elders…now I fully understand your coreward boundary restriction.”

“Not quite. It seems the Zak’de’ron did not fully share their technology and knowledge with the V’kit’no’sat. They held some back, which irritated the other races. They were still dominant, just vastly outnumbered.”

Cal-com nodded, feeling as if the galaxy had just righted itself slightly. “And the Preema?”

“They had contact with the V’kit’no’sat under a different name long ago. I think they recognized us from your memories. I have to come to terms with them one way or another. The shrinking of the V’kit’no’sat empire may have severed all communications between them, but I need to find out what they know and whose side they are on.”

“What help do you need?”

“I need to meet with them, face to face so I can use my psionics to pick their brains. I have a block that will prevent them from reading mine, which is another reason the V’kit’no’sat won’t leave us alive. We were designed to be very useful tools, but gone rogue we could pose a small threat…and they don’t tolerate any threats.”

“Who are these other races you speak of? The ones that the Elders allied with.”

“Have a look,” Paul said, sending a slew of images into his friend’s mind. He went slow enough so he could process it all, but a few minutes later the Voku finally came to grips with just how elite of a crowd he was playing with.

“Thank you, Paul. I knew you were favored by the Elders, but I did not understand why until now. You are their lesser kin.”

“Ahhh, I wouldn’t say that.”

“But you are. You no longer follow their leadership, but you are one of the great races, even if in exile. And if you have possession of a database of knowledge, then you are recovering what was lost and resuming your place in the galaxy.”

“Our place is going to get squashed flat if the Preema or anyone else rat us out, which is why only a few Humans know of this. Tell no one of it, ever. If your elders want to know they can just read your mind.”

“I apologize for betraying your secret, however inadvertently.”

“We’re not exactly hiding as it is.”

“Are the Skarrons aware?”

“They are aware of the V’kit’no’sat and keep clear of their territory, but I do not think they know our ancestry.”

“Now the shape of their territory makes sense. I never understood why they expanded laterally rather than push into the core.”

“The starmaps we have are out of date, so we don’t know who is out there beyond where we scout ourselves. We didn’t know the Preema existed, and there’s no telling how many more powers are out there and who has links to the V’kit’no’sat, so we’re working through all this as we go.”

“How long ago was your homeworld abandoned?”

“About 100 millennia, give or take.”

“And there is no way of knowing how much further they have advanced in that time?”

“Nope,” Paul confirmed succinctly.

“Not an envious position to be in, I’ll grant you, but one with great potential if you are left undiscovered.”

“Right now, that’s up to the Preema. Set up a meet and greet, then show me what you’ve got going on out here. You can ask V’kit’no’sat questions along the way.”

Cal-com smiled, not knowing if his friend had read his mind or just knew him well enough to anticipate his curiosity. As long as Paul was in a divulging mood he wanted to know as much about this threat as possible, and their connection to the Elders.

Paul’s warship was escorted by Cal-com’s conglomerate as the Voku leader went with him to the system where the Preema were establishing their staging base. He wasn’t going to be present for the exchange, but Paul was going to let him listen in just the same via a pair of Voku guards that were going down to the planet’s surface with Paul. The Preema now owned one of the moons in orbit of Adolet in the Yishmur System, but given the bad atmosphere there the meeting was going to take place on the planet below.

On the way in Paul saw the hundreds of thousands of Preema ships already present as a beehive of activity was taking place on the surface of the moon, hidden beneath a dark cloud that was the atmosphere, but still visible to sensors. They were constructing huge cities that likewise bore down deep into the planet, for the canyons they were carving out were not natural, nor were the igloos that they were constructing over top of them. That was the best metaphor Paul could make, for the structures were not blocks nor spires, but half bubbles arranged in almost irregular patterns. Some larger, some small, and others bigger than the mountains that were being torn apart to make a place for them.

Each bubble had at least two connections at their base, such as an igloo would have a low entrance. Their ships in orbit were another matter, essentially built like a pair of forward swept wings with a hollow section in the center between them. The U-shaped ships were registering of an unknown hull material, but a quick sensor modification told Paul that the ships were actually scrambling sensors without having shields raised. A little trick that he knew how to accomplish, thanks to the V’kit’no’sat database, but one that Star Force hadn’t quite learned yet. Their sensors couldn’t identify the hull material or scan the interior of their ships, but the smallest models were Battleship-class, suggesting that the Preema were into heavies rather than swarm tactics.

They did have jumpships present, though, and Paul saw several of the extremely long, thin ships built with spine-like niches where the U-shaped warships would slide over a central rail and dock. The jumpships looked like fragile wisps, but each was more than 2 miles thick and over 120 long with lots of support craft flying to and from them even now, ostensibly hauling cargo down to the moon.

Paul took his time coming into the system before departing for the surface. The Voku had established a colony on the planet, but he would be meeting the Preema at a neutral location in a barren desert. A Voku detachment was already waiting there when Paul’s dropship set down, then on Cal-com’s orders they escorted the Human the short distance over to the platform the Preema had constructed for the purpose of this summit that held their native atmosphere on one half. Unlike when Cal-com had met them the Preema were already here and waiting, with Paul able to see four of them outside their armor and shining like flood lights through the dark and seemingly foul air around them.

Paul wore his golden titan armor as he walked between the dark skinned Voku, standing out against their equally black, skintight clothing augmented by defense shields that were invisible. He was the runt amongst them, but the contingent knew some of his combat capability as well as the fact that his armor was formidable in and of itself on top of his psionics and physical skill. They walked with pride and caution, knowing that even though he was the superior warrior his safety was their assigned mission.

When Paul got to the edge of the raised platform he skipped the low step and hopped straight up on top, then walked to the center were one of the Preema was waiting on the other side of a clear energy field.

“Gar cu ratch bey?” Paul asked when he looked into the lightly glowing quadruped’s six green eyes.

The Preema blinked three of them and tilted its head inquisitively. “I apologize. There seems to be a problem with the translational software. We will try an alternative language.”

“No need,” Paul said quickly. “I assume you can understand me now?”

“Yes we can. What language were you speaking previously?”

“One that I wanted to see if you knew. By now you must realize you can’t read my mind.”

“No we cannot, though may I assume that you can read ours?”

“You are resistant, but I can make contact.”

“You have us at a disadvantage then, but this is not entirely unexpected, nor troublesome. We are used to being the superior, it would be improper of us not to humbly accept the reverse when it occurs.”

“You wanted to speak with me. I am here,” Paul said, going through a carefully choreographed probing method that was linked to his words as he tried to provoke various reactions as he made Ikrid contact with this Preema and those standing behind it while the Voku looked on oblivious from outside the platform.

“May we see your face?”

“I am assuming that you have seen my kind before,” Paul said a moment before retracting his helmet into a small bundle of equipment behind his neck and revealing the pale skin, neon blue hair that he’d donned recently after losing a bet with Jason and decided he liked and was going to keep, and the odd twinkling grey eyes that denoted his ascension to tier 3 psionics.

“A very long time ago. You are said to be a member race of an empire near the core that once stretched near to our territory, but has receded since. May I ask why you have come back this far out?”

“What was the name of this empire?”

“They call themselves the V’kit’no’sat.”

Paul’s face didn’t betray his emotional state, but there was definitely an internal flinch. So it was true, they did know, and now Star Force’s fate was in this alien race’s hands…er, paws.

“Do you have a current means of communication with them?”

“They never deemed to set up one, preferring that we remain outside their territorial zones and not interfere with internal matters of any race, whether they had a link to the V’kit’no’sat or not. We obliged and kept tabs on them as we do all our neighbors, but when their empire shrank we knew only what we heard from travelers. We have no had official nor unofficial contact with them since that time. Does that allay your concerns?”

“Concerns?”

“We mean no offense if we are wrong, but given the current state of your technology and inability to destroy the lizards on a grand scale, we have surmised that you are a splinter race of the V’kit’no’sat, or perhaps a disconnected colony?”

“If you’re asking whether or not we can give you a line of communication back to the core, the answer is no.”

“That is not what we are seeking. Our concerns are with our own territory and our neighbors. The V’kit’no’sat are beyond our sphere now, save for you. We hold you no ill will, and only seek an acquaintance. Beyond that we believe an alliance against the Li’vorkrachnika is manageable.”

“To answer your question bluntly, we are not V’kit’no’sat. Nor do we wish them to be made aware of our existence.”

“As I said, we have no contact with them, and if it is your wish we will let any meeting occur without our involvement. We will not tell anyone that you are Ter’nat, for we know the death penalty that would bring.”

Paul’s eyes narrowed. “What else do you know of the V’kit’no’sat?”

“We watched and learned. They gave us very little information beyond that which was necessary to identify themselves and make clear that they were not to be trifled with. Some of their targets fled to us for sanctuary. We did not officially help them, but a few that had already eluded their pursuit vanished permanently when they crossed our borders. I trust that is a secret you will keep as well, given that we now both have knowledge of the other that the V’kit’no’sat would not be pleased to hear.”

Paul smirked. “Perhaps, but with us it’s an internal matter that they would never overlook. For reasons that I will not go into detail with you about. You might not rate high enough for them to concern themselves with.”

“Our historical records suggest otherwise. They do not tolerate opposition in any form.”

“I’m just saying that we’d be the higher priority.”

“I do not contend that, but they would come for us in time. It is said their memory of adversaries never grows old.”

“They are a bit grumpy,” Paul admitted, losing some of his formality as his mental searches continued to come up clean. This Preema wasn’t trying to hide anything from him. “And here’s to hoping they stay in the core and leave us both alone. Right now though we have another matter to worry about, and I get the feeling you have some questions regarding the Li’vorkrachnika.”

5

“You have shown an ability to defeat them handily, based on the information the Voku supplied us. You have a tech advantage, but you are doing better than that should allow. We believe this is strategic and would like to know exactly what it is you are doing before we bring our fleets into contention with them. We do not doubt that we will be victorious, but efficiency is key given the size of the enemy territory.”

“They adapt,” Paul said bluntly. “We adapt as well, so there is no set strategy. We preserve our troops while they sacrifice theirs. Take away their ability to do that in order to achieve objectives and you thwart most of their attacks.”

“How have you done this?”

“Armor, shielding, extensive training. We don’t give them any soft targets to hit, and most of their territorial expansion is through taking over soft targets.”

“Do you use your telepathy in battle?”

“Yes we do.”

“What level of casualties do you accept?”

“None. We don’t launch an attack unless we expect everyone to survive. During defensive engagements we do what we can, but the enemy is the one who chooses the battlefield and the timing.”

The Preema tilted its head back. “You don’t lose troops in battle?”

“Rarely.”

“And when you do?”

“We learn from the mistake and move on.”

“How can one fight an enemy without putting themselves into jeopardy?”

“A lot of good equipment that takes the hits for you. The lizards send infantry into battle with only a thin protective vest. All of our troops are in full armor that also carries shielding. Combine that with tactics that rotate damaged units out on a regular basis and we have a self-sustaining combat philosophy that works so long as we don’t get too overloaded with numbers.”

“Lizards?”

“Sorry, habit. That’s what we refer to the Li’vorkrachnika as.”

“The Voku do not have a long term plan for victory against the…lizards. They accept that they must be fought now or the threat will grow worse with time. Do you have a plan?”

“A partial one. There is a line towards the core that we will not cross. The lizards have already spread beyond it so destroying them entirely is beyond our reach. Our goals lie with their colonies rimward of this line, and we do intend to destroy all of them we can find.”

“And the purpose of this line is?”

“We cannot approach the V’kit’no’sat. To do so would risk our discovery.”

“We are in a similar position in that we will not expand beyond our borders. We may fight beyond them, but we will not grow our empire externally. This limitation also seems to negate any chance of destroying the lizard civilization entirely, and from the information we have gathered it seems they can regrow from a single colony.”

“That is our understanding as well, though they suffer from supply limitations like everyone else.”

“Their population growth is predetermined and selective?”

“They grow who they need when they need them, yes.”

“High turnover rate?”

“Very high when they fight us.”

“Then their talent pool is shallow.”

“We believe so, though their leadership is kept safely away from the combat. We know little about them or their longevity.”

“Have they any allies?”

“On occasion they have used other races as tools, but we believe they intended to betray those who would help them eventually. For them there can be no cohabitation of the galaxy. At least that’s our read on them, and we haven’t seen anything to contradict it yet.”

“Point of origin?”

“A world in what we refer to as their core systems. At present they are too well defended to assault, but our ultimate goal is to get there and destroy them. In every engagement we offer them a chance to surrender and in every instance they have refused to do so. We believe annihilation is the only solution, though feel free to point out anything you think we have missed.”

“Some enemies are intractable and must be destroyed. Regrettable as this is, it is the way of the galaxy. The Voku have also offered similar conclusions. If they are to be destroyed, the Skarrons would be the logical ally to combat them coreward of your line. I know you are aware of them. Have you made any overtures in that regard?”

Paul’s eyes narrowed. “The Skarrons are as much an enemy of Star Force as the lizards are. If they want to fight them so be it, but we will not aid them.”

“And if we chose to do so, what would your reaction be?”

“To warn you that they cannot be trusted.”

“That we suspect given what we have heard of them, but to allow the lizards to expand in a safe haven is foolishness. I mean no disrespect, but the logistics are determinate. They must be countered everywhere in order for this pact to be effective.”

“We will have nothing to do with the Skarrons other than to shoot them out of orbit,” Paul said firmly. “What relations you have with them are your business, but do not bring them near us and expect us to stay our hand due to your presence.”

“I am merely making an inquiry. We have not contacted them.”

“And what of your short war with The Nexus?”

“Long past. We have no contact with them since, nor do we wish to pursue the matter beyond our borders. They were repelled and have not tried a second invasion.”

“One of our allies against the lizards is a member race of The Nexus. Will that be an issue?”

“So long as they do not attack us again, there is no issue. You said a member race, but not The Nexus as a whole as an ally?”

“The H’kar were defeated by the lizards and fled rimward. They encountered The Nexus and were granted membership. That membership saved them by giving them the technology to fight back and establish a new home territory within The Nexus. They want their old home back, and are helping us fight the lizards in order to one day accomplish that.”

“They aided them but did not fight the lizards? From what we know The Nexus is extremely insistent that an attack against one is an attack against all and they respond appropriately.”

“The Nexus feels the lizards are a minor threat and are busy fighting much larger ones. What those are I do not know, but they have not made a major push against them.”

“Anyone who considers a race that spreads as quickly as the lizards not to be worth stopping early does not have an understanding of tactics. Technological primitivism is not permanent. If they expand to great numbers, those numbers can be upgraded rapidly at some point in the future with technology influx or breakthroughs.”

“Agreed.”

“Have the lizards been assimilating captured technology?”

“Not in great amounts, but yes, there have been some instances. They operate with a standard tech package in every star system. Changes to it are rare, but sweeping when they occur. There was a race known as the Kvash that the lizards defeated. We know they incorporated one of their weapon designs into their ships prior to their most recent upgrade, the origins of which we do not know.”

“The transition from plasma to an energy beam?”

“Yes. The lizards call them Vichsam. We refer to them as ‘Phasers.’ That upgrade alone has increased their military power considerably.”

“Yet you possess far more powerful weapons. Have they not tried to duplicate them from recovered debris?”

“We try not to let them have any debris, but as we’ve learned over the years it isn’t easy to copy something more advanced. There’s a considerable learning curve involved in reverse engineering even the simplest of objects.”

“You speak of your own technological efforts? Am I to assume you will continue to advance rapidly going forward as you recover the V’kit’no’sat tech you possess?”

“We are advancing…but not sharing.”

“We are not asking. But if your powerbase will continue to grow over the course of the coming war, it is a data point that we need to factor in to our planning. When we purge the lizards off their current worlds, someone must step in to claim them…and it will not be us.”

“We will not be claiming the bulk of those worlds, but we will monitor them. If you can provide the firepower to remove the lizards, I can take the burden of their future owners off your conscience. The Voku and I are already making plans in that regard.”

“May I ask your strategy?”

“Keep most of them barren and monitored through probes and interstellar relays with regional bases to strike down any incursions by the lizards or anyone else we deem inappropriate.”

“And are you capable of doing so now?”

“With the worlds we have already cleansed, yes. We are not pushing faster than we can sustain.”

“And if we start clearing worlds, how many of those can your monitoring sustain?”

“A lot near our borders. Further out will take time.”

“We will need to be in sync on that timetable before we begin launching assaults.”

“How soon will you be capable of doing that? I noticed your construction efforts when I flew in.”

“Those facilities are to service our fleet with repair and resupply. We are capable of launching assaults now even without them in operation. We are waiting to gather more ships and until the moment is right. We must coordinate properly in order for that moment to culminate.”

“Our forces won’t be traveling this far out to fight. The Voku will oversee this region of the conflict. I do caution you, though. The lizard burrow underground well. How is your race suited for infantry and close quarters combat?”

“We know the lizards are smaller than us and may have tunnels where we cannot pass, but those tunnels can be destroyed or expanded upon. Though we fly, we are not disinclined to ground combat.”

“But are you good at it? The lizards are devious enough that even we have to careful when we assault one of their worlds.”

“We will not be needing your assistance, though your caution is noted. We come fully prepared to fight on all warfronts.”

“Including aquatics?”

The Preema shifted. “They inhabit the waters as well?”

“They have a variant designed for them. They are a minority, but any world with significant bodies of water may have colonies there that will need to be removed. Are you capable of doing that?”

“It is difficult for us, but we are able.”

“It is not so difficult for us. We have several member races that are aquatic. Once a reliable connection is made across lizard territory we will be in a position to assist with those combat assignments and we would prefer you leave them to us rather than risk your own people fighting out of their element. Also, if the lizards realize you have this weakness you can expect them to funnel more resources into developing aquatic colonies.”

“Our warships are capable of aquatic travel. Any facilities they have we can destroy.”

“And infantry?”

“There we will not go, but we can deploy machines to compensate. Unless there is more resistance than we expect, we will be able to handle our own invasion zones and would prefer that we do not mix forces unless necessary. We do not want your people, or any others in this pact, to come to harm due to compatibility issues.”

“We are well aware of those issues, but I would still urge you to defer to us in aquatic matters when applicable.”

“We will take that under advisement, but for the most part we wish to deal with this threat alone in engagement theaters.”

“What is your reason for fighting them?”

“We do not wish to take chances with the future.”

“So long as you do not fight dishonorably, you will not find our forces to be a burden. The rest of this pact that the Voku are building I cannot speak for.”

“Do not mistake me, we will fight alongside you when the time is right, but when deciding what worlds to hit next we can handle targets on our own without a combined force.”

“I imagine most missions are going to be like that for us all. At least until we can establish a corridor through lizard territory that we can reliably ship through. The lizards aren’t great at naval ambushes, but they’re adaptive and if you get sloppy they won’t hesitate to try and pick off a ship or two. Though their ships are slow compared to ours…and I assume yours. I am told your technology is on a similar level to that of the Voku?”

“I cannot speak to that, for we know little about them or their combat capability, but we are far beyond the lizards. We are also superior to The Nexus, if that allows you to draw a comparison.”

“Are there any others that you know of in that peer group in proximity to the lizards?”

“Unfortunately no. There are others, but at greater distance and disinterest. The Skarrons are the largest power after us, though their tech level is considerably lower.”

“Who ranks after that?”

“There is a disagreeable race known as the Brechmak on the upper edge of the galactic plane, similar in size to your territory. The lizards have not yet reached them, but if they do I would expect them to encounter a pushback. They are not someone whom we can negotiate with, and are therefore inadvisable as members of the Voku pact.”

“Is that what we’re calling it? The Voku pact.”

“If there is an official name I have not been informed of it.”

“Good enough for me. The Voku pact it is.”

“I can tell you that there are several technologically advanced races of small size near or currently within the boundaries of the lizard empire. A few more advanced than ourselves. They may or may not be inclined to fight, and I would wager the latter. Still, we are working with the Voku to inform as many potential targets as possible to rally as many races as are willing to the fight. Some will not want to engage until they themselves are attacked. We are fortunate that you do not hold to that lack of foresight. You have accomplished much in a short span of time, including the safe harbor to outsiders fleeing to you from the lizard advance. Such actions denote a wise race, and there are regrettably few within this galaxy.”

“That we know of,” Paul said, acknowledging the compliment with a nod. “Most of the galaxy is unknown.”

“I suspect you know more of it than us. Would you be interested in a map swap? Even if yours is dated, I would guess it to cover far more systems than ours.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “The V’kit’no’sat maps are coreward. How far rimward do yours go?”

“Into the next galactic arm, with a few outliers we have made contact with. We do not scout, so they are not thorough. Merely a conglomeration of data acquired from others.”

“How about I show you ours, you show me yours, and then we can decide how much we want to trade data on?”

“An overview?”

“Visual, yes.”

“This is agreeable. Even if you do not give us the maps I am curious to see the extent of the V’kit’no’sat before their collapse.”

“And I am curious,” Paul said, eyeing their armor suits that were splayed out on the other side of the energy field separating the two atmospheres, “as to whether or not those suits are orbit capable?”

“They are. We do not require transports to move to and from a planetary surface.”

“How about from the moon?”

“We could if necessary, but do not typically travel far so exposed. Our wings are built for atmosphere, and flying where there is none is disconcerting. Is your armor capable of reaching orbit?”

“Unfortunately no, it doesn’t fly…yet. We’re working on that, but so far the tech is too bulky to put on a frame that has to remain agile for combat purposes.”

“And the lizards have never employed such armor?”

“Not to my knowledge. They have body suits for cold climates, but no hardened armor.”

“I am surprised that is not one adaptation they have attempted to counter you.”

“It would not work. They know their weaknesses and their advantages. Trying to fight like we do will not suit them. A portable shield generator backpack would be more in line with their style, but they have not fielded any such device yet.”

“All your troops are so equipped?”

“There are minor variations, but yes.”

“And the rest of your population?”

“No, they do not wear armor.”

The Preema lifted a paw towards the right where his suit sat erect like a peeled back statue of a gargoyle. “These suits are combat rated, but all Preema wear similar versions as a matter of course. We can fly without them, but our range and speed are greatly reduced and we have no navigational capability. Such is necessary for our larger worlds to operate on, else there’d be chaos in the skies. When you use such armor on a daily basis you find ways of miniaturizing its functions and making other gradual upgrades. I imagine yours will be more rapid, for rumors of V’kit’no’sat armor were scaling, if I remember correctly?”

“The Voku use scaling tech as well, thought the V’kit’no’sat versions are much more complex. We, however, are not building to recreate what they have made, but to fashion our own. We’re keeping the hard plates even as we gain scaling tech.”

“Is there an advantage in this?”

“There will be. In any case we can’t fly in it, though we do have an avian race within Star Force.”

“Though we share a similar nature, we have no wish to meet them. As we understand it, Humans are the core to your empire, and it is only with you we wish to make ourselves known as friend and neighbor. Others can wait until they are sufficiently advanced.”

“As you wish. I take it that if the lizard threat were to disappear, you would withdraw back into your own territory and not involve yourselves in outside events?”

“We would monitor, but not partake. We have come to accept there are some things we cannot change. The lizards are one thing that we must change, else the future will grow increasingly problematic.”

6

August 24, 2827

Solar System

Earth

“So how much trouble are we in?” Davis asked as Paul walked into his office late in the day as the sun was beginning to set over the Atlantis city spires to the west.

Paul waved a hand toward one of the three desk chairs and telekinetically pulled it to him, spinning it around and sitting down with his arms on the backrest. “I think we might be ok, but I really don’t like a stranger knowing our secret. The Voku I can trust because the dragons hate the V’kit’no’sat more than we do, but the Preema are still pretty much an unknown despite the mental scans I pulled. Their ambassadorial team seemed to be on the level, but we’ve got no choice but to trust them to keep our secret for the simple fact that we can’t stop them from spilling it if they want.”

“How much do they know?”

“They identified us as Ter’nat, which says they know enough. Anyone with casual knowledge of the V’kit’no’sat would know us as Zen’zat. The Ter’nat are recluses by order and don’t interact with outsiders. If the Preema really did receive a ‘get to know us’ packet from the V’kit’no’sat then they know plenty, though they seem clueless as to the cause of their territorial shrinkage. I would guess they truly do not have communication capability with the V’kit’no’sat given the distances involved.”

“How long would it take a courier ship to reach them?”

“Their drives are faster than ours at the moment, so that’s a possibility, but as long as we don’t cross them I don’t yet see a motive for them to betray us. They also implied that they had helped fugitives escape the V’kit’no’sat in the past.”

Davis raised an eyebrow. “Now that’s interesting. Anyone we know?”

“Didn’t get into it. Most of our time was spent prepping for the lizards, but I did pull a decent amount of information from their minds as we did so. They knew I could do it, so they didn’t actively resist my intrusions as they probably could have. Their telekinetic skills are formidable, akin to maybe an acolyte level 70. As always other races never have a full Ikrid package so it’s hard to say for sure, but they could have thrown up defensive blocks if they’d wanted to, and I know they knew how.”

“So they were choosing to be open?”

“A diplomatic tactic. They shared whatever information I requested, but I think they just saw that as being polite while letting me search their minds was more efficient.”

“Did you get a population number?”

“Give or take 8 quadrillion.”

Davis closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Please tell me they’re friendly?”

“When their self-interest is involved, yes, they’re friendlies. They want to kill the lizards before they spread and surround them. They’re not overly concerned about them being a threat to the Preema, but let them run wild for a few hundred thousand years and that could change. They want to nip it in the bud, but can’t, or won’t lock down the territory on their own. They’re adamant about keeping their current borders, so they need us to keep the lizards from moving back in after they’re evicted. For that purpose, they’re being nice.”

“And if it wasn’t for that purpose?”

“Apathy. They’d let the galaxy burn if it didn’t affect them, and they don’t appear to be vindictive. They fought a brief war with The Nexus a while back, but they’re going to make diplomatic contact and request their assistance along the H’kar front. Don’t know if it’ll do any good, but I think it shows that as long as their homeworlds are secure they don’t give a damn about anything else.”

“I’m aware of that invasion, and while you were gone I was able to acquire additional information regarding it from the H’kar. No official documentation was available, but there’s enough lore circulating that it wasn’t hard to find. Seems The Nexus was planning a great crusade that was met with unexpected force and turned back. Word is they haven’t given up, just put it on the back burner for some day down the road.”

“Do they have something The Nexus wants? Their intelligence couldn’t have been that bad to miss the size of their empire. It hasn’t changed much, for they keep a strictly level population along with their fixed borders. They own every damn system within their territory, so there isn’t anyone in their backyard. That big of a hole galaxy is hard to miss.”

“It is curious, but even if we obtained official documents I doubt they would tell us the truth. This was a huge debacle for them that they still haven’t lived down internally. What kind of tech do the Preema have?”

“Different from the Voku, but in the same league. Rigid but collapsible armor, ships are fixed design as is all other large structures. Favor hull armor to shields, though they possess both. Chess piece mentality, battleship their smallest warship. Utilize jumpships that will connect their territory with their staging system at surprising speeds. These guys aren’t messing around and they’re more than fit to fight the lizards. I think the Voku could take them with even numbers, but it’s hard to say without seeing them fight. I don’t suppose there were any visuals of the combat between them and The Nexus?”

“And publicize their defeat? No, there were none to be found and no rumor of there ever having been any in the first place.”

“Well then, this is just speculation from what I was able to glean from their minds, but I think they’re the responsible hammer that won’t pick off more than it can smash. I don’t get the feeling that they are very adaptable, but with them taking a turtle mentality they haven’t exactly needed to hone that ability. The Voku are much more complex, no doubt due to the dragons’ influence. The lizards can’t fool the Voku twice, but if they find a weakness in the Preema, which I doubt will happen, I could see it tripping them up a while. They’re rooted in their winning ways, whereas the Voku are constantly changing and have woven that into their technology and battle strategies. If we had to pick a fight with one of them, I’d rather fight the Preema.”

“Let’s hope that we don’t. Short of the Zak’de’ron ordering them to do so, I don’t feel that the Voku would betray us, but you know them better than I do?”

“Agreed, though I wouldn’t want to see Cal-com put into that position. He trusts the dragons due to their wisdom above all else. Let’s hope they stay that way and don’t try to backstab us. He might balk, but the rest of the Voku wouldn’t.”

“What arrangements have you made with the Preema?”

“We shared some intel, maps mostly, and I got you an extension out towards the rim,” Paul said, pulling out a datachip and tossing it to him. “Didn’t get that decoded until a week ago. Their computer systems are ‘wacky,’ and I’m quoting one of our techs on that. We’ll have a conversion package set up within a year, but right now that bit of info is all we’ve been able to translate out of the data nodule they gave me as a going away present.”

Davis inserted the Star Force datachip into his clear desktop and produced a galactic hologram between the two men that was scaled down to their galactic arm and the rim beyond it. With a few keystrokes Davis had the computer add it to a copy of the master database that he reserved for himself and a few others, seeing thousands of star systems fill in with spotty data. There were lots of gaps in between systems but hundreds of new empires were cataloged, including two very large ones beyond the edge of The Nexus’s territory.

“It seems the mega empires are a galactic fad nowadays,” Paul commented as Davis took a moment to soak in the obvious revelations, then the trailblazer stuck a finger in the map and directed his attention to lizard territory and the scattering of dots there that indicated races within the vast expanse that remained independent.

“Interesting. So there are more out there.”

“Some extremely advanced as well just sitting out the storm,” Paul said with some disgust. “Not sure if I want to congratulate them on surviving or punch them in the face for not stomping on the lizards when they were tiny.”

“The Preema seem to know a lot of what goes on far beyond their borders.”

“Motivated self-interest,” Paul reiterated. “They claim to not scout, rather let the information flow in to them. They were particularly keen to get a piece of the V’kit’no’sat map we have.”

Davis raised an eyebrow. “What did you give them?”

“The chunk surrounding their territory. It seemed about an even trade for what they were offering us, but their ambassador did get his eyes on all of it while we were negotiating. He was rather shocked, so I’m guessing the V’kit’no’sat didn’t boast about how big their empire was to the neighbors.”

“And now they know where to look if they want to reestablish contact?”

“They wanted the map for the other races it detailed, and they were aware that it was badly out of date. As they said, they don’t scout, and in all this time they have never gone looking for the V’kit’no’sat after they were told to basically mind their own business. Again, that’s from the mind of those I met, and there’s a possibility they’re dupes fed misinformation.”

“No, you’re right. The V’kit’no’sat are so large that finding them isn’t going to be a problem if you just head coreward. And this update will help us considerably. Already I’m beginning to glimpse a few insights into The Nexus from these placements. They are not nearly so secure as they would like people to think.”

“Which means the likelihood of them helping us against the lizards is nil, save for the H’kar.”

“About that,” Davis added, his eyes still on the map and all its glorious new data. “There’s some major feelings getting rubbed the wrong way internally. Apparently the H’kar are spending too much time with us and some of the other Nexus members don’t like it. Nothing has happened, but I’ve learned that it’s an underlying thread in their relationship, especially since The Nexus is starting to be viewed badly within the H’kar for refusing to help them retake their old territory. There’s even a few rumors of them leaving to join Star Force?”

That brought Paul’s head up, but Davis waved him off. “There’s no truth in it, at least not as far as they’ve brought to me. There hasn’t even been the slightest discussion, though what the H’kar are thinking internally is anyone’s guess. Their people see us taking system after system while the H’kar’s territorial zone in The Nexus continues to be pilfered. They haven’t lost one of their own systems, but the lizards are making gains nearby and the other races think the H’kar are not fulfilling their duty.”

“Technically they aren’t,” Paul pointed out.

“They don’t have the resources to, or rather the resources and the knowhow.  Every time they engage the lizards without us they lose a lot of ships, as you well know, and their people and those in other Nexus races are noticing as well. Star Force is getting some jealous attention, it seems.”

“Where did you learn all this from?”

“I have established some inroads with the H’kar that led back into The Nexus. I’d like to get a relay link to them, but that’s probably a century off at least. For now we’re utilizing courier ships to cover the gap, but the H’kar are obliging and running routes to keep us in the loop along with their own civilization. Through them I have contact with The Nexus and a few of their more reasonable races, as well as some living within their borders but not part of their organization.”

“Sneaky, sneaky,” Paul commented approvingly.

“Something I learned from you guys when you colonized the outer zone of this system without my knowing about it.”

“Yeah,” Paul said proudly, “we did that.”

“So where are you off to after this?”

“Back to the advanced training group indefinitely. Still got a lot of work to do there. Always have a lot of work to do there.”

“Are you going to help out with the Veliquesh?”

“No. We’ve already got 5 trailblazers lined up for the invasion when it goes down and they don’t need help from me in the prep. I’m sending a chunk of Clan Saber, but I’m going to be remaining here and available to troubleshoot in their absence. We’re looking at a multiple decade mission and I have to stay free to co-op with the Voku and now the Preema going forward.”

“This is going to be the biggest annexation we’ve tried to date. Make sure you guys don’t go too thin on the staffing. We have to get this right from the outset.”

“I know…we know.”

“There’s more to it than you know,” Davis said, finally looking up from the map. “Despite their efforts, the Protovic have sprung a leak.”

Paul rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, that too. Apparently the news of far off kin was too juicy for someone to keep their mouth shut. It’s spread like wildfire throughout their civilization and back into the ADZ. A few details regarding their savagery and our intent to take them out have also surfaced, then got shredded by the rumor mill. Sadly most of the ADZ denizens that are outside Star Force are newborns. They don’t remember us giving their ancestors safe harbor or pulling them off worlds under lizard attack. They’ve grown up here knowing nothing more than what they see on the news or hear from rumors. One that keeps popping up on both is our ‘master plan’ to conquer and enslave all those that we are protecting, either over the course of time or, in more recent versions, once the lizard threat has ended.”

Paul whistled. “That’s definitely eating the crazy cake before it’s baked.”

“These people have no clue what’s going on unless we tell them, and many outside our worlds don’t get or aren’t allowed to view our news broadcasts. There’s a building movement towards a united front against us, much akin to the Rebel Alliance versus the ever dominating Empire in Star Wars.”

Paul sat up straight in his chair, glaring at Davis. “Oh no you just didn’t…”

The slightly older man held up his hand for Paul to stay with him. “They’re romanticizing it, almost like a game because they know they have no leverage on us. They also know that we’ll protect them regardless of how stupid they get. In that situation people tend to allow themselves to get stupider and eventually drown out the ones that are somewhat reasonable, generating more hype as they go until they’re believing their own nonsense. The news of the Veliquesh has amped up that tenfold and is seeming to give truth to the predictions. As a result, everyone is going to be watching very closely to what we do, and I intend to give them plenty of news updates and raw data to analyze.”

“Um…”

“Within reason. They won’t be sending any ships to take a look for themselves. If they do send them packing and I’ll deal with them accordingly. Most of the news agencies know better than to cross me, given our history of fairness. They also know that the more responsible they behave the more leeway I give them with regards to our databases. Most will respect the edict to stay away, and in exchange I’ll supply them with battle footage where acceptable, though most of their analysis is going to be in the civilian centers afterwards.”

“That is going to be a huge mess.”

“Exactly. And I want them to see who it is that we’re conquering and how messed up they are.”

Paul lowered his head and sighed. “Can’t you just let me conquer them too and end this nonsense once and for all?” he said only half sarcastically.

“Their current population is far greater than that of the Veliquesh,” Davis reminded him. “We couldn’t absorb them without it destroying us from within. As it is, the Veliquesh are going to have to be self-contained for decades else they’ll do the same.”

“How big of a threat is this, really? I thought we were long past this nonsense mattering.”

Davis chewed on his lip as he considered how to answer. “We’re dealing with younglings, Paul. Most people in the ADZ outside of Star Force haven’t attained self-sufficiency and are less than 100 years old. They don’t know we’re the good guys, and we have to show them that, again, because of their population turnover. It’s like mowing the grass, you never truly finish. I’m not worried about these other races being a threat to Star Force. Even the proposed economic sanctions they’re tossing about with each other won’t do more than tickle the economy I’ve set up. It’s not about us, it’s about them. We get a steady flow of immigrants from those races because they see a better way to live with us, and it’s the people still there that haven’t understood, or maybe haven’t been born yet that need to know.”

“I still say it’d just be easier to conquer them all, one at a time if necessary, that way we wouldn’t have to deal with them being ignorant in the first place.”

“I know, and agree. But we made agreements that we are not going to break, so long as they hold up their end. They start prohibiting emigration or eating meat and I’ll give you the go ahead to revoke their sovereignty. But so long as they hold to terms, they’re free to be as ignorant as they like. I want to take over the entire galaxy, but know we can’t, V’kit’no’sat and others aside. If we grow too big too soon we’ll collapse internally. How big we can grow without risking that is an ever present question mark in my mind, and I honestly can’t even give you a prediction.”

“So long as we don’t lose our core people, there’s no limit to how large we can grow, theoretically,” Paul pointed out.

“But there’s only so much you and I can keep our eyes on, and you know as well as I do that good people are a minority in the galaxy. We need more of them the larger we grow to keep Star Force free of corruption. A lot of the people we have, that are good and trusted soldiers and techs, are that way because they’re followers. So long as we shine the light and keep it shining they’ll mimic us and follow. If they can’t see the light all manner of problems will arise. How many torch bearers we have is the critical number to our growth, logistical and military challenges aside.”

“And with the mess that the Veliquesh are, you want us to make sure we shine the light as brightly as possible?”

“I don’t need to warn you to do what’s right. I’m warning you to not cut it so close. I know you’re going to have to pull more Archons into this mission than ever before assembled because of the need of our psionics, but you’re also going to have to delay missions against the lizards to do it and I know you hate that. Don’t take what you think you’ll need. Take that and then some and forget the lizards for now. We’re the Jedi, the Veliquesh are the Sith, and this invasion is about showing which side of the Force is stronger. And the ADZ and beyond will be watching to see the outcome. We can’t just succeed in this, we have to kick ass so boldly and smoothly to send a message that everyone needs to hear.”

“That the darkside isn’t stronger?”

“That the darkside isn’t supposed to even exist. It’s a disturbance, an anomaly rather than a peer. The Veliquesh civilization has to be annihilated, and it has to be annihilated by the light of Star Force rather than by the creep of the lizards.”

“So you want us to show off?”

“I need you to show off. The galaxy is mostly followers. Give them something worth following.”

“Alright. I still can’t go, but I’ll make sure the others make this mission lopsided.”

“And it has to be just us. No outside help that could make mistakes.”

“The Protovic don’t want in anyway, I hear. We’ll do this in house, but it’ll take a lot of troops and techs to go big on this one.”

“Go big, Paul. The bigger the better. Get this done and get it done quickly, then you can get back to the lizards. Kill the Sith first, then worry about the stormtroopers.”

“That’s not fair to the lizards. They can actually hit what they’re aiming at.”

7

July 2, 2831

Ghav System (Veliquesh territory)

Umbralsht

“Here we go,” Greg whispered to himself as the four holos of his fellow trailblazers assigned to this crusade winked out above the nexus control boards and he mentally linked with the equipment. His fleet appeared in his mind as well as in holo and he gave the final jump order with his command ship and 56 warships under his command winking out of stellar orbit and taking a few minutes to cross the Ghav System to the far out planet of Umbralsht.

It was the only one that the Veliquesh had colonized in this system as opposed to the cluttered Aphat System where Mike had originally found them. It’d been decided to start with the smallest of the 5 systems they owned after a thorough scouting expedition had been sent to them all. Each had lizards present knocking on their door, so it was likely that Star Force was going to have to fight a 3 way campaign to claim this planet but so be it. They had enough firepower with them to get the job done and then some, with four other command ships and their constituent fleets making the jump into planetary orbit shortly after Greg’s.

Jason, Rafa, Kip, and Oni were here as well to ensure that this mission did not have so much as a hiccup, and they were prepared to stay for the duration of this system’s engagement. If needed they could swap out before they went after the other 4 Veliquesh systems, but Greg knew that the others wouldn’t. They were going to own this, even if it took them the next 20 years to play out. The Veliquesh were not a small empire, and were made all the larger in the scope that their population was the goal of this invasion. They were to be captured, not killed, so orbital bombardment was out of the question. They were going to have to get tricky in order to make this work, which was exactly why Greg and the other trailblazers were here.

When his command ship came out of its jump he saw the planet with a lizard fleet higher up than the Veliquesh defenders and right where the reconnaissance drone had put them less than an hour ago. Neither side was fighting, maintaining what looked like a standoff for the moment, but the lizards immediately began to redeploy as soon as they saw his giant donut of a ship wink into existence after a very hard deceleration. It was followed by the elongated shapes of the warships who maneuvered off the jumppoint to clear it for those yet to come before they began releasing their drones.

Greg began issuing deployment orders to them as soon as they were free, getting his screens set up to cover the larger ships while sending a group off to deal with the lizards. He expected them to run, but if they wanted to stick around and get killed then so much the better. Every ship Star Force took down here was one they couldn’t use again elsewhere and that would matter to someone somewhere who didn’t have to fight these ships at a later date.

The jumpships stayed in formation as the drones shot off towards the lizard fleet and Greg let them go, mentally keeping aware of what was happening but letting the striker in command of that group handle the chase. Meanwhile the Veliquesh fleet was stirring, seeing more and more of the huge Star Force warships jumping into orbit. Did they know of what had happened in the other Veliquesh System? He would have thought so after 5 years, but there was no way to know for sure other than to ask.

Greg activated the comm and accessed the language translation system and linked it to the Veliquesh package that would ensure that their computer systems could understand the transmission. They’d spent the past half-decade preparing for this invasion and finally had all the pieces in place. Now it was time to put it to use and the opening move was Greg’s to make.

“Attention Veliquesh. I am Greg-073 in command of this Star Force warfleet. The lizard threat to you is now over. We are here to secure this system permanently, but I need you to stand down your forces and surrender to us. We are here not only to save you from the lizards but to save you from yourselves. Your civilization has gone to the darkside and it must be cleansed. There is no need for anyone to die if you’re willing to cooperate, and even if you do not we still won’t kill you. We will be taking you prisoner whether you like it or not, and we’ve brought enough firepower to break through whatever defenses you have.”

“We know you have a prophesy that has told of our arrival. We come from a region of space known as the ADZ and have 7 of your people there teaching us of your ways. We also have your purple-skinned kin there, which you will be reunited with once you are fit to do so. The barbarism of the Veliquesh must end, and it will end here and now, one way or another. I do not expect you to surrender, but I am offering it none the less. You have one hour to respond, after which time we’ll begin taking your planet from you the hard way. If after that point you change your minds you will always have the option of surrender, all you need to do is say so. We’re here to save you, after all, but seeing as how you’re currently a bunch of crazy ass holes I don’t expect much sanity from you.”

“So, you have 1 hour. Reply on this frequency if you want to chat. Meanwhile we’ll be destroying or chasing off the lizards. If you’re very confused right now that’s ok. You’ll learn. We’re the good guys and this is how we roll. Your purple-skinned kin understand and respect this, and are valued allies. You will be too, one day. That day can be today if you choose. If not…get ready for a beatdown. We haven’t come all this way to bluff, and there are a lot of lizards closer to home for us to kill. This system now belongs to Star Force. You have 1 hour to come to grips with that. You may respond earlier than that if you wish.”

Greg cut the transmission then keyed in a recorded message from the Protovic Chancellor. Kip had asked him to make it in the hopes that they would identify Star Force with their kin and maybe some of them wouldn’t fight back. Greg didn’t know if the odds on that were very good or not, but even if one person chose to surrender it was worth the minor effort. The message would run about 7 minutes and give them some history and context on the Protovic, as well as outlining the reasons why the Veliquesh civilization could not be reunited with them in its current state.

Greg had heard it before so he didn’t bother to listen to it, rather sending out deployment orders and scattering his jumpships to multiple orbital coordinates to set up for the coming assaults on the Veliquesh battle stations. The Archons weren’t going to assault them one or two at a time, but rather hitting all of them simultaneously. That would cause chaos with their defense fleet as to which position to reinforce as well as making it abundantly clear that the Veliquesh were outmatched.

As Greg’s ships dispersed so did Rafa’s fleet, with the other three still coming in through the jumppoint and making it even more intimidating to those on the planet before them. There was a chance that they’d see the force involved and come to take it as a fulfilment of their prophecy given the fact that they were going to kick the lizards out of the system. To that end Greg keyed in a relay that would send some of their battlemap data to the Veliquesh so they could see the engagements with the lizards as they progressed. This whole affair needed to be as open and truthful as possible, but deep down Greg knew that these people literally were insane. There might have been a few reasonable ones that were able to slip through their purging cracks, but the restoration of their race was going to come from the next generation. These, after they captured them, were pretty much going to be babysat and contained unless they could bring themselves to reject everything they’d lived by up until now.

The odds of that weren’t good, but with a total population of around 3 trillion there might be some in that mix…and if they’d made it this far without going fully to the darkside then they deserved a chance to climb into the light.

Which was why the assaults on the battle stations were not going to be destructive affairs. They were going to have to disable them and then board the technological monstrosities. They were built more out of raw material than anything, forcing the lizard plasma weapons to peel away layer after layer of armor and superstructure to take them out, and even with their new phaser weapons they would still take quite a pounding before they went down…which no doubt was why they’d survived so long in this never ending war.

His bridge crew would be monitoring all frequencies just in case the Veliquesh responded, so Greg didn’t worry about it and focused on arranging his fleet for the coming assault as he noticed a few lizard cruiser kills reported back from elsewhere in the system where his ships were hunting them down. They were doing so remotely, and even with the signal lag they had still been able to ambush a few after they’d made their emergency jump away from the planet and had not yet aligned for their next jump.

Star Force ships were faster, so the lizards had to run and keep running to have any chance to get away. If they delayed for any reason they were dead, and his troops were too good at this to let the opportunity slip away, so when he received a request for one of the jumpships to peel off and follow the drones to reduce the signal lag he gave permission for it to break ranks and head out to a different location where they expected some of the lizards to run to next prior to trying to get back to the star. Without a jumpship they wouldn’t be able to leave the system aside from a very slow jump to a nearby star system, and their jumpships hadn’t been able to load up prior to the Star Force fleet spooking them when they arrived.

They were probably trying to play ping pong with the system’s gravity wells to find a rendezvous point to collect the cruisers and then try to make a run for the star, meaning the warship that he’d just let go after them was going to have a challenge on its hands. Greg didn’t expect they’d get them all, space was just too big for that, but Star Force had gotten good at running down and disabling ships, though in this case they’d have to be destroyed rather than captured.

He hoped the same thing wouldn’t be necessary with the Veliquesh fleet. While they could board the battle station and take them over from within, a starship was another matter entirely. There were too many to snag first off, and those they couldn’t get an IDF gel packet on could run or, in a probable scenario given their sacrificial society, go lizard and ram the drones. If that happened they wouldn’t be able to capture all of the Veliquesh as was their goal, but there were only so many opportunities they could give these bastards to live. If they were truly determined to die fighting, some would probably find a way to do so.

Yanaris stood in his battle armor alongside four other security guards onboard one of the Veliquesh’s orbital battle stations. One of the Li’vorkrachnika’s best tactics in taking them down was to blast a hole in the hull then send suicide squads into the interior and try to disable them from within. Yanaris and the others were here to prevent that from happening, but it was not the Li’vorkrachnika that were attacking. Another unknown adversary had arrived and was overrunning the orbital defenses, but beyond that Yanaris did not have any knowledge of what was going on, nor did the others with him.

They knew they had a duty, but the breach point had already been lost. Right now he was standing with the others behind a closed door heavy enough to stand up against considerable firepower. It was blocking the most critical section of the station from the attackers and Yanaris was here to insure that they did not make it through. Any cuts would have to be made into the material of the door itself, for it would not open no matter how much trickery you allowed. It was a big, fat wall and would have to be dealt with as such, and any holes cut into it would allow his team to shoot back before the attackers could come through, making it very costly to them and perhaps enough to stop them entirely.

Yanaris’s armor didn’t cover his entire body. It exposed his hands and face, but had an otherwise full ornamental helmet that came up to the underside of his chin and was designed to be flexible yet resilient. He could turn his head as much as he liked and it wouldn’t interfere, giving him the situational awareness necessary in battle that a full helmet would have hindered. Around his left arm was coiled his weapon, a Shas’tik cannon that he would use to shoot through the cutting holes if they manifested, though he knew that if they got to his position the rest of the battle station was essentially lost. He and the four with him were the last defenders protecting the critical systems and operational crew and they would do their duty no matter what the outcome.

Even if they died there was a chance that others would come to the aid of the station, so he planned to do everything he could to stop or slow the attackers, even though he had no idea what they were capable of. During the time of waiting he cycled through a light, standing prayer pose mentally uttering a venatra when a bright blue light poked through the door. It shook him enough that he jerked his arm up and took aim automatically, as did the others, but the brilliant dot didn’t expand. It barely moved at all, tracing upwards ever so slightly.

Yanaris held his aim, but as the minutes ticked by the snake-like weapon began to bob and his head began twitchy. The waiting was unbearable as a tiny line was made forming a half circle, giving him nothing to shook back against. There were no explosives going off, no plasma holes being chewed out, just thin, tiny, precise dot of light ever so slowly cutting a path around a section of the door.

When the Veliquesh beside him fired his weapon Yanaris did likewise in reflex, with a dozen or more yellow energy beams sizzling against the inside of the door and barely scratching the surface. Yanaris glared at the other trooper, angry at himself for the breach in protocol, but there was no time for recriminations. He held his aim again, steady as he could manage with the others doing likewise as they waited, and waited.

When that bright blue dot finally finished its circle it went out, then the attackers began to pull the circular plug towards them, at which point Yanaris and the others stepped backward and took up positions alongside either wall in the short hallway that led to a not so reinforced door behind which were the personnel responsible for maintaining the critical systems.

Yanaris took a knee in front of one of the others, letting him have a clear firing line over his head while using his own body to block the lower half of his while keeping the center of the hallway clear for hopefully some of the attackers’ weaponsfire to miss through…but when the plug of the now useless door was rolled clear there was no one to see on the other side.

The Veliquesh held their ground and waited for a few seconds, then Yanaris realized he had frozen up from panic, unable to do anything more than stand still and breathe. He cursed himself but was unable to do anything about it, even his eyes wouldn’t turn, but they were still open and blinking though he couldn’t move a single muscle of his own accord. Somehow his fear had turned him into a living statue.

Then a figure appeared in front of that hole and ducked down to step through, with Yanaris trying to pull the trigger on his weapon but unable to. He expected the others to fire but when the black-armored attacker walked through casually and sustained no hits Yanaris didn’t understand why the others didn’t shoot him. He couldn’t turn his head to see what they were doing, but he could see the attacker draw a weapon from behind his back and fire a pink burst of energy to Yanaris’s left, followed by two more shots as the rage and confusion swelled inside of him a moment before the attacker took aim at him and the Veliquesh was hit and fuzz filled his head a split second before he blacked out.

The striker shot all five Veliquesh with his stun pistol, then free of the effort to freeze their minds he extended his psionics beyond the next door and felt a group of personnel taking refuge there, maybe 20 or so within his range. He used his Pefbar to examine the door, finding it was a simple latch, then he telepathically told two of the commandos outside to come in behind him.

As soon as their dirty white armor stepped through the hole he ran forward and kicked the door open, throwing a Fornax blast ahead of him that took all of the Veliquesh down to the ground for a moment, but that was all he needed to come through and begin firing stun blasts on their fallen bodies, with the commandos fanning out to either side in the room and doing likewise.

The striker ran forward, scanning more of the room and the surrounding hallway connections and finding a single individual behind a locked door. He stopped and focused hard on that one, hacking into his mind and rendering him unconscious directly. Tagging that door on the battlemap with a retrieve icon he moved on further into the station’s interior as an army of armored Kiritas followed them up and began collecting the prisoners, binding them up and administering patches to their exposed heads that would keep them unconscious until they wanted them otherwise.

Once their prizes were wrapped appropriately in a tiny anti-grav harness they were floated a half meter off the ground and dragged back out through the cut doors in the massive station one or two at a time as the Kiritas took them to the captured hangar and handed them over to the dropships. Once full they’d make a trip over to the cargo jumpships waiting nearby in orbit, unload, then come back again to pick up more in a cycle that would continue round the clock for most days in the years to come.

8

December 11, 2831

Ghav System (Veliquesh territory)

Umbralsht

Jason ran hard to keep pace with the mech star as it approached the Veliquesh army guarding a reclusive facility on the third southern continent’s expansive barren plains. There wasn’t so much as a blade of grass amongst the dirt and gravel his golden boots were racing across, but at the same time there wasn’t a lick of elevation change either, making for a very flat battlefield that had a pair of orbital defense clusters that were likewise keeping aircraft at bay. The facility covered less than 2 square miles but it had several hundred thousand Veliquesh troops guarding it, including what looked to be at least 200 tanks based on what had come outside and into view of orbital scan thus far.

Jason had several options for dealing with the facility but had elected for a brute force, simplistic approach. Rather than send a group of highly skilled infantry to take the Veliquesh on in a widespread brawl he had tagged 5 mechs to accompany him in and subdue the defenders for a cleanup team to collect and remove. That put a lot of emphasis on those five mechs, but the Veliquesh tanks didn’t have enough firepower to seriously threaten them unless they could focus their firepower on a single target and pound it for a few minutes.

That wasn’t going to happen, for this star of mechwarriors had fought together enough times to be able to feel where each other were and come to their aid even without use of the battlemap. All were Archons and were using a watered down imitation of battlemeld in that they kept an Ikrid link between each other to coordinate their combat. That meant they couldn’t get too much spacing in between them, but spread them over a kilometer or so and they acted like a single mind, with one able to communicate with another with no comm delay.

The Veliquesh would never be able to isolate one of them, leaving Jason the ‘weak’ link here. He could have come in a mech himself, but they needed an infantry component and no one aside from the other 4 trailblazers could keep up with him. They were busy with other campaigns across the planet so he was handling this one solo…or rather in tandem with the mechs with him being their tiny little brother in his golden titan armor.

He was using the powered enhancements to augment his running in order to keep pace when the Veliquesh fired the first shots. Their tanks used the same yellow energy beams that their infantry weapons did, with thirteen hitting the first of 3 neos and being absorbed by the mech’s shields. Each beam persisted for nearly a full second, making the mech look like it was the central hub in a brilliant spider’s web of energy that began to oscillate as the Veliquesh tanks continuously repositioned, floating over the ground and moving out to engage the mechs as their infantry followed behind, intent on fighting them with their tiny personal weapons.

That kind of stupidity had been seen throughout the invasion, for the Veliquesh had no qualms about wasting personnel. It was strange, for against the lizards they used considerable caution to preserve most of their forces, but against the drastically superior Star Force troops they were fighting almost in kamikaze fashion, as if they would rather die opposing the ‘heretics’ than run away to live and fight another day.

Jason had used that to his advantage many times to draw the Veliquesh troops out into easy takedowns. These savages had some skill, but it was so mixed in with craziness that they were easy to manipulate even when he wasn’t inside their heads. A proper soldier went into battle without internal struggles to fight, so that the only opponents they had were exterior. These Veliquesh, like their brothers across the planet, felt they had something to prove in combat, namely that their sick religion was legit and their prophecies would fulfill themselves over the course of events no matter how differing the facts appeared at present.

This left them fighting a ghost war, trying to make reality bend into their expectations. This greatly restricted their adaptational ability, whereas Jason had no such hindrances. If he came up against Veliquesh that were fighting better than he was he’d pull back, regroup, and find a different way to beat them. When you fought a ghost war you had a battle plan that you believed would work, and you tried to make it work even when it was obvious that it wasn’t. You had to delude yourself rather than rationally evaluate what was going on, for your subconscious mind would start telling you something other than your beliefs held, and irrational people would never accept that.

So it wasn’t surprising that these Veliquesh somehow convinced themselves that infantry weapons were going to give them a way to defeat the five mechs before them. Jason didn’t mind, for it just made these troops all the easier to capture, but there was the small problem of them getting in around the mechs’ feet. They wouldn’t slow them down…if they were willing to step on them, which was not the case. Had they been lizards the Archons would have taken care not to if possible, but ultimately would run them over if they had to. Here the objective was to capture the enemy troops, so mashing them into pulp wasn’t an option.

Jason was going to make sure that didn’t happen, acting as minesweeper should any of them get bogged down with suicidal crazies swarming them like groupies. The neos had some options to deal with them, but the two sabers were a bit more ungainly. They were a special mech variant that Paul had developed independent of Cora’s genius and were only used by four Clans, Sangheili being one of them. They were a deviation from standard Star Force mech design in that they were quadruped and shaped like horses…with a spike coming out the top of their heads.

That spike wouldn’t be used today, but fit in with the melee theme and was technically a form of sword more in line with some of the biological ones that the V’kit’no’sat had. The mechs were fast at straight line speed, but their maneuvering capabilities in engagements were subpar. That said, they were a solid mech that was geared more towards the future with many upgrades assumed to be forthcoming. Why the two mechwarriors piloting them had chosen them was a personal matter, for Jason hadn’t picked equipment for this mission. He preferred they piloted what they felt most comfortable with, so the two ‘unicorns’ were accompanying the three humanoid neos with Jason running between them in the middle right slot in the six-man line.

While Jason hadn’t chosen what mechs they used, all the mechs in this invasion had been reconfigured with disabling weapons. They each still carried one lethal one, just in case it was needed, but when Jason finally gave the star the go ahead to engage, the neos fired huge orbs of pink stun energy into the tanks where normally they would have been firing maulers out of their wrist cannons. There was a risk in that, for if that amount of stun energy hit one of the infantry it might kill them. Humans were more resistant to stun energy than other races because they were descended from Zen’zat, not Ter’nat, and it had been part of the upgrades given to them.

But in order to take down the crews inside the tanks they had to hit them with enough stun energy to soak through the armor and into the cockpit. That yield had been tuned during the first weeks of ground combat so now they knew how much they had to hit them with in order to take them down. Rather than load it all up into one shot they watered down the energy orbs with a binding agent that would amp up the persistency of the stun energy in the material it hit. That meant when the first orb hit a tank it would render its surface with the stun energy that would cling to it like static electricity. Subsequent hits would increase the saturation until it would penetrate into the cockpit and create a field through the tank that would knock out anyone inside.

That left infantry hits less dangerous, but still potentially deadly…plus the misses from the mechs that hit the ground would leave a circle of invisible stun residue potent enough that for about 20 seconds would function as a stun mine for any infantry walking over top of it. That was a sweet side effect that hadn’t been planned, for his mechwarriors rarely missed their targets.

Having to hit each tank with multiple hits wasn’t a problem, so as more and more yellow beams stretched across the sky marking the mechs and trying to burn through their shields one or two pink orbs would follow them back per second and hit a tank, with Jason knowing it was down only when it stopped firing, for it was mechanically undamaged from the attacks.

Some of them kept moving, but thanks to the pancake flat terrain it wasn’t like they were going to run off a cliff or something. Jason had one pass him by, motoring on anti-grav and heading on a random heading past the mechs with its crew asleep at the wheel. Something about that seemed funny, but if one of those tank beams hit him he’d be in trouble. His shields were far less powerful than the mechs but he could still take one or two hits, in theory. He wasn’t interested in testing that, so as the mechs engaged the tanks and the ranges closed, they physically met up with each other and the trailblazer ran past one of the tanks and psionically knocked out its crew as he headed for the ranks of infantry behind them.

They were approaching in columns and jogging in formation…which made them all the easier to target with area of effect weapons. They should have approached scattered, but it seemed like holding to formation was one part of their delusional plan to achieve victory.

In reality it made it all the easier for Jason, for he was an area of effect weapon, and launched himself into a sprint and dove into the nearest column as they saw and fired at his armor. Most of their shots missed, with the few that hit being inconsequential. He knocked aside the first of the red and green-faced Protovic and pushed into their lines with the impacts with their armor draining his shields further. He let that persist as he emitted a Fornax field around him and knocked them down like a giant paintbrush from the sky had touched the front row and made a swath all the way to the back of their formation.

They didn’t stay down long, for as soon as his disabling aura passed them they regained their bodily control and got to their feet, but Jason had delayed them from getting to the mechs. When he got to the back and saw clean air ahead of him all the way up to the facility a few kilometers off he wheeled around and pulled out a rack of stun grenades, cradling it in his left hand as he ran back into the now chaotic mess of troops and started chucking them at the densest clusters of enemy troops.

Each of the little grenades glowed when activated and had a light adhesion surface, so that when he hit one of their armored suits it would stick like a weak magnet and detonate per its programming based off point of contact. Jason had set these to one second, so as he ran through the troops doing a fair impression of the Master Chief from Halo he stuck grenades to troops with just enough time for him to run out of range, then they’d physically blow apart releasing the stun energy within in what looked like water balloon pops.

When he finished his crate he chucked the container aside and pulled out a pair of stun pistols from his back rack and got to work with individual shots up until the other infantry columns got near the mechs, then he diverted to start clearing the idiots away from the walking machines while they methodically took down the tanks.

On another part of the planet Kip was invading one of their cities with a few hundred Archons operating in battlemeld pairings that were making good use of their Lew abilities and mowing down dozens, even hundreds, of civilians in a single pass. The area of effect stun ‘lines’ were far more useful than infantry weapons and were allowing the Archons to knock out the Veliquesh faster than the retrieval teams could pick them up.

Originally those capable of the Lew and Jini abilities had been spread out across multiple missions, but after seeing how ridiculously effective it was at knocking out the civilians and even the stupid soldiers who chose to fight them hand to hand in the streets rather than taking advantage of the urban terrain, he’d reorganized most of them into one team that was tearing across this city in front of cleanup crews of commandos and a few other Archons that were hunting down and stunning those that were missed.

At present Kip’s troops were assaulting 6 different cities simultaneously and cleaning up 4 others, but by pooling this group together it was making this assault so much easier and he planned to continue with the tactic against the largest cities. Had Humans not had the Ikrid blocks in place he’d have been horrified to think what the V’kit’no’sat could have done to them in a similar manner. This wasn’t even a fight, merely a dance off with the enemy dropping to the ground unconscious after a few choreographed tandem moves.

Kip was there on the ground, but rather than helping with the sweeps he was perched atop one of the Veliquesh buildings and watching everything happening via battlemap. This was going so smoothly he expected something bad was going to happen to compensate for their good fortune and he was going to be in position to respond to it personally. Not only did he have a jump pack layered onto his armor he also had an eagle flight exoskeleton standing beside him so he could cross kilometers of city when needed. It wasn’t something he could fight in, merely a little aerial motorcycle that he could strap on for travel here and there, but it was more efficient for this type of mission than using a skeet.

After half the city was clear his guess proved correct, though not in the way he suspected. He got a report from aerial reconnaissance of an assembly of Veliquesh in one of the unsecured sections of the city prepping another sacrificial ceremony, but this one had hundreds of pedestals being assembled.

“Oh no you don’t,” the trailblazer said, jumping up from his seated position and crossing to his eagle in a few steps. He strapped in and flew off the building and kept low to the rooftops to avoid the few anti-air batteries that were still in play. His skeets were finding and taking them out, but since this ceremony was going down in an area still controlled by the enemy he wasn’t going to risk getting hit by playing aerial fighter. Instead he even ducked down in between some of the taller buildings and navigated the artificial terrain, drawing several rifle shots from below but they missed as he zipped across the cityscape at considerable speed.

It took him 3 minutes to get to the plaza where there were already 2 green pyres lit and people being strapped onto others six at a time. It seemed they were trying to up the number of sacrifices in order to gain a blessing from their fictitious Nash, probably to stem the ‘magical’ methods his Archons were using to take control of the city, but Kip was going to have none of it.

He flew out over top of the assembly of what looked to be at least 10,000 people and set his eagle to fly to a predetermined rooftop nearby before dropping out of it and falling into the savage horde. Feathering his jump pack he angled his fall and landed near one of the lit pyres. With a telekinetic jerk he severed the internal components and extinguished the flame…revealing the half destroyed bodies of those who had been alive less than a minute ago.

Kip sent out a huge Fornax field and held the effort, blanketing some 18 of the pyres as he killed the other active one then worked his way around to three more. After that he had to release the effort to allow his mental tissues to recharge, during which time he made good use of his other psionics and stun weapons. The Veliquesh still tried to stop him, not by attacking him, which many did, but by delaying him long enough for them to burn at least a few more people before he could stop them.

But the trailblazer could sense their thoughts, for they were literally all screaming with rage in the same insane mental voice. The ceremony had to be completed, no matter what they had to do to stop the ‘demon.’

It wasn’t the exact word, but it was close enough that Kip took the slander as a compliment as he made use of several Ikrid inquiries as he moved about, fighting as little as necessary, to head off the attempts to activate other pyres, including some that were still being hauled in via transport. Those they set up in the streets nearby and dragged their unwilling prisoners out there to try and avoid him, but he knew what was happening before most of the crowd did and successfully killed every pyre before they could be lit…aside from the two that had been active when he arrived.

Then in an equally horrific act, the bunches of bound prisoners were turned on and began to be hacked apart and sometimes decapitated with knives and other bladed weapons. It seemed that if they couldn’t complete the ritual through fire they’d do it through lesser means. Unfortunately Kip couldn’t get to all of them in time, but those he did he stopped cold with so many psionic abilities it looked from the air like some kind of bomb hit the crowd and mowed down hundreds of people within a matter of seconds.

That invisible bomb kept popping up at location after location until the crowds finally decided to scatter when there was no longer any prisoners to execute. Some were dead, the rest were unconscious and now out of reach across a sea of equally silent bodies.

Kip stayed there and chased off or knocked out the rest of the bastards, then patrolled his prisoners both visually and with Ikrid to ensure there were none active hiding amongst the rest. He spotted two and headed to them directly, finding that they were both prisoners that hadn’t been entirely killed.

“Damn,” he whispered, dropping to a knee next to one and mentally linking with the other across a short distance. Their bodies were slashed so badly that there was no way he could save them and he knew it, which was why he didn’t call for an emergency dropship flight. They were both awake but still bound by the hands and feet, so Kip numbed the pain and telekinetically snapped the corded cuffs as the one 20 meters off slipped from his mental grip.

The one just in front of him persisted and looked up at him, shivering from the horror that had just been silenced as much as from the blood loss. Both were female and looked to be from the prime cattle they raised in seclusion and ignorance for these sick occasions. This one didn’t understand what was going on, but as she looked at his gold armor she mouthed a word that Kip didn’t recognize vocally, but mentally he interpreted the sentiment as ‘thank you.’

A moment later her eyelids closed and her head collapsed to the ground, resting in the pool of her own blood…but her life didn’t fade as fast as the other one, persistently hanging on despite her gruesome injuries.

“Shit,” Kip said, taking one quick look around him with Ikrid before pulling the gauntlet off his right hand and pressing his flesh against her forehead…one of the few places where she wasn’t cut. If she was going to fight to hang on then he’d do what he could, even if it was futile. He called for a dropship with a medic, knowing it would take at least half an hour to get here and that she didn’t have that kind of time, but if he didn’t then there was really no hope for her.

An urge in him built as he connected to her through physical contact to enhance his control over her body as he manually tried to lock down the damage, using a combination of Ikrid hacking and telekinetic patches to reduce her bleeding and put her body into a semblance of recovery mode. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but by taking away some of the randomness of her panic mode he could maybe help her body heal a bit quicker. It was just a crazy idea but he felt like doing something rather than just waiting for her to die.

His hatred for what they’d done boiled over in him and he didn’t recognize the instability surging beneath it until it nearly overwhelmed him…at which point the ascension forced itself to prominence. He resisted it at first, not wanting to let go of his hold on the woman, but finding a way to do both he let it creep its way into what would have been four red flashing lights had he been wearing a biomonitor, but he knew the feeling regardless.

When the tissue growth activated it was full body…but far less intense than what he’d gone through to get bioshield. Still he had to fight to keep his hold on the woman and the rest of her blood from spilling out onto the plaza’s ornamental paving stones. When the ascension finished his hold on her morphed into a new sense, in which he could ‘see’ her body from a new perspective. Working on instinct or genetic memory or whatever it was, he pushed several new avenues available to him and her cellular regeneration spiked…not enough to even compare to a regenerator, but it was enough for her wounds to start patching and the internal organ damage to start closing off and engaging emergency healing options equivalent to closing blast doors on a starship with a hull breach.

Kip didn’t know what he was doing but he just went with it, every now and then taking a peek around the area with Pefbar but fighting the internal battle nonstop to the point where he had to manually force her respiratory systems to keep functioning when they tried to shut down. As he goosed her healing along he essentially acted like a second brain giving her body orders and keeping her alive while unconscious and unaware of what was going on.

Somehow he managed to keep her clinging to life until the dropship with skeet escort flew directly over him and hovered above the unconscious crowd, for there were no good spots to land nearby. A team of commandos dropped out, followed by a pair of armored medics who came over to him.

“I can’t release her. I’m all that’s keeping her alive. I’ll move her inside then work with me enroute to the command ship. We’re going straight to the regenerator on Greg’s flagship,” he said as he telekinetically lifted her body while he maintained his touch on her forehead. One of the medics told the pilot to fly lower and he brought it down with only a meter of clearance over the unconscious bodies. Kip set a collection ping on the battlemap, knowing that others would follow it up and take these people prisoner before they could wake or be killed by others in the city. He added a hazardous tag to it then let it be, focusing all of his energy on the woman as he walked her into the dropship with the medics while the commandos stayed behind to begin the collection effort and temporarily secure the site.

9

“Archon, we have it,” the medic said holding a V’kit’no’sat regenerator in his hand. “Let go of her.”

Kip let go of her head as she lay on the medical bed, still somehow clinging to life as the medic pulled the tattered remains of her shirt off her partially armored chest and laid the gleaming silver piece of technology directly onto the exoskeletal strip that ran down the middle of her flat torso. The hardened, black scaly plates didn’t cause the tiny tendrils of the regenerator any trouble for they sank into her body as if the hard patches weren’t even there.

The device continued to branch out across her like a mess of tree roots, dipping down under her pants and spreading out across most of her body. Immediately the sensors built into the bed began to show her vitals improving as the regenerator started to rapidly repair the damage done to her.

Kip sighed, knowing that she’d live past this point. The regenerator could revive those who were not functioning, so he had no doubt about its ability to heal her injuries. It’d even replace her lost blood, though it’d be limited to the physical matter within her body, meaning she’d have to eat a lot to give it the necessary mass to replace something like a missing arm…fortunately all of hers were still mostly intact, making the recovery process that much more simple.

The trailblazer took a step back and stumbled, suddenly feeling the consequences of his ascension as the adrenaline induced numbness began to wear off.

“Are you alright?” one of the medics said, with three of them hovering around the patient and a score of others scattered around the medbay.

“Yes and no. I need you to run a full scan and send the results back to Earth. Tag it ‘new psionic data.’”

“New?” the head medic asked. “Your disorientation is ascension residue?”

“Yeah, I got fried and didn’t have time to deal with it properly. And damn it all, I didn’t have a biomonitor on. Get me scanned quickly and maybe there will be something salvageable.”

“Over here,” one of the other medics said, motioning him to an empty table. He began extruding the necessary equipment from the concealed wall niches as Kip deactivated and stepped out of his armor, leaving the Christmas tree of apparatus standing in place as he rolled onto the table.

“What do you want done with her after she’s healed?”

“Keep her unconscious and send her over to the prisoner ship with the others, standard protocol,” he said, closing his eyes and laying his head back. “Wake me when you’re done scanning. I need to slip into Sesspik before my head explodes.”

The female Protovic woke up in a groggy state not knowing where she was or what had happened to her, but as soon as her memories caught up she reacted violently, jumping up off the narrow bed and hitting her head on the low ceiling above it. She bounced down and onto the floor, then scrambled to her feet looking around in a panic as she clawed at her own body searching for her injuries amidst the memory of pain.

But there were no wounds, which she could clearly see given that she wasn’t wearing any clothes. Her thin physique was much like that of a Human, save for that fact that she had no hair or breasts. Female Protovic still bore the younglings during reproduction, but they were born into a fleshy egg sack that then gestated externally to produce offspring that could eat solid food so there were no mammary glands in their genome.

To her that was normal, for she’d never known of another race. She’d spent most of her life in seclusion along with her sisters in the Renval where they trained their bodies and minds for clarity and purity while they awaited their graduation to the second phase of their progression towards becoming Advarchs. Naisha had recently been moved into that second phase of her life, only to end up bound as a prisoner and taken out into a plaza for some horrific purpose. She didn’t know what had happened, but the numerous stabbings that she’d suffered would not leave her memory and she kept flopping around on the floor in nervous twitchings for a long time before the lingering panic finally bled off.

That left her looking around and wondering where she was, and if she was in any more danger. All she could see was the confines of a tiny room that had two doors. One was closed and the other was open. She stood up and poked her head inside it, finding but an unusual chamber that resembled a lavatory. Inside it was a stack of folded clothing, also foreign.

Naisha didn’t know what was going on, so she went to the other door and tried to find a way to open it but there was no handle or keypad. It was shut and no amount of prying with her fingers could get her to move it. Normally she would have accepted her situation and gone along with the flow, assuming she was where she was supposed to be, but the room did not look Veliquesh and after what had just happened her trust levels were running low.

After a few minutes of walking around the small room and looking at every facet of it a hologram appeared in front of a flat screen on the wall with the image of an alien, yet it spoke their language.

“Hello. You are probably wondering where you are and what is happening, and this recorded message has been designed to answer the largest questions. I will be your guide through the transition process, which will be an entirely solitary affair. You are currently in transit from your former home to a new one that we have built for you. Who are we, you may be asking? We are Star Force. If you haven’t heard of us already let me make this as simple as possible…we’re the ones invading your home and taking you prisoner, not because we’re the enemy but because we’re your friends.”

“You’ll notice that you’re not dead. That’s because we didn’t come here to kill you, but to save you from a corrupt and horrific existence. The Veliquesh civilization that you were born into is an abomination. We are killing that abomination but giving you another chance at life. You are onboard one of our jumpships at the moment and will remain in this chamber until we arrive at your new home. There you will be kept in isolation until you have earned your freedom. If you choose not to cooperate, so be it. You will not be harmed, but you will also not be allowed any contact with the outside world. If you choose to live that way we will accommodate you. If you want something more then you’ll have to be willing to learn new things and unlearn old lies that have blinded you.”

“This will be hard for you, we know, which is why we’re keeping you by yourself. No one else can tell you what to do, or punish you for not doing something. It’s just you and the automated information database. Explore, learn, make mistakes and question everything. There will be no reprisals of any kind. This is your time, your chance at a fresh start. Make use of it or not. The choice is yours.”

“For now just stay where you are, food will be brought to you through the panel to the left of your bed. There is a set of clothes for you to wear, if you wish, in the other chamber. You can stay nude if you like, no one will be monitoring you, but everything from here on out will be Star Force equipment, including the clothing. It is safe, do not worry, for we have many of your race as allies and are well familiar with your biology and needs.”

The alien moved to the side and an image of a Veliquesh appeared beside it, except that it wasn’t right. It had purple markings instead of red.

“What the Human says is true. I am part of Star Force, as you will have a chance to become if you prove yourselves worthy. If not they will take care of your for the remainder of your life, asking nothing in return. Why would they do that? Because they are the protectors of all life, no matter where you come from or what race you are. That’s why you weren’t killed during the invasion, and that’s why my race is allied with them. I was born into Axius, which is something you will learn about later, so I have been Star Force my entire life. They are not the enemy, and I ask that you take the time to question everything. That is not what you have been told to do since birth, but it is what you will need to find a way to do now.”

“This room,” the alien continued, “has a learning module. Touch the crystal below the screen to access it and you will have instructions to follow from there. The trip to your new home won’t take long, and if you feel like doing nothing that is alright. The learning will take place at a speed of your choosing, or not at all. We’re flexible like that. This is your journey and your future. Proceed as you wish, but know that we are not your enemy, and while it seems like we’re the bad guys, in truth we just rescued you from the bad guys. It make take a long time for you to understand that, but so be it. We’ve got time, and so do you, for we don’t make sacrifices of any kind, and you have no need to fear for your life.”

“Use the terminal,” the Veliquesh added. “Listen and learn. I wish you luck, my long lost brothers and sisters. Be brave and think. The truth doesn’t mind verification. Only lies want you blind to other possibilities.”

The hologram shut down, but a button underneath the screen on the wall lit up with a blinking light that wouldn’t stop.

Naisha didn’t press it. She didn’t do anything but stand still wrapping her arms around herself and rubbing the exoskeleton strips on her elbows.

Sacrifice? Is that what they were doing to her and the other captives? She’d never been taught anything about that growing up, other than what the word meant. In fact she didn’t know much about her own people, aside from that they were fighting a war and that she was one of a few selected from birth to perform an important role in the survival of their race.

But they’d just tried to kill her?

Or maybe she was already dead? The memories of the stabbings were pounding in her head but nothing else was there. She didn’t know how she’d gotten to this room or even where she was. If what the alien said was true she was on a starship, but there was no way to tell. Gravity felt normal, but that didn’t mean anything.

Her own people had just killed her, or tried to…then the memory of the golden armor appeared and she realized that person had somehow saved her. Was it an alien? Or was it the purple skin that was talking?

Naisha didn’t know anything, and after a few minutes of thinking with no answers she just sat down on the soft floor and wrapped her arms around her knees and cried for a long time.

She woke up again, this time without the violent reaction, finding herself lying on the floor where she’d been sitting. Her head was still a mess, and despite the ghost images of pain her body was fully healed…though how that had happened she didn’t know. Maybe this was the next life…but no, the alien had said she’d been taken.

Naisha didn’t know what to think, but the button underneath the screen was still flashing rhythmically, the only thing in the room to be even remotely active. Hesitantly she crawled over to it and pressed her thin finger against it. It stopped flashing and the screen came alive with Veliquesh script that had an inventory menu. She read through it, finding the scrolling buttons were almost identical to what she had used growing up, which somehow felt reassuring.

With that being the only bit of home here she gravitated to it, reading the headings and picking a few to click on by using her fingers on the screen. There was a lot of data, far too much to read at once, but as she scrolled down she saw an information topic labeled ‘sacrifices.’ Cringing with a cocktail of ugly emotions swirling inside her, Naisha pulled it up and read what her people had been doing and how the aliens denounced it as being horrifically wrong.

Naisha didn’t want to believe it, and wouldn’t have if she hadn’t experienced it herself. Then it came to the part about the Renval and how those raised in it were not told of their true purpose. That they were supposed to be sacrificed with no knowledge as to why in order to cause a larger blessing to emerge from the Nash’garmat’ecklima than other types of sacrifices would. They had to be betrayed in order for their civilization to prosper, and she was one of their sacrificial dupes.

She recoiled from the screen, sitting back down on the floor and crying again. She knew it was true but her mind wouldn’t accept it. She’d been taught to adhere to the principles of the Veliquesh without question, concern, or trepidation…and then they’d stabbed her. She didn’t deserve that. She was pure and hadn’t faltered one iota in her convictions. She prayed every day, practiced the cleansing rituals without fail, done everything she’d been told to do.

But that was the point. The betrayal had to be visceral and total, according to this information, for her sacrifice to be worth the effort of her secluded upbringing. Her life was a currency the Veliquesh had tried to spend to counter the invasion…and invasion by a race that had bothered to save her life and heal her, somehow, and whom was allied with purple Veliquesh?

Summoning up a touch of courage she went back to the terminal and found an entry explaining who they were. The ‘Protovic’ history was weird, most of which she couldn’t understand given the indoctrinated mess that her mind was, but a part of her needed to believe that they were the true Veliquesh that she had been loyal to since birth. With that thought being about all that was sustaining her from a total mental breakdown she continued reading, more and more until a beep from the wall signaled that her food had arrived, as an entry in the reading had described.

Hesitantly she went over and opened the panel, with her hunger taking over as soon as she smelled the contents of the tray. Whatever they were it wasn’t Veliquesh food, but she ate the oddly shaped pieces none the less, finding the tastes weird but her appetite wasn’t allowing for complaint. She put the tray back inside as instructed and hit a button to conceal it again. It’d be recycled for the next delivery later on.

Naisha went back to her reading, then when biological necessity asserted itself went into the connected chamber. When she came back out it was in the Star Force clothing. The regimented part of her mind recoiled from it, telling her that she was wearing poison and now unpure, but another part said this was what the Protovic would wear and therefore was pure. The Renval had been perverted, and if she was going to rectify herself she had to trust in the Protovic’s wisdom and go along with these aliens, whom they revered as being not just allies but very wise.

Naisha stayed up and read through entries until her eyes could take no more. She finally went to the bed and fell asleep the moment she laid down, waking who knew how long later to find another tray of food having arrived and was waiting for her at the repetitive tone that had somehow failed to wake her.

She ate the cold food without concern and went back to studying, with that being the one constant that she was trying to sustain herself on and ignoring everything in the past. It was too traumatic to analyze, so she blocked it out as much as she could even as she was reading about it. With that mental duplicity gaining in complexity she became two people. One being the emotional victim and the other the scholar, with her disconnecting the two when she was reading in order to give her mind the freedom to wander that she had never been allowed before.

Sometime later the hologram reappeared, startling her as it manifested itself right where she was standing. Naisha jerked back, then heard the alien say that she was about to be transferred to her new home, but that it would have to happen when she was unconscious. It told her to lie down on her bed but she was reluctant to do so, fearing another betrayal. Eventually it didn’t matter, for there was a bright pink light and suddenly she lost consciousness.

She woke up sometime later finding herself laying on the bed as instructed…but the room had changed color. It was the same size and dimensions, but the white/grey motif had been replaced with white/gold. She swung her legs off the bed and looked around, triggering the motion sensors that immediately activated another holographic message.

“Welcome to your new home,” the alien said. “It looks a lot like your room on the starship, but I can assure you that you are planetside now. You’ve been moved 29 lightyears away to a star system known as Broj,” it said as a holographic map materialized with all 5 Veliquesh systems marked along with a pulsing blue one that indicated her present location.

She was a bit coreward of them, but not far off in what had previously been categorized as the Shrva’en System and held by the lizards, formerly owned by a race called the Nephen. That’s what she’d learned in her studies as a child, but apparently things had changed…or had that just been another lie she’d been told?

“There are other Veliquesh here, but you will not see them. They are in chambers similar to yours, but they must also earn their freedom through learning and training, which you are now available to make use of. Now that you’ve read the training file intro, you can take your orientation session now if you wish. Just step over to the door and put your hand on the circle.”

Naisha looked at the door and saw a glowing gold spot appear. Forcing herself to trust in the Protovic, she stood up and walked over to it, putting her five fingers against it and pressing her palm firmly. After a moment there was a tone and she let go as the door slid into the wall revealing a hallway outside with indicator lights that the reading had told her would be here. She followed them through a series of turns until she came to the first chamber, with the hologram returning, this time in much larger form and standing as tall as she was.

“This is the track, which is for the purpose of running. The shoes you have now are adequate, but you may earn upgrades with successful workouts. If you wish to begin enter. If not return to your quarters by following the indicated lines.”

Naisha walked towards the closed door and it opened before she could make contact, revealing a wide hallway that had a slightly spongy surface to it. On the floor was a series of lines with markings on them, but they were of a script she didn’t understand.

“Standard evaluation run. Stay with the marker as long as you can. Four circuits is the maximum. Begin in five, four, three, two, one…”

The glowing purple ball floating near the wall started to move…but Naisha didn’t, for a moment, then scrambled to catch up. It wasn’t moving very fast but she did have to run to keep pace. Following instructions came naturally to her, so she did as told and stayed with it for four full circuits, at which time it disappeared and was replaced by a static blue symbol that was accompanied by some type of brief music.

The hologram reappeared, clapping its hands together slowly. “Well done. You’ve taken your first step into a much larger world. Now it is time to rest and eat. Return to your quarters and the information terminal will show you how to schedule future workouts. You have done well.”

It disappeared and the guiding lights returned. Naisha followed them out of the track and back to her quarters where she was locked in again. Her mind and emotions were still a jumble, but suppressed enough for her to function. It felt better to have something to do, as well as an acknowledgement that she was doing it correctly.

That said she still had a long journey ahead of her, and far more than she could expected. But day by day, little by little, she’d work through the horrors and lies in her mind, slowly freeing herself through knowledge and training, though it would be a painful transition. The lies did not want to die, and clung to her through all the indoctrinational tricks that had essentially glued them to her subconscious. But she wanted to know the truth, deep down inside, and that little light of inspiration was enough to ever so gradually trim away the lies now that they didn’t have any exterior support. She was alone, and while that was scary in and of itself, it gave her mind the freedom to figure things out on her own, making mistakes along the way and not being punished for them.

Had she been amongst other Veliquesh she would not have made the transition, for compliance had been burned into her mind from birth, but without anyone else to calibrate to she had to learn to set her own course. She had to unlearn what she had learned, and eventually the new knowledge and skills replaced the old, permanently freeing her from the past and killing the Veliquesh in her.

She was Protovic know, so the hologram decreed, and gave her the final list of tasks she’d have to complete before being allowed out of her seclusion and into the next stage of her transitional journey.

10

May 19, 2838

Broj System (Bsidd Region)

Onyx

Naisha was nervous and excited as she sat on the bed in her small quarters. There was a countdown on her display screen indicating when she’d be able to leave, not for another workout session but from this place entirely. What was in store for her she didn’t know, but she was ready to move on. As much as she’d come to think of her little cubby hole here as home, she wanted to get out in the galaxy and see some of the things she’d been learning about.

The countdown only had a few minutes left, and was displayed in Star Force numbers rather than Veliquesh. In fact all of her lessons over the past 2 years had been in their language. She spoke English now, somewhat, and could read their letters and numbers with effort. Part of her mind was still thinking in Veliquesh terms, but every now and then she’d have a dream in English. Her lessons told her that it would take time, but eventually she would be able to fully convert over to the Star Force language and she looked forward to the opportunity to actually converse with someone other than the computer.

She’d been here for almost 7 years now, with no contact whatsoever to the other Veliquesh, or anyone from Star Force. There were no messages, no passerbys in the hallway. She hadn’t glimpsed a living creature since she’d been rescued into this facility, but she’d learned and seen many in her lessons. She knew what the ADZ was, how big the lizard empire had grown, who the Humans were and the other races that made up Star Force…and why they had decided to invade the Veliquesh. Naisha had no mixed feelings there, for if they hadn’t she’d have been sacrificed along with the other dupes.

‘Dupe’ was a word she’d clung to, for it fit her situation completely. They had used her since birth, tricking her into becoming the supposedly pure sacrifice they wanted. There was nothing pure about her or the others in the Renval. Purity, holiness, sanctity, etc were just fictious nonsense that she’d been told about so many times she’d just took them to be true without thinking. They’d always discouraged thinking, insisting on acceptance. She’d done what she thought she was supposed to do, bought into what they told her and had been loyal…which was why she was a dupe. She’d fallen for it completely.

But then again that was partially a good thing, for it had kept her alive to the day when Star Force arrived. Had she had questions or concerns during her early years she would have been quietly taken away and killed. Several of her Renval brothers and sisters had been transferred to other locations, and only now did she realize what had really happened to them. Dissent had not been tolerated, which meant she and the others had been born into a trap that they had no chance of escaping from.

But she was still a dupe for having believed it all, though not now. Star Force taught, but they did not force. It was odd, for ‘force’ was in their name, but that ‘force’ was a protective one. Keeping people like her from harm while they thought freely and figured things out on their own. For as much information was available to her in her lessons, she always had to do the hard work herself. Nothing was given to her, she had to achieve every rank attributed to her…and if she hadn’t she’d simply be left alone in her quarters to do whatever she wanted, not that there was much to do in such a small room aside from watch the vids and sleep.

No, Naisha owed Star Force for her life and then some, but she had been the one to earn her departure. A small part of her mind wondered if she wasn’t being a dupe for a second time, but rather than pushing the thought aside she considered it. Her gut said no, that this was legit, but there was only one way to find out. As she watched the final seconds tick off the clock she knew this was the moment of truth and found her insides twisting up in knots of anxiety.

When the countdown reached zero the door merely slid open, with Naisha seeing guide lights outside like every other day she’d been led to various training rooms. With no belongings to her name she simply walked out and went where directed, passing down familiar hallways until reaching a door that she’d never been through. When it opened there were more corridors like the ones she’d just walked through, but now she was in new territory and her mind seemed to come alive at that. This was fresh exposure rather than the repetition she’d lived by ever since being brought here.

When she walked through the archway the door closed behind her but the lights kept guiding her on through a very long course that eventually brought her to a cupola that had the first living person she’d seen inside the glass casing. The purple-skinned Protovic smiled and opened the clear door for her, allowing her to tentatively come inside the booth that had two short benches in it along either wall.

“Hello, Naisha. My name is Gharris. I’ll be your attendant through this transition period.”

“H…Hi,” she stammered, finding her voice catching in her throat.

“It’s alright. I assume you haven’t spoken to anyone in a long time…or are my words difficult to understand?”

“You sound different than the hologram.”

“That’s because he isn’t me. I am the first Protovic you’ve met with this color of skin, right?”

Naisha nodded.

“And I look the same as the hologram?”

“No. Not the same. I thought you would speak the same.”

“We all have our little quirks. Please, have a seat,” Gharris said, motioning for her to sit down on the opposite bench as he touched a control panel on the side of his.

“What is this room?”

“It’s not a room, as you’ll see in a moment. It’s our ride,” he finished as there was a mechanical shimmy as the pod car detached and began traveling down a dark tunnel. The lights of the hallway soon shrank to a dim speck, but both Protovic were providing enough of their own light to see by, which was why the pod had no interior illumination. Gharris looked at her casually as the pod was filled with a mix of red, purple, and green light from their faces and hands.

“You are being transferred into a city where you will live. It’s not the final destination on your journey, but it will be a big shock compared to what you’ve been living in.”

“A city?”

“Yes. A Star Force city,” he said as a crack of white light appeared on the opposite side of the bubble car and quickly enlarged as they approached, testifying to the speed that they were traveling. A moment later the darkness vanished as they shot out into the sunlight traveling on an elevated monorail through snow-covered mountains.

Naisha sucked in a quick breath and Gharris smiled. “Nice little reveal we have there, isn’t it? Look back and you’ll see where you’ve been living all this time.”

She turned her head to the left and saw a flat mountain covered in snow…only it wasn’t a mountain, but rather the side of a huge artificial building larger than anything she’d ever laid eyes on before, but certainly in proportion to some of the infrastructure that she’d learned about in the ADZ.

“The rest of the Veliquesh are there, in isolation like you were. Or, rather, the ones that have been captured. The fighting is still ongoing and we’re receiving shipments of prisoners in the same manner that brought you here. They’re just starting the journey that you’ve been on, if they want to pursue it. If not they’ll live out their lives in that building or others like it that have been built across the planet. Even now more are being constructed to house all the prisoners, and it’s a race to construct facilities quick enough to hold everyone being brought in. The Archons are quite good at what they do, so we receive regular transports of prisoners coming in.”

“You, however, are no longer a prisoner. You’ve proven yourself to be wise enough that we’re willing to trust you not to repeat the mistakes of the past, and by past I mean the Veliquesh civilization. It dies in that building,” Gharris said, pointing to the quickly shrinking artificial mountain range as natural ones were popping up between it and them as they passed further out across the terrain. “You are Protovic, like me. The coloration of your skin and your past don’t change that. We were born at different times and different places, but we are the same race, now reunited.”

“Thank you,” she said meekly, yet totally in awe at the landscapes around her.

“But,” he added, “this planet will be your home unless you earn your way off it. I’m here because I choose to be, as are a lot of other Axius Protovic, along with a scattering of other races. We all live in the same city, and those of you that earn your way out of that building will be living with us and learning what it truly means to be part of Star Force. You can kick back and relax, enjoying yourselves and making a life here, or you can push your training further and earn the option to leave and go elsewhere as a full Star Force citizen. I think a lot of you will be staying here,” he said, pointing ahead as the first towers of the city became visible over the mountain peaks, “but ultimately it will be up to you what you do with your life.”

The distance was deceiving, looking as if the city was just over the next line of mountains, but it took them nearly 20 more minutes before those spires became huge structures dwarfing the nearest mountains. Naisha’s jaw literally dropped, which Gharris took notice of.

“Big, isn’t it?”

“What will I do there?”

“Whatever you want or nothing at all. There will be opportunities to work for credits or other perks, as well as training for a variety of things. If you want to pursue full citizenship there will be a gauntlet of tasks set before you, but no timetable of when they have to be accomplished. You can do multiple things at once if you choose, and you may reproduce if you wish. There will be other Protovic there.”

She turned her head away from the clear walls and looked at him oddly.

He squinted back at her. “You were Renval, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So you’ve never mated?”

She shook her head ‘no.’

“Something else for you to experiment with if you wish. However I will tell you, any offspring you produce will go to a maturia and you will not see them again. They will be raised as full citizens from birth, and therefore will not be in this city. They won’t be on this planet, actually.”

“Why?”

“So that we can make sure the Veliquesh culture dies here. Those who never leave prisoner status will, unfortunately, never achieve self-sufficiency. They’ll grow weak and degenerate and die there. I’ve heard that some have actually found ways to kill themselves,” Gharris said with visible dissatisfaction on his face. “We can’t save everyone, and in truth we can’t save anyone if they don’t want to be saved. This planet is our way of destroying the Veliquesh but saving those people within it that want something better. Those who questioned were killed by the Veliquesh, meaning that virtually everyone that’s been captured is some form of crazy. We’re not assuming they can’t be redeemed, but so far not one of the Protovic to come out of that facility has been an adult outside of the Renval.”

“How many of us are there?”

“That have earned their way out? Somewhere around 350, I think.”

“That’s all?”

“Sadly yes, but there may be more working through the system more slowly than you. I don’t know their status, we never see any of that. I was just told you were ready and to pick you up. You’re one of us now, not one of them.”

“What happened to the younglings?”

“They’re treated as prisoners as well, but have a different process to earn their way out. No one that was born into the Veliquesh culture, no matter how young they were, is allowed into this city without earning their way here. The infants are being raised and trained as a group and I expect most of them will be here eventually. All new births here will be sent offworld, so the infant facilities will only have a short lifespan once the invasion is completed.”

“How long will that take?”

“Hard to say. Population wise about 22% of you are here.”

“How many have died?”

“None at our hands, and we’ve kept the lizards away ever since the invasion began. A small number have killed themselves prior to being taken prisoner, plus however many have done so in isolation. We know it is hard to live alone after being with so many people for so long, but it has to be done this way. Each person has to walk their own path, and if we put you together into groups, even of two, one would influence the other.”

“I understand. You can’t let us be forced into anything by our peers.”

“And you won’t be here. It is impossible to describe, but the community you are entering is far different than what you grew up in. I’ll help you get situated and be available for a number of days afterward, but there isn’t much to actually do other than to go around exploring. There are no dangers here, just people to meet and things to do.”

“Do I get my own quarters?”

“Yes, and they’ll be identical to the ones you’ve had…except no locked doors. Well, you can lock it from the inside, but you’re free to move about the city as often as you like, whenever you like. You just can’t leave. As you can see the planet is covered in snow and very cold, not somewhere we can survive without equipment. The spaceport is also restricted, but you’ll hit checkpoints that will prevent you from access without the proper ID so you can’t go somewhere you’re not supposed to be on accident. If you bump into them you’ll be politely redirected, so feel free to walk anywhere and everywhere you can.”

“It’s so big,” Naisha said as the last of the mountains passed alongside them as they shot through a valley and the whole of the city opened up before them. There was a boundary wall separating the icy wastelands, with the monorail track passing over top of it and intersecting a number of other lines. They hit one that continued into the city, with so many buildings interconnected by short tubes and rail lines that it literally blew her mind to see it all…and then there were the massive spires in the center and dotted around the perimeter that she had to look up through the ceiling to see the tops of.

“We are well protected from the lizards and others. There are weapons batteries at the top of some of those spires, not to mention a shield that protects the entire city when activated. You’ll never have to worry about them getting to you here.”

“How many of us can this city hold?”

“A lot, and we’ll expand it or build others as necessary going forward. We don’t know how many people will make it out of prisoner status, but we’re going to make sure each and every one of them has the chance to do so. After that it’s totally in their hands.”

“If I’m not a prisoner, and I’m not a citizen, then what am I?”

“Think of yourself as a guest that has a lot to learn about what it is to be part of Star Force, with people like me living here to act as friends and mentors. You can watch and learn from us, but don’t think you’re separate. You’re like our little brothers and sisters from now on, regardless of what your age actually is.”

“Have you attained self-sufficiency?”

“I have.”

“How old are you?”

“Only 72.”

“Wow. Most Veliquesh only lived to be 40 or 50.”

“You’re not Veliquesh anymore. You’re Protovic and Star Force, and you can live as long as you want if you’re willing to work at it.”

“I am.”

“I know. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t,” Gharris said as the pod slid into the side of one of the many buildings and the cityscape disappeared. They traveled through a tunnel, slowing in speed until they popped out into an internal air pocket that looked more like another world than a single room.

“We’re here,” he said a moment before the pod switched tracks and moved down from the elevated lines to park in a receptacle along with numerous other empty pods. He opened the door and stepped out, waiting for her to do so as well.

Naisha walked out cautiously, hearing so many sounds that it seemed to overwhelm her for a moment. Gharris closed the door and took her by the arm.

“Walk with me. It’ll take some time to get your bearings and I know a good place to start.”

She let him guide her, clinging to his arm as a safety line as they passed several other people walking through the mostly empty paths until they came to a set of wide stairs. They climbed up them, too numerous for her to try and count, and arrived at a wide promenade with clumps of people here and there at tables or kiosks. Almost all of them were not Protovic, and those that were didn’t have any red patches on their faces.

“Over here,” he said, walking her to a railing that let them look down over the top of the park and see far more people below doing all manner of things.

Naisha grabbed the railing and held on tight, for fear of falling even though there was no way she was going to unless she climbed over, for it came all the way up to her chest. The vertigo aside the sight of so many people had her shivering with nerves for a reason she couldn’t peg, but her whole body was shaking uncontrollably.

“You’ve been by yourself for a long time. It’s understandable that there will be some shakes while you adjust.”

“Thank you, but I do not like this. I should have more control over myself.”

“You’re not the first to go through this,” he reassured her, “and won’t be the last.”

“I suppose not,” she said, still clinging to the rail and trying to steady her shaking arms.

“Just let it pass, don’t force it,” Gharris suggested. “We can wait here till it does. I don’t have anywhere else to be today. You’re my only assignment.”

“What do you normally do?”

“I work as a comm tech, servicing and building communications gear. Everything from personal equipment up to the planetary transmitters. I volunteered to be a transitional attendant, mostly because I wanted to see if you guys were really our peers.”

She looked over at him. “Are we?”

Gharris nodded. “Very much so. You’re home now, sister,” he said, putting his arm across her shoulders and giving her a soft hug on her exoskeletal plates. “And we’re very glad to have you here.”

“I really don’t feel like I deserve this.”

“Nonsense. Everyone deserves this. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.”

“What about all those in the prison?”

Gharris sighed. “We’d bring them here if we could, but we can’t bring the Veliquesh with them. It has to die there, so the only way you were able to get here was to separate yourself from it. If we don’t kill it that poison could spread and linger on. You’re free to do what you want here, and if you wanted to live the Veliquesh way you could, up to a point. That sickness could continue in you and others, but we know it won’t. Not after everything you’ve learned. If you bought into that nonsense you never would have been able to pass the requirements to get here.”

“I know.”

“So us keeping the others in isolation until or unless they earn their way out isn’t us punishing them, it’s one last act of corruption by the Veliquesh culture. It’s making them prisoners, and unless they can break themselves free of it…and we’re offering them all the help we can…then they’ll still be victims of it. But it will end with them. We’ll still offer them a way out, we’ll never give up on them until they day they die, but if they can’t bring themselves to think rather than believe, there’s nothing more we can do for them. Bringing them here and letting them see each other would only destroy what little chance they have of freeing their minds. Isolation is their best hope of that.”

“It works,” Naisha said.

“And hopefully in time the others there now will find their way through it. If not, there will be many more coming in fresh to the system. And with 3 trillion of you to process, I expect there will be many more red faces showing up in this city over the coming years, even if that number is only a fraction of the total rescued.”

“I’m not ungrateful, at all, but something about that still makes me sad…and excited, because I made it through. Is that wrong?”

“No. No it’s not. What’s happened to your people is sad, but you survived it and have a bright future ahead of you. Don’t waste it. Embrace it. Let the others make their way here on their own terms, or not at all. They aren’t your concern now. What you do going forward is.”

“Ok. Other than standing here with the shakes, what am I supposed to do today?”

Ghariss laughed. “Whatever we want. We’re exploring, remember? I’ll get you to your quarters eventually, but for now let’s be brave and head out, shakes or not. Pick a direction and we’ll start walking.”

“What?”

“Just point in some direction and I’ll take it from there.”

“Um…alright,” she said pointing to her left for no reason.

He offered her his arm again. “You can let go when the shakes leave you.”

“Do I have to?” she asked, looping both of hers around his and holding on tightly.

“You won’t get lost. I promise. But you can hold on to me if you wish until you feel comfortable. I don’t mind the close proximity to such a pretty face,” he said with a wink, which she didn’t interpret, for that was one Star Force facial expression that she’d have to learn along with a lot of others in the days to come.

“Come on,” he said, nudging her to start moving. “One foot in front of the other and let’s start walking you into your future.”

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1

August 29, 2840

Mastodon System (Ninja Monkey territory)

Kido

Morgan stood on the edge of a small, churning pool of water looking up at the waterfall that stretched above it more than 100 meters as Ur’va’sel walked up beside her in his red/black Ninja Monkey combat armor. The Scionate stood as high as her shoulder with his head raised upwards to look at her with a scorch mark across where the left eye would be, save for the fact that the helmet, like Morgan’s, had no faceplate or eye slits. It was solid armor with an interior display screen fed by multiple microscopic cameras on the exterior, so the quadruped didn’t see the damage he’d taken earlier in the day, only the jungle around them.

“What is it?” he asked her.

“Just taking a moment to ponder the change in lizard tactics,” she said, still looking up at the waterfall that was throwing a fine spray of mist over her golden armor, though the helmet cam wouldn’t pick that up on contact and cloud her vision, “and to wonder why these battles seem more personal. I’ve helped take 93 worlds from the lizards, but these last few seem different.”

“Because you can keep them?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s because I’m responsible for them hereafter, whereas in the past I’d just move on to the next target. Still, I’m feeling a bit of sentimentality I hadn’t expected.”

“Do you think the lizards feel likewise?”

“No. I think they’re testing us again. We haven’t been using large forces to take these planets and they either sense a weakness or just don’t want to let us get away with victories that we didn’t earn.”

“They are not going to take this world back,” the Scionate said firmly.

“I think their aim is to deny it to us, or at least stall our advance. Whatever their motivation is, they keep sending more troops down.”

“In that they are at least making us earn our keep.”

“They’re wasting troops, Ur’va’sel. They may not care about losses, but they always lose them for a reason. I don’t see their angle here, but they’re up to something. I know it.”

“What can they hope to gain? Even if we should be defeated the rest of Star Force will not let them keep this world.”

“Technically it’s all on us, but they don’t know that…or do they? Damn, I’ve been blind. That is why they’re here.”

“Explain please.”

Morgan shuffled her feet, thinking things through in a flash.

“There’s been a lingering question concerning their intelligence capabilities and whether or not they monitor ADZ activities. Do they even know our language? I know they’re too smart not to take advantage of opportunities, but we haven’t seen any evidence of it. We make so much public knowledge they can’t have missed it, and Ninja Monkey’s mandate isn’t a secret anymore. It’s hit the news networks, and I’ll be damned if they aren’t monitoring them somehow.”

“So they know we are limited in number?”

Morgan nodded. “I think they’re testing us in that regard. They want to see whether or not we really are on our own, and if we are…holy crap.”

“What is it?”

She turned to look at her top ranking Scionate within Clan Ninja Monkey. “I think the lizards are picking a fight with us, and intend to take back these worlds if they can. These troop insertions are probably just scouts, testing our reactions.”

“What of the past years? We never saw this response in the other systems.”

“It probably took time for them to notice, now they’re calling our bluff. We either fight them Clan to lizard, or break our mandate and get help.”

“Why would they care?”

“They know about our no-go line. I bet this is a taunt.”

“How could they know that?”

“Well, we haven’t publically said we’re not pushing any further coreward, but it’s pretty damn obvious which directions we’re expanding. This border is staying essentially the same while the Calavari and Bsidd Regions are mushrooming out. Either they came to that deduction based on the map or they deduced it through word of our mandate. If they know, or even suspect that we won’t push coreward, then I bet this is just the first stage of them getting bold…and that’s something we cannot have.”

“Bold, as in major push?”

“Possibly. Either way I think they’re going to contend this world and every other one we take going forward,” she said as a ping on the battlemap got her attention.

“Another drop pod,” Ur’va’sel said, seeing the marker for a new lizard craft that was entering the atmosphere at roughly the same speed as a meteor and would deliver 100-200 troops instantaneously to whatever location they wanted, and with most of this planet not covered by Ninja Monkey anti-air defenses they were landing troops everywhere in small groups that were accomplishing a number of missions.

Morgan had already busted up several firebases they were establishing in the jungle or digging underground. Nothing large, just ground work while other teams were hitting soft targets and even assaulting the two colonies she’d started to build on Kido. The 18 lizard colonies that had been located here were now toast, but the lizards had not let a day go by without them having boots on the ground in some location. They owned two more worlds in this system, with Morgan now owning three if you counted Kido. As was normal for her Clan, she was renaming every system and world she took, even though this world was not fully under her control yet.

The other two insystem had been taken some 4 years ago, but she hadn’t been able to launch this attack until she’d built them up sufficiently to defend themselves. Her available troop numbers were low, for the Ninja Monkeys now possessed 9 different systems on the border and had to have troops in all of them for defensive placements. Even as she was getting in more and more recruits from a variety of races she was having to hold back her invasions until she pooled enough to make the next step forward. That more than anything probably confirmed to the lizards that she was operating alone here, and now it looked like they had decided to fight her directly rather than playing for time and letting Star Force have whatever systems it wanted without lizard reinforcements to contend with.

The enemy’s local defenses in this region were heavy, given the fact that Star Force had not pushed into this region and the lizards had been able to build freely since they’d claimed them. They were definitely challenges to take, but Morgan’s gut instinct confirmed what her mind told her.

This was an entirely new game, and without Star Force’s backing the lizards weren’t going to be playing shy anymore. Their claws were starting to come out now that they sensed an opportunity for victory, either in outright reclaiming some worlds or in at least making Star Force go back on its stated mandate for her Clan. That would be a symbolic victory rather than a material one, but if they were monitoring ADZ news broadcasts then they were probably aware of Star Force’s ‘no nonsense’ reputation and their credibility when it came to pronouncements and following them through.

If they forced Star Force to backtrack on this one it’d be a black mark, suggesting that they’d underestimated the threat. It’d been so long since the lizards had had a victory against them that maybe that was enough of a reason for them to pursue, or maybe this was just for the sake of testing how Star Force would react. Either way, more of those drop pods were coming down from orbit as lizard cruisers dove into the upper atmosphere to release them before they could be intercepted. Morgan’s small fleet could hold its own, but blockade an entire planet it could not.

“Crap, they’re coming down further away than we thought,” Morgan said, turning on her left leg and jumping into a run following the course of the small river. “We’ve got some running to do.”

“We will keep pace,” Ur’va’sel said as he followed on her heels while sending out a comm to the other Scionate nearby to join them. Within a couple of minutes a group of 17 others had caught up and fell into a long, agile line following the trailblazer and having to work hard to keep up with her despite their quadruped speed advantage. The jungle was tricky to navigate, which forced them to redirect with about every third step, but Morgan blazed the trail and the Scionate followed her marks as they crossed country as fast as they could to get to the location of the recent drop pods.

It took them almost half an hour to get further to the south, then Morgan began picking up mental signatures and guessed they were moving off from the pods so not to betray their locations. The jungle canopy was thick enough to hide them from all but the closest of scans and the lizards were making good use of it, with this group of six moving rapidly to who knew where.

“Iv’ra’nom, Gha’stiv’kex…they’re yours,” she said, diverting to the left to chase a larger group ahead.

“We will be back shortly,” Iv’ra’nom said as he and another Scionate towards the end of the line broke off from their trail and made their way towards the waypoint Morgan set down slightly ahead of where the lizards were moving. The Scionate didn’t have psionics to track them, but get them close and they’d be able to do the rest.

Morgan kept their pace hard, forcing their way through bits of dense jungle and over hillsides rather than trying to circle around. She had no trouble jumping over the bits of terrain and fortunately the Scionate didn’t either, for they possessed a vertical jump higher than her own…though they did have four legs to accomplish it with.

When the trailblazer cut over a short ravine she hopped up to the cliff edge and grabbed a branch, pulling herself the rest of the way up and onto her feet at the top while the Scionate just lunged the full height, clawing at the ground for traction and letting their momentum take them up and over the rim. Morgan got back into the lead after a moment, then led them the last kilometer up to a group of at least 100 lizards that were not moving, or rather not across terrain. They were active, but it looked like they were setting up another firebase in a fixed location, probably what the group of six were planning to work out of and extending their perimeter.

The lizards had been using comm probes to set up short range sequences that could stretch across kilometers without being noticeable from range. Star Force couldn’t hack the signals because they were so low powered that they couldn’t get a receiver on them, plus it seemed they were mostly directional and broadcasting horizontally, meaning even the most sensitive equipment couldn’t pick them up from orbit.

Those six might have been going to deploy those, but she’d have to wait for the report from the two she sent after them. One armored Scionate was enough to kill six lizards, but she didn’t want to get sloppy. And while she could easily have tracked down these groups solo, she’d been using the Scionate more and more as escorts simply due to the fact that they could keep up with her while running…not to mention that the lizards were now scattering rather than standing their ground and fighting, and having more people with her helped greatly in running them all down.

If the lizards had an advantage they’d fight, or had nowhere to run to, but if they had a choice they’d flee and regroup with others. It was something new in this campaign, but then again everything here seemed new, like the lizards were working on another page in their playbook. Morgan wasn’t sure exactly what they were up to, but the more of them she took out of the picture the better, as always.

And her team wasn’t the only one out roaming the jungle. She had hundreds of teams scattered across the planet doing the same, though she saved herself for the hottest spots, and this region had seen the most recent lizard drops, hence this was where she’d deployed herself and her Scionate team.

When they were nearly on top of them Morgan telepathically gave the Scionate the order to fan out, with her slowing her speed but still remaining point. Just as she was about to use her psionics to subdue the outlying lizards she ran straight into an invisible wall and bounced off it. Three of the Scionate did as well before the others checked up and stopped short of the shield wall the lizards had deployed.

An armored paw poked at Morgan’s helmet as her Pefbar returned quicker than her vision.

“Archon, are you alright?”

“What…what the hell?” she asked, sitting up and feeling a bit dizzy as she looked ahead and saw the tiny fluctuations in her Pefbar as to where the energy shield was. Just past it she could see the lizards squirming about, for they’d been alerted to their presence and were hastily going somewhere further away from the shield wall…which she expected was around the entire perimeter, but there was no way to know for sure.

“An energy shield,” the Scionate said, looking down at her helmet as she sat on the ground for a moment before she attempted to stand. Not seeing that coming had knocked the wind out of her, but she was getting her balance again quickly.

“How quaint,” she said, looking around for an emitter nearby but seeing nothing in her Pefbar to telekinetically wrench. Instead she summoned up a wave of goosebumps and pooled her concussive energy around her body. “Follow the perimeter and see if you can find a gap. I’m going after them.”

The Scionate immediately left her and scattered in both directions while she walked forward and stepped into the shield with her Jumat disrupting it enough to let her pass through. Unfortunately she couldn’t transmit the energy around the Scionate or she would have brought them with her, and trying to knock the shield down for a heartbeat to let one of them jump through would have taken too much time. As soon as she was on the other side she ran ahead, tracking the nearest lizard minds through the thick foliage to try and find out where they were going.

She had her answer some forty seconds later when the lizards suddenly went vertical, dropping down into what had to be underground unless there was a deep ravine that she wasn’t seeing. When she got to their approximate descent point she found a sealed hatch that was buried in the dirt and covered with overhanging leaves, almost impossible to find. Apparently the lizards had been here for some time, long enough anyways to have dug out subsurface bunkers by hand.

“You guys find a way in yet?”

“Negative. The arc is vast and we are still searching the perimeter.”

“The twerps have infrastructure in place, subsurface. Keep looking for a way in, but if you find none break up into teams of 2 and patrol the perimeter. Hunt down any lizards that make their way out. I’m going down and cleaning out whatever mess they’ve made. I’ll contact you when I’m done or find a way to shut the shield down.”

With that Morgan telekinetically latched onto the flimsy hatch and pulled it off its hinges, then hopped into the opening and fell straight down into the crude lizard labyrinth.

7 hours later Morgan stepped off a dropship onto the hangar deck of her command ship in orbit. It was the only one in the Ninja Monkey fleet and was her mobile base of operations wherever she went while most of her troops were stationed in the pair of surface colonies and a few firebases that had been set up nearer to the lizard drop regions. She could have slept there, but she needed to squeeze in at least a short workout before heading back out again and the colonies didn’t have a full sanctum, in that there was no elite section to it.

Her command ship did, but first thing she did when she got back was shower and eat, then on her way to bed for what would be a six hour stint she sat down at her terminal and ran through the system status reports. They detailed everything that was happening in Mastodon and included some lizard ship movements elsewhere, but none had come in to reinforce this planet, for she owned orbit and none could stay long enough to stake out a foothold. They’d run troops down into drop position, or maybe send some cargo down, but that was all they could do…and they’d been spamming that tactic ever since they’d figured out they could get away with it.

Had Morgan more drones that wouldn’t be possible, but she could only build so fast. Her other captured worlds were doing well to start snowballing their industry, but it would take a lot of time to build up the necessary material and, while they were certainly winning here, the losses of equipment that they were suffering in Mastodon were eating into whatever reinforcements she was getting.

Fully conquering this system was going to take several more years at least, and the other ones she was eyeing going forward were getting more heavily fortified as time went by. The lizards knew she was coming for them eventually, and since they seemed to think it would only be the Ninja Monkeys attacking they were putting more resources into beefing them up than other systems…which was going to make this a very long, arduous campaign.

Part of Morgan didn’t like that, seeing that the lizards had found a way to use their coreward border against them, but another part of her appreciated the challenge. It was her Clan against the lizards and they weren’t going to play defense against her. They might be getting their asses kicked elsewhere and trying to minimize the losses while they gained more and more systems on other fronts, but here they were making a play at it and calling Star Force out.

Morgan would meet them head on and fight this, with her Clan essentially engaged in an even fight while Star Force rolled over systems towards the rim and the lizards were expanding quickly coreward. It was an odd little microcosm in the war, but it seemed fitting none the less. She wanted her Clan to be on the front lines getting battle experience, and it seemed the lizards were going to oblige and give her all the fight she could handle…and maybe more if these drops and new tactics were just the scouting probe for a larger, more typical swarm rush to come.

Only time would tell, but this was her fight and her border to lock down…and with every day that went by she secured her holdings tighter as well. No matter what happened, both sides were amping up their defenses and setting up their strategy for the long term, with this looking like a major brawl in its infancy.

If Clan Ninja Monkey was going to survive this they’d have to do it by becoming far stronger than they were now, and Morgan relished that make or break necessity. As much as she liked training, she felt she belonged on the battlefield where the outcome mattered to more than your stats. Winning and losing here affected people’s lives and the balance of power in this swath of space, and Morgan intended to stake out her little piece of the border so those systems on the other side could develop in peace and contribute to other fronts while Clan Ninja Monkey took the heat here.

So far the rest of the coreward border was quiet, with Morgan having succeeded in drawing the lizards’ attention to her little piece, for that’s where the extra resources and troops were going. In that way she was protecting a far larger border than just her handful of systems could cover. It was a taunt that was getting more of a response than she’d imagined, as well as having the bonus effect of being able to fight the lizards when they were trying to win. She feared everyone else was getting soft in their expectations on the fronts they were winning on, for the lizards didn’t truly expect to hold those.

Here it seemed they thought they could and were actually trying, and potentially succeeding if Morgan couldn’t beat them. That meant this combat would give her troops far more experience than any other front, and that fit right into her plans. She just hoped the lizards didn’t come so hard at her so fast that she’d have to retreat and pull back to a couple of systems. If they were playing the probing game then she had time, and that was what she expected to get. A few systems here or there didn’t mean a damn to the lizards. They were focusing here for other reasons, and she expected them to give her just enough resistance to see how much her Clan could and couldn’t do.

Keeping her hand concealed so they couldn’t push her past that limit was the trick, and the longer that time went on the harder it would be to do that.

Morgan went through all the recent reports then shut down her terminal and slid into bed. This wasn’t a game, and it certainly wasn’t a walk in the park. She knew she was going to have more difficulty here than on any other front…which meant this was exactly where she was supposed to be.

Twelve hours from now she’d be back down on the planet hunting more lizards being dropped from orbit, but for right now she let herself disconnect from everything and just rest. This was going to be a long war, with her ability to sustain herself and her Clan being the key to victory. Get wore down, even a little, and it would snowball into defeat.

Rest was a weapon, and one Morgan had learned to make full use of a long time ago.

After seven minutes of pillow time she slipped into sleep, her mind quiet and her body numbing to the regenerative process. When she woke the next morning she’d snap back into action, with that polarity being a skill that most Archons never fully mastered.

2

February 2, 2848

Anivia System (Delta Region)

Frostbite

Busy? Taryn’s mental voice asked.

Come in, Ginsi answered a moment before the trailblazer walked through her quarters’ door, though she remained at her comm terminal reading.

“What are you working on?”

“Nothing,” the newly minted padawan said as Taryn walked up behind her chair and scoped out the flatscreen display. “Just reading a message from Mina.”

“You two still keep in contact?”

Ginsi nodded. “She’s a friend and I’m feeding her workouts. You’d be surprised what kind of nonsense is floating around out there despite people having grown up in a maturia.”

“You have no idea,” Taryn said patiently while Ginsi finished up. Her apprentice typed back a short reply and sent it off, then spun around and looked up at her.

“What’s up?”

“Something big.”

“I like big.”

“The reason we came here for training wasn’t for the view,” Taryn said, referencing the frozen wasteland that was Frostbite. “We’ve been given a long term assignment, and I’m going to want as much input from you as possible. You’re not just here to tag along.”

“What is it?” Ginsi said with a frown. The ‘long term’ part threw her.

“We’re going to uplift a ward.”

The padawan’s eyebrows raised. “A ward?”

“The Hepcha, actually. They’ve been climbing in status for a long while and we felt it was time to bring them fully into the fold.”

“Do we need to? I mean with the Protovic we’ve already got a huge upgrade to our lineup underway.”

“We can multitask. The Hepcha have earned this, and it’s up to us to incorporate them as best we can.”

“What’s there to do? They already have a Star Force society.”

“We have to make them independent and combat capable.”

“They’re avian, right?”

“Yes.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Right now there are only 1.2 billion, but we’ve been keeping their population low by choice. They’re egg layers so it’s not an issue, save for now we’ll be boosting those numbers considerably.”

“Aren’t there other races better suited to ground combat that we could incorporate? The Lacvamat haven’t exactly been all that helpful.”

Taryn tapped Ginsi on the forehead with her finger. “You’ve got your head stuck in hand to hand combat. Avian is different, and while there are a lot of weaknesses they do have advantages. We’ve got to tailor the Hepcha to make them effective.”

Ginsi shrugged. “If you say so.”

“Not overly thrilled, are you?”

“You know I prefer combat.”

“But you’re my apprentice, and I’m taking this assignment…therefore you are as well. There’s more to being an Archon than just fighting, though if that’s your aim there will be plenty of opportunity for that to come. Look at this as a peak into an area that you’ll probably never otherwise see. And if it helps your mental outlook, consider what we’re going to be doing as crafting living weapons. The Calavari weren’t that good on the ground before we got through training them. Don’t count the Hepcha out just yet.”

“If you say so. They’re one of the wards in this system, aren’t they?”

“Yep.”

“So we’ll be living with them?”

“No, they’ll be living with us. There’s a generic colony that’s been built on Preen for our purposes. We’ll expand and reconfigure it as necessary, but it’ll be built for both Human and Hepcha by the time we’re done with it.”

“What’s it built for now?”

“Axius design so we could be flexible from the get go.”

“An extra they had or specifically for us?”

“Axius built it…for us.”

“Ok then, where do we start?”

“After morning workouts we’re transferring over there along with a team I’ve been assembling. Work like this has no roadmap, despite others having done similar things with other races. Each one is unique and we have to troubleshoot our way through it.”

“Don’t you mean trailblaze?”

“Or that.”

“Who oversaw the Lacvamat elevation?”

“Connor. I’ve read through all his notes and I’d suggest you do so as well, I’ve already given you access, but don’t make the mistake of assuming all avians are the same. Hepcha have four wings and feathers. The Lacvamat have two and are flesh. That right there is going to make their movement capability different.”

Ginsi held up her hands. “Alright, alright. I hear you. What exactly do you want me to do?”

“Think outside the box and find a way for these guys to kick ass.”

Ginsi’s frown turned into a smirk. “You do know how to press my buttons, don’t you?”

“Perception isn’t about lies, but rather the best way to approach a situation. You see them as they are, I see them as for what they will become.”

“Honestly I don’t know crap about them other than what I read through in the maturia a long time ago.”

“No rush. This is going to take a long time. First things first, though. Our training doesn’t end, we just cram it into a long morning session and extend our days out to 36 hours. That’ll give us plenty of sleep and the necessary hours to tinker with the Hepcha civilization.”

“That’s still a cutback.”

“If you’re measuring by volume, yes. But it’s a far less cutback than we’d see if we were out fighting the lizards.”

“You have a point there.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll still have a chance to soar up through the ranks.”

“Only if you teach me the psionics I need. Without them I’m capped.”

“Academically. No one is physically capped.”

“You know what I mean, and…”

“No, I’m not giving you all of them first year. One at time, youngling.”

Ginsi growled. “Yes, master.”

Taryn pointed a warning finger down at her. “Don’t call me ‘master’ or I’ll go Vader on you. Get dressed and meet me in the sanctum. We’ve got a lot of work to do here and I’m going to make you pay for that comment.”

“I like more workouts,” Ginsi countered as she stood up and walked over to her quarter’s closet and began taking off her casual uniform to replace it with more appropriate workout attire.

“I didn’t say more workouts, I’m just not going to hold back as much as normal. Be prepared for a few bruises,” Taryn said as she walked out.

“You’re all heart, mast…” Ginsi whispered until her throat suddenly tightened up from a telekinetic chokehold.

Not funny, she told Taryn who was still walking away in the hallway outside her quarters. The titan held her until she got out of range, then the invisible grip disappeared and she could breathe normally again.

“Prick,” she said as she pulled out a jog bra and put it on. And to think she’d been thrilled when a trailblazer had taken her on as an apprentice. Right now that didn’t seem like a good idea, for there were days when she really wanted to kick Taryn’s ass…but she was far too strong for her to do that, and the titan didn’t mind flaunting that fact from time to time.

“One day,” she said, pulling on her running shoes and snugging them up before heading out and down to the sanctum in the Axius colony where they were staying…and soon to be leaving.

Ginsi sat down in the command center they’d just claimed and put her feet up on a station as Taryn took center stage amidst several dozen support personnel that she’d chosen to head the Hepcha ‘uplift’ process. The padawan had ultimately decided just to play the support banana on this one and learn what she could in the process, because it really wasn’t something she was interested in. Her focus was on her skills and her skills alone for that day in the hopefully distant future when Star Force went up against the V’kit’no’sat…and she intended to be the one fighting them, not an army of Hepcha.

“The work that has been done with the Hepcha thus far,” Taryn began as she pulled up a hologram of the race that floated larger than life midair above her head, “has been commendable, but it’s been based around the fact that Star Force would provide them everything they needed rather than them providing for themselves. This is necessary in wards, as well as a way to help them detox from whatever life they lived previously…which is usually a pretty bad one if we’re taking them on as wards.”

“There’s word floating around that there are a few other wards that are teetering on reaching elevation status, but none have accomplished as much as the Hepcha have. They are eager to join our ranks and that is why we’re here. We’re not forcing this, so let’s just guide the flow and let them find out how far they can climb. Biggest drawback we have is their lightweight frame,” Taryn said, pointing above her.

“Good for flying, but little else. The feathers are also problematic. Lacvamat just use conical capture to achieve flight, but the Hepcha filter it through their wings on the upbeat. Armor won’t allow for that. We can armor their midsection and put extra strong shielding over their wings, but it looks like an anti-grav component will need to be added instead. That won’t leave much armor volume, so we’ve got a challenge to solve there.”

“They’re smaller than the Lacvamat and barely bigger than a cat, but experiments with growth enhancements derived from the drugs that the Knights use have enlarged a segment of them to about 2/3rds Lacvamat size. I intend to keep this binary divide in their society and make use of both advantages. The smaller Hepcha will have combat uses, we just have to figure out what those are. They will probably be support oriented, but you never know. Axius has some very clever ways to make the smaller races combat viable, and it’s our job to copy, steal, or invent our own for these guys.”

“Neural interface is going to be key, because they have very little button pressing capability, which essentially comes down to their talons…which they have to stand on…and their beak. We’re going to look to Scionate designs for inspiration there, given that they also use a lot of backup mouth controls. We need manual backups, of course, but we also need manual interfaces for civilian applications. Save the neural links for combat. Some work in this has already been done under the ward system, but I’ve looked through what they’re living with and it’s too damn inefficient. Way better than what they used to have, but not good enough for me.”

“One thing that we are creating new is glide corridors, and I’ve already got the techs working in a section of the city on prototypes. Due to their small size we should be able to carve out tunnels above the Human walkways for them to move through. Since they need to be small, we’re going to have repulsor buffers in them so they can just dive in and coast. They won’t hit the walls or have to flap their wings, just ride it through like a one-way waterslide.”

Ginsi raised a hand to get Taryn’s attention. “Is there such a thing as a 2-way waterslide?”

Rather than getting mad the trailblazer considered that. “I don’t think so, but now that you’ve mentioned it I think we have to build one…but not here. Water is a no go around these guys. Wet their feathers and their flight capability gets chopped. They can manage it, but it’s like putting a heavy backpack on before you go running. That said, aquatics is still a go because they won’t ever be swimming without gear. Some of the preliminary tests that Lens ran indicate they have good aptitude for maneuvering in currents and at high speeds, which is probably pathetically slow to what they’re used to doing in the atmosphere. We are developing an aquatics division for the Hepcha, and there are currently zero people in it right now, so we’ll have to build it from scratch.”

“What they do have is a significant aerial division, piloting skeets, Valeries, and a few other craft. Nothing original to them, so that’s going to have to change. They also have a handful of individuals fighting with Axius on the ground, and we want to look through those combat records very carefully. They have no naval or mech divisions, and the first thing we want to look into is getting them a cargo fleet. I’m going to bring in some Kiritak to help with that and run what we set up so they can get some experience without the entire operation being a newbfest.”

“But first priority is this colony and the infrastructure. We’ll tolerate it as is, but we need to come up with firm designs before we start building elsewhere. That means theorizing, creating prototypes here, and testing them with the population we start to pull over from the wards. We are doing nothing on theory, and everything from practical experience. Clear?” she asked, getting a few confirmation nods.

“These guys are looking to us for guidance and we’re going to give it to them. Don’t make guesses, and bring anything unclear to me. I’d rather not give them something than give them something faulty that we then have to replace. Every step they take is one forward, we’re not having them go backwards. Trust is a commodity that you can’t replace, so don’t squander it. Route everything through me except where I say otherwise. I’m the face of this transformation so feed into that. You’re just my little minions working behind the scenes…save for the big minion over there that is my mini-me.”

“Mini?” Ginsi asked, for she was almost exactly the same height and weight as Taryn.

“You and I will be on the same page, so you’ll be able to speak for me to the Hepcha. We’re a team, but the rest of you will be disconnected from them as far as image holds. You’ll be integrated with them on projects and living side by side, but you’re the hired help. I’m the one that has to get this done. Don’t take that as an insult, because it’s not. You guys can come and go as needed. You can be reassigned to another system or leave the project entirely. I cannot. I’m in this for the long haul. So we’re going to structure their social understanding of the conversion down to me and my padawan. We’re the figureheads…and actual ones…leading this. The rest of you have your work, but you’ll be nameless and interchangeable. Focus on your tasks and I’ll take the hero worship. I’m told that it happens with all the races that we uplift and I don’t want you getting involved in it.”

“What I said may not make sense now, but just remember it and in time you’ll understand. Don’t let it become personal. I’ll give you tasks and you’ll complete them. You are not becoming part of the Hepcha community like an Axius colony. You’re separate. You may cross paths with them but don’t let yourselves become standard bearers. Don’t let them get to know you or else they’ll pattern off of you. Let them focus on me and Ginsi while you analyze them. Keep your distance or your perception might slip. We have to make changes to them in order to get them up to speed and I don’t want you empathizing with them because they’re, as some people have already stated, cute.”

“Cute or not they want this and we’re going to give it to them. That means a lot of work and training on their part. If they see you making excuses for them they’ll think that’s acceptable. It is not unless I say it is, so let them get their cues from me. You just remain pleasantly neutral.”

“Are they really that impressionable?” Ginsi asked.

“Very. And insulated. As a ward they haven’t had the commerce traffic coming to and from them. It’s restricted to keep them safely anonymous for the most part. That’s going to be a shock, and I want me to be the intermediary that brings them through the transition. Not 50 different ones that might be telling them opposing things, even if it’s just with your body language during off hours. You can let your hair down in private, but do not take any Hepcha as close friends. You need to keep a professional distance while you are working here. After the fact is your prerogative. The first step for them has to be at my sole direction.”

“We’ll keep our distance,” one of the techs assured her.

Taryn nodded. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, ambrosia is going to be tricky to develop for these guys given that they’ve already got a hyperactive metabolism that requires near ambrosia levels of sustenance in their food anyway. For their ambrosia we’re doing the opposite and making it an endurance boost, and how we’re going to do that I’m not quite sure. Just one of many things we’re going to have to figure out going forward.”

3

March 1, 2848

Aphat System (Veliquesh territory)

Dmak

Kip zipped his skeet past a Veliquesh building and delivered a pointblank mauler burst into the last of the anti-air defenses the city had, melting through the light armor casing and junking the interior. There was a small spurt of debris that flew out the other side, but the turret’s death wasn’t dramatic. He circled back around to confirm that he’d hit it, and the lack of fire when he raised up above the rooftops told him everything he needed to know even before he got eyes on the damaged turret.

A quick check of the battlemap confirmed that the city had now been fully plucked of defenses.

“All fighters pull back. Admiral, send in the presents once we’re clear,” he commed as he accelerated towards the perimeter of the Veliquesh city. It’d been 17 years since this invasion began and to date they hadn’t lost a single man. Some of the Veliquesh had managed to get themselves killed, but none of Kip’s troops or any of the other Star Force armies had suffered more than bodily injuries, and those were far and few between…largely due to a change in tactics they’d made after the first few years.

The Veliquesh cities were huge and widespread, not making use of their volume and relying mostly on low level buildings, as far as Star Force standards went anyways. It took Kip and the other pilots some time to get into the clear, and when they did he set and traveled out to a waypoint where the others would eventually gather with him. Once they were all out a virtual marker appeared covering the entire city and out past the edges like a golden blanket indicating the no-fly zone that was now in effect. The Admiral had set that in place, not Kip, and soon the first of the bombs became visible on the upper edge of the battlemap as they fell from orbit.

Or rather flew, for they were actually missiles rather than rail gun slugs or just chunks of matter. They came down in a spread, one wave after another and each bomb targeting different locations within the city where it would pop just prior to reaching the buildings or the surface. When they detonated they created a huge plume of green that washed across and through the buildings, then turned pink when it expanded out far enough. The clinging stun energy saturated the area and would hold its charge for several minutes while more bombs fell nearby and onto the same locations, blanketing the cityscape and rendering anyone caught out in the open unconscious on contact.

Originally Kip and the others hadn’t been able to use area of effect weapons for fear of overloading their targets and killing them, but subsequent research into Veliquesh physiology and some sneaky techs had found a way to lace the energy with a regulator that would actually repel additional stun energy past a certain concentration. As a bonus it wouldn’t only resist that energy, but push it away until it hit something that wasn’t already saturated. For that reason one bomb could cover a lot of city if the buildings were small, while others required multiple hits to soak through and saturate the large ones. Everything from person to bulkheads got a bath with the residue rippling across already hit areas and traveling, in some cases, kilometers before it found a fresh area to soak into.

The energy was configured to be matter hungry and lightly susceptible to gravity, meaning that the bombs were effectively water balloons that would spread out across the city rather than blowing back into the air. It’d taken years of tweaks to get them to where they were now, but they were more than worth the effort for they could neutralize a city far faster with the bombs than going in on foot and shooting them one person at a time. It also meant there was little risk to the ground teams, though on occasion there would be a handful that the bombs would miss.

To Kip it felt fitting, for while they were almost forced to use such weapons against the lizards they were using them now to take down an equally bad enemy but without having to resort to the bloodshed that the Veliquesh lived and breathed. That was a snub to them in and of itself, for they weren’t just defeating them militarily, but culturally as well.

And there was nothing the Veliquesh could do about it. Star Force’s weapons and tactics were far superior to the lizards, whom had finally been winning out against the Veliquesh when Kip and the others had arrived. They’d driven them off then set about the methodical destruction of the sick culture without killing the people in it. It was a crusade that he and the others here were fully behind with no mixed feelings. Had they been sending down lethal bombs that would have been another story, for you never knew who was down there and if they deserved killing or not.

By taking away that question mark Star Force could be as aggressive as it liked, and the number of bombs coming down certainly testified to an appetite for destruction. None of the buildings were so much as scratched, but with every detonation swaths of the sick race were taken out of the equation and would wake up later as prisoners in an isolation that would only end if they effectively switched sides. So Kip knew that every bomb detonation was taking down the number of Veliquesh permanently, for if any of these did see their freedom again it would be as Protovic, with the Veliquesh in them dying here with every beautiful green explosion.

But as always, this was just one piece of a very large puzzle. The other four systems the Veliquesh had owned were now barren and under watch by Star Force, but not inhabited. Their cities were slowly being dismantled by an advance team, but most of the techs assigned to this mission were busy building new prison habitats to keep up with the demand. When they eventually worked through those they’d be redeployed to reclamation duty that would wipe the Veliquesh stench off those four systems and add them to the unoccupied territory list that Star Force was accumulating from its conquests throughout lizard territory.

The Aphat System was different. It was too valuable to pass up with 18 habitable planetoids, whereas other systems were lucky to even have 1. That meant it also had the bulk of the Veliquesh population in it, with this world being the second major one they’d hit. They’d started with the ones that the lizards had invaded and worked their way through the Veliquesh survivors there while a group of them also tracked down and destroyed the lizards on the ground. As usual they refused to surrender, but after all this time Kip only felt a tiny pang of regret. He knew they had genetic ‘brain boxes’ on them that would resist the isolation technique they were using on the Veliquesh prisoners, but he still hated having to kill them all…a little bit.

By now that it was clear that it was either their race in dominance or their deaths trying to accomplish it. If there was another way to deal with them he and the others would find it in time, but for now it was offer them surrender and when they didn’t accept it, blow the hell out of them.

Kip was glad they weren’t doing that to the Veliquesh, even if some of them deserved it. Star Force wasn’t interested in punishment, only neutralizing threats, and once these bastards were taken prisoner they wouldn’t be sacrificing anyone else again…not to mention what other horrors they might have wrought had the lizards not boxed them in. According to their interrogations of the ‘diplomatic envoy’ that Mike had brought back with him, they seemed to have galactic domination as one of their long term goals, and if they had no qualms about killing their own younglings for not maintaining 100% compliance he doubted they’d be any more merciful to other races.

Kip waited with the other skeets on the perimeter until the bombardment ceased and the no-fly zone restriction disappeared. When it did he and the others headed back in as a flock of dropships came down from orbit carrying cleanup teams that would begin collecting the captives and transporting them back up to the holding ships. Several combat teams were coming down as well, for the bombs didn’t always penetrate deep enough to catch all the subsurface structures. Kip was going to be flying patrols in case there were any hotspots that needed hit and organizing the teams from the air while staying on guard for any more of the suicidal Veliquesh fighter squadrons that seemed to be interested in doing damage to the transports carrying their own people rather than to Kip’s troops.

For whatever their reasons they were targeting them with ambushes wherever they could, so Kip was staying in pilot mode for these operations just in case he needed to intercept some more of their fighters springing up from concealed hideaways. The Veliquesh might be crazy, but they weren’t totally stupid, and Kip could see now how they’d held the lizards off for so long. They were innovative within their strict strategies, which were focused around causing damage regardless of the strength of their opponent. The lizards happened to be weaker than them, technologically speaking, so it had paid off, but Star Force was not and the Veliquesh were essentially throwing themselves at them trying to do what damage they could.

They’d changed targets now, but the methodology was the same. The switch to hidden hangars spread across the planet had been an effective move for the fact that Star Force hadn’t been able to locate and eliminate them all initially, but the Veliquesh pilots still fought in the same manner. Again, as he’d noted on numerous occasions, these bastards showed some potential along with the crazy in them. How the two could coexist Kip wasn’t sure, but they did. And that meant he always had to stay on his toes just in case they showed another spark of adaptability and tried something new.

Today wasn’t going to be one of those days, and the now predictable fighter squadrons appearing from outside the city and rushing the filled transports as they headed back to orbit with prisoners were intercepted and destroyed. Those pilots that survived the crashes would be recovered, but there was no way the skeets could go easy on them when there were troops on the ground and ships in the air that were vulnerable. The Veliquesh weapons were better than what the lizards used, and had they got to one of the transports they could have brought it down with sustained weaponsfire from 6 or 8 of them.

They sent over 300 towards the city this time, meaning Kip and the others had to take them down quickly. Some of the pilots would die, but so be it. These were actively attacking their ships, which was considerably different than some Veliquesh sitting in a building minding his own business.

So after the fighters were destroyed and he sent recovery teams out to the crash sites Kip continued his aerial patrol for several hours until his bladder called it quits and he cycled back up to orbit while replacement patrols took over for him. They came from firebases on the surface but he headed back up to his command ship that was sitting next to Greg’s in a low parking orbit. The other three were spread out around the same planet with their fleets in blockade formation to keep any remaining surface ships from escaping and to prevent any ships from the other Veliquesh planets in the system from interrupting this planetary assault.

For the most part they didn’t try anymore, given the number of ships present, but when the transports finished filling a jumpship with prisoners and that ship would leave the system they would try and intercept it if they had an opportunity. Usually they didn’t, given the speed of the Star Force vessels, so the naval front was pretty much mundane up until they got around to finishing with this planet and would assault another.

Right now Kip was in the bad guy farming business, harvesting the citizenry from planet after plant and shipping them off to a nearby Star Force system where others would deal with the aftermath. As long as this crusade was taking, he wouldn’t be involved in the non-combat assignments, nor would the other four trailblazers. When the last prisoner had been collected their work would be finished and they’d return to other duties, leaving what happened to the Veliquesh in others’ hands.

And that was for the best, because after so many years of dealing with these guys Kip thoroughly hated them. Even now they were conducting sacrifice rituals on the other planets in order to try and stay Star Force’s inevitable march against them. He couldn’t stop them all and had to just turn a blind eye to it and focus on one planet at a time…but he never could, not completely. And even on a planet like this that was crawling with Star Force units there were still Veliquesh killing each other, whether it be a public ceremony or younglings that didn’t measure up.

Sometimes they’d find bodies of individuals in the buildings after a stun bombardment that had been eviscerated through a number of sick means with no clue as to why or how it’d happened. The depth of this civilization’s corruption was something Kip didn’t care to figure out, given that he was here to destroy it. To that end he did his job and ‘harvested’ as many living Veliquesh as he could get his hands on, but the trail of bodies left behind from their internal affairs made it clear why Veliquesh didn’t typically live past half a century.

That was another reason why Kip preferred organizing assaults from the air, so he didn’t have to see what they’d been up to in person. Every time he did it made him angry, and after a while that anger drained you of energy. The same was true of his troops, so he made sure to rotate them in and out of duties that had them on the front lines to give them a chance to recharge physically and emotionally.

For Kip, he didn’t give himself time off. When his skeet slid into one of the many bays on his command ship he first headed to the bathroom, then over to the sanctum to get in some training and work off that anger in a beneficial way. After that he’d get some sleep then head back down to the planet again to oversee another city assault while this one and four others were still being cleaned up.

Once a city was ‘harvested’ they had to put down surveillance gear around the perimeter to make sure no Veliquesh snuck back in, with some inevitably trying. It was a good tactic, for it would give them an impregnable base of operations for the simple reason that Star Force thought it was empty, but Kip and the others were too shrewd for that. They had teams assigned to patrol and hunt down any reclaimers that made their way inside, and with psionics they weren't that hard to locate.

Day in and day out this would continue, as it had for some 17 years now. Kip had seen so many cities that he could literally replicate the Veliquesh architecture from memory, but that wasn’t an issue for him or his troops. They fought the same way they trained…with an eye on the current trends and maintaining themselves indefinitely. The 3 trillion population of the Veliquesh wasn’t going to be an impediment against them, for they’d simply take it one mission at a time, slipping in training blocks here and there so they didn’t grow weak, and work through the entire number of the sick bastards over the course of time.

It was work that needed to be done and Kip didn’t feel like being anywhere else, but when the day came and it was completed he was going to be glad to see the galaxy rid of the Veliquesh and say goodbye to this region of space…at least until the cities were deconstructed and something worthwhile was put in their place.

Most of his troops felt the same way, with all manner of public countdowns being recorded from the jumpships to the firebases. They were doing good work here, but they’d all be glad when it was eventually finished.

4

April 9, 2853

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Jmry

Rafa climbed up a ladder and out of one of the Veliquesh buildings, coming onto the rooftop and leaving the collection team below to pick up the stunned prisoners. When he got to the top he scanned his battlemap looking for more targets but every building around him had been tagged with a ‘green’ marker indicating that it had already been checked and cleared.

Numerous units were dotting the map, but all of them were Star Force and most were collection teams. The others were combat units that, like Rafa, were looking for stragglers that had escaped capture. The building below him had held a group of holdouts, but the trailblazer had made quick work of them using his Ikrid, putting them all to sleep without a shot even needing to be fired.

Four high priority dots were also spread across this Veliquesh city, with those being Kip, Oni, Greg, and Jason. This was the last city on the last planet that hadn’t yet fallen. A few others had actually gone ahead and surrendered, seeing that they stood no chance as they witnessed the fall of every other city across Jmry, but this one and a few others had remained defiant to the end…and now it looked like it was finally over.

Rafa double-checked the battlemap to make sure it was really done, then he allowed himself to sit down and rest for a bit as he looked out over the Veliquesh city. The plaza where this had all began with Mike was about a kilometer to the northeast, and they’d specifically left this location for last. It’d taken 22 years for the five of them to conquer the three trillion Veliquesh, and slow as it was stunning and taking them prisoner, Rafa knew it had been the right call. Kill the culture but spare the people, for as bad as these psychopaths were none of them had chosen to be born into this sick place. Had they been born into an Axius colony he doubted they would have ended up the way they were, and that was why the Veliquesh civilization had to be destroyed…so that the next generation would be spared this horror and have a chance at a real life.

That next generation was going to be in the hands of someone else, for as soon as they tidied up here they were leaving. This system was remaining in Star Force hands, but it was going to be under the direction of a mage while the trailblazers cycled back to the ADZ. Rafa was going to spend some badly needed time with the advanced training group and he wasn’t sure about the others. They hadn’t talked about what they were doing next, rather focusing on the task at hand and maintaining their training throughout.

It had been a long war, but in some ways it didn’t seem like it. Once you got past a certain span of time everything blurred together and you just went with the grind. Rafa’s sense of time was linked to planets taken, not days on the calendar, and this one finished the set. Five systems conquered, zero casualties, and a prisoner count exceeding 3.07 trillion. What they picked up here would be added to that, but the bulk of that number had already been shipped to the Broj System, leaving Rafa and the others with a small pool of waiting cargo ships to carry these last few off. When they went, so would Rafa, and he could wash his hands of this place.

The building he now sat on and all the ones in his vision would be gone if and when he ever came back. Every last bit of infrastructure was going to be torn down and replaced, erasing the Veliquesh from existence. After this it was back to fighting the lizards and that even longer war, which made Rafa laugh. When were they not at war? First it was with other Humans on Earth, then the lizards, followed by the Skarrons and a lot of little confrontations that didn’t even make the news. Archons were always fighting someone, somewhere…he was just glad the battles were taking place on the enemy’s turf rather than the ADZ being invaded. At least now they could pick their battles, more or less.

“All done?” Jason’s voice asked inside his helmet.

“Looks like, but there could always be a few stragglers.”

“The sweeper teams can finish those. I’m heading back to orbit. Want a lift?”

“Sure,” Rafa said as he stood up, with Jason sending him a waypoint across the city. “Be there in 20.”

When Rafa finally ran up to the position where Jason had given him the waypoint he saw a Falcon-class dropship squeezed onto a road between two fat buildings and a trio of golden-clad Archons standing at the foot of the open boarding ramp. The trailblazers slowed to a jog as he came up on them, then stopped just a foot short of Oni’s armored shoulder.

“Greg’s on his way,” Jason told him. “We were discussing where we were headed after this.”

“Now or when we get back to the ADZ?”

“Right now,” Oni clarified, “I’m heading to a sanctum for a nice long run, after that is the question. Do you want to head back to the ADZ on the same ship or are you going somewhere we’re not?”

“I’m headed to Earth,” Rafa said. “What about you?”

“Mordor. I’ve got Clan stuff to take care of.”

“I’m going to pay Morgan a visit,” Kip added. “Her reports are indicating some heavy lizard activity in her region and I want to see what they’re up to personally.”

“Well, I’ve got some rounds to make in Beta Region,” Jason finished, “but I can transit through Sol, so I’m up for a group trip if you are.”

“I’m in no rush,” Kip mentioned as Greg came floating down to them from one of the nearby rooftops. “So I’m game.”

“Game for what?” he asked as he walked the last few steps to them after deactivating his jump pack.

“Heading back to Sol on the same ship so we can get some workouts in together before we head our separate ways,” Oni said.

“I’d like to, but my I’m going to meet up with a task force heading deeper into lizard space not far from here. I’m not heading back home for a while.”

“Sucks,” Kip commented.

Greg’s golden armor shrugged. “Lots of lizard systems to take and this little detour put us behind schedule as it is.”

“We have a schedule?” Rafa asked.

“I’d like to be knocking on their homeworld’s door in a couple hundred years, if that’s alright with you?”

“Fine with me, but don’t you want a break from combat to get in some decent training?”

“Nope. I’m good as is.”

“Can you stick around a few days?” Jason asked.

“We need to babysit the tail end of this operation anyway, so sure. I’m up for a few days of kicking your asses in challenges.”

“Your ship or mine?” Oni asked.

“Mine,” Jason said, thumbing towards the dropship. “That’s where this bird is going.”

“Settles that,” Rafa said as he brushed past Jason. “Let’s get to it.”

Brad-050 arrived in Aphat 4 months after his fellow trailblazers left, bringing with him an army of techs and a few combat ships to replace the majority that had cycled out to lizard hunting duty. He still had a decent defense fleet under his command to protect the system, but coming with him were a flotilla of Sentinel pieces that would combine into two of the newest versions full of Keema batteries and the most advanced defense shields to date. With those in place it was going to be damn hard for the lizards to displace them, and nowadays they didn’t seem to be in a rush to try.

Since the initial invasion the lizards hadn’t been back to Aphat or the other four systems that Star Force had taken from the Veliquesh. Those were being patrolled with their own guardian fleets while techs disassembled what was left of their infrastructure, then those fleets would eventually transition to Aphat, leaving nothing but monitoring equipment behind to make sure the lizards didn’t move in and claim them.

Aphat was an entirely different situation, for the reclamation effort here was going to take far longer. Brad had picked the planet of Nym to begin his work on and had redirected all techs to cleansing a section of its surface and subsequently building a small Star Force colony in its place. As the techs progressed further across the planet the Star Force infrastructure would follow, at a much slower pace, but as time went on the Veliquesh stain would be erased and a new piece of Star Force would grow in its place.

The facilities on Broj where the Veliquesh prisoners were being held also had the maturias for the children recovered. Those children were then sent into the transitional colony where they could prove themselves worthy or not of being full citizens. Already some had moved into the ADZ, but the ones coming out to Brad were another group entirely.

When prisoners had been taken a fair number of the Veliquesh females had been pregnant. When they gave birth to the fleshy egg sacks in isolation, those as of yet unhatched younglings were taken offworld to a separate maturia located deeper in Bsidd space. Brad had been working with them for a while, but most of the maturia regimen was a copy of the Axius Protovic program so he didn’t have much to do there. His work was going to begin in earnest now that those maturia were starting to produce graduates.

They weren’t in vast numbers, for the Veliquesh prisoners weren’t mating in isolation and the handful that were in the transitional colony weren’t adding all that many. That meant Brad had a limited window of opportunity to get a Star Force Protovic civilization set up and functioning before they ran out of younglings to grow it from. He had specifically said that none of the transitional Protovic would be allowed to join in the early stages, for he wanted to form it out of those who had known nothing but Star Force maturia, but intended to open it up to them a few decades down the road once the tone of the civilization had been set.

That meant he had a lot of green personnel to work with, so he’d recruited a variety of individuals from across Star Force to assist him in forming the core of the new civilization. Few of them were Protovic, but rather a mix of Calavari, Kiritak, Human, Bsidd, and Elarioni, for this world did have a large ocean on it and Brad wanted to get the aquatics division started right away. There were around 1200 of them in total, meaning that aside from the construction crews building the colony everything was going to have to be staffed by the maturia graduates and overseen by the ‘elders.’

That wasn’t the most preferred situation, but given that Brad didn’t have a native population to babysit and he was able to start from scratch he felt it was a good place to start. Wisdom took time to build, and the more hands-on activity these younglings could get, the faster they would learn…though he was having a transitional support team in place to actually run the startup colony during the integration of the younglings. Things like food prep and maintenance weren’t something you wanted to hand them right off their first day, but the support team would cycle out gradually and within a year or two be fully replaced by locals.

When Brad’s jumpship arrived he took a dropship down to the half-built colony with his elite staff and got to work right away setting up the necessary programs needed for when the younglings started to arrive a month later. A lot of that planning had already been done, but it wasn’t until they actually got on site that they were able to get a feel for the place and set up shop. There was a full sanctum in place for Brad’s use, so he intended to stay planetside for the foreseeable future rather than living out of a jumpship.

When he got to the surface he essentially staked his claim and started micromanaging everything in order to make sure things were in order for when the first batch of 5,000 younglings arrived. He’s specified that number and would have exactly that amount coming in every month for the first year while the balance would be moved into other locations within Star Force to await their turn. Nearly all of them wanted to come to Brad’s new addition to the empire, for they’d been hearing of it throughout their maturia training, but the trailblazer knew he couldn’t overload the limited infrastructure and staff with too much new blood, hence a staggered approach was used.

He spent a lot of personal time with that first 5,000. So much so that he eventually knew them all by name. He pushed them hard in training, got them acquainted with limited but essential duties, then relied on them to carry them out when the next batch came in and he saw to their indoctrination into the new order…save it wasn’t all that new for them, for all they’d ever known was Star Force. The few wrinkles that Brad put into the Protovic civilization took some getting used to and developed over time, but after that first year the trailblazer felt he had a sufficient core of personnel to open up the immigration doors and allow an additional 10,000 per week.

The Star Force engineers gave him plenty of infrastructure to use and kept right on building as he incorporated more and more Protovic younglings into his new civilization. Some of them even began working with the construction crews to learn hands-on and begin creating their own branch. They weren’t given anything critical to do, just some basic work to gain experience on with the prime crews as they expanded the single colony out into a network of cities across the northern continent.

As the colony’s population surged a small trickle of new infants came with it, which were put into a maturia on site staffed by the same people who had been working the others and were now transitioning here as those were being shut down stage by stage as they exhausted their supply of infants. Brad couldn’t trust younglings to run the maturias so they had to be staffed by professionals, but as soon as the local maturia had its first class assembled the Protovic civilization was officially born and sustainable.

It would take another 20 years before any of those infants cycled into the general population, but the sequence was underway and Brad was careful to monitor all aspects of the new Protovic as they developed, making adjustments where necessary and improvements where he was able to fashion them. He kept his core staff around permanently, knowing that it would be a long time before the Protovic were able to fly solo, but with each year that passed they became more and more capable.

Brad didn’t open the door to the older Protovic transfers until the 24th year, and even then he limited the number to only 10 the first month. He increased that tiny amount to 15 the next, then 25 and so on to make sure that the individuals assimilated into the masses rather than having a social division form between the old and the new. He wanted them all to identify simply as ‘Protovic’ and made the transition gradual for that reason.

Over time he upped the number, but by then there were so many maturia younglings coming in that it didn’t truly matter and the transitional ones were blended in with the new civilization as they all worked to build and strengthen the newest part of Star Force. It would be a long time into the future before they’d start fielding warships and armies of their own to fight the lizards, but Brad worked patiently and diligently towards that end, slowly crafting a new twist on classic Star Force protocol to make the Protovic an effective and unique addition to the overall empire…and one that would surpass the independent Protovic civilization in comparison, tech advantage aside.

5

December 26, 2879

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Naisha set her bag down on the bed of her new three room quarters. The design was slightly different than what she had been living in on Onyx but basically the same third level allotment that she’d earned in the transitional colony that was now in the process of becoming part of Axius. More and more non-Protovic were coming to the world as a slow trickle of people were coming out of the prisons. She didn’t know the exact number, but it had only been a few years ago when the ‘survivor’ count had passed 500,000.

500,000 out of what had been 3 trillion people taken prisoner. Naisha had been insulated from the rest of the Veliquesh civilization, but she hadn’t expected it to be as thoroughly corrupt as that number indicated. On the other hand, given some of the stories she’d heard from other survivors it was amazing that anyone had come out of that mess of a life sane. But all those she’d talked to were, for like her they’d come through the transition process and earned their freedom. Naisha still didn’t know exactly how that worked from a psychological or scientific standpoint…but it obviously did.

Most of the Protovic on Onyx were from the pools of younglings that the invasion had rescued before they could be evaluated as ‘unfit’ and killed, making her and the other survivors a small minority, then add in all the immigrants from other races and the planet had become a vibrant mix of faces and cultures that washed away the last bits of Veliquesh from her system…though she’d always retain the memories of how they’d tried to kill her and nearly succeeded.

She never know who it was that had saved her, but what she’d learned of Star Force told her that it had been an Archon, based on the armor. She couldn’t for the life of her remember what color it had been, and though she wanted to know she figured that was probably going to be one mystery she carried with her for the rest of her life…which now that she’d attained self-sufficiency could end up being a very long time.

Rather than spending her days in the colony lingering about as she had at first and many others did permanently, Naisha had trained as a generic worker, though for Star Force that was a lot more complicated that it sounded. It was the lowest paid position within the organization but one that still required extensive training. She spent over 8 months going through drills and procedures that expanded upon what she’d learned during her days in the prison…which she eventually found out doubled for what others went through in a maturia.

The extra training ran her through all kinds of variables and how to deal with them, giving her basic training in the food supply division that was far more than she’d expected. Half of all Star Force foodstuffs were prepackaged, with the rest requiring combination and prep before being made available in the cafeterias. She began as a level 1 assistant having had lessons in various allergies and the components that went into every bit of food that Star Force provided free of charge.

Other food items were available for sale by private venders, but Naisha hadn’t been allowed to work in a cafeteria until she knew every single item Star Force served and how to assemble each of those that were not prepackaged. That included the foodstuffs for Protovic, Humans, Calavari, and every other race within Star Force. The foodstuffs weren’t labeled as such, for some were palatable by several races, but they weren’t going to let her do so much as lay out the packages onto the display cases until she was able to spot potential problems, such as the wrong items going in the vending lines.

All the foodstuffs looked different, even if it was as simple a thing as coloration, so people would know which ones were meant for them and which were not, and it was the responsibility of every single person on the staff to insure there were no mistakes made so the people coming in to eat didn’t have to think about what they were grabbing off the racks.

It was important, as were all Star Force positions, and that was made clear from day 1 of training. When she began her work the tasks were simple, with her taking certain items from place to place and other menial tasks that could easily have been accomplished without any training required, but the difference was she wasn’t just following orders. She understood everything that she was doing and saw each item as a puzzle piece in a larger system that was recognizable to her.

Working in that position was her way of paying back Star Force for saving her, though they in turn paid her a credit stipend for doing so. She received an automatic 2.2 credits per day when she began and that had risen to 2.9 by the time she’d petitioned and received permission to transfer to the Protovic colony on Nym. After a month of working in the cafeteria she had been given a quarters’ upgrade as default, but she went ahead and purchased the next level up. That had cost her .7 credits per day and was deducted from her stipend automatically, which still allowed her to accumulate a surplus to use on whatever she wanted.

There were further quarters upgrades available, but the next one up cost 3.5 credits per day and was therefore out of her pay range unless she wanted to save up and pay a year’s advance. That hadn’t appealed to her and the three room quarters were much more luxurious than the basic ‘pods’ that she’d lived in. The bedroom was larger and had several modular pullouts that she could configure as she liked. The cleansing chamber was also slightly larger and included clothing storage, but it was the auxiliary living space in the third room that made the quarters a true luxury.

It had no specific purpose, but was more than three times the size of the bedroom and contained a large vid screen across one wall. The standard furniture was here, but Naisha could purchase additional pieces as needed…or actually the correct term was ‘rent,’ for when she’d transferred to Nym her old furniture hadn’t come with her. Right now there was a long couch and a stool stationed next to a table built into the wall. Anything beyond that she’d have to acquire with credits.

Her credit account did transfer between factions, and all of Star Force used the same currency system so she wasn’t going to have to start from scratch, nor was she going to have to look for a new position. That had already been arranged prior to her transit. There had been a long waiting line for the survivors to transfer to the Protovic and priority had gone to those most qualified. Had she not been working a job she’d still be waiting on Onyx, so even though she was on the lowest working tier of the empire she still got preferential treatment over those who simply lived without contributing.

Star Force had made it clear that that was perfectly acceptable behavior, but Naisha thought it was unacceptably rude on the part of the survivors to do so. They were alive and well because Star Force had rescued them, then went to the effort to train them. Naisha wasn’t skilled in any major way, but she was helping out where she could and didn’t care to socialize with any of the others that did not…and she’d gotten into more than one argument over that fact back on Onyx.

When her bag hit the bed she came down beside it a moment later and just laid out. Travel between star systems wasn’t difficult, but it did take her out of her routine and she found that to be exhausting. Naisha closed her eyes and took a crash nap right then and there, waking up some time later and beginning to unpack the few personal items she’d brought with her. All the necessities could be acquired locally, so what was in her pack was an assortment of novelties that she’d accumulated, including a small collection of decorative statues.

Naisha arranged them on one of the pullout shelves built into the living room wall and hit the activation buttons on those that were so equipped, with the Dvapp-built ‘snowman’ beginning to oscillate through his dance pattern as the crystalline material bent and flowed in a cyclical pattern.

She’d paid 172 credits for it, but it was worth every one and her favorite of them all. A few special items of clothing went into the closet and a custom set of casual shoes dropped next to the bed, which was the end of her unpacking. She stowed away her travel duffle and left her quarters after reprogramming the security code to something new, headed to the nearest equipment store.

There were several types in a Star Force city, but it was the clothing one that she headed to first. Nothing there cost credits, though there were temporal limitations to how much you could acquire at a time so no hoarding could occur. The amount was actually rather high so Naisha was able to fill out her wardrobe with standard uniforms and casual clothes on that single trip, then would be able to replace worn out clothing at a recycle station there and exchange them for tokens that could be used for more items.

The standard was 300 tokens for clothing, which included shoes, but since she was working that stipend upped to 350. Likewise there was a utility stipend of 75 tokens that allowed her to get a toothbrush and toothpaste at another equipment store along with shedding kit and a few other personal maintenance items, all of which could be recycled for a refund of the tokens if they became broken or empty.

Naisha went to a third store and picked up some training gear pulling from a third pool of tokens. Here she got a pair of running shoes and some stretch bands so she could do some resistance training in her quarters first thing when she woke up. She still had some tokens left in all three pools but didn’t feel the need to burn them all, but she did head to the civilian stores and bought a few things with credits, including a bag of candy that was sold as being tailored specifically to Protovic physiology.

It was by far the best candy she’d ever had back on Onyx and she wanted to keep a supply of it in her quarters at all times. It cost her 1.4 credits per bag, but it was worth it when she came back from a workout with a sugar low and didn’t feel like heading over to the cafeteria to eat. Some people took prepackaged foodstuffs back to their quarters to store up a small stockpile, but all of the warm foods were meant to be eaten on site. Private companies made meals that could be prepared in your quarters using modular cooking equipment, but Naisha didn’t care for those. A regular candy snack was enough to get her by until she found enough energy to get herself back over to the cafeteria to eat rather than work.

She wasn’t sure what would be different here, but assumed that most of the procedures would be the same. The grace window she had after transit was three days, but she went ahead and reported for work as soon as she got herself settled that first day. She spent a 4 hour shift then headed off for a workout in one of the local gymnasiums before allowing herself the luxury to explore her new home…or some of it, for the city was massive.

She and the rest of the citizens pretty much had access to everything, with only a few restricted sections for those with clearance beyond hers. One of those was the shipyards, for the city had a surface facility that was working in the open air beneath a shield dome to keep the weather out. Naisha eventually found her way to an observation deck on a tower that overlooked the shipyard and sat down on one of the bar stools sipping a confection drink along with others that were there to enjoy the view of the city or the broadcasts on the vid screens that were showing everything from news to sports.

All the faces she had seen since arriving here were Protovic and her red variety. Supposedly there were a handful of purple here that had come from Axius and even the other Protovic civilization that was an ally of Star Force, but they must have been so few in number to disappear amongst the masses.

It was odd, for everyone was the same. She’d gotten used to there being different races everywhere, but aside from the occasional Human this colony was all Protovic. That brought up a few memories of the Veliquesh, but things here were so different, so open, that the comparison fizzed immediately.

Looking out the windows she could see the drone warships she’d heard about. Rather than adopt the standard Star Force block style or use one of the other factions’ blueprints the Protovic had designed and begun to build their own version. It wasn’t much of a deviation, but they were using triangular wedges that would come together in fours that would then form a solid square, making for no wasted volume during transport onboard a jumpship.

Right now there were three of the drones under construction within sight, along with several starships that took on a more unique design and incorporated the typical Protovic hammerhead motif into a blocky back segment rather than the X-design. These starships, Naisha knew, were for local transit within the system. Many more were promised to come, but the Protovic fleet was only in its infancy. There were two other shipyards on the planet and four more in orbit working to build that military and civilian fleet, but it was going to take a long time to increase their numbers, for they were getting no outside help in doing so.

Everything here was being built locally, which was part of the draw for Naisha and the other immigrants. This was a Protovic civilization, and while they were part of Star Force she found it appealing to have a corner of it that was their own. That wasn’t to say she wanted to be isolationist, not at all, but she did like the idea of them being able to pull their own weight and eventually give back to the rest of Star Force later on when they had the strength to really make a difference in the war against the lizards.

That was beyond her prevue though, so she was determined to do what she could in support of those that would be going out to fight. Already there was a small number of advanced Protovic teams fighting alongside Axius, but the bulk of their limited military was still involved in permanent training to get them ready and establish a core group that others generations could build upon. Everything here had been built from scratch, and while they did have all the wisdom and experience of Star Force and the leadership of a trailblazer, some things still had to be earned with time and the Protovic were no exception.

But they were earning their keep and learning, which was why Naisha was so excited to be here and be a part of it, finally, after getting passed up so many times for transfer. She loved the community on Onyx, but now that she was here she realized this was truly where she belonged.

Another added bonus was that the Veliquesh that had tried to kill her and the others were now stuck in a prison facility in another system entirely, rather than being right next door. They couldn’t get out unless they earned their way out, but the fact that a lot of them were still alive and unrepentant was a disturbing thought. She knew that wouldn’t last forever, and even if Star Force isolation kept them alive longer than they would have been in their former decrepit society, they wouldn’t last forever unless they attained self-sufficiency, which Naisha knew required a lot of training and the willingness to analyze and rework a person’s interior.

Veliquesh didn’t do that. They prayed to the Nash to aid them rather than trying to do it themselves. She’d already heard that some of the prison facilities were being torn down and the materials recycled as they were no longer needed, for the prisoner count was diminishing with each year. A few would earn their way out, but the rest were simply dying off from what had mistakenly been considered old age in the past. Now she realized it was really physical and mental degradation.

In short, the Veliquesh that didn’t learn from Star Force and become Protovic were going to have their sick culture kill them through an alternative means…stagnation. The tools were there for them to use and learn from, but if they didn’t they’d eventually die off. All of them would, and that thought comforted Naisha. Not because of their failure to change, but because the nightmare of the Veliquesh would, some day in the future, be completely erased from the galaxy, and the ongoing deconstruction efforts of the prison facilities meant that day wasn’t too far away.

Here though she didn’t have to worry about that, or see it. These were all Protovic, as she was, and they had a bright future ahead of them if they were willing to work at it, and she was, for while she was going to be working in the cafeteria she was also taking additional maturia courses at a slow pace attempting to create new skills. Right now that was just a basic, all around training program, but if she showed aptitude in anything she was going to pursue it, for while she was helping Star Force in a tiny way she wanted to do more.

And even if it took her 100 years of training to get to the point where she was able to do that, she was ok with it. For now that she was self-sufficient she had all the time in the galaxy, and no matter what meager achievements she was able to make going forward she would always strive for more. Because that was the Star Force way and, above all else, she wanted to repay them as much as she could, knowing that debt could never fully be repaid. They had saved her from darkness and given her a place in the light…and she was going to defend and support that light in any way, shape, or form she could, in perpetuity.

6

January 3, 2880

Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

Nym

Jenran took a deep breath and set himself, eyeing the target at the end of the run-up. When the tone sounded he took off running, not at full sprint, as he’d learned previously, because while he needed speed he also needed control and accuracy. He had 55 meters to work with and got up to decent speed in half that, then transitioned into a ‘floating’ stride as he set himself into a forward lean, finishing with his last few strides sending him into a partial lunge forward.

He hit the target head first with his body at about a 40 degree angle to the ground then bounced off it and landed haphazardly to the left. The Protovic flipped around into a tri-point stance and shook off the momentary disorientation with a twitch of his head, then ran off to the side to touch a finish pedestal. This challenge was two part, with the level of impact being measured as well as the recovery time, and as soon as he hit the pedestal with his glowing red/green hand his score was displayed above it in holo.

Jenran frowned. His combined score had gone up 16 points, but his kinetic impact had decreased 7. It seemed that no matter what he tried he always lost ground in some way.

He hit the reset button on the side of the finish pedestal and walked back to the start point, set himself again, then took off running. He hit the wall in a similar manner, impacting it with the exoskeleton cap on his head where a Human would have had hair, but if one of them had tried this they’d knock themselves unconscious or snap their neck. Jenran didn’t have to worry about either because when he impacted his exoskeleton ran down the back of his head and connected to his torso, so as long as he held his form there wasn’t going to be any bending involved.

The bounce coming off the wall was uncontrollable and somewhat random, but others had learned how to at least predict it so they could stay on their feet and get to the pedestal almost instantaneously. His current bounce sent him neither left or right, but rather returned him directly opposite his momentum path…which was a rarity. It bounced him back half a meter and he fell flat on his face.

Jenran climbed to his feet and jogged the few steps over to the finish pedestal on the right, for there were two to accommodate which way you bounced off the wall. He’d been screwed by the reverse direction immediately, and as a result his score ended up being junk…yet his kinetic impact had gone up 21 points from the previous run.

“Having trouble?” a voice asked from nearby.

Jenran turned around and saw Kleeva watching him. “I can’t get a handle on this.”

“Your head is more rounded, so it’s going to be harder to apply a predictable hit,” she said, walking over to him and hitting the reset button on the pedestal. “All males are.”

“They don’t have the same difficulty that I do,” he complained.

“Watch me,” she said, running back to the start and reversing direction with a single foot plant that turned into a light sprint. When she hit the wall head first her flatter cranial dome rolled her to the right. Her shoulder hit the wall, then her body rolled across it and she landed on her feet already moving towards the finish pedestal. She slapped the button and got a transition time less than half of what Jenran had been scoring on his best runs.

Kleeva tilted her neck to the left, with a soft pop sounding as her exoskeleton readjusted. “See what I did?”

“You stayed on your feet.”

“No…well yes, but that’s not what I meant. I turned my head a fraction prior to impact so I knew which way I’d be bouncing.”

Jenran frowned. “Doesn’t that reduce your impact score?”

“Not when you only do it a fraction. I can measure it out better because of my flat head, but I’ve seen some males do it better than me so I know you can.”

Jenran looked down at his shorter friend who was also going through commando training. All females were smaller than the males by about 12% mass, but aside from a slightly flatter head and a few other small cosmetic differences they were every bit as effective as the males, though in the case of this training drill they were better because of that cranium difference.

“I’ll keep trying, but my scores aren’t even at the minimum yet.”

“I’m only just over it,” she argued.

“You’re lower mass, so that’s to be expected.”

“I have to hit the same scores as you, regardless.”

“I’m just saying your technique is better, and I don’t know how to train myself a better one other than throwing myself at this stupid wall a bazillion times and hoping to accidentally improve.”

“You know, when we get into actual combat we’re going to have helmets and targets that aren’t flat walls.”

“Exactly my point. We have to adapt and I can’t figure out how to do it here on the easy, predictable, non-moving challenge course.”

“It’s all in the angle of impact.”

“I can’t feel it enough to control it.”

“Then slow down.”

“My score tanks from the lack of impact if I do that.”

“But you might need to in order to learn the control necessary. You can gradually up it until you find the break point, then fiddle with it there.”

“I have to learn this at speed.”

“And you will…after you learn it at slow speed,” she insisted, pulling him by the arm. “Come on. I’ll pace you.”

“We’ll run into each other on the bounce.”

“Afraid of a few bumps?” she said, citing the now well-known endurance that the race had compared to the others in Star Force. With their exoskeletal patches and almost Gumby-like flesh elsewhere, the Protovic could take a lot more pounding than others could without getting injured, so much so that it was rumored that their trailblazer patron had designed this and other collision tactics specifically for their combat use…things the other races couldn’t do without hurting themselves.

“Fine,” he relented, walking with her back to the start and taking up a position alongside the shorter Protovic.

“Mimic me,” she said, walking forward at first then transitioning into a slow jog that she added to at the very end with a lunge forward into the wall. Jenran made for a sloppy shadow and hit a fraction of a second after her, with both of them rolling to the outside and away from each other.

“Try to match me closer. I’ll increase slowly,” Kleeva said, walking back to the start.

“I feel like a youngling,” he complained, glancing around at the other identical courses being used nearby. Those Protovic weren’t going anywhere near this slow, and most of them were hitting scores that he hadn’t even come close to.

“You are one,” she said pithily before giving him a countdown with her left hand, dropping it as she took off. This time he held to her pace better and they both impacted the wall at nearly the same time, then they reset and began to repeat the binary attack on multiple run-throughs, increasing their speed gradually as they progressed and per Kleeva’s choice…which was a much slower rate than Jenran preferred.

They were up to their 21st repetition when he hit and bounced the wrong way, slamming into her left elbow as she rolled across the wall. He dropped to the ground and didn’t get up while she did, recovering and transitioning over to the pedestal. When Kleeva tapped it and turned around she saw him still lying on the ground clutching his crotch.

“What’s wrong?”

“What do you think?” he groaned.

Kleeva’s hand rose to cover her mouth as she laughed. “You weren’t closed up?”

“Apparently not,” he said, embarrassed.

“Why the hell not? You know I didn’t do that on purpose.”

“Doesn’t really matter at this point,” he said, getting to a knee but rising no further.

“But why weren’t you closed up?” she asked, referencing the pelvic plates on the males that covered their genitalia when not in use. Females had internal organs and merely an aperture that was not protected, but very hard to hit. If a male got caught with his plates spread and hit there with even the slightest bump it was said to be extremely painful.

“You.”

“Me?”

“I wasn’t concentrating when I hit the wall and I guess I…spread on accident.”

“Because of me?”

“You are one of the hottest girls here,” he said in mild defense.

“Oh…really? You never mentioned you had a thing for me before…”

“I didn’t plan to,” he said, wincing as he got up, then trying to stand still and let the unbearable pain bleed off. “I’m here to fight…not mate.”

“You can’t do either right now,” she said, still smirking. “Wow. Never realized I had that effect on guys.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he asked, still in considerable pain that didn’t want to go away.

“I’m sorry…but yeah. A bit.”

“This is why you don’t do tandem runs.”

“No, this is why you keep yourself closed up,” she argued, still not quite believing that he’d been caught off guard because of her.

“I’ll remember that,” he said stiffly.

“It really hurts, doesn’t it?”

“You have no idea.”

“How long before you start feeling…normal?”

“Depends how hard you’re hit, and you stuck me good with your elbow.”

“Actually, it was you that rolled into me, remember? At least we found your speed limit. Now you can work on gradually increasing it without losing control.”

“I really hate you right now.”

“What happened?” another commando trainee asked, coming over to where Jenran was standing with an awkward lean forward.

“Don’t ask.”

“He got caught open,” Kleeva told him.

The other male tried to suppress a smirk, then looked at him with genuine concern. “How bad?”

“Elbow.”

“Ouch,” he said empathetically. “Been there before. Nothing you can do but wait it out.”

“I know.”

“My condolences,” the other male said, heading back to his own training drills.

“I’m sorry,” Kleeva said after he’d left.

“Not your fault…but I still hate you.”

“At least that’s one thing girls don’t have to worry about in combat.”

“Lucky you.”

“Do you want me to find you a medic?”

“No.”

“How about a stun gun?”

Jenran didn’t answer vocally, but gave her a look that said ‘maybe.’

“Tell you what. You rest and I’ll get back to my own training. Later on today, or whenever you fully recover, I’ll make it up to you,” she said, leaning in close to his head and whispering. “Pain now, pleasure later, all even?”

“No need,” he said, mentally kicking himself for turning her down but he was in so much residual pain that his subconscious didn’t argue much. “Just an accident, and my fault. Forget about it.”

“And what if I insist?” she said, gently licking his forehead.

“Not really in the flirting mood right now,” he said honestly.

“Oh…right. Sorry. I owe you, though. Guess we’ll continue this later then,” she said, stepping away and hesitating. “If you don’t find me, I’ll find you. I want to even up.”

“Fine…later,” he said, sitting back down on the ground.

Kleeva cringed and walked away.

Jenran looked down at his crotch, then up at the wall where the misfortune had occurred. “Can’t get any worse,” he told himself, standing up and walking to the start position. If he was going to be in pain he might as well be getting something out of these minutes than just sitting and wallowing in discomfort…that and he didn’t want to attract any more attention.

Making sure he was tightly closed up he jogged forward and very lightly hit the wall head on, rolling to the left and over to the pedestal. He didn’t even look at the score, resetting it and going back to try again. With each repetition the pain got less and less to the point where he was able to start processing what Kleeva had been saying pre-flirt.

Right now he had to go slow, and that restriction made him realize she was right. He was worrying too much about his appearance and needed to work this from the slow end up. Now that he literally had no pride left there was no shame in taking these runs slow and trying to work on his impact deflection angles.

Turning his brain off to everything else he just repeated the drill more times than he knew until he accidentally set a new personal best combined score…and at a lower speed than he had been attempting before. Frowning, he reset the drill and did it again, getting almost the exact same score, only 1 point lower. Jenran did it four more times the exact same way, ruling out the possibility that it was just an accident, then he hit the reset again and took his start position, the pain of his collision now almost entirely gone.

He took off at full speed and tried to apply the same technique he’d been using to this attempt, not expecting to succeed but hoping to see that something had changed. When he hit the wall he bounced off randomly again, but he flopped onto the ground and got to his feet well enough and tagged the pedestal, seeing that the kinetic impact was decent, but more importantly he’d been able to feel his error on contact. There was no way he could have controlled it, but he wasn’t numbing up for that moment of impact like he had been before.

Now that he could ‘see’ what was occurring he knew he could learn to do it like the others. In retrospect he realized he’d just been trying for too much and hadn’t allowed his senses to calibrate to the hard impacts. He’d been mentally flinching with each but now, having let his mind gradually adjust to harder and harder impacts, he could go through it ‘eyes open,’ which he tested with several more runs before slowing down again and picking up from where he’d left off on his gradual improvement, now confident that he’d be able to get this within the next few days.

When he eventually quit he realized he’d spend the past 4 hours in the gym. He’d expected to be there half an hour and had to rush several other training elements before reporting for mandatory scripted sessions. He didn’t like having screwed up his morning’s workouts, but realized that the tradeoff was more than worth it. He’d made a huge rookie mistake and now was wise to it, with the ironic part being that he probably wouldn’t have gained that insight if Kleeva hadn’t embarrassed him with that accidental collision.

He’d heard stories of accidental training insights from others, and now it seemed he had one of his own to tell. He liked that, but more so he liked the increased capability it would give him, for he could apply the same insight to other areas even after he mastered the head ram. It was one of the unique combat tactics to the Protovic and he’d been feeling inadequate for not being able to do it up to requirements. His scores weren’t high enough to meet them yet, but it was just a matter of time now that he knew his mistake had been countered.

Regardless of any sexual liaison with Kleeva that would result from this, his crotch knock had been worth it. He knew he’d never say that in the moment of pain, but it was now past and he still had his training insight going forward. It had sucked, and he wouldn’t be living down that stigma anytime soon, but on the battlefield things like that didn’t matter. Skill and ability did, and he’d just increased his slightly, however accidental it might have been.

7

July 5, 2888

Ventrol System (lizard territory)

Treymit

Nephit took cover behind a boulder, tucking his appendages in behind as much of it as he could as his fellow Bsidd did likewise in four other spots. The lizards they were facing were being more stubborn than normal and weren’t walking out to their deaths like normal. They had numbers on the Star Force troops but not enough to really press the issue. Instead the lizards were operating in hit teams that were carrying one of their newest toys…a rocket launcher that did more concussive damage than shrapnel. Even a direct hit wouldn’t take down Nephit or his fellow Betas if their shields and armor were full, but that’s not what the lizards were going for.

The stupid explosives would physically move the Bsidd they hit, knocking them over or even flinging them through the air when the lizards shot at their feet. If they got a good bounce the lizards would rush them when they were out of position, and the little bastards were getting good with combos, making it necessary for the Bsidd to not group up too much and keep to cover whenever possible. His team had two snipers in the back that were working through the enemy ranks, so right now they just needed to buy time.

They had two Archons with their unit of some 500 Bsidd, and they’d ordered them into a defensive position, telling them to turtle up and hold ground. Ahead of them was a lizard stronghold they were trying to knock out, one that still had anti-air cover to keep the aerial division back, so they were going to take it down the hard way. It hadn’t occurred to Nephit unit a few minutes ago that the lizards had flanked them with reinforcements and now surrounded them on all sides…hence the turtle maneuver.

He’d fought in a few of these situations before, knowing they were dangerous if they screwed up, but more often than not the lizards would overcommit and turn their advantage into defeat. That wasn’t happening here, for the little green vermin were fighting smart and chucking rockets into them whenever they could. His armor had taken a gash on two of his appendages, but his shields had reformed over it before it could get worse. Others had also taken some armor damage, but everyone was still combat capable so he wasn’t worried too much. If they were in trouble the Archons would tell them what to do, and right now they were just holding ground as they’d done so many times in the past.

A phaser shot skipped across the boulder’s surface, blowing up a spray of molten dust as it passed and partially hit him in the helmet. His shield caught it but he ducked down a bit further, having thought he was too low to be shot already. He got a ‘hand’ signal from another Bsidd across a gap and hiding behind a dead tree on the otherwise rocky terrain, prompting him to curl up his appendages and roll like a ball out into the open. When he took fire, as expected, he just kept rolling like a tumbleweed as four others stepped out and returned fire. He didn’t see how many of the lizards were hit, but when he got to the other side and took cover behind a rock near the tree those there gave him a nod of respect, meaning that the maneuver had been worth it.

Nephit checked his shield gage, noting it had dropped under 25%. He needed to stay down and recharge, but the lizards weren’t going to cooperate. A rocket zipped by his head and hit a boulder behind him, blasting it apart and turning the pieces into light shrapnel that bounced off the twenty some Bsidd in the area. Those that were now denied cover ran multiple ways as two more rocket shots came in and physically moved three of them out of position with hits to the ground nearby.

Nephit got slammed up against his cover rock by the concussion wave, then a sea of green rushed into view to his right as the lizards came forward and tried to take advantage of the situation, firing dozens of phaser shots into the downed and disoriented Bsidd that were out in the open. He and the others rushed out and engaged them hand to hand, with a few getting there first and interposing themselves between the attackers and their targets. Nephit came out into the flank of the group and took a shot to the helmet as two of them turned on him just as he saw a sammy sniper shot come down and hit a lizard to his right in the head.

It fell to the ground dead, with Nephit seeing the det pack on its back. He cursed and kept fighting, realizing how he and the others had stupidly been baited into a trap…one that their sniper had just saved them from.

Thirty seconds later half the lizards there were dead and the others fell back to the horde that was waiting further up the plain. They’d just been poked, not fully engaged, but he and others had taken a lot of shield depletion and some bad armor hits. He was ok for the moment, ducking back into cover as long range phaser blasts peppered the area, breaking up the short-lived melee.

After a few seconds of cover and him seeing his shield strength bar begin to creep back up his comm broke open with some type of music he wasn’t familiar with. It was loud and obviously a battle song, but he didn’t know what it was for until he zoomed out his battlemap and saw a host of new icons approaching.

“Yes,” one of the Bsidd next to him said with eagerness as orders from the Archons began to come through in the form of waypoints and target beacons. The unfamiliar song kept repeating the phrase ‘back off, I’ll take you on” and Nephit liked it immediately, especially because the orders were indicating that they were abandoning their turtle formation and pressing the attack. He and the others waited as instructed until their standard bearers came up in the form of an Archon striker that was not assigned to them, but was probably one belonging to the Protovic that were reinforcing them.

The battle song kept playing for several minutes as they approach, with that lead Archon running out into the open where Nephit and the others had just fought that brief scrap and setting his feet into the dry dirt and holding position as the lizards peppered him with pink phaser strikes. The next thing the Bsidd saw was a blur of red/grey armor flying through the air past the Archon on what was probably a telekinetic grip, for the Human’s arm went in the same direction as if he was flinging the mass forward.

Immediately Nephit got the order to push and he jumped out of cover as the Archon beat them to the front by two steps, following the Protovic he’d just threw into the group of lizards ahead that had been bowled down from the physical impact. A red energy shield burst out from that Protovic into a flat wall blocking most of the firing coming in at him. Those lizards nearest him on the ‘friendly’ side turned and shot him multiple times but he just held still, carrying a large shield emitter backpack as the Archon telekinetically ripped two of them off him and the Bsidd shot the others dead.

Behind Nephit more Bsidd followed along with a column of Protovic. They looked like Humans and wore almost identical armor to their commandos, with the coloration being the only major difference. A specialized icon flashed directly over top the Bsidd on the battlemap, with it materializing on his HUD as an area of blue sparkles surrounding him. He knew that meant to make gaps to let the Protovic through, with the smaller allies sprinting up between them and running directly towards the lizards as the shield carrier either lost his charge or deliberately dropped the energy matrix.

Half a dozen of the Protovic ran by or jumped over him, then weathered a storm of phaser hits before diving and ramming the lizard groups head first and knocking several over per hit. Nephit and the Bsidd weren’t far behind and used the disruption to shoot down some at range then jump in on top of the others and fight them hand to hand using their plasma rods. What looked like a sea of blue lightsaber blades lit up, six per Bsidd, and began lashing the lizards with pointblank plasma hits.

As was expected, the lizards didn’t back down like the song suggested. Those hidden nearby emerged and swarmed the Star Force troops in what looked to be an even battle for the moment Nephit had to glance around, then he was too occupied with the lizards on top of him to pay attention to anything else. He fought them as he normally did, but there were rockets flying everything disrupting their formations…though they had the Protovic doing the same to the lizards with their own bodies. He’d never seen a Human fight like that before, but these troops were and taking a hell of a physical beating doing it. More than once he saw an Archon pick one up and throw them like a rock at the lizards, and not all of them had shield packs.

Some of those ramming tactics paid off for Nephit, because they set up kills for him. The Kamikaze-like behavior was something the lizards hadn’t seen Star Force use before and it seemed to shake them up even as they were chucking rockets and pouncing on anyone they caught out. More Protovic were grouped up into fireteams and were assisting hunting the lizards like typical Human commandos.

With me, an Archon said telepathically as it passed Nephit and tapped him on one of his appendages.

A bit shocked by the voice appearing in his head rather than his helmet, Nephit did as instructed and followed the Archon through the melee and up to the front with two Protovic flanking him. They didn’t stay there long, having to divert to knock down groups of lizards coming towards him but the Archon didn’t stop moving and neither did Nephit until they ran up on a crevice that ran between two monoliths of rock that stood 6 meters high.

Kill them as they come out, the Archon said as he turned around and protected the Bsidd’s flank.

Nephit trusted in his judgement and faced directly into the crevice that was barely wide enough for two Betas to stand side by side, but he had just enough room to stretch out his appendages and swing freely as he bullied his way into the line of lizards coming up out of a small hole in the rock wall on the left. He cut down two with plasma rods and shot the rest as he moved his way up to the hole as another quickly climbed out and tried to roll away from him. The Bsidd reached out and jabbed it in the chest with a plasma rod as another climbed out and tried to get away, firing a shot into his chest section as it scurried to clear the hole.

Nephit understood what he had to do and backed up a step so they couldn’t shoot out the lateral tunnel at him, then he used one of his two rifles to shoot the lizards that had come out while he jabbed the next one crawling out of the tunnel. He remained them, fighting furiously to knock them all down and not let any through while the Archon covered the entrance to the crevice…though he couldn’t see him. The lizards were climbing out so fast he couldn’t pay attention to anything else, trusting that the Archon would know what he was doing and Nephit understanding that he had to be the mauler taking down this line of reinforcements as they were vulnerable coming out single file.

It was a sweet spot for an ambush and required him to rack up an insanely high kill count, which is exactly what he did up until he ran out of ammo, but by then there were other Bsidd standing behind him ready to take his place, for they’d already advanced this far and secured their foothold…with the lizards below ground apparently unaware and still sending a string of reinforcements out to a quick death as the crevice filled up with bodies.

Jenran dove into a group of four lizards, hitting one in the chest with his helmeted head. Rather than rolling to either side he just let him momentum carry him into and over the lizard as it went down. He rolled through a rough somersault and kicked out his armored left leg to catch a third lizard, for a second had been bowled down by the first as it was knocked backwards.

The Protovic didn’t even bother to try and fire his rifle, clinging to it with one hand as he kicked and rolled, knocking down as many lizards as he could until blue plasma streaks filled the air directly over him and the surrounding lizards went down from the hits. Red/grey suits of armor ran up to and past him as Jenran got to his feet and fell into line behind them.

They didn’t have far to go to get to the next group of lizards, with someone else pulling the same maneuver he just had. Using his rifle, Jenran moved forward and shot one of the lizards that had been knocked down while the others engaged a group of 50 or so situated in a circular enclosure within the rocks. It was an ambush position but the Protovic didn’t care, they just pushed their way in, knocking down the leading edge of the lizards and ramming a shield carrier into the worst of it. That bit of tech was one of Brad’s unique additions to the Protovic, which essentially put a heavy cradle over top of the commando armor that made the carrier extremely unagile and incapable of most hand to hand combat…but the tradeoff was worth it when paired with a fighting unit.

He’d said the Protovic were ‘headstrong,’ hence the signature battle song he’d given them, and had crafted their ground combat tactics accordingly. They carried more armor than Human commandos, making their suits slightly more stiff while needing less internal padding given their exoskeletal segments. And while they were trained to be agile, their ability to simply ram their opponents and not get disoriented by the collision gave them an advantage that Brad had told them to use often in group combat while still training them to be conventional commandos with a full range of evasive combat techniques.

This was the first invasion that the Protovic army was involved in and Jenran’s fifth battle. He and the others knew they were being evaluated, as well as the fact that this fight was live and people were in jeopardy if they screwed it up…but so far everyone had been doing their job and they’d been mowing down the lizards they’d been assigned to go against, though he suspected they were being given the easy assignments since they were newbs to this sort of fighting, while the Bsidd armies were taking on the heaviest areas of resistance.

Didn’t matter to him. There were lizards here to be fought and the bulk of the currently small Protovic army was finally getting a chance to contribute…and he was realizing just how small and weak the lizards were. These were standard varieties they were coming up against, no maulers, and every time he collided with one it did little to stop his higher mass. They were easy takedowns if they could get to them, especially considering that they were wearing no armor aside from some pathetic vests. Those might stop a shot, or half of one, but otherwise they were useless against Star Force’s weapons.

Jenran fought from the back of his unit while his shields recharged, only taking a few additional hits while the others soaked up most of the incoming fire. When he was nearly full and ready to take on the next diving assignment he got a battlemap prompt and immediately ran over to the nearby waypoint, finding the Archon that had summoned him and feeling his telepathy in his head.

He’d done this before and returned a ‘ready’ thought while getting the approximate direction the Archon wanted to throw him. He ran on that trajectory then felt himself tip forward and be lifted off the ground, accelerated by an invisible force as he was shot through the air like a slow missile past the Archon and the other Protovic, then hit headfirst into a wall of lizards. He kept his arms tucked around his rifle until he felt the telekinetic hold let go and gravity returned to normal.

As he crashed into the lizards he let his legs and one arm fly wide to catch as many of them as he could, acting like a snowplow that mowed down a line of them, leaving him the prime target now as multiple phaser blasts hit him, though a few missed and actually hit other lizards as he scrambled around on the ground, knowing that standing up immediately was a bad idea. He needed to buy a few seconds and then…

Two more Protovic came running up and head-butted lizards aside as a wave of blue plasma fire followed them along with the padawan that had thrown him. A group of lizards just dropped to the ground in front of him and Jenran shot them as quickly as he could while the Archon jumped over their bodies and punched another so hard he flew back as another projectile and knocked four more down.

Soon Jenran was surrounded by other Protovic and out of danger, finding his shields had gone down and he had a slightly melted gash across his right leg but no other damage. He held back and shot a few downed lizards that he wasn’t sure were totally dead as his shield bar reformed at minimal strength.

Tucking in behind others with more shield than him, he followed the group forward as they continued their cyclical push that, by design, was never supposed to end and give the lizards a chance to regroup. Once a Protovic formation started the charge forward they would continue until the enemy gave them too much resistance and they had to fall back, or until they’d won the battle.

8

July 18, 2888

Chepmet System (lizard territory)

Inner Zone

The Excalibur came out of its deceleration jump into view of the white star that stood at the center of the lizard-occupied system head of the line. It’d pulled extra heavy on the gravity drives to position them further out than normal, for they expected immediate resistance. Chepmet was a key system on the primary shipping route connecting the lizard core worlds and their expansion zone into Skarron territory. They used multiple paths to link the two, but the bulk of their ship and cargo transfer was occurring on one line…one very heavily defended line as they attempted to reduce the amount of raids that Star Force and the Voku were exacting on them.

The Preema invasion corridor had already eaten out a chunk of lizard territory on the Voku side of the midline and Star Force continued to creep their border in from the opposite side. That meant the vast expanse of territory in the ‘middle’ of lizard space was shrinking. Not so much that they were in jeopardy of getting cut off anytime soon, but the lizards could see the writing on the wall and had been reinforcing this particular line of systems, both in terms of planetary defenses and ship count.

So it didn’t surprise Paul when his command ship’s sensors began to pick up warship contacts in orbit around the star by the thousands. They were there to make sure any lizard ships coming through were protected as they made the transition from one jumppoint to another, for intercepting a ship mid jump was virtually unheard of. The weak points in the traffic flow were around the stars, so that’s where the lizards were pooling their ships and adding more to them as the months passed by.

There were too many for Paul to take out with his small Clan Saber fleet, which exited behind the Excalibur six in count. Four were standard warships and began deploying drones immediately upon arrival, but the other two were the main reason they were here. They were jumpship-sized drones that had no internal living space whatsoever, not even for maintenance access. Normally Star Force wouldn’t build anything that big in that manner, but these were prototypes that Clan Saber had developed and Paul had brought them here for a field test…as well as to diminish the number of ships the lizards had in the system.

Both mammoth warships were Ravager-class and had the distinction of carrying the first ‘holy’ weapon Star Force had managed to produce, which was the V’kit’no’sat’s Dre’mo’don. It was crude as hell right now and too large to fit on any normal sized drone, but each ravager had 12 Dre’mo’dons on them, a lot of armor and shields, and some backup Ta’lin’yi and mauler cannons with a sprinkling of Sammy anti-air turrets.

They were beasts with more kill power than the rest of the fleet combined, most of which was due to the Dre’mo’dons. They were the same type of weapon that Kara had in her armor, which compressed down into a tiny jewel set into her wrist. The one’s Star Force had built were monstrosities, and not due to their destructive power. What the V’kit’no’sat could condense down into a square meter, Star Force’s techs were only accomplishing the same with a battery the size of a dropship.

That meant they were hugely inefficient, but the end result was same when the condensed energy packet was launched. It wasn’t a beam, nor could reach even close to beam speeds, making it a medium/short range weapon, but it tore apart shields and armor alike in a way that made all the rest of Star Force’s weapons look like mere toys…which was why Paul and Roger had been pressing the techs to rush the design even if it took something huge to carry them.

The weapon schematics had been a Star Force project, but it was Clan Saber that had gone ahead and incorporated them into the ravager design while others factions were waiting for them to be tinkered with and reduced in size first. Paul wasn’t waiting, for this weapon put them ahead of the Voku, the Preema, and the Nexus in terms of raw firepower. He was here to take the pair of ravagers against an overwhelming lizard fleet, with the rest of his ships there to protect the prototypes. He knew he’d have to withdraw at some point, but intended to get a lot of data and ship kills before that and did not want to risk losing one of the very expensive ships.

Credits weren’t the issue, but the number of arc elements and solari required to construct the Dre’mo’don were insane compared to everything else they were using. Paul had only been able to afford it because Clan Saber had built a small Star Forge-class mining station of their own now that the main facilities were out of prototype stage and they had a limited, but firm handle on the technology. Mainline had 3 of the massive stations up and running with another two under construction, while Paul had spent a significant amount of his Clan’s resources to build his own baby version that he’d named the Pocket Knife.

Between it and the two ravagers, he’d devoted an enormous amount of his Clan’s resources into a very small amount of equipment, but both ventures were going to put the Sabers far ahead of the curve. The Dre’mo’don wasn’t the V’kit’no’sat’s most advanced weapon by far, but it was a staple of their smaller ships and the batteries on the ravagers were equivalent in yield to what the Rit’ko’sor had on their Frigate analogs. Small by V’kit’no’sat standards, but still naval yield and far more powerful than anything Kara could produce.

To put it in simpler terms, the weapons should be able to 1-hit lizard cruisers, though to date that theory hadn’t been tested, which was one of the reasons why Paul was here.

The trailblazer linked into the nexus and took personal command of both ravagers while leaving the drone fleet under the control of the remote pilots. They knew their job and he probably wouldn’t have to give any additional orders, leaving him free to focus on the new tech and using it to maximum advantage while simultaneously safeguarding it.

As the lizard sensors finally caught the echoes from the incoming ships their fleets began to reposition to come after the invaders, and those were just the ones already in orbit around the star. Paul knew there were at least 2 inhabited planets in the system, but how many more ships they had around them was a question mark. They’d only been able to get a brief scouting report that was some 60 years old from the Voku, plus updates from ships passing through that could not stay around long enough to take a fresh look.

As Paul’s fleet began to move towards the star and approach the swarm of lizard ships, three of his own drones broke off and made microjumps that would take them through a very fast scouting run of the other planets. That wasn’t their purpose here, but he might as well have a look while they were in the neighborhood. Those drones were operating on limited remote control and Paul had told his Admiral previously that he wanted them out and back quickly, for he didn’t know how long they’d be able to stand up against the lizard fleet and he didn’t want them left behind for the lizards to potentially disable and study.

As the four jumpships spread out into compass points around the Excalibur and the drones filled in the gaps while pushing the formation out even further, Paul kept the two ravagers in close to the command ship before sending them on out ahead when the fat donut started shooting bloons at the enemy. He wanted to keep well clear of their firing radius and let them fight the enemy, with the rest of the fleet holding position nearby to react as necessary. They were all going to shoot any and all lizard ships that came within firing range, but he wanted the ravagers to go in first and have their choice of targets.

Paul watched with considerable interest as the first 100+ ship tendril of cruisers came in towards the port ravager firing their phaser beams at a slightly greater range than the Dre’mo’dons could handle. Their energy packet was only momentarily cohesive, and once that cloyingness ran its course they’d pop like fireworks and dissipate their energy. Anything near the ‘pop’ would take damage, but it would be minimal compared to what the bolt would have accomplished on a proper hit.

When Paul felt the first of the cruisers come within the reliable range he fired the first Dre’mo’don, which while on V’kit’no’sat weapons was green, a color alteration hadn’t been a big technological issue so Paul had these built standard Star Force blue. What looked like a tiny pinprick of light glowed so brightly it might as well have been a piece of a star. It shot out almost too fast for the eye to track and impacted one of the fresh lizard cruisers that had full armor and shields, while a handful of the others had already been hit by bloons and weakened.

The Dre’mo’don hit the lizard shields and punched right through, overloading their matrix on impact then partially melting through the armor plates as the energy packet destabilized, turning from a tiny mote into a miniature nova. The hole in the armor expanded on the inside into a destructive cone that blew out the opposite side of the ship and nearly severed the entire thing in half. Sensor tags of weapons batteries winked out across the hull leaving only two still operational, but the rest of the cruiser was either junk or unpowered.

Pretty damn close to a 1-hit kill.

Paul didn’t waste a second shot on it and targeted a different cruiser with his second battery while the first went on an 18-second recharge. He hated that it was that ponderously slow but he had 12 batteries to work with, so as the lizard fleets swarmed around the ravagers with even more ships only minutes away, he was able to fire a shot every 1.5 seconds and use the secondary weaponry to clean up his kills and take them completely out of the fight.

And Paul had two ships to work with, so there was a constant repetition of the tiny blue sparks flying out and knocking down cruisers as the rest of the Star Force fleet became heavily engaged and positioned to  keep themselves bracketing the ravagers so the enemy couldn’t fully surround them and fire from all angles simultaneously. Paul had brought two shield ship drones per ravager and had them waiting nearby to swoop in and aid them if necessary, but the confusion of the lizards prevented any serious threat to the deadly ships.

The titan knew it would take time for the enemy to calculate the destructive potential and adjust their attack patterns accordingly. Until that happened he was more than happy to just sit there racking up easy kills, all the while monitoring the long range sensors and the growing number of ships heading their way.

It took 12 minutes before Paul realized the lizards were not adapting to the new threat. Almost giddy with the opportunity he expanded his mind out to the rest of the fleet and grabbed some remote pilots to man the secondary weapons on the ravagers while he assumed full fleet control and took them on the offensive. He split up the ravagers and sent them into different areas while the Excalibur did the same. The lizards weren’t running, but they weren’t adjusting to the firepower the ravagers were throwing down…perhaps because it was so extreme they didn’t know what to do about it.

Regardless of their thinking, or lack thereof, Paul knew the opportunity he had and pressed the engagement to the point of risking the loss of a significant portion of his drones. The spacing between his ships spread out, taking on a much more aggressive posture and figuratively taunting the lizards to come at them now that they weren’t turtled up into a defensive alignment. When the enemy continued to press the attack Paul new it was game on and that he had a chance of destroying the entire fleet now on sensors…though discounting whatever else they had in the system.

That was a wild card right now and he’d keep an eye on it, but so long as the lizards were going to take the bait he was going to make them pay for their lack of vision. He frowned as the term ‘lack of vision’ stuck in his mind and he realized it was something the Emperor had said.

Whatever…the point was valid. The lizards would learn what the ravagers could do going forward and adapt to it as they always did, but in the next few minutes at least he had caught them by surprise and was going to milk it for all he could.

15 days later…

Paul’s seven ship fleet flew into planetary orbit at one of their frontline system naval outposts, which was comprised of a repair yard and supply depot sitting near a Sentinel defense platform. The planet was uninhabited as of now, with the facilities having been built specifically to aid in the warfront expansion by giving Star Force a stepping stone forward without having to put down another significant colonization effort.

Another warfleet, one much larger than Paul’s, was already on station and he recognized Taryn’s flagship a couple of seconds before her hologram appeared beside his command chair on the bridge.

“What the hell happened to you?” she asked, seeing the armor damage across all of his ships and the onboard drone count being at 43% capacity.

“Picked a fight and won,” Paul said pithily as he motioned to the Admiral to go ahead and get the repair work ordered, which is what he’d been on the bridge to do rather than being down in his sanctum trying fruitlessly to find the trigger to the Ubven ability that Rio had been continuously flaunting in their sparring sessions, preventing Paul or anyone else from beating him even once in hand to hand when he could essentially freeze his opponent for a few seconds whenever he wanted.

“Kind of looks like you lost,” Taryn commented.

“Took more damage than I planned, but I had a limited opportunity to do some significant damage and I took it. The lizards didn’t know what to do with the ravagers.”

“Define significant damage?” she asked curiously.

Paul smiled. “Kill count…232,721 cruisers.”

Taryn’s eyes went wide. “What the hell?!”

“I told you the Dre’mo’dons would be worth the effort.”

“No way,” she said disbelievingly. “I’ve seen the numbers. They shouldn’t be that effective. What else did you do?”

“I admit, we’re not going to get that kind of a landslide going forward, but they didn’t know how many ships were necessary to mass against the ravagers for longer than I expected. In their moment of uncertainty they didn’t retreat and I made them pay for it.”

“How many ships did you leave them with?”

Paul cringed. “They had well over a million insystem. We got a decent scouting survey, but never got a complete ship count.”

“Damn, they are serious about holding that trade route. Mostly cruisers?”

“All cruisers. I think they know using bigger ships is just making it easier for us. And now that we can pretty much kill one with a single hit I doubt we’ll see any larger varieties used, save for chess pieces if and when they think there’s a need.”

“Don’t you think they’ll keep those far away now?”

“It’s possible, but they now have data on the defenses the ravagers had and they can see they’re nothing special. If I was stupid enough to hold position, they could run an invoker up on one and take it down before the Dre’mo’dons could do enough damage to disable it. That much mass has its advantages. The capital ship tonnage is their liability, with us anyway. Skarrons are a different story.”

“Yeah, they just keep hemorrhaging territory,” Taryn said, referencing an intelligence report passed on by the Preema, who were now officially allies with the Skarrons and assisting them in a few engagements past the Star Force coreward no-go line in an attempt to slow or stop the lizard advance in some key sectors. They knew they needed the Skarrons on the offensive, not the defensive, but so far the lizards were owning them…though the Skarrons had so much territory that their empire hadn’t been seriously weakened thus far, though it did have an ever expanding chunk bitten out of it on the map.

“Where are you headed?” Paul asked.

“Yechmo then Deerma. Should be able to clear out both fairly easy. The lizards never put down serious roots, and I’m curious as to why.”

“How’s the new padawan working out?”

“He’s no Ginsi, but we gel well. No arguments or bristling like with Supergirl, and he’s actually interested in more than just level upgrades.”

“Couldn’t talk Ginsi into becoming a builder?”

“Nope. She’s choosing to go straight-up weapon. Useful in her niche, but she’s no trailblazer. Take away our training notes and her progression will tank, I’ll guarantee it. Might happen anyway now that I’m not around to hold her hand. She’s very quick when something is explained to her, but her adaptational skills aside from hand to hand suck. Well, that’s not fair. She’s slightly below average for Archons. Compared to us, she sucks.”

“And the new guy?”

“He’s a grinder, but intelligent. He’ll make a solid mage when I get finished with him. Are you out of the padawan business?”

“For now. The stronger I get the more of a hindrance they become.”

“I felt the same way too until I started looking on them as a tool rather than a ward. I give them more space than I did before and I’ve found a useful balance.”

“How soon you leaving?”

“Got another task force I’m waiting on. Probably a week at the earliest.”

“Then get your butt over here and we’ll discuss padawans during a long run, and I promise I won’t slow you down.”

“Heading over,” she said with a smirk. “And have the holos of your battle handy. I want to see how your new toys earned those beauty marks.”

9

October 2, 2888

Unnamed System (Backwater Region)

Unnamed planet

Jack-809506 stopped walking suddenly, pausing in the forest underneath the partial canopy as rays of sunlight came down onto the ground like strobe lights.

“What’s wrong?” Ikra asked as she sat perched on the Archon’s back rack. The Hepcha had been riding there for several hours as the scouting pair had been quietly pushing their way north over hilly terrain in search of the bandits that had been ambushing convoys coming though the region. The planet’s population was primitive in that they hadn’t mastered anti-grav tech yet, but they were part of a small alliance that had and their trading partners had set up a number of spaceports on the planet to facilitate the economic interlinking.

One of those spaceports was 230 miles to the south and had been getting its cargo shipments hijacked, both those coming into the spaceport over ground and those flowing out from it. The local Venats hadn’t been able to find those responsible, but a handful of investigators from the Uframon Alliance suspected Groms and they’d asked Star Force to confirm it if possible.

Jack was out in the middle of nowhere as far as Star Force was concerned. He was in the Backwater Region, which was a loose term referring to all the territory beyond Epsilon, Gamma, and Delta Regions that the lizards had not gotten into yet. Most of where Star Force had outposts was between the ADZ and the original Voku territory, but even at that those were single systems out of thousands of others…and Jack was far beyond those bastions of civilization.

Per Director Davis’s wishes Star Force had been making diplomatic contact with as many races as it could and establishing some level of relations with them. The Uframon Alliance was on the very fringe of Star Force’s reach and was on good terms with them, with a single enclave having been positioned on their capitol. It was the most heavily defended world Uframon had, but it was weak by ADZ standards. The idea of having Star Force put a tiny foothold down there was centered around trying to prop up Uframon and give them both legitimacy and military threat, for if someone invaded the planet they’d also have to attack Star Force as well…and word of their almost magical technology had gotten around the region despite the lack of interstellar communications.

That Star Force outpost was where Jack and a few hundred other personnel were stationed. The ranger was one of 7 Archons there and split most of his time between solitary training and going out on simple missions to aid Uframon. Some of them involved helping to teach their military new tricks, evaluating weaknesses in their security, or often tackling the unknown that they couldn’t. This current mission fell into the latter category, and as a courtesy he had volunteered to check it out.

The planet he was on was so primitive that it didn’t even have an official name yet, nor did the system as far as Star Force was concerned. The native’s had a name for it, but their language was so bizarre that it couldn’t be used. Assigning one to it and others in the region was still on the to-do list, as were many other systems that were being scouted out, but for now it simply had the identification number of TX-7839, with the planet having the same designation with a ‘-04’ being added. It had been a small member of the Uframon for the past 43 years and had benefited enormously from the economic activity, but it was still legitimately backwater as far as Jack was concerned.

Apparently someone else thought so as well, for they’d been launching convoy ambushes and getting away with it. Enough supplies and personnel had been lost that Uframon command had taken notice and sent their investigators…who could find nothing. A lull in the raids occurred during their arrival then they began again after they left. A second trip had found, again, nothing, so Uframon had asked Star Force if they could discovery who was conducting these raids and Jack had been sent with his scouting partner here to find out.

He’d come via an Explorer-class starship/jumpship hybrid. It was small, but given Star Force’s engine tech it could travel faster than most other races’ jumpships and was sufficient to hop around the local star systems. It was approximately the size of a heavy cruiser but could be operated by a crew of 1 if needed. Jack had brought two more crewers, one for the starship and one for the dropship that had brought them down to the planet and was parked a good ways back, leaving him and Ikra on their own as they hiked through the forest headed nowhere in particular.

“Something’s wrong. I can’t sense anyone, but the wildlife is behaving different over there,” the Archon said, raising his left arm and pointing to the northwest. “Check it out.”

“On it,” the Hepcha said, spreading its four wings out across the ranger’s back and lifting off her travel perch with a flurry of alternating wing beats that gave her race a snakelike appearance in the air as her head and hind quarters bobbed up and down alternate of each other. The cat-sized avian flew up through a gap in the treetops and hovered in place, letting Jack pull camera feeds from her armor so he could see what she saw.

The Hepcha saw the rolling terrain covered in trees but nothing out of the ordinary, then when she started to angle in the direction Jack had indicated and gain some altitude, a line in the greenery became visible. Ikra flew lower as she approached it, searching for any anti-air turrets or ships in the sky that could spot her. When she found nothing she eased into a hummingbird-like hover that had her feathered wings stoking the air unbound while the rest of her body was covered in very thin, but still strong light blue armor that looked like scales. Those scales scraped over top of one another, preserving her flexibility while still protecting her body from all angles.

“See it?” she asked through the comm in her tiny helmet that covered her round head and long beak.

“Yeah,” Jack replied, watching via his helmet’s HUD. “Sneaky bastards. They cut into the trees to make a landing pad underneath the canopy. The hillside to your right will block view of it from the ground save for the nearest half mile, and all the orbital scans will show is untouched forest.”

“Ships should still be visible from the sky?”

“Not when there’s cloud cover, and most of the raids have occurred in bad weather.”

“This isn’t that well hidden,” the Hepcha argued as she flew around in casual circles, keeping her distance but giving the Archon multiple angles to work with. There wasn’t any infrastructure visible, just a flat piece of ground with a few trunks missing and an intact canopy above stretching from the nearby trees.

“You have to remember we’re playing in a very low league here. They don’t think about hiding things the way we do. The locals have very bad sensors, so I can imagine these guys operating out of this location with ease. Hold position, I’m coming to you.”

“No sign of activity yet.”

“Lay low just in case.”

“How low?”

“Stretch your wings if you like, but don’t get any altitude.”

“Buzzing as ordered,” she said as the Archon began to run, visible on her battlemap as a speedy dot moving through the forest. He was fast for a ground pounder, but couldn’t match her flight speed even on his best day and her worst. They’d been working as a scouting pair for the past 3 years, and even though she’d wanted to be posted to the front lines where the heavy action was, Ikra had come to realize that out here in the ‘safe’ territories there were still all kinds of dangers, but most of them were well within Star Force’s ability to dominate, leaving her and Jack as a very powerful pairing that she’d come to relish. Had they been fighting against the lizards that would have been another story altogether.

“Contact,” Ikra warned, seeing movement near the pad.

“I know, I can feel them now,” Jack said, heading in that direction on the battlemap. “They’re definitely Groms.”

“What do you want to do?”

“The locals can’t handle them, so we are.”

“How?”

Jack hesitated, knowing what Ikra meant even without her having to say it. This wasn’t a defensive mission, it was offense. Different standards applied and even if these guys were going to have to be killed he couldn’t get too over the top. When an enemy attacked you it was obvious how to respond, but when you were attacking them there were a lot of unknowns as to who you were shooting at and whether or not they deserved it. When they shot at you that was clear enough.

“They aren’t conducting these raids on foot, so we’re depriving them of their toys. If they make a big fuss over it we take them down as well, but their deaths aren’t the mission.”

“Gotcha,” the Hepcha said as she swooped down low to the treetops as Jack was nearing the clearing, making a big looping turn as she activated her shields and triggered her armor to extend out over her wings, taking away her main lifting capability but replacing it with light anti-grav. Ikra flew across the treetops, a blue scaled four-winged bird floating on her technology as she timed her arrival to coincide with Jack’s as he put up four waypoints on the map for her, marking the location of the hostiles.

When she flew over the last of the treetops she came up on an incline that put the clearing partially above the rest of the forest, allowing lateral access while still being covered by the branches. This left a bit of cover for her to emerge from, but as the Groms finally noticed Jack she coasted into the clear and underneath the higher set trees and dove down a couple of meters onto the nearest of them.

The bulky biped was wearing a bandoleer of ammunition and boots, but little else. Its grey hide was thick and it had a pair of short horns protruding from the top of its head that she centered on. With her right talon she trigged a charge just before she landed on its head for a split second, delivering the stun energy on contact for she didn’t have the weight luxury of carrying ranged weapons.

Ikra bounced off its head as it fell to the ground and got a couple of meters of altitude back as Jack shot the other three with ease, leaving the pair momentarily alone.

“Where now?” she asked, coasting on an anti-grav cushion but keeping moving. She wasn’t heavily armored enough to soak up a lot of damage and staying put was a good way to become an easy target. Jack, however, held still and silent for a moment, with Ikra knowing that meant he was focusing on his slowing growing psionic abilities.

“These are sentries. There’s a group of minds down that trail,” he said, pointing to a lightly mashed bit of brush. “They’re not moving yet.”

“No vehicles?”

Jack chewed on his lip. “No,” he said, taking his right gauntlet off and walking over to one of the unconscious Groms.

“Got your back,” Ikra said, beginning to fly a small circle around him to keep an eye on the area while he did his mind to mind thing. This wasn’t the first time they’d dealt with Groms, and she knew it’d take several minutes at least if he was able to get anything from them. They were aggressive and pack minded, but apparently their mental structure was very different from what Jack was used to, plus he didn’t know their language. There were so many different ones out here there was no way they could hope to learn them all, so he was going to have to wing it and hope to pick up on something.

Even the locals they were here to protect couldn’t be communicated with. They had to use an intermediary from the Uframon that could speak the language, and then communicate with him through a translation program only a few years old. It was a mess, so when the pair had come here they hadn’t bothered to inform anyone about it. They didn’t expect to coordinate with anyone, and even if they did the raiders might get tipped off and disappear.

So as usual they’d just dropped in where they wanted, for no one could stop them anyway and it was better to keep away from the locals altogether.

“They’re waiting on something,” Jack finally said, standing up and taking a step away from the Grom that massed twice what he did…in armor. “I think we’re going to stick around and see what shows up.”

“How long?”

“Soon.”

“Stay here or go after the others down the trail?”

“Trail…after I get them out of sight,” Jack said, walking over to and grabbing one of the Groms to drag off the crude dirt landing pad. “I get the feeling we’ve stumbled onto a network, and the more links we can smoke out the better.”

“So not a one day mission?” Ikra asked, still circling above him on the invisible cushion beneath her wings. She cocked her head, twisting her helmeted beak to the side and pausing her flight.

“I hear it too,” Jack said, noting the telltale whine of inefficient anti-grav approaching from a distance. “Go take a look.”

Ikra flexed her wings, mentally triggering them to increase propulsion in combination with a talon button press. She flew up out of the partial gap and into the open air, immediately dipping back down again and surfing the low gaps between the uneven treetops to keep out of sight. She flew wide of the direction the sound was coming from and spied one of the taller trees in the area. Ikra approached it from the opposite side and grabbed hold of the upper branches, pushing herself inside the leaves and then climbing through it far enough to look out but still conceal her. A few blue patches in the sea of green would most likely go unnoticed.

“Convoy. Not Grom transports, but definitely built for overland travel. Nothing the locals could build.”

“How many?”

“I count 3. I don’t think more than one will fit on the landing pad at a time.”

“Damn…our timing super sucks on this one. Looks like we start taking it all down and sort through the pieces afterwards.”

“I don’t think the transports are shielded.”

“Show me.”

Ikra sent the visual link as they came within a half mile of her position.

“Take the last, wait for the first to land.”

“Gladly,” she said, waiting impatiently until the three box-like hovering transports passed her by. When the first one dipped into the gap underneath the trees where Jack was waiting she pushed hard out of her perch and flew across the distance like a slow missile, coming up on the back transport and landing on top of it. It only took a moment to find the hatch, which she grasped with her talons and pulled up. It flipped open on a hinge, then she released and let it bang down on the top of the metallic box as she dove inside and went to work on the crew.

These might not be lizards, but this was still combat and she was working one on one with an Archon taking down targets far larger than her small frame. That was due to the armor, weapons, and training that Star Force had given her race in addition to sanctuary when their homeworld had been destroyed. She’d gone from being a helpless victim to a hunter, a moral hunter, and Ikra appreciated the irony in that as she got battered around inside the transport by the Groms as they flailed panickly to no avail.

After a long 40 seconds all 13 of them were unconscious and she was still unharmed, though her shields had gone down from the physical blows. With a satisfied beak pucker she drifted back over to the hatch when the transport hit something and came to a sudden stop. Ikra bounced off the wall then righted herself, flying up through the topside entrance and having to pull her way through tree branches that the pilotless transport had rammed into.

With them sliding harmlessly over her armor she pushed through and into clean air again, just in time to see the second transport turning away to run.

“Oh no you don’t,” she said with grim determination and took off after it.

10

November 19, 2888

Palma System (Preema Invasion Corridor)

Hefisti

Riona-111 looked out through the command nexus interface at the graveyard of lizard ships in orbit around the oversized planet that they’d recently been defending. It was a monster of a world with three times the surface area of Earth but only a 1.2 gravity rating. That made it a very valuable piece of property, but one that neither the Preema, Voku, nor Star Force would be laying claim to. This was going to be yet another world/system added to the list of purges and monitored to keep the lizards or others from coming back.

The purging process was already underway on the planet, with a fleet of 6 Preema Beta-class warships and 10 Alpha-class sitting in tranquil position just inside the orbit of the debris field that they’d been responsible for before Riona’s fleet had arrived. She had 12 Warship-class jumpships, one of which she was onboard, escorting a fleet of some 42 cargo/transport jumpships carrying Star Force aquatics troops. Hefisti housed a single body of water, but one that was bigger than all the oceans on Earth combined. The lizards had colonized it as well as the land, and digging them out of it was going to be a pain in the ass.

Which was why the Preema had asked for Star Force’s help on this one. Riona could see that they were already doing heavy damage on the land as they were given access to the Preema’s own version of a battlemap that displayed the location of all their units, but nothing was in the water as of yet. She didn’t know if that meant they were going to let her handle all of the aquatic warfare or they’d be joining in later, but either way the cleansing of the ocean was her responsibility.

According to intelligence reports from the Voku, this world had been a major lizard stronghold and it looked like they’d fought hard to hold onto it based on the space debris, which could easily have accounted for over 100,000 cruisers. Riona didn’t know how many there had been, nor how many ships the Preema had used to destroy them, but she got the feeling that those left in orbit were just here to guard the planet while their ground troops went into action. If these 16 alone had done this much damage then she was considerably underestimating their firepower.

The Alphas were their smallest ship, battleship size, and they scaled up from there. Star Force had tagged them all Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, Epsilons, and jumpships. The Epsilons were so large that two of them squeezed together around a jumpship and took up all the available space on it, for they each easily outmassed the spindly frame. Riona knew of only five that the Preema had brought with them out of their home territory to the staging outpost and had never seen one in person, but knew they were the most powerful warships Star Force had ever come across given their sheer size and technology.

The Preema warships also doubled as troop carriers, for there were no ‘civilian’ ships within the system. Riona also assumed that there had been a much larger fleet here previously because the amount of troops showing on the planet was far greater than what the handful of ships in orbit could carry. They’d landed and set up a huge ground offensive, with their obvious intent being to destroy the lizard colonies as quickly as possible so they could check off this system and move on to the next.

But they couldn’t do that until the ocean was clear as well, and Riona knew there was a bit of a time competition in play. How much infrastructure the lizards had down there was unknown, but she intended to destroy it before the Preema got finished with the land-based colonies if at all possible.

One of her bridge officers got a line to the Preema commander and patched it through to the nexus with the winged quadruped appearing in holo, resplendent in its armor that they seemed to wear just about everywhere, though this one’s helmet had been retracted, which she knew was a measure of respect they were granting the Humans during communication.

“I am Riona-111 and have an army of aquatics troops ready to deploy into combat, with your permission,” she said, with the computer translating her words into the Preema’s native language. She and the other Archons had gotten out of the habit of learning new ones, relying instead on translators unless there was a significant reason to do otherwise. She’d learned lizard, obviously, as well as the old Alliance trade language, then more recently added Voku given their ever growing relationship, but unless something similar was going to happen with the Preema she wasn’t going to bother to add theirs to her personal list.

“Thank you for responding to our request,” the Preema said, his tone artificial due to the program being responsible for his words and therefore stripping them of all subtext. “There is a large lizard presence within the ocean. We have not probed it beyond light reconnaissance. We will transfer the appropriate files to you, but we suspect that there is much more down there that we do not know about. It will be a long, hard fight.”

“We came prepared for a hard fight.”

“Permission granted, and a request.”

“Yes?”

“Will you give us access to your communications protocols so we may monitor your efforts in realtime. We’d like to learn how the enemy fights for a time when we are required to fight them under the water as well, whether it be on this planet or another.”

“I can set up a relayed feed without linking you into our grid. It will provide you with a viewable datastream, but one that you won’t be able to interact with. We keep our comm systems’ intricacies a closely guarded secret.”

“I did not mean to pry. We only wish to watch and learn. Please do so in whatever manner you can that is not intrusive.”

“I’ll have it set up before we make planetfall.”

“Thank you, and good hunting.”

“Likewise,” Riona said as the brief conversation came to an end. She’d heard they weren’t overly theatrical, and this one seemed to be entirely down to business…which is something she could respect.

Using the mental control interface she sent the order to the bridge crew to set up the data transfer as well as picking their first landing spot and ordering the ships to begin heading down to low orbit and start unloading. The jumpships were not going to try to go in-atmosphere, even though it was technically possible, but rather get right on the border and drop the anti-grav equipped aquatics craft off there.

While she had some time to spare she zoomed in their surveillance equipment on the ground battles and took a look at what the Preema were up against. The land was full of lizard colonies, all of which had been stripped of their anti-orbital batteries from above. They had large craters where they had been, but the rest of the cityscape had been untouched and Riona knew why. The Preema ships had a variety of weapons at their disposal, but the largest one was a plasma orb the size of a football field that was generated within their U-shaped hulls.

That plasma was highly energized matter, the same way Star Force rifles were, and required physical material to generate the plasma in addition to the energy from a reactor or capacitor. That meant ammo limitations whenever you had something that big in play, though the plasma weapons were a lot more economical than rail guns. Preema plasma was extremely advanced and dense, but it was still just ionized gas. They were putting it to good use though, and looked to have probably dropped their warships down into the atmosphere and pummeled the batteries up close from a few miles above.

Staying put and vaporizing the city bit by bit would undoubtedly bleed them dry, and she didn’t think they wanted to do that and probably didn’t have enough supplies enroute to feed that kind of a campaign. If the lizards saw you systemically tearing a city apart they’d probably run and hide and you’d have to come down on foot and kill them up close anyway, so why waste the ammo?

Though by ‘foot’ she meant wing, for the Preema were avian and she could see swarms of them over a few sites. The resolution wasn’t great from their altitude and angle, plus some cloud cover obscuring straight visuals, but they were operating not in tight formation, but a widespread grouping that suggested non-lizard swarm tactics…more of a strong-man formation. They had armor that could take a pounding, she’d heard, so she was as interested in seeing them fight as they were to see the Star Force aquatics in action…though this wasn’t the first joint mission to date, but it was the largest.

It was also Riona’s first in conjunction with the Preema and on this side of the boundary line between the Voku and Star Force claimed ‘harvest’ zones, for the mage often thought of all the lizard systems like a forest on the map that they had to clearcut. Every other mission she’d gone on had been on the Star Force side, with this campaign having brought her clear across lizard territory to the far edge where the pushback was occurring. The Preema had jumped ahead a bit to get to this planet, given its significance, but there was definitely a huge sea of lizard systems between her and friendly territory, meaning her resupply options were nil.

Riona had to make do with what she had, and she’d brought along a lot of equipment and troops for that reason. When the jumpships hit the lowest comfortable orbit they could, they began releasing the aquatics battleships, destroyers, and frigates to coast down on their own to the water, or in the battleships’ case fly around the planet at will, for they were actually designed for the air as opposed to the water craft that could limp around on their anti-gravs that gave them propulsion underwater.

The smaller Star Force vessels were carried down in bunches inside larger transports that disengaged from the jumpships and ferried them, aquatics mechs and troops, and prefab modules that would be used to construct Star Force firebases, supply depots, and even a repair yard once they got them situated. This was going to be a multi-year campaign unless the lizards had really scrimped on their aquatics footprint, and Riona knew she was going to have to take her time and put down some temporary roots in order to hunt these bastards down properly.

In the meantime she was going to stay in orbit and observe both the underwater and ground battles, learning how the Preema fought and seeing how many surprises the lizards had in store for both of them. They were definitely going to lose this planet and system, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t take a few of the invaders with them and knowing the lizards as Star Force did, Riona knew to be constantly on guard for an innovative attempt at doing so.

She hoped the Preema wouldn’t get overconfident and be caught off guard just as her ship orbited around far enough to get sensors on the back side of the planet…where the crashed remains of one of their Alpha-class warships was visible at the base of a still present smoke plume.

“Damn,” she whispered, guessing it was from the efforts to take out the anti-orbital guns. “So much for our invincible ally.”

Riona took another look at her drone placements, which had disconnected from the warships to cover the cargo ships during offloading and once back up into holding orbit. They were where they were supposed to be, and she made a mental note not to trust the Preema for their security at any time, merely to count them as a luxury backup. She didn’t know the circumstances of the loss of that Alpha, but the lizards had managed to take one down in the face of what should have been an overwhelming assault fleet.

Paul has said the Preema might be newbs as far as their isolation saw them doing more watching beyond their borders than fighting, and she had a gut feeling he was right. But newbs or not, they were getting the job done and now with her here she might be able to spot a few ambushes before they went down. If not she’d keep her own people protected and see what happened to the Preema, for it was still unclear just how ‘close’ this alliance was to be.

Paul plopped down in the chair at his quarters’ comm terminal in Atlantis after another 29 hour training stint. He was due for a badly needed shower, then some food and downtime before heading to bed for 13 hours before getting up and repeating his 45 hour day. It was by far the heaviest workload he’d ever tried, but that’s what the advanced training group looked like now for all of the veterans. Paul spent more time here than most of the trailblazers, cycling to and from it between missions to the front or master builder duties within the ADZ.

He could feel the stress on him from the past 8 months that he’d been holding this insane cycle, for the workouts he was doing were not skill-oriented, for the most part, but effort-based in order to push his body’s power generation capabilities to new heights across the board. He was hanging in there well, having already gotten past the worst of it, he thought, and was now settled into the grind.

Right now he was delaying the shower in favor of checking for map updates…and finding one had come in through the relay grid. He downloaded it to his personal map and brought up the hologram of the war zones, seeing tiny colored dots representing star systems and a few with pulsing ‘update’ highlights. Wanting to know how things were going out there at all times, especially with regards to Cal-com and what the Voku and Preema were doing, he searched through and made himself aware of all the changes, most of which were small when compared to the overall battlefront.

But Paul was a details man for a reason, and his moniker of ‘The Admiral’ had stuck to this day partly for that reason. Star Force was engaging on a level of warfare that no one could have imaged back when the organization had been in its infancy, and with each upgrade they went through Paul and the others had to basically write the book on how to do these unprecedented things…and managing an interstellar war across thousands of star systems was more than a 1-trick pony for sure.

Though his time was best served in the advanced training group for the moment, he didn’t want to be out of the loop and made sure to keep himself in it with these constant checks, that way he wouldn’t have to waste hours going through new information if he only delved into the updates every week, or month.

It took him about half an hour to get through them all, but as he did so he began to feel a tingle of a headache. That wasn’t uncommon, for his body complained in any number of ways when going through training this intense, but this headache was a little bit different. It was an internal pressure that stuck around until he was in the shower, then it altered into something else, still light and in the background of his mind, with him not truly paying attention to it until he was about to hit the drying sequence and stopped with his hand midair.

He focused internally and caught a ‘whiff’ of something familiar, as far as his internal senses went. He held still under the falling water until he identified it, then with a raised eyebrow he sat down on the shower floor in a naked meditative pose as his internal mental structure altered and he pulled forth the faint trickle of an ascension that had somehow been lingering in the background of his senses.

That was new, for every time an Archon had an ascension it was loud and obvious, so he didn’t know what he was getting into here but it was an opportunity that he wasn’t going to pass up. Reaching out with his mind he telekinetically grabbed the biomonitor from the shelf outside and flew it through a crack in the shower top that he made, then resealed the panel and let the falling water continue as he attached it to his head and ventured into the unknown, not sure what this ascension was or where it would lead, but he’d be damned if he let it fade into the background again.

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- 1 August 29, 2840 Mastodon System (Ninja Monkey territory) Kido

- 10 November 19, 2888 Palma System (Preema Invasion Corridor) Hefisti

- 2 February 2, 2848 Anivia System (Delta Region) Frostbite

- 3 March 1, 2848 Aphat System (Veliquesh territory) Dmak

- 4 April 9, 2853 Aphat System (Bsidd Region) Jmry

- 5 December 26, 2879 Aphat System (Bsidd Region) Nym

- 6 January 3, 2880 Aphat System (Bsidd Region) Nym

- 7 July 5, 2888 Ventrol System (lizard territory) Treymit

- 8 July 18, 2888 Chepmet System (lizard territory) Inner Zone

- 9 October 2, 2888 Unnamed System (Backwater Region) Unnamed planet