Star Force 73-76
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 73-76
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

1

November 19, 2888

Solar System

Earth

Paul sat there as the water fell, barely holding on to the ascension prompt that seemed to want to disappear again. It was so faint he was surprised to have even noticed it, as well as curious as to what was actually going on. As the minutes passed and the sensation slowly grew under his prodding he felt he began to understand it, or at least had a theory. Other ascensions were pretty much automatic, hit the trigger and it’d send you into the conversion mode that, if handled ‘properly,’ would make small adjustments in increments that would eventually allow the final transformation and flash growth of new tissue in a controlled manner.

Paul and the others weren’t going for controlled, for they didn’t want to risk losing the ascension and not getting it back again since they didn’t know for sure what was causing it. That’s where the discomfort came from…rushing the preliminary into a short amount of time. It was the more direct course, rather than being an incorrect one, but it was definitely what left one wasted after the transformation, though to be honest no one had ever done it the slow way to find out how much easier it’d be.

This one, Paul figured, was due to a progressive trigger rather than a finite one. What they’d learned so far was that the triggers responded to different things, some being a fitness level stat, some being a momentary bio status…like being really stressed. That momentary status would disappear while the fitness level stat would stay the same or improve, for Paul and the others didn’t backslide.

The fitness level stat made it easy to share an ability using the twin link, for the person who had it didn’t have to do anything but get their partner to mimic their status and then their trigger would activate. For the status though the one with the ability had to recreate the stress or whatever it was that flipped their trigger, then link to the other person to make their trigger read the wrong bio data. That was very difficult to do, but Paul and the others had learned how to summon up a fake memory of the occurrence or whatever they needed to do in training in order to get their bodies/minds into the correct state.

Paul had the suspicion that this one, whatever it was, was a temporary status ascension that he was just nibbling on the edge of. It might even be the case that his momentary alignment had now passed but since the ascension process had already started it was hanging around without any real power…hence the lack of internal fireworks. If that was the case then he’d stumbled onto it, probably very briefly, during his day of workouts, though which one was in question.

But it didn’t matter now, getting the new ability did, and so long as he had a sniff of an ascension to latch onto he was going to make this work…but at the same time he didn’t want to go after it too fast, knowing that the longer he dragged this out the more data his biomonitor would register. Paul already had all the known psionics, that they had triggers mapped out for anyway, so even if this one was something someone else had already achieved then they still needed more data. Him having Sav necessarily lengthened the process a bit, but he needed to drag his feet as much as he could without losing the ascension.

Both priorities were counterproductive, but Paul was having to work hard to hang onto it at all, so his near failure was accomplishing the stall tactic and he didn’t push any harder than he needed to in order to gain ground, with the instability steadily rising. The further it did the less chance he had of losing it, but his mind became more and more clouded with the mental storm and no one here to help him through it. He thought about calling for help but nixed the idea immediately. He could do this, as he’d done many times before, and he wasn’t about to back down from a challenge.

So what would have been a 20 min shower stretched on into an hour, then two hours, then a third hour and six more minutes before he got to four flashing red lights. At that point he was so exhausted he didn’t dare try and stretch it out further else he’d risk losing it altogether, so he committed himself to go fully into it and push past what seemed to be a very defiant limit…only to realize that he hadn’t been holding back much at all.

That sent a shock through his clouded mind, along with the fear that he might peg out and lose his energy and fall off the crescendo he was surfing. Doubling down he summoned up a surge of anger at the thought of losing this and the emotion steadied his effort. He gritted his teeth, suspecting he was in for a hell of a transformation if the resistance was this bad, and pushed the mental storm into the channels necessary to peak it out, having to apply so much pressure for so long he began to wonder if his trigger might be broken.

Minutes passed on as he was teetering on what he felt was the brim of the now very full cup and wondering if he hadn’t delayed too long, for his fatigue was making his control jittery and he wasn’t sure how much strength he had left to channel the instability…then in a split second the pressure was gone, the storm’s strength shifted, and his entire body convulsed, knocking his head against the shower wall multiple times as tissue was flash grown throughout every part of his body.

Paul knew he had to ride it out, so he didn’t try to stand or do anything other than stay put and let it happen. He was only partially aware of his flopping around at the base of the shower, for inside he was on fire and regretting the decision to push this ascension…for it was far worse than anything he’d experienced before, easily surpassing the bioshield upgrade which had a full body transformation similar to this.

He didn’t know how many seconds it lasted, or perhaps minutes, but somewhere in the torment the prescribed upgrade was met and the worse of the pain subsided, leaving him hurting but with a clearing head as he slumped to the wet floor and just held still, his head leaning against the clear sidewall as he took stock of his situation.

His entire body was numb, seeming to pulse with heat, and the ascension storm was still swirling in his mind, but with each second that passed it diminished by a chunk with him knowing it would soon be gone and the aftermath of the transformation would remain…which in this case was going to be a very bad case of fragging. He knew moving would make it worse so he stayed still and just let himself hurt before he tried…

“Paul?” a voice said along with a triple knock on the outside of his shower tube to get his attention, for he wasn’t moving. “Are you ok?” Rio asked.

No, he answer telepathically, which hurt enough on its own. He figured the movement of speaking would be even more traumatic.

“What happened? I heard you screaming from over a mile away.”

Ascension.

“You got another one?” the trailblazer asked, his eyebrows raising.

This one is full body, and the worst yet. Don’t try to move me, please.

“Don’t worry,” Rio said with a smirk, guessing at how much pain his peer was in. “I can improvise.”

The trailblazer raised his right index finger and concentrated, pooling the heat within it for a long moment before jabbing it into the clear material of the shower tube and melting through it. He slowly pulled his finger through a rough square, cutting out a section and tossing the piece aside as water droplets spilled out onto him and the floor, but he didn’t care. He let his finger cool off and reached his other hand through to grab the nearest part of Paul’s body, which was his ankle, and hacked his way into his nervous system and got his first look at the score.

What he saw/felt blew him away. Paul was totally wrecked, and in so much residual pain he was glad he had left him where he was. With an effort he numbed up his friend as much as he could, blocking the pain from getting to him and giving him an artificial soothing to wrap his mind around.

Thank you…very…much.

“You are so fragged. I don’t think this is Ubven. It was really bad for me, but nothing like this.”

I tried to stretch it out to get more data. That should have made it easier. I don’t know what happened…unless this was easier.

“They said post-Sav ascensions were nastier…whoa, dude. You’ve got tissue growths all over your body.”

What kind?

“I don’t want to guess and be wrong.”

Just tell me. I can’t sense anything right now.

“Have a look through me then,” Rio said rather than making a pronouncement. He sent his mental image of his hacking into Paul’s body back to Paul, which made for a very weird mental echo, but it allowed him to see the new growths without all the mental disturbance that was clouding him out right now.

Damn, Paul said, knowing those type of growths intimately well. He laughed once, then immediately regretted it as the bodily pain shot through the numbing Rio had him under.

“Buddy, I think we need to use the regenerator on this one. I don’t think you even realize how tore up you are.”

Do it, Paul said without hesitation.

Rio looked around, knowing he couldn’t let go of Paul in his current state. He saw through the walls using his Pefbar into the other rooms of the quarters and even all the way out to the door that he’d broken through to get to Paul when he didn’t respond to telepathy, and blast it all, he didn’t have a portable comm device laying around. There was a terminal he could use, but it was in the next room and out of reach.

Reaching out with his Ikrid, he searched the surrounding minds in Atlantis out to the edge of his range, finding several Archons that could help him. Rather than explaining to them what was happening, he requested an Ensek link be established, with them using their own psionics as relay transmitters for him. None of the six he mentally contacted complained or asked for an explanation, simply trusting in him and using their ability to relay his telepathy out to others beyond his range.

He found more and extended his chain across the city to a specific building, and as luck would have it, Davis was sitting in his office when the Ensek relay reached him.

I’m here, the Director responded using his limited telepathy, which then got amplified and sent across the city person to person.

It’s Rio. I’m in Paul’s quarters and I need you to send a V’kit’no’sat regenerator here immediately. He’s had a bad ascension and I can’t risk budging him. I’m numbing him up best I can, but that means I can’t leave either.

Is he dying?

No, he just wishes he did.

Stay there, I’ll get it to you as soon as possible, he responded, feeling the link disappear a moment later.

Davis brought up an order prompt and sent a text message to the medical division, explaining the urgency and linking them Paul’s quarters’ location once he looked it up, then he headed there himself, hoping for Paul’s sake the regenerator arrived before he did.

The Kich’a’kat leads withdrew from Paul’s body after only a few seconds of being fully deployed, and with them went the insane pain and clouded mind, leaving Paul sitting at the bottom of his shower, naked, and four people standing outside it.

The trailblazer got to his feet slowly, still feeling wobbly as if all the connections in his brain weren’t fully functioning yet, and leaned against the sidewall for a moment.

“Want some help out?” Rio asked.

“No, I’ve got it,” Paul said, pushing aside the top panel and climbing out. He walked down the short staircase and grabbed a towel, rubbing his blue hair dry then slipping it around his waist before sitting down on the steps. “I’m not hurting anymore, but I am totally exhausted.”

“What happened?” Davis asked as a medtech and Aaron looked on while Rio leaned against the nearby wall, his eyes also on Paul.

“It’s strange, it didn’t jump me this time. It was in the background and I had to draw it out. I took my time and hopefully got a lot of bio data, but when it hit I was overwhelmed. I can’t believe Morgan went through that.”

“Meaning what?” Davis asked.

“We’re pretty sure it’s Jumat,” Rio explained as he glanced at the medtech. “Care to confirm that?”

“I don’t have a scanner with me, but if you’ll come down to the medbay I can tell you exactly what you got.”

Paul raised an arm up level to the ground and concentrated, trying to summon up some goosebumps and succeeding with ease. He tried to force them off his hand but they didn’t cooperate, flying off his arm randomly in all directions…and leaving him even more fatigued than before, which was saying a lot, given that he started out this whole mess at the end of a day of workouts.

The air pushed by the invisible energy washed across the four men present but only the Archons noticed, leaving the medtech oblivious.

“Well that settles that,” Aaron concluded. “I wonder if your advancement made it worse. Morgan was so young when it happened to her…”

“Maybe Sav,” Rio added.

“Morgan walked out of that gravity trap,” Paul reminded them. “I don’t know if I could even have stood or not, but the pain was bad enough that I didn’t want to try. I’m not dissing her in this, but there’s no way she went through all that and made it out. There has to be something different.”

“Maybe hers processed more gradually during the duration of the enhanced gravity,” Davis suggested. “Though we still don’t know what the actual trigger is.”

Paul shook his head, glad that the movement didn’t ring his bell again. “I took my time…a long time, and still got fragged. Still first try, but I dragged it out to get more data.”

“How old are you?” Aaron asked.

Paul looked up at him, knowing full well that he knew how old he was, but that wasn’t the point. “Too young,” he answered.

“How many others have Jumat?” Davis asked, knowing the Archons had gone over the psionics records more times than he had, but he still remembered it was very few.

“98 thousand, give or take,” Paul answered. “The youngest of which was 29,000 when he got it.”

“We knew Morgan’s was a mistake…a fortuitous mistake,” Davis added, “but I’m guessing this is not. How do your skills match up with the others? I know there’s data on some of them in the pyramid.”

“The age numbers don’t match the skills,” Aaron answered. “They’re all over the place.”

“But,” Rio said, getting to the point, “even the weakest of them could kick Paul’s ass.”

“It could be a cascade,” the medtech said, almost apologizing with his glance when he realized he was interrupting an exclusive conversation.

“Meaning?” Paul asked.

“I’m not involved in the research, but I have heard suggestions that your psionics tissues have to be rearranged slightly when new growths come in. The more tissues you have, the more alignment is required…”

“Hence a cascade in alteration changes,” Paul said, pounding his right fist into the step, “that the V’kit’no’sat never had to worry about since they didn’t have all the psionics.”

“Now the reports I’ve been reading are making sense,” Davis added, thinking things through quickly and making the connections. “A lot of mages’ reports indicate that they’re taking their padawans through the ascension process in stages to lessen the fragging effect. The more psionics we add to the pool the harder the transition is going to be.”

“And we’ve got Sav,” Rio added.

“So the next time one of us ascends,” Aaron finished, “we either have to face this or let the ascension process partially run its course and cancel it, hoping to start over again the next time it pops up.”

“Except we don’t know that there will be a next time,” Paul argued.

“You also didn’t have any help,” Rio reminded him.

“I don’t think that had an effect on the fragging, but maybe on my fatigue. I need some ambrosia doses sooner rather than later. If I move around too much I feel like I’m going to keel over.”

Davis glanced at the medtech and he politely hurried off to fetch the required foodstuffs, but he hesitated before he got out the quarters’ door and came back into Paul’s large shower room. “How many doses are you taking?”

“213.”

The medtech did a double-take. “Per day?”

“Yah,” Aaron answered for him.

“That’s enough to kill a normal person.”

“Kill or render comatose?” Davis asked curiously.

“Still a debate on that. Fortunately no one has been stupid enough to overdose far enough to find out. Do you just want me to measure it off in liquid?” he asked Paul.

“I don’t care, I just need it in me. Between the ascension and the regenerator, I think I’m actually totally empty.”

“That’s not fun,” Rio commented.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” the medtech said, disappearing for keeps this time as Davis walked over and sat down next to Paul on the carpeted steps.

“Do you think this is intentional or an unforeseen complication?”

“The dragons are too good at what they do. Even if they didn’t expect any Zen’zat to attain this many psionics, they would have made contingency plans just in case. Us breeding was unexpected because it wasn’t allowed and contrary to the program design, but getting psionics is the point of advancement.”

“Another little test for us to pass?” Aaron wondered.

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“We’ve got to tell the padawans to take it slow,” Rio insisted. “Ubven really worked me over, and we can’t expect them to be as strong as us. Especially when we’re giving them psionics that were designed for a much fitter person.”

“Agreed,” Aaron echoed.

“Which brings us back to Morgan,” Davis deferred.

“It was her first ascension…actually, she got it even before all of tier 1.”

“There’s your answer,” Aaron pointed out. “No cascade effect, just her nearly getting crushed to death.”

“About that. Got to be more involved than ‘moving around.’ I get his gist, but not the physical applications of it.”

“Perhaps a more intricate addition process,” Davis offered.

“I’d guess something like that,” Paul agreed.

“Once you get some ambrosia in you, feel like taking a nap on a med table?”

“Might as well figure this out sooner rather than later,” he agreed, slowly getting to his feet. “If I fall feel free to catch me.”

“Where you going?” Davis asked.

“To trade my towel in for some clothes. Morgan pulls off the nude patient thing better than I do.”

2

“Here,” Vortison said, pointing to the hologram that was situated beside the med table that Paul was now sleeping on. Curious as he was as to what was happening to him medically, his need for rest had called for a crash nap while the scanners did their work, arrayed over him like a giant arch.

“Here what?” Rio asked, looking on with Aaron and Davis at the small point somewhere inside Paul’s head that had been enlarged.

“Tissue displacement. And here,” the chief geneticist said, pointing to the base of Paul’s holographic neck, “bone restructuring.”

“Why bone?” Davis asked.

“Curious, isn’t it? The nodules that make up the Jumat emitters are located in all tissues, even the heart muscle. I’d guess this is due to transmission angles, but in the case of his skeleton the flash growth actually damaged the bone, for I can see the work the regenerator did creating new tissue,” he said, zooming in even further and highlighting a specific region around a tiny sphere.

“The flash growth actually broke his bones?” Rio asked.

“On a very small scale, yes. That’s correct. I think your insistence on pushing the ascensions immediately didn’t allow for a necessary conversion. In fact I can show you,” he said, bringing up a second hologram to Rio’s right that had Paul’s biomonitor data. The level of detail was far less, but it showed the same location in his neck.

“If I can loop this…” Vortison said, bringing the full, multi-hour process into a three second compression. “And there you go.”

The three Archons looked at the very small change in the tissue, almost too small to notice if the medtech hadn’t pointing it out to them.

“The bone was prepping,” Aaron realized.

“By beginning a ‘softening’ cycle that would allow the flash growth to be absorbed, then the bone density could even out afterwards or retain the higher density like a cocoon around the emitter. I’m not sure which, but either way that softening was never allowed to fully take place, hence he had a lot of tiny bombs go off inside and break bone, along with probably damaging the new tissue at the same time from the collision.”

“Did the regenerator fix the Jumat tissue?” Davis wondered.

“It did,” Vortison said, bringing up two more holos, one the before view of Paul post-ascension and the other more detailed one of him currently. “All is functioning correctly now, though I only have Morgan’s file to compare with. I highly suggest you don’t try any more 1-time ascensions going forward, especially with the unknowns. There is no data on them for us to speculate on.”

“Was this problem in the database file on Jumat?”

“No, it wasn’t. And not a lot is. I don’t think they wanted people understanding the full depth of the psionics, medically speaking. Most of the files are geared towards maintenance and repair, not their actual construction. Ascensions aren’t even mentioned other than a transition period, and that was in the restricted files.”

“What about his current fatigue?” Rio asked, glancing down at Paul who was lying motionless with his hands folded over his abdomen in a ‘Jedi trance’ pose.

“Jumat tissue is the densest and has the highest volume of all the psionics we’ve discovered. As a result it had to suck a lot of resources out of his body just for the building blocks, not to mention the energy expenditure. Add in his workout load, which you said was already full and completed for the day, then add the drain the regenerator had by cannibalizing even more tissue to make repairs…well, let’s just say he’s been hit on all angles and needs a table of food and a good, long nap.”

“Anybody got some whipped cream and a feather?” Aaron asked, prompting a smirk from Davis before he pointed into one of the holograms.

“How crammed is his head getting with the new tissues?”

Vortison twisted his own neck to the side, as if in redundant thought that wouldn’t quite process. “If you’d asked me earlier I would have said you’d be experienced a world of problems by now, but every upgrade has fit in seamlessly, excluding the first bit of nonsense with the latent abilities being suppressed through successive reproduction cycles. It’s all fitting in there, but there was a lot of reorganization going on this time, simply due to the size of his emitter particles…which are larger than Morgan’s, by the way. I don’t know why.”

“Did hers grow with time?” Rio wondered.

“In volume, no. Density, yes, and number, yes. It seems you add a few more as needed in response to training, but not in any localized area. The distribution pattern is like clockwork, and hers have increased by…” he paused, checking another file for the number, “18% since her first scan. Density has increased by 208% on the originals, less so on the newer growths due to them beginning at a higher…damn, that may be your answer right there.”

“Paul is more advanced,” Aaron said, catching on. “So maybe the dragons built in a curve to match power output to your fitness level.”

“No,” Rio differed. “Not unless volume is a variable. Have any of Morgan’s doubled up in the same location?”

“Never,” Vortison said firmly. “There is a wide distribution pattern.”

“How much bigger are Paul’s,” Davis asked.

“17%, each and every one,” the medtech testified. “The precision is machinelike.”

“Individual variation?” Rio floated.

“Possible,” Vortison allowed.

“Morgan is not going to like to hear that,” Aaron said, with Rio nodding. “Damn, what would this look like on a Zen’zat?”

“Given their larger size? No, it has no effect. Other psionics may grow larger under the stimulation, but I’m positive Jumat particles will not. They act almost like implants rather than a functioning part of an entire system. Leaches, if you will, that suck ambrosia and other nutrients out of the system while remaining isolated from it. Same way with the bioshield emitters. They’re not part of your cognitive processes like the other tissues are, even if some of them are positioned within your skull. They’re ‘hardware,’ linked to software but independent of it.”

“Do you think we got enough data to locate the trigger?” Davis asked.

“Too early to say. The fact that we’ve got several hours’ worth is promising, but I don’t want to commit to anything just yet.”

“How soon will you know?”

“Maybe tomorrow…maybe 50 years from now. We have a stack of data to sort through looking for a needle. If it’s in there we’ll find it, but I can’t quote you a number, even if I have my own suspicions…none of which I feel like sharing, because they’re a total gut instinct that will probably prove wrong.”

“So insecure,” Aaron commented, shaking his head slightly.

Vortison frowned, then cringed as he decided to violate his own order. “I think Paul got enough, but each trigger is different so we won’t know until we actually find it…if we find it.”

“If you do,” Davis said, his voice imbuing importance, “then we will have a significant advantage against the V’kit’no’sat…assuming they hold to protocol.”

“You already do with Sav,” Vortison pointed out.

Rio shook his head. “No, Davis is right. Jumat isn’t a technique, it’s a literal biological cannon. If we all get this, par for the course, we’ll be able to take down other Zen’zat far more powerful than us…even some of the larger races. Jumat is pretty much the holy grail for the Zen’zat, and only a rare few have ever achieved it.”

“I know the numbers,” Vortison reminded him.

“But you haven’t seen it in action. Haven’t felt it hit you. Morgan has a huge advantage over the rest of us, and she’s learned to use it so well that no one could touch her until I got Ubven.”

“Unless she made a mistake,” Aaron added.

“She doesn’t make many. This is going to be extremely important if you can find the trigger.”

“And give the V’kit’no’sat even more reason to hunt down and eradicate us.”

Davis pointed a finger at the trailblazer. “Word.”

Aaron frowned at him. “Word?”

“It’s old school.”

“I know what it means, just didn’t expect you to use it.”

“My vocabulary altered going through basic, then some more in the sanctums afterwards.”

Rio glanced at Aaron. “We’re rubbing off on him.”

“It’s pithy, so therefore useful,” Davis clarified. “We know the V’kit’no’sat will want us dead. If we get Jumat we’ll be better able to defend ourselves, but it’ll enrage them even further.”

“How do you know that?” Vortison asked.

Davis hesitated to answer, trying to find the right words. “It’s an Archon/Zen’zat thing.”

“It means we’re getting to use the cool toys they’re banned from,” Aaron translated.

“That makes a weird sort of sense,” Vortison said, returning to his data examination and dismissing all but the active hologram.

“How strong is he? Concussive wise?” Rio asked.

“Difficult to say, but he shouldn’t have any coordination. That will come with training, as you well know. I would guess he can produce a great deal more force than Morgan could initially, but nothing compared to her levels now.”

“The new emitters Morgan has got…gradual or flash growth?” Aaron asked, getting back to another point.

“She’s never mentioned any painful transitions, so I’m assuming gradual. The flash growth seems to only manifest during ascensions or under the stimulation of a regenerator. Something we still haven’t fully cracked, and it’s not a tech issue, I’m afraid. We’re not supplying the necessary genetic command codes. The ones the V’kit’no’sat use are so complicated even I don’t fully understand what I’m reading when I’m reviewing them…and like most things, they didn’t bother to leave an instruction manual in the database.”

“Does bioshield add more emitters?”

“Yes.”

“Volume increase?”

“No. They actually seem to be patterned the same way, or rather from the same source design material. The Jumat is larger, but they’re pretty much the same type of psionic tissue. Density increases, along with number of particles, equates to upgraded strength.”

“He was also the first to get bioshield,” Davis pointed out. “Any chance that’s a coincidence?”

“Discounting Morgan as an anomaly,” Aaron clarified.

“Actually it’s going to be one of the first avenues I pursue looking for the trigger,” Vortison said. “I’m hoping it’s not a coincidence and there is a correlation between the two.”

Rio gestured towards Paul. “How soon is he going to be back into training shape?”

“It’ll take more than a day for his body to digest the necessary foodstuffs to replace the redundant tissue that was cannibalized. Knowing him he’ll probably be back at it in 12 hours or so. I’d recommend taking it longer than that, but new psionics are like candy to you guys and you can’t help but pursuing them with equal fervor.”

“Change that to ‘donuts’ and you’d be about right,” Aaron said deadpan.

“Alright then,” Rio said, taking a step back and spinning around heading for the door. “If you find any more interesting stuff send me a report. I’m heading back to my own training. I’ll get with Paul later for…calibration issues.”

Vortison frowned at the retreating Archon. “Meaning what?”

“Nothing you have to worry about,” he said, walking out the door.

Synthia-462991 walked down a hallway of the advanced training group’s private sanctum within Atlantis, having located Paul’s mental signature in one of the many mediation chambers ahead and needing to find him. Her master was in an intense training session at the moment and couldn’t be disturbed so she’d been sent to relay the message to Paul personally, but she didn’t expect to see Paul naked until she turned left and walked into the chamber to find him standing in the center and his clothes and shoes piled up on the edge of the circular room.

“Oh…I’m sorry,” she said, glancing down at the floor for a moment out of reflex before looking back at him again as he turned around to face her. “I didn’t think you’d be undressed.”

“If it mattered I would have closed the door. Am I in your way?”

“Way?” she said, looking him up and down twice approvingly.

“Do you need this chamber? I didn’t check the schedule, just grabbed an open one since this wing looked deserted.”

“No, no…I was just sent to find you. Rio is stuck in an endurance challenge but he wanted to grab you before you got busy too. He didn’t expect you’d be back in training after only 5 hours.”

“I had a really good crash nap,” Paul said, running his fingers through his short, blue hair. “And you can stop being awkward and just enjoy the view while you’ve got it.”

Synthia almost blushed. “That obvious?”

“Well, I do try to stay in shape…”

“I noticed,” she said, smiling widely. “Rio said it’s important, so he sent me to find you.”

“Important enough to bother me, but not stop his own workout?” Paul said, raising an eyebrow.

“Sorry. When I felt you in here I didn’t think I’d actually be disturbing you…do you always mediate naked? And where can I buy tickets?”

Paul laughed. “No. I’m not meditating, just needed some privacy to work on my new ability. The clothes really get in the way, hence they had to go.”

“If you wanted privacy you could have closed the door.”

“I’m displacing a lot of air, and connecting to the hallway makes it less turbulent. I didn’t know any hot padawans would be walking by.”

“Hot? Are you flirting with me?”

“A little.”

“Why…other than just messing with my head?”

“Returning the compliment in your eyes. I can get dressed if it’d make things easier on you?”

“I’ll manage, thanks.”

“Is there more to the message or did you just want to play cheer leader?”

“Can I?”

Paul smirked. “What is it that Rio wants?”

“He said something about wanting to get to your memories while they were fresh. Wouldn’t get into it when I asked anything further.”

“How long until he’s finished with his challenge?”

“A little less than 3 hours to go.”

“I’ll meet him when he’s done then.”

Synthia nodded, then walked over and leaned against the wall, still staring at Paul. “Don’t let me hold you up. What exactly are you doing anyway? I know it’s Jumat related, but…”

“Trying to get a feel for the damn triggering sensation,” Paul said, with a bit of frustration in his voice. “It feels like goosebumps, and I’m only able to do it about a third of the time I try. Once it starts I’m also having trouble sustaining it, and when I can it blows off me almost immediately. I have almost no control at all and ripped my shirt earlier, so I ditched the clothes. Until I can at least confine it to my arms and legs I’m better off naked.”

“Makes sense,” Synthia agreed. “Is it really invisible?”

“Save for a slight distortion, yes. Hold on…let me try again,” the titan said, closing his eyes and trying to make himself get goosebumps. It wasn’t something that he knew how to do, so he just tried to imagine himself in places of cold or excitement previously that had rendered the skin pucker. He had to run through four different memories before he got one to catch and a tingle manifested itself at the base of his neck.

He tried to latch onto it, which was like grabbing for a wet bar of soap under water, and managed to increase the volume a bit before it traveled down his back and mushroomed out into the air behind him.

Synthia laughed, covering her mouth with her hand before she said anything.

Paul frowned. “You saw the distortion?”

“Yeah,” she said, giggling.

“No, it didn’t come off my butt,” he clarified. “Started in my neck and went down my back before releasing.”

“Took you a while.”

“It’s getting harder and harder to get goosebumps. My bag of tricks is wearing thin, but I’m not that close to finding a way to manually do it yet. This may sound odd, but it’s like getting a third arm that you’ve never used before that’s twitching around all over the place whenever you send a mental signal to it and…yeah, ok, bad metaphor. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Kind of like the bioshield?”

“Somewhat, but that’s a direct activation. This energy has to be generated, then released. Two step process that makes it a whole lot more trickier.”

“Are you ticklish?”

“Um…not sure, actually.”

“May I?” she asked, raising her eyebrows in an unsure gesture.

“Is this training related or are you flirting back?”

“Both,” she said honestly.

“That’s the best kind. Go ahead.”

The padawan walked over to him and stepped behind where he couldn’t see. “Don’t use your Pefbar. A blind reaction should be better.”

“Ok,” he said a moment before he felt her run her finger down his spine slowly.

The next thing Synthia knew the air in front of her face suddenly blossomed and kicked her hair back. “Worked?”

“Guess I am ticklish,” Paul admitted.

“Being naked is probably part of it. I’m guessing here, but as far as I know most Archons might get naked without flinching, but we are hardly ever touched when we are.”

“Good point,” Paul admitted.

“And since we don’t usually get laid, you should be really ticklish right now,” she said, running her finger across the left side of his waist and seeing/feeling another distortion manifest from his skin.

“Am I to take this to mean you’re wanting to help with my training?”

“Whatever keeps me here and you naked.”

Paul reached out telekinetically and hit the door controls, lowering a very wide door down and closing off the hallway from view.

“Alright then, I’ll indulge you in the name of more goosebumps. I figure I’ll numb up to your touch eventually, but do what you can now and hopefully I’ll hop the learning curve before that happens.”

“Why’d you shut the door?”

“Just in case someone else walks by.”

“Think they’d get the wrong idea?”

“No, but your touch is having a secondary effect and I’m a little bit shy regarding volume increases in public.”

Synthia couldn’t help but laugh, not at him but the idea that she could do that to him with just a finger brush on his back. “But you’re ok with me seeing it?”

“You’re standing behind me.”

“I have Pefbar,” she reminded him.

“Just shut up and poke,” he said, trying to keep from peeking himself to know when and where she was going to tickle him, for that would definitely lessen the effect. “But don’t mention this to your master.”

“Embarrassed?”

“Just don’t want to make him jealous.”

“I will admit…he’s not as hot as you,” she said, stroking his neck with two fingertips this time and giving Paul easy access to another wave of goosebumps.

“That’s working fine,” he said, trying to focus the slippery energy inside his body and redirect it even a nudge before it automatically released. “You don’t have to add innuendo.”

“Waste not, want not,” she said, touching his waist and running her finger laterally across the small of his back.

3

Paul was waiting outside the training chamber in the sanctum when Rio walked out, drenched in sweat but not looking overly fatigued. The trailblazer pointed in the direction of the equipment room and Paul walked with him, getting the feeling that there was something he wanted to discuss in private. There weren’t many other Archons in the sanctum, but he sensed something was up so he went along quietly until they got into the equipment room and Rio still wouldn’t say anything.

What? he asked telepathically, almost shouting it as the other titan began to pull a set of fresh clothes from a rack on the wall.

Rio didn’t say anything, but he did stop picking out clothes and turned around to look at him.

Paul crossed his arms over his chest and stared back, wondering what the hell he was up to and deciding to wait him out. After a few minutes he got a battlemeld prompt from Rio and accepted it, then a series of images/thoughts flashed into his mind.

Rio immediately pointed a finger at him when he felt a twitch in his fellow Archon. “So you do recognize them?”

“I don’t know…what are you showing me?”

“You tell me.”

“I just said I…”

Rio raised his eyebrows, waiting for a response.

“Those aren’t sensory. Where did you get them?”

“A dream. A repetitive dream that is very illusive. You’ve had it too, otherwise you wouldn’t have reacted that way.”

“What way?”

“That flinch of recognition.”

“Dude, I really don’t know what this stuff is. I can’t remember ever seeing it before, and I don’t typically recall dreams so…”

“Well I do,” Rio said, dropping the battlemeld link. “I always have. Maybe not for long, but a few minutes after waking up they stick around…this one, however, is very elusive. What I just shared with you is fragments I’ve pieced together, and is probably half crap. It’s familiar to your subconscious mind, I sensed it in you, even if you can’t remember. That’s why I didn’t say anything coming over here. I wanted a raw response.”

“What is it you just showed me? For some reason I can’t picture it again.”

Rio shook his head in dismay. “Son of a bitch, they’re at it again.”

“They?”

“V’kit’no’sat, dragons…whoever wrote this part of the psionics. I’ve been having these dreams ever since Ubven, and I think I might have been having them even before that and the ascension just kicked them up a little higher into my consciousness. I’m wildly guessing here, Paul, but I think they might have started with Sav.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “Show me again.”

“This is pretty much fiction I’ve compiled, like notes, because I can’t pull up the actual images when I’m awake,” he said, reestablishing the battlemeld and sending Paul a series of flashes of…

“The architecture looks V’kit’no’sat.”

“Yeah it does. I don’t know if that’s legit or my mind is just filling in the blanks with what I know, but that’s not the point. The glowy thing is.”

“Why do I see a whip and hat?”

“Again, filler from my memories. Focus on the context.”

“This is so muddled that…”

“You reacted to something in there. Try to find it,” Rio insisted.

Paul sighed and tried to go passive, feeling what he was ‘seeing’ and trying to get a sense of it. “Run it through a few times more quickly.”

Rio did as asked, but Paul couldn’t come up with anything definitive.

“I got nothing.”

“Focus on what’s missing.”

“Meaning?”

“Compare a moment ago when you didn’t know it was coming. Like a scary movie that you jump out of your seat at.”

“For the record, I’ve never done that.”

“Quit fighting me on this, it’s important,” Rio underscored. “Before your memory fades, compare the now to the then and see if anything is missing. A scary movie you don’t react to still has the memory of when you should be jumpy and don’t until you’ve seen it a lot of times.”

“Run it again,” Paul said, taking Rio at his word and trying to focus. It took seven more play-throughs of the collage of images and flashes of emotion before he finally spotted a tiny discrepancy.

“I don’t know if this is my imagination or not, but there feels like a dead spot.”

“Where?”

“Run it through slowly and I’ll stop you.”

Rio did as asked then Paul mentally pinged him when he hit the spot. It was an image of a forest landscape viewed from just above the treetops.

“This it?” Rio said, focusing and pausing that bit of the sequence.

“Yes, but I don’t know why.”

“Every time I run this through my head I think it degrades even more,” Rio admitted. “I get the dream again and if I can hang onto a piece of it, it realigns. Sharing it with you might be causing the degradation to snowball.”

“So what now?”

“Now I try and focus on that bit the next time I have the dream.”

“You mean when you wake up for those first few minutes?”

“That’s my note taking time, but I think I’m still active in the dream. Just a hunch, because I’ve got nothing to back it up with.”

“So you think this is psionic related?”

“I thought I was being stupid earlier but couldn’t let it go. Now I know I’m not because you’ve seen the same thing whether you remember it now or not.”

“Why did you say Sav?”

Rio cringed.

“Just spit it out already.”

“This is so without merit that I’m afraid I’m going to bias you going forward.”

“Bias me then. I want to know what you’re thinking.”

Rio held up his left hand and extended two fingers out in a ‘V’ then pointed them up to his eyes in the old school hand signal for ‘keep your eyes open.’ It took a moment for Paul to realize that wasn’t what he was doing. Rather, he was just pointing at his eyes…

His twinkling grey eyes.

“There’s no mention in the database for the color change,” Rio reminded him. “And if I’m guessing right, the dream started when I got them.”

“Tier 3,” Paul echoed, his mind racing with the possible implications…which were numerous considering they had so little data to rule anything out with. “To what end?”

“I don’t know, but I doubt it’s there without a reason.”

Paul glared at him. “And this was the first you thought about mentioning it to us?”

“Do you mention every whiff of thought that passes through your head? The only thing I have to go on is corroboration from you. Beyond that it’s just a daydream.”

“Oh no, you’re not getting away with that, buddy. You’ve been suspecting this a while, confirmation or no. You should have said something.”

“There are only four of us that have a pair of Tier 3s, and you’re the only addition since me. Your ascension is fresh, so I thought I’d try out this stupid theory and probably get made fun of for it…which is also why I wasn’t going to tell you if you didn’t respond to the images I sent you.”

Paul rolled his eyes. “Just because we make fun of you doesn’t mean we don’t care,” he said with a touch of sarcasm.

“Have you ever tried to put meaning to your dreams?”

“Not when I’m awake, no. I figure they’re just incoherent nonsense that’s the result of thinking with only a piece of your brain active.”

“Well, I’ve always thought there was a little bit more to that and I wanted to explore those stupid notions in private.”

Paul held up a hand. “Alright, alright. You win. I have side projects that I’m working on and haven’t told you guys about, and won’t, unless they pan out, so I can see what you mean.”

Rio frowned. “What kind of side projects?”

“The kind that keep Clan Saber ahead of you morons. Don’t change the subject.”

The titan pointed an accusing finger at him. “Sharing is caring…especially when it involves new toys.”

“Like I said, I don’t share until I have something worth sharing…which basically means I’m arguing against myself as of two minutes ago. Fine, you kept these dreams to yourself but now we know a bit more. Where do you want to go from here?”

“I got more conscious access to the dreams after my second Tier 3. We need to confer with Jason and Morgan.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“I sense another stupid idea you’re holding back.”

Rio frowned. “The dreams are random. I can’t predict when they will happen, but it seems to be, on average, every two weeks or so, but with wide fluctuations. The stupid idea would be you trying to peek on my dreams and consciously see what I can’t.”

Paul sighed. “Yeah that is stupid…but it makes sense.”

“Except that we can’t realistically do that.”

“Oh can’t we?”

“You can’t lose hours staying awake watching me in the hopes of catching something.”

“Me, no. I’m in too heavy of training and I’ve got this brand new psionic to work out…but we can always recruit a few dozen other Archons to take shifts with you at night holding your hand.”

Rio cringed at the thought of having someone in his room and head while he tried to relax and rest. He wondered why that was, because he could sleep in the middle of a crowded, noisy room if he wanted to. His quarters, however, had become something of a sanctuary. A place he’d trained himself to let his guard down so he could more fully heal. If he was going to be watched he’d need to do it elsewhere so he didn’t break the habit.

“They can be hot chicks, right?”

“Is there an Archon girl that’s not hot?”

Rio considered that, rifling through his memories. “You’ve got a point there.”

“I’m sure you’ll get a fair amount of volunteers. Have each take a 1 or 2-hour shift and see if they come up with anything.”

“Why didn’t I think of doing that before?”

“Because it’s stupid,” Paul explained pithily. “But sometimes stupid works.”

“Do your conversations with Jason go like this?”

“No, ours are more intelligent. I only pick up the stupid vibe around you and a few others.”

Rio nodded. “Thought so. Thanks for the suggestion,” he said, brushing past Paul and heading for one of the shower booths. “I’ll comm you the results.”

“No problem,” Paul said, heading for the door and back to his quarters to do a little database digging before he dove back into his training regimen that had already been disrupted by the past day’s events. Something about what Rio told him felt…significant, and he really wished he’d mentioned it sooner so Paul and the others could have been on the look for it in their own sleep sessions.

Ielia-521993 pulled up a chair next to Rio’s bed in an empty set of generic quarters as he layed down, head hitting the pillow and wondering which posture he should choose, which she could guess by his awkwardness.

“Toss and turn all you want,” the striker said agreeably, “I’ll adjust to you. If you’re stiff, odds are you won’t enter dream state, so try and relax.”

“Thank you,” Rio said, rolling over on his right side as she slid her chair closer and put a hand gently on his neck. “If you see anything weird bouncing around my head I’m pleading ignorant.”

“I’m just a passive observer unless we hit pay dirt. Don’t want you kicking me out of the Clan for snooping around inside your head, now do I?”

“Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about that.”

“I’m here for the mission,” she said quickly. “I’ll stick to it, curiosity or not. Trust me or you’ll never get to sleep.”

“I can trust once…but not twice.”

“You won’t need twice. Me and the others have already discussed this. No prying, pranks, or anything other than business. If there’s a V’kit’no’sat secret buried in your dreams we want you to find it so you can pass it on to us down the road.”

“Kiss goodnight?”

Ielia leaned forward and gave him a peck on the side of his head. “Goodnight. Dream of superpowers.”

“Would if I could,” Rio said, closing his eyes. “But I’m afraid this is going to be totally random. Go ahead and knock me out, then let me surf on my own.”

“Alright,” Ielia said, using her touch to bypass the Ikrid blocks and Rio’s own defenses, which he had lowered, and force him into unconsciousness. He went down into a sleep state without a fight, then she released her influence and just became the passive observer. When she let go he didn’t push his way back to consciousness, meaning that he really had trusted her and was now in a fairly deep sleep that was sliding even further. She didn’t know when the dreams would start, so she kept a link to the tiny piece of his conscious mind that was functioning, watching the blank ‘movie screen’ for about 20 minutes until bits and pieces of random stuff started popping up…all of which was skewed due to the lack of full brain power being applied.

Ielia had never looked at someone’s dreams before, and these looked like an artistic attempt at a stylistic cartoon that didn’t care for physics. Rio’s dreams held that semblance for a while until they crystalized a bit when Mario and Luigi got into a pie flinging fight with the Three Stooges…who had telekinesis and bioshields.

Halfway during that fight, which was in far more detail than the rest of his dreams, Ielia’s relief quietly snuck into the quarters through the unlocked door. The mage had a brief telepathic conversation with her so as not to wake Rio, then she lightly grabbed his wrist and they both watched another minute of the odd fight before Ielia let go of his neck and the mental feed shut off. She snuck out of the room ninja quiet and got halfway down the hallway before she busted out laughing, no longer needing to hold it in.

She’d always wondered what went through a trailblazer’s mind, and had suspected there might be all kinds of high end intellectual thought all the way down to primal, lustful fantasies…but honestly that pie fight was way better and fit their reputation to a ‘T.’ The image of Luigi slinging a trio of pies at Curly and the bald guy blocking them all with a raised hand and a bioshield before uttering a ‘whoop, whoop, whoop’ taunt was too much for her to handle and had Ielia giggling for the next ten minutes.

She’d be back two days later to take another shift, one that had her coming in when Rio was already asleep. After that she’d drop in for one or two a week for the next two months before one of the ‘watchers’ hit what they thought was pay dirt.

4

January 30, 2889

Solar System

Earth

“Define block?” Paul said, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against a wall in the hallway as one of the watchers explained to him and Rio about the anomaly.

“It’s pretty self-explanatory,” Paula-610445 said, a bit miffed. “I was monitoring his dreams just like I have every other night I’ve pulled a shift, then a piece of his mind disconnected from my vision. I didn’t lose my connection. I was still in his head and could monitor his body and most aspects of his mind, but wherever his bit of consciousness transitioned I was not allowed. It lasted through to the next shift for about five minutes then he came out of it and into a dreamless state. I stayed the entire time until he reverted back to normal. There was nothing external triggering it, or releasing him from it. I was simply blocked from seeing whatever he was thinking or dreaming at the time.”

“Well that was a gigantic waste of time,” Rio said, blowing out a frustrated breath.

“Yes and no,” Paul differed. “We’ve found a camouflage tarp. That means there’s something underneath meant to be hidden. Something important.”

“Well I can’t get at it,” Paula said apologetically. “Maybe someone stronger would have better luck.”

“I don’t doubt your skills, and I think if even Aaron had been the one observing he would have been blocked out as well. No, there’s something significant about these dreams that the designers don’t want anyone else to know about. Did you pull anything new this time?”

“No,” Rio said regretfully. “But I do know it was the same dream and I’ve got a little bit better retention of the details. They’ll probably fade like normal, but right now I don’t recognize anything new.”

“Show me.”

Rio took a moment then sent Paul a copy of his recollection. It was about the same as last time, but bits were missing that were there before, along with new pieces having been added. On the whole it was the same, but the fine details had shifted slightly, probably with Rio’s memory slurry having been degraded with repetitive ‘looks’ as he tried to analyze it. Paul sent him a battlemeld prompt and when he accepted they compared mental notes, allowing Rio to reconstruct a bit more using Paul’s perspective on what he’d shown him previously as a baseline.

The image of the sky over the forest, the supposed important part, added four dots that hadn’t been there before.

“I’ve seen those stars before,” Paul said, not being able to remember when, but knowing in his gut that they were familiar.

“Why do you call them stars?”

“I don’t…no, not stars. Suns. One is white…I don’t remember the others.”

“A centralized quad system,” Rio added, with the images seeming to pop back into memory…though for some reason he couldn’t make out the colors either.

“Not too many of those.”

“Map,” Rio said, glancing at Paula belatedly.

“I’m thinking I’m out of the loop now, aren’t I?” she asked.

“You’re welcome to tag along,” Paul offered.

The striker held up a hand. “No no. You guys run along to whatever it is you’re doing. Are we done with the night sessions or do you want us to keep looking.”

“Other than counting how many I have there’s no point. So no, we’re done. Thank you.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

“You gave us something useful,” Paul added. “But it looks like something we’re going to have to work from the inside out.”

Paula threw both trailblazers a two fingered salute as she spun on her heels, then silently walked off.

Rio looked at Paul.

“Before training,” he said, with both of them heading to find a secure terminal.

Kara sat in the command chair on the Clan Ghostblade Ma’kri-class warship as the ship’s captain and crew handled the rundown of the lizard jumpship, confident that they could do the task without her input after all these years of experience. It had already been snared by a slew of namis, now they were in the process of picking apart key systems with precision weapons strikes before it had a chance to flee like the rest of the convoy. The two jumpships that had been carrying cruisers never even bothered to deploy them in self-defense, jumping out along with the other 14 large vessels and abandoning the snared one to the Star Force ship, knowing that they didn’t have a chance of fighting it out and winning.

Back in the day they would have always gone after two lizard ships simultaneously, so that they could capture both then shunt the lizard crews over to one and send them on their way while keeping the other ship as their prize. But today, and in previous years, Kara had gotten in the habit of being a bit more bold on some smaller raids, and her catching the convoy in this system had been luck rather than planning, so she was going to raid this ship in traditional pirate fashion, with the first task being to disarm the limited defensive weapons it had, including shield generators.

After that came comm systems and anything else shallow to the hull that could be smashed, but she left the ship’s gravity drives untouched. They were currently dampened by the namis, which had gone through considerable upgrades over the years, and were now sticking to the shields like ticks and emitting their IDF fields to neutralize the drives. When the shields went down they dropped to the hull and likewise held the giant ship in place while the Ma’kri went about redecorating the hull as it liked.

When all preparations were underway and the system scans were reading clear, for the rest of the convoy had already jumped out of the system onto the next leg of its journey, she called in her own ships that were out on the system’s periphery and waited for the small flotilla to arrive before she stepped out of the hangar bay and flew over to the lizard ship ahead of the boarding craft to follow.

Once inside it was standard neutralization, stunning everything in sight either through weapons or psionics. The Ghostblade commandos that followed helped to do the same as techs came with them and began looting the ship of cargo that Kara wanted. While the Clan leader and the warriors played tag with the ship’s crew, the army of ant-like workers scurried around the massive cargo holds scouting out what was available and carrying back what they wanted to their dropships, making many round trips through the process.

Eventually Kara got half the ship napping before her ships’ holds were filled, for she hadn’t brought the necessary vessels to clear out everything, let alone to take the ship as a prize, so once the pirates were done they retreated to their dropships and left, with Kara being the last man out and flying over to the Ma’kri superman style as the dropships returned to their industry ships.

Kara had 97 of the vessels in this neutral system as a staging point to bring resources to from other raids. Jumpships full of cargo would find the fleet, slowly feed over the resources and receive back the finished products, whether it be machine parts, clothing, or ammunition, with none of the industry ships having the spare space to hold finished goods. They were all compact units designed for the task of creation, not storage, thus all the booty that Kara collected had to be stored on other ships waiting nearby.

Since she didn’t have any of those here now and had only hopped over to the star to jump the lizard convoy as it had the misfortune of coming through her secret rendezvous spot, what little cargo space they did have was filled to the brim now and would be replaced with the goods as the raw materials that they’d stolen were transformed into them.

Fortunately the industry ships had their own fleet of dropships and staff of personnel ranging from techs to accountants to warriors. Each ship was a mini-city of its own, small in size but when connected to the rest of the varied fleet became the Ghostblade civilization in a Battlestar Galactica sort of way. Some of the industry ships were ore processors, others were shipyards and bioharvest, while the ones that were eating the finished materials they’d stolen from the lizards were fabrication models. Each was staffed with specialized crew as well as some redundant facilities so people wouldn’t have to be hopping from one ship to another on a daily commute.

That said, ship to ship transfer via dropship was common, even in a fleet as small as this one. Kara currently had thousands of the industry ships under her command, scattered around lizard territory in a few select spots that kept changing as per her orders. If the lizards ever saw a pattern and went looking for them they’d be too late, for systems like this were only a temporary holding point. The Ghostblade ‘territory’ was actually these ships, rather than any geographic location.

They’d also been doing a bit of mining of their own in the system, for now that they had a decent sized fleet they weren’t relying on only piracy to fuel it. Kara still wanted to grab as many lizard resources and ships as she could, and even had a few special industry ships designed for the exclusive purpose of stripping down captured vessels for recycling. None of those ‘chop shop’ ships were here though, for this was just an outreach group. The much larger fleets were roaming on the edge of Star Force borders where they could stay somewhat linked into current events.

Updates would flow out to the other fleets as available via courier ships, so it wasn’t until 4 months after Paul sent his initial message to her did Kara finally receive it two days after the raid when a Ghostblade jumpship arrived bringing with it a load of raw ore and database updates to pass along.

When Kara checked her messages she found not one, but two from Paul, with the first being his inquiry into Rio’s dreams. He said he also thought he had them but couldn’t remember even the slightest detail without prodding. The second message explained further how the dreams themselves were protected from external viewing and wanted to know if she knew anything about this.

Kara waited a long moment, hoping some insight would pop up in response to these revelations, but none did. She mentally sorted through everything she had learned over the years from the knowledge implants the Zak’de’ron had given her, but there was nothing relating to dreams that she had ever discovered and nothing new was popping up now. She waited until the next outgoing ship was available before she composed a reply, hoping something would change but it didn’t. Kara had no knowledge of this, nor could she ever remember having the dream, even though she had been given Sav and Rio suspected that was when this had all begun.

“I’m sorry, Paul, but I’ve got nothing. I’ve racked my brain trying to find even the slightest reference, but nada. I can’t help you with this, and I doubt something is buried inside my head if it didn’t come out now. Always a possibility, but would be a break from form. I’m guessing the dragons didn’t feel like giving me a cheat sheet on this one. I’ll try to be on the lookout in my own dreams, but as far as I know I rarely have any, so I’m not too hopeful there.”

“Wish I could be more help. Keep me in the loop as often as you can. Maybe something more you learn will trigger a memory down the road. As for the system you described, I checked through the map myself and didn’t come up with anything either. 239 matching candidates and nothing about them stood out to me. I don’t know what else to do on this one other than to wait and cross my fingers, as useless as that sounds. Hope you and Rio have better luck.”

Paul watched the hologram shrug, then Kara’s image disappeared. He kicked the wall under his terminal in frustration. She’d been their best hope of getting some answers, but whatever this was it seemed they were on their own. He’d had no luck with his own dreams, unable to remember ever having them other than weird corroborations when Rio showed him something. Morgan and Jason likewise couldn’t recall anything, though they hadn’t met up with them in person to get the telepathic images that Rio had given Paul. Maybe when that eventually happened down the road they’d recognize something, but for right now it was all on Rio and Paul…and all he could do was act as a calibrating rod and try to help Rio sort out what he learned and maintain the memory of it better.

“Well that’s a great way to start the day,” he said as he spun up out of his chair and headed for the door, workout gear already on as he headed for the sanctum and his morning run of 10 miles. He completed it in the standard 42 minutes then headed over to another chamber to meet up with Rio and give him the good news.

When he opened the door he walked through a short airlock, letting the first door close before the second would open, then he was in the ‘danger room’ with a lot of small, orb-like objects flying around. Paul stayed on the edge and out of the engagement zone, but he could see Rio knocking several of them into the walls with telekinetic blows and knew to keep his eyes open in case one came his way.

“Need something?” Rio yelled without stopping his engagement with the hundreds of little stun bots that were desperately trying to make physical contact with him.

Got a message from Kara, Paul telepathically replied. She has absolutely no idea what we’re talking about. Not even a twitch of recollection.

Rio rolled to the side to avoid a dive of two of the little bots before telekinetically throwing them behind him, then he evaded a few more while he built up additional power in his Ubven nodules. When he peaked it out he batted a few more aside to give him space enough to detonate, then with a flinch of physical effort that Paul could see he released the pent up Lachka energy.

It expanded out into a huge volume that swallowed up all the bots, invisible to the naked eye but visible to Paul if he’d bothered to use his Rentar ability. He didn’t, merely holding position against the wall as all the bots froze midair, locked into a super dense telekinetic field that lingered on even after Rio released the effort. It’d remain there for several seconds, depending on the size of the field and the density that he’d created, but while everything solid and liquid was physically locked in place as if the room had suddenly filled up with invisible sand, Rio casually strolled through it, immune to his own effect due to a passive emission from his Ubven tissue.

Had Paul wanted to walk out to him he would have ran into a solid wall around the edges, but able to push his way in slowly if he used his Rentar to ‘melt’ away the Lachka field. Rio’s immunity worked far better, with his stride barely showing any hindrance at all. When he got to the edge he reached out telekinetically to hit the switch on the wall ending the simulation a split second after the Ubven field fizzled and the orbs started to move about very slowly, gaining speed with every tenth of a second until they broke free into normal movement.

But by then the signal had already been sent out and they no longer angled towards Rio, rather flying up towards wall niches that opened to allow them access to their docking berths.

“So what do we do now?” he asked, arms spread wide in a gesture of exasperation.

“I guess we do it the hard way,” Paul answered, not liking it either. “If this is a test, then we’re going to have to pass it as designed…and be ‘we’ I mean ‘you’ for the most part. Kara couldn’t remember the dreams either, and I’m guessing that no one with a single Tier 3 will be able to. Either Ubven is different or it’s just a quirk that you’re able to pull enough to be aware of it.”

“I hate to say this…”

“…but what if we need all 8 Tier 3s?” Paul finished for him.

“It would explain why no Zen’zat ever had to deal with this, and maybe why Kara has no memory. Something so exclusive that they didn’t expect us to achieve it.”

“He did give her the Vorch’nas before he knew we could cheat our way into new abilities.”

“Share,” Rio corrected him. “At least one of us has to earn them.”

“True, and maybe this is the same deal.”

“Tier 4?” Rio floated.

Paul bit his lip. “Kara knows about Tier 4, but not these dreams.”

“She knows about Tier 3 too, but not our eyes,” Rio said, pointing at his own twinkling grey orbs.

“I really want it to be a gateway into Tier 4 too, but I wouldn’t put any credits on that.”

“Actually, if it’s not Tier 4 it’s gotta be something else that big if multiple Tier 3s are a prerequisite.”

“That thought alone is enough for me to keep a dream journal.”

Rio raised an eyebrow. “You’re keeping a dream journal?”

“Yeah. I keep a datapad beside my bed and write down whatever I can remember when I wake up before it fully fades.”

“Worth a try.”

“It’s still blank,” Paul said flatly.

5

March 13, 2890

Deering System (Core Region)

Gray (Clan Aquaman Capitol)

Lens-087 dove off the pier headfirst into the warm ocean that covered only a small fraction of the planet’s surface, but every liter of it belonged to Clan Aquaman while the land, save for a mile deep around the shore, belonged to Mainline Star Force and six other Clans. He’d built several narrow cities on the perimeter of the Tear Drop to function as intermediaries between his Clan and the rest of the planet, but most of his infrastructure and population was situated beneath the waves.

He hadn’t built any surface water cities, with everything sitting on the seafloor or dug in beneath it. At the center of the Tear Drop was a 19 mile deep hole, at the base of which sat a basin that held one of his largest and most secure cities. In the past Star Force couldn’t have built anything that deep, but their technology had progressed to the point where it wasn’t an issue now, though at those depths no free swimming was possible, not even for the scattering of Elarioni in his Clan.

Those few he’d been able to recruit due to Clan Aquaman still maintaining a narrow hold on aquatic dominance within Star Force, but most of the superior aquatics race that had chosen to join a Clan were now part of Clan Alterra. Erin had beat him to the punch and, as a result of recruiting Ariel to her Clan, had pulled all the best and brightest Elarioni to her save for a few. They’d helped her Clan jump their aquatics division up to rank #2, surpassing Kyler’s Clan Cloud only 9 years ago and creeping their way toward the Aquamen.

Len’s Clan was superior all around if you took the Elarioni out of the equation, despite the advancements they’d helped the Alterra make in terms of technology and tactics, but now that there were no rules regarding the makeup of a Clan the Elarioni were now counted in the scoring and were giving Erin’s civilization a huge boost…one that Lens was desperately trying to stay ahead of. Some of the Elarioni recognized his methodology was superior and wanted to help him out, hence they’d thrown in with his Clan, almost out of pity for how much the other Elarioni had shifted the balance of power within the ‘JV teams.’ The independent Elarioni civilization still held a considerable advantage, though no actual competitions were held to determine exactly how dominate they would be.

He privately thought Clan Alterra could best them now, but sadly Aquaman could not. Hand to hand in the water the Elarioni were just too damn agile. Equipment-wise was another story, and even with millennia of fine tuning what the Elarioni had was not necessarily better than what Star Force was using now, thanks to the sharing Ariel and others had done, giving Star Force the benefit of their experience.

There were still some technological secrets that the Elarioni held on to, but for the most part everything they knew Star Force now knew, and Lens and the other aquatics leaders weren’t squeezing them for details. They were a private race in some regards, though they also wanted to exert influence with the other water dwelling races that Star Force had relations with, so there was a dichotomy in their social structure that inevitably led to a lot of sharing…including Star Force secrets flowing back to them from the Elarioni that served in Mainline and now the Clans.

Lens didn’t think there were any thefts of material or schematics occurring, but what one individual learned they could always share with others. It was their personal knowledge and Star Force didn’t try to clamp down on such things, though there were sensitive items, like comm systems, that the individuals involved with knew not to share. A single leak there could lead to disaster, but as far as how to build better aquatics craft or engineer training drills was knowledge that was best shared within the Star Force community that included empire members and associates.

Though there were also a number of known links to less than friendly races who coopted former Star Force personnel for a price. Again, there was no theft going on there, just organizations and nations looking for a quick way to jump the learning curve by recruiting talent. It was a form of competition that Lens could appreciate, for he and Erin were doing the exact same thing by bringing in Elarioni, and he was still kicking himself for letting her get to Ariel first.

But that was behind him now and the landscape was set. Clan Aquaman would pull people from every race available to gain an advantage, and as of now he had some 19 different aquatics races and 4 non-aquatics under his command, all of which were working together to up their power ranking and further develop their little pocket civilization within Star Force. They had bits of territory on six other planets that had water and 4 that didn’t, with those 4 all being in Sol, but this Ocean was entirely theirs and where Lens was putting most of his resources into building a stronghold that even the V’kit’no’sat would have a tough time conquering.

19 miles of water made for a decent shield against orbital bombardment, though he knew some weapons would even be able to get through that, but the extra defense always made sense to him, which was why he put his largest city at the deepest point in the Tear Drop. Other infrastructure was spread out through the middle depths and the shallows, with one more recent addition being within half a mile of the shore but unconnected via subsurface tunnels.

That was a security issue, requiring one to swim to get to the location. Lens often chose to go the direct route rather than finding a ship to hop a ride on, with him wearing nothing but a wetsuit and breath mask today, preferring to feel the water on his skin rather than be insulated from it in a suit of armor.

As he dove beneath the surface he passed by schools of fish and other sea creatures, none large enough to try and eat him, but there were a few races in the depths that could. They normally avoided the shallows and anywhere there was infrastructure, but to be on the safe side there were barrier nets surrounding the shallows cities. The energy barriers allowed the water to flow through but not solids unless you had an access code. That allowed ships to pass through but the dangerous wildlife, none sufficiently advanced to actually talk to, were kept out and the miles of ‘safe’ territory had been screened thoroughly to make sure none had been missed.

That said, free water swimming was frowned upon outside the safe zones while not being technically banned. He trusted his people to know the difference as to when was a good time to go and not, but as for him he wasn’t concerned, even if this had been deep water. His psionics allowed him to detect and deter even the largest of the aquatic predators if need be. It was the low level and non-Archons that were at risk, including the Elarioni, for some of the wildlife could match them in speed, which was quite alarming.

Some had questioned the wisdom of setting up in an unfriendly ocean, but Star Force had done it back on Earth originally and Lens wasn’t too concerned here. Yes, there were other bodies of water without predators or even wildlife at all, but this was the one that had become available to them via trade and he’d taken it, challenges and all, and his Clan was flourishing as a result…save for the competition from Clan Alterra.

Knowing that he wasn’t going to beat them at their own game concerning Elarioni recruitment he’d been searching for other angles and had finally found one…or rather created one, in a crazy co-op with the Dvapp to help them develop a new kind of aquatics technology. That was insane, given that the Dvapp didn’t live underwater, but his apparent stupidity was beginning to show merit as a recently developed and quiet research facility had been built along the shore in the shallows and had Lens working there most days of the week.

Today was no exception, so as he swam by a few schools of tiny fish he dolphin-kicked his way down to an entrance and passed through a waterlock into the interior that was air-filled. Most Clan Alterra facilities were now water-filled, given their number of Elarioni, but Clan Aquaman was about 60/40 air to water. A lot of his aquatics races were also capable of air breathing, so he didn’t have issues with needing a lot of water-only structures. That said, his air-breathing ones often had submerged compartments or tunnels, with swimming from one location to another being as common as walking.

That had been deliberate to encourage casual swimming to further their skills through use rather than exclusively workouts…but Humans were still groundpounders and needed to live in that environment, as did the Dvapp who were working in this facility with him.

There were 329 of them here, and while they could move about under water it was a new experience for them. They didn’t breathe via lungs, but rather ‘soaked’ oxygen in through their crystalline bodies. They didn’t need much, and could get enough from the water if the concentration levels were high enough, but their swimming skills were still in their infancy and right now he needed them comfortable and focusing on their tech rather than struggling to get around in water-filled infrastructure.

So when Lens passed through the waterlock he entered a facility that was air-only save for the hangar bays where their prototypes were berthed and the lap pool where he was trying to teach some of them to swim, though with their amorphous bodies they had virtually an infinite number of propulsion possibilities. The Dvapp were intrigued with the idea of developing their own aquatics division and had agreed to help Lens advance his in exchange for them sharing the results of their research.

Lens pulled off his breath mask and retracted it into a small pouch behind his neck on the collar of his wetsuit, then walked with bare feet down the hallways as most of the staff did while the Dvapp moved around either in bipedal form or as long snakes wriggling to and fro. One of them coming down the hallway Lens was in stopped about ten meters in front of him and squished together into a thick puddle of what looked like white crystal mush, then it rose up from the center and resolved into a stocky biped with two arms, two legs, a stubby head and no facial features whatsoever.

“We have good news,” it said in English, though the pronunciation was coming from body vibrations rather than vocal chords. That gave it an echoing sound, but the words were spot on. The Dvapp, like most races in the ADZ, had incorporated English into their cultures given that it was the trade language that all others used. The old one had receded in prominence, though it and many others were still used in various sectors, but the Star Force language is what bound everyone in the ADZ and expansion regions together, with the Dvapp realizing that they needed to learn and master it in order to facilitate their interconnection with the overall community, though that was still limited to very restricted activities, for they preferred their privacy in most cases.

“Tell me it’s the form shift?” Lens almost pleaded with ‘him,’ though technically Dvapp didn’t have a gender.

“It is,” Ga’rel confirmed, vibrating his body in a ripple that sounded like metallic clinking and was a sign of excitement for them. “An adjustment made last night compensated for the tension issues. The new crystal slurry is maintaining rigidity throughout under level 18 pressure.”

Lens pulled a slow, silent fist pump, knowing how significant that sentence was. This issue had been plaguing their research for the past 11 months and been holding back a whole line of experiments that could now begin. “Well done.”

“We knew we would solve the riddle eventually. Your formula is new to us, and its impressiveness will not deter our applying applications as we familiarize ourselves with it.”

“We just took yours and upgraded it.”

“You altered it in a way we had never considered. Now that we are becoming accustomed to it, I anticipate several more breakthroughs in the coming years.”

“I’m hoping,” Lens agreed. “Is the dart ready for its run?”

“It is as of 15 minutes ago.”

“I’m headed out then. Carry on.”

The Dvapp leaned forward and fell onto the floor, melting back into a snake and moving on down the hallway and around a corner. A lot of them chose bipedal form as a form of courtesy when talking with bipeds, but it seemed a lot of them preferred to move about as snakes. When he’d asked them about that earlier they said it was just a personal preference, but about two thirds of those assigned to this research mission were inclined to do the worm rather than walk.

Lens passed a few more as he navigated his way through one chamber to another enroute to one of seven hangars. It was the one meant for external use rather than construction, and in it were several of the sea-worthy prototypes, including the Dart-class speed craft that he’d helped design to replace the traditional streak that Star Force was still using.

Right now it didn’t look very speedy, for it sat bobbing in a cubical berth with an energy net set across the open side that connected to the communal pool, on the far side of which was a tunnel that led to a much larger waterlock, though this one had shield pass-through capability rather than double doors so traffic wouldn’t back up. It had doors as well, and right now they were closed, for very few missions were active. Most of their research was still unfortunately in the development stage.

The dart was their most capable design, and the smallest, with it sitting in the pocket of water with an exposed seat on top. It was designed for a biped, which the Dvapp could accommodate to and therefore useable by both Star Force and their race down the road.

Lens hopped into the water beside the craft and swam a couple of meters to get to it, then climbed up the side using a series of handholds that were basically depressions into the rock solid goo. The artificial gravity drive had already been powered up, so the ball-like glob didn’t spin to the side when he climbed. Rather it compensated for his weight and only wobbled a few inches as he leveraged his way up on top and sat down in the bathtub-like depression.

The cockpit was made of traditional materials, as far as Star Force was concerned, with the bulk of the craft being the amorphous crystalline formula that the Dvapp had mastered over the course of their development and which Lens and a team of Star Force techs had upgraded, crudely, far beyond what the Dvapp had ever considered. Most of that upgrade had to do with compatibility with the water, though there were some higher level sciences involved taken from knowledge in the V’kit’no’sat database and transferred to the Dvapp tech, for which there was no matching counterpart in the records.

There were many shape-shifting technologies, but more like what the Voku used. The crystalline slurry was something the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t seen much of, and nothing on the level that the Dvapp used, so Len’s techs didn’t have the luxury of just copying and pasting the data…they had to figure this one out for themselves.

What they’d come up with they’d given over to the Dvapp, who were the real miracle workers here. The crude formula Lens gave them had been refined considerably given their experience with the technology, enough to form the bulk of the dart that he was now sitting in. When he hit a button on his control board the depressions in the outer hull that he’d used to climb up with melted and disappeared. Simultaneously material from the bulk sitting below him in the water rose up around him, eventually climbing over his head with the wide tendrils touching and meshing together, completely sealing him inside a bubble that kept both water, air, and light out.

Internal illumination took over, with the crystalline structure actually glowing blue, though his control board was already lit up enough for him to see by. He remotely deactivated the energy gate and trolled the now covered blob out into the wide communal pool, getting several meters of distance away from the side walls before he triggered the transformation.

When he did his cockpit bulge sank, partially submerging as the white crystalline material stretched out into a thick, but pointy needle giving it the ‘dart’ moniker. The thickest point was in the rear, where the solid cockpit now sat with a bit of material behind him that tapered down into a much shorter point for streamlining purposes.

Lens grabbed the steering wheel/joystick and moved the dart forward, turning to the right with the straight needle-shape of the craft bending to facilitate the turn. Even though he was moving at creeping speeds the agility of that bend was one of the glaring reasons why this tech was better than the rigid hulls that Star Force aquatics had used for centuries. Bendable tech could be fashioned, and had been in the past, but nothing like what this little baby was capable of.

His dart literally wrapped itself around the curve he ordered it to make, then it straightened out again as he headed through the short tunnel, triggering the doors to open and exiting through the protective energy fields that were keeping the hangar separate from the seawater and the wildlife outside. He kept his speeds low to avoid crushing any of them, then he went ahead and sent out a telepathic signal to cause them to move out of his way. They might not have been able to talk to him, but he could still communicate with them to a degree, which ironically allowed him to live up to the Clan name he’d chosen even before he knew psionics existed.

Trolling across the shallows ‘safe’ zone, he headed for the sea barriers beyond where he intended to put the dart through its next round of field tests in the open water.

6

June 1, 2890

Jartul System (Calavari Region)

Daka

Mark-084 jogged across the hangar and jumped up into the open cockpit of his prototype skeet, sliding down onto the pommel and closing the canopy with a thought. The telepathic interlink allowed him to control the basic functions from range, but now that he was inside and placed his hands on the control bars that option was nullified, routing his control through his physical Ikrid. That way an outsider couldn’t telepathically override his controls and open the canopy or power down the craft in flight, as well as allowing him much greater control through a nexus-like interface.

Mark dived into it, submerging himself into an overall view of the hangar rather than looking out through the holograms that now covered the interior of his canopy. He didn’t even see them, for he was looking through the interface as he lifted the heavily armored skeet off the ground along with 9 others. They were all visually identical on the exterior, but inside they had no cockpits, save for a collapsible one in case Mark needed to fly a drone down to pick someone up, at which point the skeet would grow a bulge to carry the person or cargo.

But that was a side point. The purpose of these skeets was to fight remotely and use the internal space for additional equipment, while Mark’s skeet was the reverse. It only had limited weaponry and was far tankier than any skeet that had been developed before. Its flight characteristics were identical to the others, so it lacked nothing in agility or speed, but its purpose was to house the pilot for the squadron without visually giving away clues as to which craft he was in.

The drone skeets were also prototypes, and not in the traditional version. Mark and others had used computer programmed escorts to fight with before, but those were more like weapons that were pacing nearby that could be used to do limited fighting. They were useful in a wide variety of situations, but this new neural interface had allowed Mark to create something more. He was no longer mentally pressing buttons within a nexus, he was directly connected to his skeet as if it were an extension of his body…along with the other nine as well.

He was flying them as if they were all the same craft and his mind was suspended between them with no bias as to the one his body was actually in. In experiments he had been able to fly and fight with up to 21 before seeing a steep performance reduction, so taking out a standard squadron of 10 was well within his capabilities. Sav-enhanced he had no trouble lifting all of them up off the deck and flying them out through the open hangar door and into Daka’s thick atmosphere, but this test wasn’t so much about what he could do, as it was preparing a new generation of non-Sav pilots for what they could do…which meant he needed to refine the tech and tactics prior to bringing them into the new training program.

He had to get the bugs out, and the best way to do that was to run live missions against computer-controlled targets. Several ranges had been constructed on Daka for just this type of thing, and though they were live fire capable he wasn’t going to be using that function. He needed the prototypes intact so he could run them through the gauntlet ad nausea without having to worry about replacing components every time he made a mistake or the course got the better of him, for he’d designed it to be challenging.

Putting pilots into aerial craft or mechs had always been an issue, because it put them in harm’s way unlike a naval pilot who flew his warship by remote, sitting inside a well-protected jumpship and able to fight his battles in a way that wasn’t concerned with the survivability of the drone. Star Force didn’t use them recklessly, but they could push combat in directions that couldn’t be achieved with living personnel. That said, aerial craft and mechs had to have pilots in them, for drones just weren’t effective enough.

Star Force had compensated by creating safeguards like the armored cocoon surrounding the cockpit that would allow a pilot to usually survive a crash, losing the craft but giving the person a chance to stay alive. Same was true of the mechs, though they always carried far more armor than aerial craft did. While drone tech had now improved to the point where Mark could sit inside a city and fly a drone skeet from within it he didn’t like relying on that option. Line of sight communication issues were always in play, limiting range, as well as the possibility of signal disruptions from countermeasures or compromised emitters.

There was a need to have a pilot in the cockpit in the middle of battle in a variety of situations and Mark believed that would always be the case, though there were some where remotely flown craft were definitely the way to go. In the cases where there needed to be a pilot the emphasis was always on reducing the risks, and this latest improvement was going to take a squadron of ten pilots and reduce them down to one, making it a bit of a shell game as to which skeet to shoot at from the enemy’s perspective.

Not only that, it would mean Star Force could deploy more aerial craft than they had pilots, much like Cora was doing with the mechs. The difference was, Mark was the only person in the skeet, whereas a mech star of drones was controlled by the backseat rider in a two-person morpheus. It was a piggyback system, but the project he was working on was based on the idea of taking a single skeet as the craft of choice for an advanced pilot and changing it into a squadron piloted in the same manner, by the same person, without any reduction in efficiency or reaction time.

That did leave a caveat, and that was that the squadron had to stay together. A few kilometers apart didn’t matter, but send one skeet off across hundreds of miles and you’d start to get microlag, which was a problem with the remote control method from cities or warships in orbit. The adjustments that Mark and other veteran pilots made were so precise that even the tiniest bit of delay could be felt when mind-linked with the operating systems, and as a result would decrease their agility, even if it was just by a hair.

Mark didn’t believe in fighting handcuffed, but with the localized transmitters in the prototypes they would not only have no detectable lag but also be able to ignore most types of jamming. That technology had existed for a while, with the neural controls being what had hung the trailblazer up when he’d pursued this project before. Now that that was no longer an issue, it was ‘game on’ into the next phase of aerial combat.

So as Mark flew his squadron out away from the hangar and over to the ranges he saw them and the landscape from a hive mind position. He could see and ‘feel’ everything from each of the craft, but he could also step back a bit and taken an omnipresent position…one that was critical when planning out strategy and analyzing the enemy’s movements rather than just living in the moment and trying to juke and evade the nearest enemy craft.

That was why it was important that the neural interface not overstress the pilots. Most couldn’t handle 10 craft, and it was Mark’s job to refine the neural interface enough that they could. Most Archons did not have Sav and wouldn’t in the coming years, so he had to get this project so smoothed out that they wouldn’t need it. His goal was a squadron of ten, but if he could even get his midline pilots flying 3 craft at a time it would be a success…though one with reduced firepower, for the ‘cradle’ skeet would always be underpowered due to the extra layers of protection, and in a trio that amounted to 33% of the craft being diminished, whereas in a full squadron that number was down to 10%.

But it wasn’t just about limiting the number of pilots in the air and allowing a drone or two to go down in flames to achieve an objective. It was the interplay between the skeets that most intrigued Mark. Teamwork was essential in any dogfight, and he had gotten very good at syncing his movements and attacks with others, but this new system went way beyond that, in that he didn’t have to coordinate at all. He was in control of all 10 craft, so he could use them in an unlimited number of new ways that had never been conceived of before.

The tactics had, of course, but the implementation had not, for you didn’t have time to discuss what you wanted to do over the next half second with your wingmen. Now Mark didn’t even have a tenth of a second delay, for he was all 10 craft and didn’t have to discuss anything with himself. Aerial combat was usually chaos with a bit of organization thrown in, but if Mark could get this project out of the prototype phase and into the field, Star Force’s half of that uncertainty would virtually evaporate and they’d be able to own the enemy in a way never seen before.

And the best way for a trailblazer, or any Archon, to modify tech or strategy was to throw themselves into simulated combat and make adjustments when failures happened, which is what Mark was going to continue to do today.

He’d already been at this several weeks, so when he lowered his squadron down to ground level and zipped them across the grassy plains he knew to keep them below 62 meters in altitude to avoid the targeting zone of the turrets ahead, as well as when to bring them up off the deck and into a crisscross pattern that left the automated guns chasing targets of his choosing as his ten skeets hopped up over terrain and back down behind it, leapfrogging across a scattered series of hills as they approached the turrets that he knew were designed to chase a single target until it was taken down, for he’d developed that program to counter the rotational strategies that Star Force preferred to keep shielded units in play.

He had to make this course hard, so he’d added in challenges that he wasn’t sure how to beat, expecting to lose…as he had done on every run. So far he hadn’t even made it a third of the way through the course before the low-powered targeting beams registered enough hits on his shields to knock a skeet out of the air, which in this case was it disconnecting from Mark’s mind and flying off out of the challenge zone and to a waiting area.

The Achilles heel to this project was in his cradle ship, for if it went down the rest of the squadron would revert to normal drones operating on preprogrammed protocols or picked up by a remote controller. If he was working with other squadrons then his drones could be retasked to one of those pilots, but that still left the handful of manned skeets as the primary targets for the enemy, which was why he needed to fight with his in a way identical to the others.

To that end he had the same mauler cannons as the drones did, while they had a slew of additional weaponry. If he had them use it and his craft didn’t it would be a giveaway, but the maulers were the primary choice for most aerial combat and if he only used them there would be no obvious tell, for the short range transmissions were being emitted from every craft so no signal monitoring could pick up which craft he was actually in.

That was why he had his skeet going through the attack pattern on the turrets along with the others rather than lagging back and playing a more conservative role. He needed anonymity to protect him more than armor and a secondary shield, and he had to get used to fighting that way in these simulations now so it’d become second nature when he actually got out into the field against the lizards at a later date.

As for the basic design of the skeets, those had remained the same through all these centuries. T-shaped with spherical pods on each prong that held anti-grav units. The skeet could limp around on one if necessary, but all three were required for full maneuvering capability. The hull was thin save for a bump around the cockpit, with most of the weaponry lying in the crossbar up front with the sensors, shield emitters, and other support systems situated behind the cockpit in the tail.

Other auxiliary craft had been built for Mainline, such as the gunships and interceptors, but the skeets had remained the backbone of Star Force’s aerial division and would remain so, even with other factions deciding to use different craft. The Calavari Valeries were solid, and the other models were decent, for Mark had helped in their construction, but none suited his style of combat more than the skeet. Its narrow profile made it hard to target, and the T-shape meant there wasn’t much of a silhouette to shoot at from above or below. Overall it was simply the best design he had ever come across and Mainline and the Clans would continue using it until they found, or created, something better.

If the other factions wanted a unique craft, so be it. They weren’t going to let them build any junk, but Mark knew that combat could be achieved in a variety of approaches and if they wanted to pursue different ones then there was an advantage in that…coupled with disadvantages. Mark wanted his skeet because it was all around solid, rather than weighted in a single attack profile. Those singular attack profiles could be very effective when you got to choose your battles, but when defending and not having very many options he preferred to be piloting a craft that was nimble and could be utilized in multiple ways…which was basically the definition of a skeet.

Some of his fellow pilots that were working with him on this project had suggested outfitting the squadron with different ships, or even just altered models of skeets to give him some singular attack or defensive options but he wouldn’t have it. This project was complicated enough as it was, and making it even more convoluted by mixing up ship designs would put more stress on the pilot and reduce the amount of processing power he had. Mark could pull it off, but those without Sav wouldn’t be able to…at least not as well as he’d hoped. Keeping all the craft systematically identical was a way to reduce the mental load and free up some thought for other purposes.

That and he needed all the ships to look alike to hide the cradle.

Mark spun and crisscrossed his 10 skeets around the pair of turrets on the first rise, stitching them with mauler fire from all the ships and circling them around behind terrain to get the targeting programs to dismiss them and chase another skeet. There was no easy way to take down these turrets, so he just had to make it a slugging match without incurring hull damage. If he could do that he could buzz around and recharge shields before heading into the turret field ahead.

Those would require diving down into canyons to avoid, for if he pulled up out of them the crossfire would be so intense it was unlikely that he’d get all 10 ships through…and if he was really sloppy he’d lose all of them right then and there. He’d tried it on day 3 just to see how bad it’d get and hadn’t been disappointed, learning from the danger now that he knew what it was rather than having to guess, and pushed the canyon approaches with his skeets heading down multiple ones and out of sight of each other.

The transmitters were powerful enough to punch through a limited amount of rock and dirt, so he didn’t lose his linkage to the drones, but he had to keep them within a tight radius that he was also pressing out to find the fail point. This entire challenge run was more about finding ways to fail than finding a way through, for a lucky run wouldn’t do him much good.

He had to lose, over and over again, in order to build a playbook for this new type of aerial warfare, and while he certainly didn’t like losing, he had no problem thinking outside of the box and trying new approaches, no matter how odd or seemingly stupid. For when he was piloting a squadron solo he didn’t have to explain himself to anyone and could experiment on a whim if necessary.

And that freedom was always necessary when searching out new ways to do something. Success on this course was learning, not finishing it. That would be bonus, and right now Mark seriously didn’t think there was a way through, for he’d made it overly hard and, honestly, not entirely fair, but in the back of his mind he just saw that as an even sweeter challenge.

Tell a trailblazer something couldn’t be done and half the time they’d find a way to do it anyway. He recognized that tendency within himself and the others and wasn’t above self-goading. He’d spent a long time planning out this course before putting all thought of designing it aside and switching his mindset over to beating it. Now it was just a fixed thing, immutable, with no one actively changing it up to thwart him. He’d created a monster, but it was a static monster that he was going to figure out how to beat if he could.

Meanwhile there were many betting pools in the pilot corps as to if and when he’d actually get around to pulling it off, with a little over 60% wagering on completion despite their knowing how insanely difficult the course was. They had that much faith in their top pilot to figure out this puzzle that they were willing to put credits on it, while others were hoping to clean up by betting against him, knowing that it would be a win/win scenario.

Either they’d get a boat load of credits or some valuable new tactics and equipment tweaks. Either way this was on Mark’s shoulders for now. What he was able to achieve, limited or whole in this endeavor, would set the stage for their contributions on this project to follow.

7

August 2, 2890

Solar System

Europa

Daniel-002 received the package from Lens on one of the surface landing pads that connected to the moon’s underwater cities through the thick ice sheath protecting them from space. It was a cargo crate the size of a house and had been dropped off via a cargo ship passing through the system with other ports of call to attend to. The slight detour had been negligible, but saved his fellow trailblazer the trouble of sending an entire jumpship to get him the package when sending it through the ‘mail’ was far easier.

Time wasn’t an issue here but Daniel was glad he finally got it, for when he brought the crate down into the Clan Westley colony situated on the ocean floor he opened it to find a series of Dvapp aquatics gel packages. Daniel’s Clan was only ranked 28th in aquatics, but he’d been working with Lens for the past few decades in order to develop some new technologies in an effort to undercut Erin’s Elarioni advantage. Eventually the tech would get distributed out to Mainline and the other Clans, but for now it was a private affair that had Daniel more than eager to incorporate the advancements into his own Clan craft.

The gel had been a work in progress for a long time, but what Lens had sent him was the prototype for a new matrix that should allow Daniel to create the morphing properties he required for his Project Tentacle. Unlike Lens, who was building ‘standard’ aquatics craft, Daniel was going in a more Elarioni fashion and working on limbs rather than beams and torpedoes. He saw the potential in the gel that, while weaker than a solid plate of armor, had so many combat uses it was insane. First and foremost of those was the ability to reach out and touch someone by extending a tendril of gel out considerable distances.

The enemy wouldn’t know how far the ‘safe’ zone was and that would cause a lot of chaos in battle. Project Tentacle intended to create aquatic drones that could be controlled from a battleship or other protected location. The difference between these drones and others was the fact that these could morph into different craft as needed for the mission. They could be long and needle shaped for chasing operations or ball up into protective spheres for chokepoint defense.

The problem Daniel had had with the earlier forms of the aquatics gel was that it wasn’t responsive enough to create active drones, in that they could change shape while fighting. Those prototypes they currently had could morph then fight, rather than fighting through morphing. Lens had said this new gel slurry would be up to the task and had already sent Daniel the specs through the relay grid, but rather than building factories to produce the insanely complicated material…of which there were only two in existence…he’d sent along a lot of packets of it, each of which could be ‘grown’ by adding a specific set of raw materials.

That had been designed into them so they could repair themselves in the field without the need for a shipyard. They absorbed materials like a plant did, from both solids and the water, meaning that Daniel could take several of the packets and ‘plant’ them in larger containers in order to grow more material. None of it was biological, but a very complex crystalline technology that operated similar to how the Dvapp themselves were built. It wasn’t their body material, for that, while odd, was still biological despite its crystalline tendencies. At a casual glance the gel might look the same, but it wasn’t alive and never had been. Just a very useful piece of technology.

When Daniel opened the crate he pulled out a single packet and carried it off on a cargo sled to his research lab while the rest was spirited off to others for immediate use in experiments or for growing purposes. The packet that Daniel took, which was the size of a couch, he brought to a specific lab that he was spending a lot of time in. He personally levitated the packet up and tore a hole in the flexible casing, allowing the mushy material to spill out into a collection basin that looked like an elevated sandbox by the time he was done with it.

The trailblazer dipped a finger into the white ‘sand’ and tested the cloyingness. It flowed like a thick liquid, but didn’t snap back into level shape like water did. That confirmed his suspicions and he immediately inserted a probe into the eight inch thick pool, causing it to solidify into armor rigidity.

He poked another finger into it…or tried. It was now hard to the touch and would stand up to considerable pounding, but as far as armor was concerned it was subpar. His drones would compensate for that fact by having a lot of it on them, allowing them to bleed away material at a faster rate while still preserving the interior components. Those amounted to three floating orbs of traditional technology that would interface with and control the gel, and for experimental purposes here was accomplished by the probe.

Daniel ran the gel through a simple set of commands, confirming the upgrades Lens had made, then he dove into the task of reprogramming it to his personal needs. Part of that work had already been done previously, so all he had to do was download segments of the software, but the rest had to be configured on site in response to additional test runs that he was now going to begin to execute.

First using one of the preprogrammed ones, Daniel had the gel change color, shifting from base white to blue, then pink, green, and finally black before cycling back to white. Next he caused the gel to segment into four pieces. As soon as they broke apart three of the pieces became dead weight, retaining their shape and not doing anything while the fourth segment that had the probe attached continued to morph into a cube while the others were just solidified puddles.

Daniel telekinetically pushed one over to touch the cube and it changed shape again until contact was broken, returning to statue mode. One facet of the gel was that it could only be controlled by ‘land lines,’ meaning that physical contact had to be made. Remote control was impossible without alternate technology being inserted into it, such as the probe now was. That was something that was going to remain set, for Daniel and Lens didn’t have a clue how to program a comm system into it. Maybe someday thousands of years into the future they could, but the V’kit’no’sat database was no help with this, for they didn’t have record of any similar technologies.

But for his goals there was no need to have a receiver built in. It just meant that if a piece of one of the drones got lopped off it’d go neutral and unresponsive, holding its shape until it was recovered or destroyed. The gel did have to be powered, and this batch had come fully charged, but when it lost power it was designed to lock into place as a solid rather than disperse as a gel or liquid.

There were multiple versions of the gel that Lens had developed, but the stiffer versions he was not interested in. Those were being used to form the hulls of his friend’s bendable warships, but Daniel’s drones had to go far beyond that, hence the even lower armor value. The more they morphed the less rigid their matrixes were, and the more rigid the matrixes were the higher their maximum armor value.

It was a cost of defense to include the flexibility that Daniel required, but that too was calculated. Lens wasn’t pursuing this path, nor were the Dvapp or any of the other four Clans involved in the research. The Aquamen were the leaders and handling most of the research, but what Daniel intended to make of it was something entirely new and going even beyond the bounds of what the Elarioni had built.

3 years later…

Daniel returned to Europa after a 3 month stint in the advanced training group getting beat up by Paul and Rio. It had been educational, but he was eager to get back to work on Project Tentacle, which his techs had continued in his absence with some late breakthroughs that had allowed them to fashion a working prototype at minimum volume, which was about equivalent to a big trash can.

“How do we look?” Daniel asked when he came into the lab and saw several familiar faces working at various stations.

“003 is waiting in the water, with 004 and 005 standing in their firing tubes on the destroyer.”

“Alright, set for recording mode and let’s get to this,” he said, stepping over to the control station and accessing the neural interface. It was only a minimal drain on his cognitive processes, for the miniaturized version of a command nexus didn’t have more than a few functions that the proper ones did, and at the moment he was only controlling a single drone.

It was sitting in the cold water outside the colony and not far from the destroyer on station there. Daniel set the spherical globe of gel into motion, traveling through the water at a troll then shifting into a more aerodynamic point as the trailblazer put it through several alterations as a general test of base functions they had established prior to his training vacation. When everything checked out he began running it through more advanced shapes, including the stretchable pylons that ended with fingers or hooks that could grasp objects at range.

He played with the outer limits, finding what they were by triggering a line too long and too thin for the minimal currents, snapping it a third of the way out and losing control of most of the line. Daniel withdrew the rest of it that he controlled and motored the mass over to the floating section, making physical contact again and calling it back into a thicker band that he then whipped around slowly, testing its strength against the water. He didn’t have to see the data collected as it came in, knowing that the rest of his staff was monitoring that and would alert him if there was a problem, so Daniel just played with it, testing its limits and trying to seek out problems if they were there.

After working through the lines he pulled the mass back together then spread it out into a canvas, immediately catching itself on the currents and moving about slowly in their direction. He let the material go almost totally limp and saw it scrunch up in several locations due to eddies as he caused it to get thinner and thinner in order to cover the most surface area. He had it out to nearly the size of a football field before holes began to tear in it.

He upped the solidity to keep them from spreading, but the moving water masses began cracking entire sections off. Daniel quickly pulled back what he had control of then sent out lines to hit the now drifting pieces, regaining control and bringing them back into the single mass. Next he signaled the destroyer to launch a target buoy, with it coming out of the fixed hull of the angular craft and speeding out to his location before slowing and moving on a circular path that had it tracing a lazy circle around his location.

Daniel paused, knowing this was the moment of truth, then had his ball of gel shoot off through the water in needle form towards the target, hunting it down and coming at it from the side in order to up the difficulty. Approaching from the front or behind would have been easier, but Daniel didn’t want easy.

When the drone got close to the probe the needle balled up again then sprouted three tentacles from a central mass as it continued to head straight towards the target. It eventually made contact, denting under the collision speed with a silent splat, then Daniel manually controlled all three tentacles and wrapped them around the probe, flattening them out in some places into paddles that held it tight like cushions around an egg. The probe couldn’t escape the grip from any angle and Daniel locked it in by causing the pieces to solidify in their current form.

Next he tested the gravity drive buried inside the gel, pulling against the probe’s own unit in a tug of war that saw the drone being overpowered as the destroyer upped the thrust to continue its ordered path. Daniels job was to stop it, and he was failing. The little glob of gel couldn’t compete with the much larger gravity drive in the probe, meaning in this case that traditional tech was better.

Daniel sent a signal for the destroyer to launch 004 and soon he had control of the second globe and was simultaneously driving it over to the test area while he continued to wrestle with the probe, through thrust multiple directions as well as reconfiguring his hold on the probe to produce fins and even small sails to catch and redirect the water flow to give him more tugging options.

It wasn’t enough, but when the second drone got to the probe it latched on as well, morphing into the first one and becoming an integrated unit. The individual pieces inside, three each, remained separate and communicating with each other via short range signals, but the gel itself didn’t care which unit it belonged to and would go wherever it was signaled. It behaved as a single unit that now had two gravity drives inside it, allowing for more pulling power as Daniel wobbled the probe off course multiple times before it eventually dragged its way back into a circular path that was now no longer mathematically precise, but rather a wibbly wobbly and ugly route, but the drones still couldn’t gain full control.

That was solved when Daniel had the third one launched and combined it with the other two, giving him enough tugging power to force the probe off course and over to a designated location while the destroyer crew fought to prevent it. The wrestling match eventually went Daniel’s way, but the delay was considerable. He mentally noted that if actual capture missions were going to be launched, more units would be necessary for an expedient recovery process.

Once that part of the experiment was completed he had the now single drone release the probe and break apart again. He had to manually determine the break points or use a percentage program, settling on the latter as he let it split the gel up evenly between them before sending two off nearby into station keeping while he worked with the third, spreading it out into a thin block wall that the destroyer then maneuvered the probe into, testing the gel’s blocking capability.

The first impact shattered the gel, with Daniel having to go around and pick up all the pieces before they could float off and be lost, for there was no homing capability built into them. On the next attempt he reduced the rigidity and saw the wall dent before being thrown off the side of the probe by the continued movement. The drone just didn’t have the mass to stop it, but he was hoping that the amount of water it would have to displace behind the wall would compensate.

He brought in a second drone and combined them for the next attempt, spreading them out into a wider and slightly thicker sail before upping the rigidity a bit. When the probe hit it caught, denting it slightly, and suddenly having a huge amount of drag put on it as the sail didn’t slip off of one side like before thanks to a few hasty tendrils that Daniel manually formed and stuck to the side like support lines.

One thing he was realizing with clarity was the amount of mental control necessary to use manual functions. With his Sav and experience he wasn’t having trouble, but he knew rookies and even veterans without Sav would, meaning that the more automated functions that could be toggled by button press, whether actual or virtual, were a must while the manual functions would allow the higher end users so much flexibility in their tactics that he felt like the Green Lantern, for he could shape the gel into any form his mind imagined…so long as his mind could account for and control every particle within the gel. That was the catch, but for the time being three drones was not enough to push his limits.

When they got around to mass producing these things he was going to see how many he could actually control, but for today this successful test was a huge step forward and a major deviation from established Star Force protocol involving aquatics. It was that deviation that he hoped would give his Clan an advantage over the others, and eventually give Star Force a whole slew of new tactics to use in warfare beneath the waves.

8

August 5, 2893

Merovingian System (Core Region)

Low stellar orbit

Administrator Claven walked the decks of the Prometheus as he did every day, bypassing techs at work and visually inspecting that everything was in order. The massive Star Forge-class mining station was his to oversee and arguably the most important piece of property that Star Force had. A few other stations had been built after the Prometheus with more scheduled for construction, but those were mostly empty shells still waiting to be filled with equipment. Only his station was fully operational, and it had taken a long time to get it that way.

Gone were the research techs and Archons that had created it, tuned it, and filled its massive void with new factories that could operate at high capacity in low volume. Even now those were no longer considered new tech, so the operation of the station had been transitioned over to a conventional staff, with Claven being appointed Administrator of the station. A title that was usually reserved for a full colony.

But here in this empty system all that there was of Star Force was the Prometheus and the Canderian sedas. He had no control over the latter, for they were simply neighbors in this system near to Sol. They were in the safest region Star Force controlled, perhaps even safer than Earth given that Merovingian had nothing of value in it for anyone to come looking for. That said, Claven had a full complement of troops onboard, including a pair of Archon rangers, just in case the massive space station was boarded.

They also had some 72 naval drones situated in a higher holding orbit guarding the sister station to the Prometheus…which was little more than a disconnected piece of the monster, for it was a warehouse/starport located at an altitude that wouldn’t see it cooked from the stellar radiation. It was there that incoming cargo ships picked up and delivered supplies, then a fleet of specially shielded dropships would ferry traffic to and from the Prometheus as it sat so low it was nearly within the atmosphere of the star itself.

That ‘atmosphere’ was not a clear distinction, for there was so much turbulence that waves of material often washed over the star forge’s shields, ironically giving the station additional power with every hit. The stellar output was being absorbed as much as it was being reflected, providing the station with the bulk of its power output augmented by internal reactors. In fact, that absorption capability was the only way the Prometheus could function at full capacity, for the collection probes were so large that they literally gobbled it up. That was understandable, given that they had to resist the destructive power of the star when actually touching it, and the fact that they were comprised totally of shield energy themselves.

Right now Claven had 19 collection ‘straws’ inside the star reaching down more than 200 miles on a standard day and up to 480 on special occasions. That was barely scratching the surface, but it was more than enough to get a good pull on the denser stellar material. Each of those straws fanned out at the bottom into huge collection nets, which were comprised of clusters of tiny spheres that allowed only certain materials or types of materials to pass through, then what was collected was shunted up the connecting stalks and into the Prometheus for processing.

From there automation and the Administrator’s army of techs sorted out unwanted material and sent it back down into the star to save space on the star forge while anything valuable was shunted into holding tanks and cooled to desired levels. From there it was either held or sent into processing sectors where it would be converted into whatever products Claven ordered them to make. Most of the corovon they harvested was kept raw, but right now some 13% of it was being bonded into molecules on site to produce a variety of substances that were then shunted to another section of the station and combined with others into armor plating, structural beams, shield emitters, hand weapons, Archon armor, and hundreds of other things that were more economical to build right here and now than to ship off the raw materials to another star system for manufacturing.

The factories onboard the star forge were so condensed and automated that the station was extra heavy, even for something of its massive size. Any movement required a good tugging on the gravity drives, not to mention the constant strain of having to hover above the star, for they couldn’t suffer the lateral movement of orbit when they had shield tethers into the star’s surface. Those tethers literally latched them in place, forcing them to expend huge amounts of energy just to stay put and not fall into the star themselves.

The low altitude they held also acted as a defense against attack or curious onlookers, for the plasma gases swirling around them made quite the problem for primitive sensors. Most races had trouble even locating the star forge at this altitude, but Star Force’s advancements into Pro’phad energy gave the Administrator clear lines of sight around his station and well down into the star. He could scan deeper than he could reach at the moment, which allowed him to move the station around as needed to find the densest deposits to mine.

The starport above them didn’t orbit either, maintaining a more distant hover/rotation to match the location of the Prometheus as the star spun about on its axis. It too had absorption shields, but they didn’t pick up as much energy given that they were farther away. It was more than enough to keep them in their laggy orbit, but whenever a jumpship arrived to exchange cargo they had to keep their engines on or fall away from the station, making navigation a bit of a hassle, but one that Claven’s dropship pilots handled on a day to day basis with no trouble.

And the Administrator kept them busy shipping out finished products up to the warehouses and bringing back down whatever compounds couldn’t be harvested from the star…which were minimal considering they only focused on products that could be entirely or almost entirely made from the mining resources. Bits and pieces of others were brought in to add to them but a lot of the supplies were meant for the station itself, for there were no bioharvest facilities or any other type of personal sustenance infrastructure on the station. They relied entirely on imports, though in a pinch the Canderians could cover for them in the way of supplies.

Normally a station of this size would have redundancies, but because it was located so close to the star and designed for a very select purpose the designers had scrapped the standard protocols and built this beast as a harvest engine with little else slowing her down. It was Claven’s responsibility to make sure she kept churning out raw materials and products round the clock, and he felt it was best to get his own eyes on his station as much as possible rather than relying exclusively on reports shunted to his office.

He oversaw the station operations from there, along with the rest of the 342,953 people on the station. None of them were here as visitors, nor were any allowed. Each and every one was a specialist in their field, for nothing less would allow them a transfer to what was considered an extremely critical position. While some materials, such as warship armor, were produced here because of the corovon being handy, the primary importance of this station was its ability to collect materials that were virtually nonexistent outside of stars. While corovon was always important, it was the solari that the star forges were designed to go after…and it was the solari that were allowing Star Force to take a huge leap into the next technological level and put them ahead of both the lizards and ADZ denizens alike.

Star Force had no equal now, though rumors about the Preema and Nexus were still abound. Claven knew they had advanced technology, but he also knew about the tech that wasn’t available to the public that Star Force was designing and currently using, a lot of which was incorporated into this station. He was also getting regular requests from highly placed techs and even Paul-024 himself with regards to new solari to hunt and in what numbers they needed, along with occasional explanations as to why.

All that was holding Star Force back in some lines of research was available solari, whether it be for actual experiments or sufficient bulk for prototype development. And even when they figured out how to build something they would need to mass produce it using the solari from this mining station and the other newer additions, none of which could hold a candle to the Prometheus’s current production quotas…which were more or less a joke, for with the swirling currents within the star you never knew for sure how much material you could collect or not. It was a fishing expedition, with Claven having the ultimate decisions about where to dip their rods.

That in itself was a huge responsibility, for it had a direct impact on Star Force’s upper end tech production. He’d gotten good at it over the years, but every day was a new challenge and he expected to have to move the station in a few more hours after sucking up as much from the current deposit of denomsi as they could get. The tiny globule had disconnected from a chunk deep within the star that, honestly, shouldn’t even be there. How this star had acquired a compound that was only typical of high mass stars was still a mystery, and getting down to harvest it directly was one of his standing goals, though they were far from that day. Whenever a bit of it would break off and float up to the surface regions where it was possible to collect it he immediately retasked the entire station, for it was just that damn valuable.

The Yamcha star forge, the third in the line to be produced, was currently working through the headaches of mining one of those insanely large stars, and it was from there that Star Force was getting the bulk of its limited denomsi supply. Whenever Claven could contribute to it he felt obligated, for it was the solari responsible for the newest and most powerful weapon that Star Force possessed…the Dre’mo’don. Without denomsi it couldn’t be built, and the same could be said of other solaris and technologies under development that this star had in far greater amounts.

The Administrator had to get to them, collect and process, then either fabricate or ship out to be used elsewhere on as regular an output schedule as he could manage. His crew was damn good at what they did, but this operation was always in flux due to the unknown hauls they would be bringing in.

As he hopped into a lift car to take him down a segment of the 94 mile long station, he selected a region where a transition was being made. One of the factory segments was shifting from haviti saturation to chori condensation thanks to the band of the latter that they’d had the luck of hitting, or rather being hit by, as it cycled through the subsurface currents. The condensation process was meant for packaging, diminishing the volume required by stacking the element in its raw form into tightly linked molecular handshakes…that were difficult to uncouple later, but that wasn’t his problem.

There were only so many jumpships available to haul cargo and he had to get his output compressed as tightly as he could in order to load them up and keep from having to scale back production to match the traffic flow. Though in truth he could get as many jumpships as he requested, giving the importance of this operation, but after centuries of working within Star Force he hated being inefficient and didn’t want to waste a jumpship that could be put to use someplace else just because he couldn’t pack smartly enough.

When he got off the lift he walked a considerable distance through mostly empty corridors until he got to the section that had been transitioned, according to the report, but it was good to see with his own eyes that all was operating smoothly as he walked into the command booth with four other men working or monitoring their stations.

“How we doing fellas?”

“Purring like a kitten,” the eldest of them said, bringing up the large hologram so the Administrator could see for himself. Most of the sector’s internal machinery had multiple uses and only a few specialized components, allowing it to be transitioned from task to task in order to save space and the diagram showed that everything was now into chori condensation mode, with bricks of the element being sealed inside protective casings so they wouldn’t react with the environment and go boom…or probably more like melt through a deck or two via various chemical reactions that would simultaneously create a noxious cloud that would kill anyone nearby. Such things didn’t happen under Star Force’s careful attention, but anytime you had raw solari in such density there were bound to be violent reactions if exposed to a ‘natural’ environment.

One of the other techs frowned at their chief. “What’s a kitten?”

“A baby cat,” the older man explained, throwing a glance at his age peer in Claven.

“Cat…like Scionate cat?” the tech asked, still confused.

“No,” the Administrator explained before the chief could. “It’s a race that now lives exclusively in the sanctuaries. Back in the day they were kept as pets and would make a soft rumbling sound when they were asleep or happy.”

“What’s a pet?” another of the younger techs asked.

Claven sighed, looking at the chief. “I’ll leave that one to you. We’re good here? Aside from their lack of dark age cultural knowledge.”

“We’re good, though I think in a couple, maybe three days we’ll have to pull a maintenance shutdown given the amounts coming in. Gotta manually scrub those headers.”

Claven nodded. “Make the call when necessary. Still no word on the upgrade yet.”

“That’s alright, boss. I don’t mind the manual labor. Gives us something to do other than watch holograms and push buttons.”

“I prefer it that way,” Claven differed. “If you get busy that means things are breaking and I’m having a really bad day. So stay bored, please.”

“As ordered.”

“Carry on,” the Administrator said, walking out of the booth and back into the hallway to continue his rounds. He couldn’t hit everywhere on the station, for it was just too freaking huge, but he chose a few vital areas and then stopped by locations he hadn’t in the previous days. There was something wrong about being in command of a facility that you never set foot in, not because he didn’t trust his crew to do their jobs, he just didn’t like to be out of the loop.

An hour later his wrist beeped and he held up his arm lateral in front of him to activate the holographic torso of one of his assistants.

“What is it?”

“Supply convoy is here early. Do you want me to get the ball rolling or wait for you?”

“Anything unusual in the manifests?”

“Just getting them now.”

“Are they all loaded?”

“Seven ships in total, two are empty.”

“Start filling them with the armor pallets. I’ll handle the rest when I get back.”

“Offloads?”

“Put them in the bays the pallets leave.”

“What about bay 7?”

Claven shook his head. “No, we’ll have to slow production here when the backup hits. Keep bay 7 open for the chori.”

“Understood. I’ll tell them to hold off until they can shovel out their own floor space.”

“I’ll be back inside half an hour,” Claven promised, deactivating his communicator and casually walking on, cutting his inspection tour short but hitting two more locations before heading back up to the command center and his staff of 6. If he didn’t make these tours those 6 would be the only faces he saw on a regular basis, for given the size of the station and the automation, his crew of over a quarter million were so spread out that they didn’t bump into each other much during work, and Claven spent most of his time working or training, with almost no interactions in the residential zones.

He was in them to eat, sleep, and train…all of which he did quickly and usually alone, then he was back in his office or roaming the station. This posting was too important for him to allow himself time off, so he never did. If a time came when he needed a break he’d resign and let someone else fill the slot. Until then he was on call round the clock in order to make sure this behemoth kept functioning and feeding Star Force the valuable materials that only it and its twins could produce, and until they caught up with the Prometheus’s production levels the weight of responsibility was even more on their shoulders.

Or rather his, for he deferred everything to himself while allowing the crew the downtime he didn’t take. They all had shifts and replacements to take over while they decompressed and pursued personal agendas, but there was only one Administrator, and even when he slept he kept his communicator on just in case something went wrong. From the day he stepped on this station to the day he left it he considered himself never to be off duty, for he knew that trouble could come at any time and any place, and it didn’t have off hours.

9

May 9, 2894

Solar System

Earth

Paul stood in the center of a small circle, arm raised and redirecting towards various thuds as they were thrown at him from a narrow arc. As each one came he summoned up a small burst of concussive energy in his bare arm and threw it forward from his palm, intercepting and knocking down the little balls before they could hit him. His aim was improving, but it was still difficult to emit a precise blast, for the Jumat was more like a tsunami than a rifle shot. Still, he could throw enough over a certain vector to block a single thud coming at him, with this drill focusing on his aim and repetition.

He no longer had trouble summoning up the goosebumps that the energy manifested from. That was now a skill that he could trigger at will, with many other aspects of the psionic being added in these first few years thanks mainly to Morgan’s notes, for she had meticulously kept them and formed a training database on the ability from her first year to the present. In it she listed mental tricks that had helped Paul learn the summoning skill faster than she had, as well as numerous training simulations that she’d developed over the years and that now Paul had the benefit of using straight off.

His progress with the Jumat was far faster than hers had been, and now he felt that he truly understood why Ginsi was climbing the ranks as fast as she was. He’d always been the trailblazer figuring things out or with his peers, but now he got the opportunity to see what it looked like to be following someone else through and gaining from their experience.

It was literally night and day, for he didn’t have to figure out ways to train…Morgan had already done that for him. All he had to do was throw himself into the drills and challenges and work on improving. He was literally a kid in a candy store, and that combined with the fact that he’d started out with more raw power than Morgan had put him way ahead of her progression rate and he intended to keep it that way, for he was so far behind her that he doubted he’d ever catch up. She had centuries of working to develop her Jumat as an advantage over him, and though they hadn’t met up to spar yet, for she was busy waging her private war against the lizards in Ninja Monkey territory, Paul knew it would be a laughably one-sided affair.

Hitting and pushing back the thuds took a decent amount of his energy, but if he’d wanted to he could knock a person off their feet with ease…he just couldn’t do it with repetition. His tissues were so new that they didn’t hold charge well, though with his ambrosia levels being so high he had yet another advantage over the Morgan of the past, for the Jumat consumed ambrosia as a quick resupply fuel source. Problem was Paul’s tissue wasn’t good at absorbing it, at least not as good as Morgan, so whenever he tried something big he usually got one or two shots at it before he had to take a sip from his ambrosia bottle and wait for it to process.

He literally had enough ambrosia in that one bottle to service 1000 adepts for months. Paul didn’t want to have to constantly run off for supplies, so he’d had a concentrated liter of it made up for him so he could ingest it at will without having to fill himself up on foodstuffs or water. Overdosing was a big danger, for he couldn’t measure accurately sipping through a straw, but he was managing it well enough. Plus all he had to do to overcome a mistake was fire off some more Jumat blasts as soon as his tissues soaked up the abundant fuel source.

Per Morgan’s notes he knew the best way to increase his abilities wasn’t in going big, but in working on repetition and getting his cycling rate up. He hadn’t yet learned how to manifest the energy outside his clothing, but he had learned to channel it to various parts of his body, forgoing the need to train naked when all he had to do was keep one arm bare. Today he was wearing a sleeveless shirt so he could alternate arms, but neither one of them would fatigue, for his entire body was producing the energy and transmitting it to a given location. His arms, or whatever other body part he chose, became his firing array, not the generation point.

Right now he’d learned to use his arms and chest as emitters, for it took a while to calibrate the mental control necessary to use other body parts. The chest he’d only added within the previous year, doing a DBZ flex in order to pool the energy just below the surface and transfer it out in a finishing move-like attack. For that he had to be shirtless, but today he wasn’t working in it so he’d donned his sleeveless tank that was now soaked with sweat after four hours of work, first of which began on the track and now had transitioned into the thud firing chamber.

Using the Jumat was exhausting, which was why these smaller bursts were key in developing his endurance and teaching his tissues to soak up ambrosia faster. They could charge through other means, but all were slower. The key to using Jumat as a serious weapon was in having the ambrosia handy, otherwise it was just going to be a surprise or last ditch attack that he’d have to hoard. Once expended, the Jumat tissues would take hours, if not more than a day to fully recharge naturally while the ambrosia would hit his bloodstream and he’d feel the effects within a minute.

As useful as telekinesis was, there was no substitute for Jumat. It was literally the cannon to the Lachka sword. It was crude in comparison, but he had so much firepower available now, in burst at least, that he understood how vitally important an advantage he had over the Zen’zat that he had kept his non-training activities to a minimum and had been making the advanced training group his semi-permanent home as he worked to get a handle on this oh so impressive Tier 3 ability.

Paul secluded himself in training so much that others had started interrupting him via comm when they needed something, knowing that if they waited he might not come out of the sanctum for more than a day. So as Paul was batting one thud out of the air at a time a voice filled the chamber and he kept going without delay.

“I’m here,” Paul said, twitching his arm to the left and surging another pulse of invisible energy to cancel the thud’s momentum and lightly bounce it back towards the wall and the collection ring at the bottom. “What do you need?”

“Just got word from Vortison,” Rio’s voice said eagerly. “He says he’s found the trigger and wants you to verify it.”

Paul stopped what he was doing and looked towards the ceiling out of reflex. “Seriously?”

“Yes,” Rio said as the next thud came out and hit Paul in the chest, bouncing off him and ending the drill in failure, but he didn’t care.

“Now?”

“If you can spare the time.”

“Dumb question,” Paul said, telekinetically grabbing his ambrosia bottle and heading out the door. “On my way.”

Paul walked into the lab along with Rio, both clad in fresh clothes as the medtech in charge of genetic research waved them over with a pair of curled fingers as he was manipulating a hologram with his other hand.

“Talk to me,” Paul said, walking up on his shoulder.

“I’ve always wondered why this one was so elusive, and now I have my answer. I think it’s a resistance measurement with a temporal cap restriction of at least a few minutes so some freak attack or condition wouldn’t trigger it. Morgan’s gravity damage and her resistance to it was prolonged and, I think, enough to push her over the edge. Your level of training, without considerable breaks, pegged you out. Step into the scanner please.”

Paul listened as he walked over to the duplicate of the V’kit’no’sat medical station made from Star Force tech. It wasn’t nearly as advanced in the alterations department, but they’d been able to fully copy the scanning tech. As soon as Paul walked in a hologram of his body lit up on Vortison’s console and he began manipulating it to get the suspected trigger under scrutiny.

“Hmmn,” Vortison said, looking at the live data.

“What?” Rio asked, more than eager to get his own Jumat.

“His is turned off.”

“Meaning what?” Paul asked, for his Jumat ability was most definitely ‘on.’

“The trigger and ascension protocol are separate on this one. Or to be more precise, there’s not the usual overlap. Most of the triggers we’ve discovered are a completion measure, so that once you attain that, for lack of a better word, ‘fitness’ level you activate the trigger. This means it’s always turned on so long as you’re maintaining or improving…which allows you to share them. Right now Paul’s isn’t on, so it isn’t just a matter of finding which part of yourself to mimic.”

“I have to recreate the stress level,” Paul guessed.

Vortison nodded. “Yeah, I think so. What I don’t know is how long the trigger will be on. Could be a few seconds or a few hours. Think of it like a coffer with a small hole in it. You fill it with stress until it overflows the brim, but if you stop adding stress the level will diminish and eventually dry up completely.”

“So I’m going to have to catch him during hard workouts?” Rio figured.

Paul shook his head. “We’ve got to figure out how much stress is required, then program a biomonitor to measure in realtime.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Vortison confirmed. “I need you to hang out right where you are for the next hour or so, and hopefully I can create a program to measure how close to peaking out you are.”

“Limit break?” Rio asked, glancing at Paul.

“Done.”

“Done what?” Vortison asked as he worked.

“Naming stuff,” Paul explained as he crossed his arms over his chest as he stood more or less still. There was nothing for him to do but wait, though in this case he wasn’t going to complain. “Is it possible to overfill the coffer?”

“Also on my to-find list. I need your active stats to determine that as your stress levels recede. It’s a good thing you came straight from training.”

“I wasn’t hitting it that hard, to be honest. I was working on my Jumat’s finer control. Stressful in its own way, but not what I’d image this trigger is looking for.”

“It has to be full body,” Vortison confirmed, “to get the necessary levels. If you got your arm chopped off it wouldn’t be enough because it was region specific. You need to feel it all over and, I think, you need to be pressing back, so damage alone won’t trigger it.”

“Trying to walk under heavy gravity,” Rio said, drawing another conclusion.

“I’m not an Archon, but I think that would be the most efficient means of reaching it.”

“It doesn’t work,” Paul said, dashing his hopes and drawing a curious glance from the medtech. “I tried long ago. The level Morgan probably survived I’ve matched and exceeded in training. It’s not going to be enough unless we allow ourselves to be damaged at the same time, and we’re not stupid enough to risk that. She almost died, and I think we’d have to do the same in order to get at it that way.”

“So how did you get at it?”

“Cumulative effect would be my guess.”

“Specifically?”

“Workout load. Not one specific drill or action, but the effect of everything adding up into a giant weight that will crush you if you don’t rest or know how to manage it. I’ve learned and press it harder in training in order to up my resistance to that kind of stress. I think it’s fair to say I’ve gone further in that area than anyone else?” Paul asked, looking at Rio.

“Holistically, yeah, I’d say you have. Vermaire, however…”

“Damn, why hasn’t he popped the trigger,” Paul said, thinking hard.

“Mass,” Vortison said off hand.

“What?”

“It’s his mass…I mean I’m just guessing here, but the larger you are the more tissue you have to spread the load through.”

“Wait a sec…” Rio said, with Paul thinking the same thing.

“If it’s proportional to size, then the Zen’zat growth enhancements are actually hindering their ability to achieve Jumat?”

“I’ll know more after we peg this down, but I’d hesitantly say yes…assuming that the smaller individuals were competing on the same level. You’re both stronger than Vermaire, I assume.”

Rio cringed. “Not exactly.”

“No?”

“Hand to hand,” Paul admitted, “he pretty much owns us.”

“Is he stronger, in terms of muscles, per fiber?”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “Actually, I don’t know which one of us is stronger per fiber.”

“Boris is the smallest, though not by much.”

“Percentage strength,” Vortison explained. “If you lift a static amount of mass, the effort is spread out through your fibers. The Knights have far more than you, so is Vermaire creating as much force, and inversely as much strain, as you are?”

“I’ve never thought of it that way,” Paul admitted. “He’s done what seems impossible by virtually undoing his speed penalty for his larger size. He moves as fast as us, and coupled with his mass that gives him a huge advantage in raw power.”

“Vortison is right,” Rio agreed. “He’s a badass, but there’s a lot more of him to absorb punishment. If this trigger is taking the whole person into account, then we’re ahead of him.”

“Not by that much,” Paul argued.

“These triggers were designed for Zen’zat,” Vortison reminded them. “The others aren’t affected by size. This one, I can say, probably is…but if we can identify how much stress it takes it won’t matter.”

“It will if others want to share it,” Rio said, thinking ahead. “They’ll have to find their own limit breaks.”

“Damn, you’re right,” Paul agreed. “Only me and Morgan have reached them, and hers was a fluke that she was lucky to survive.”

“So Paul just shares it with everyone,” Vortison said as if it was obvious.

“For the trailblazers that’s not an issue,” Rio explained. “But going forward when there are thousands of titans he can’t be pinned down playing Yoda.”

“You’re reserving it for titans?”

“Actually,” Paul said, thinking ahead. “I think we’ll stick with Sav as the titan upgrade. We haven’t discussed it in detail because it’s the only Tier 3 trigger we had, but I think we should save Jumat for the next level.”

“Which will be?” Vortison asked.

“We haven’t named it yet,” Rio answered, but his eyes were on Paul. “There are 8 Tier 3. You really want to divvy them out one per level?”

“The padawans have their hands full getting all the Tier 2s, some of which we’re still waiting on the triggers for,” Paul said irreverently.

“I can’t give you triggers for abilities that you haven’t unlocked,” the geneticist pointed out.

“I’m referring to the others, but fair enough. They’re going to have a lot more to learn than we did, then they need to spend their mage years mastering them. Add Sav at titan and everything changes again. We take it for granted because we’re still learning its effects, but if we throw too much at the second gen they’ll skip and piecemeal their way forward. What we need them to do is grind it out and develop techniques that don’t directly affect their levels.”

“Like Ginsi,” Rio pointed out.

“Exactly. She’s narrow focused. We don’t want to encourage that, so spreading out the Tier 3s is probably a good idea.”

“500 levels to integrate Sav seems like an overkill.”

“And to continue developing the Tier 2s,” Paul added.

Rio considered that, assuming that they did eventually unlock them all. “Ok, I’m sold. So long as I get Jumat before then.”

“We’re always exempt,” Paul said unnecessarily.

“Why is that?” Vortison asked, his focus mostly on his displays.

“Because we have to figure out how everything works,” Rio explained, “so we can write the instruction manual.”

“And the writer’s block is real,” Paul added.

“That…is something I totally understand. After all these centuries I’m still trying to catch up with what the V’kit’no’sat geneticists know. The learning curve, even with the abundant data we have, is massive.”

“It ought to be for a civilization that persists millions of years,” Paul pointed out. “But don’t let that be an excuse to sandbag. Rio wants that trigger ASAP.”

“Yes he does,” the trailblazer agreed.

“Impatient twerps,” Vortison mumbled. “Lucky for you I’m one too. You’ll have what you need shortly, then it’ll be up to you,” he said, pointing at Paul, “to replicate the necessary stress levels.”

The titan smiled. “Challenge accepted.”

10

May 27, 2894

Solar System

Earth

Paul flipped backwards, landing on his hands and continuing to flip over to his feet again in sequence, doing a line of some 100+ back handsprings with such a fluid grace it was almost boring. When he reached the end of the line he paused for a moment, just long enough to turn around and head back the other way on Balboa Lane and finish his 18th lap. Halfway down it the tiny biomonitor on his head chirped a series of Artoo beeps but Paul didn’t stop and continued with his gymnastics tumbles.

He went ahead and did two more laps, then shook the dizziness from his head as he jogged through the sanctum and took to a climbing wall at speed, knowing that he needed to push his stress level higher than the trigger required. Last time he’d pegged out he’d stopped and called Rio, but the stress levels diminished enough in the next few minutes that by the time the trailblazer got to him it was too late. He’d tried to get it back again shortly, but for some reason he couldn’t and he thought it was probably a chain effect.

That meant a sequence of stress hits some hundred or even thousand long, which if broken would have to start all over again. Unfortunately this time he didn’t have the luxury of an ascension prompt that could linger on after the stress diminished, so he had to get himself up to proper levels and then go beyond it so that he’d have some extra to lose without taking him low enough to turn his now pointless trigger off.

Pointless as far as the V’kit’no’sat were concerned, for they had no idea that there would be a way to cheat the process.

As Paul climbed the wall he got another series of electronic bleeps telling him that he’d just ratcheted up another level. Switching actions, he’d learned, helped increase the stress whereas if he’d just stuck with the tumbles he would have become immune to it after a while, plus his fatigue would have diminished his movement speed. By switching to another activity that used his muscles in a ‘fresh’ way he would get more bang for his buck and cause his stress levels to skyrocket…so that’s what he had been doing these past few weeks, with his biomonitor now programmed to tell him how far above the trigger he was.

It also sent out a signal on its own telling Rio to get his ass over to Paul. This one happened to catch him while he was sleeping, so by the time he got out of bed and over to the sanctum Paul was a half mile into his never-ending wall climb and busy grasping and throwing himself up a meter or two at a time from the knobs and ledges, forcing the pace so hard he was almost falling, but with little danger there considering he was only 3 meters off the ground as he fought to stay ahead of the vertical treadmill’s safety slow that would activate when he got within a meter of the ground.

I’m here, Rio told him telepathically, standing off to the side as he watched his peer climbing the moving wall with such recklessness it was a mix of comical and awe-inspiring.

Five more minutes. I want the cushion.

I’ll be ready when you are, Rio said, sitting down crosslegged and clearing his mind as he ran himself through the basics of the twin link again. It took a few seconds of calibration each time he tried it with someone and he hoped to shave one of those off if he could with a little preemptive mental alignment. Paul was of no help to him right now, but he could reach out and sense the other to a degree, allowing him to create a mental handshake that was ready and waiting when Paul suddenly flipped backwards off the wall and landed on the floor feet first, only to be dumped backwards by the momentum and his weak limbs.

He got up and jogged over to Rio, sitting down while mentally establishing the twin link between them as he felt his repetitive numbness begin to diminish as the rest break ate into it. A moment later he could sense what Rio did, and vice versa, but in order to get the trigger to transfer they had to share a specific section of their biotelemetry, and in order to do that they had to go deep. Since they couldn’t cheery pick very well they had to go broad spectrum and link as much of their minds together as possible, accomplished via continuous transmission rather than battlemeld…for that was the only way the cheat could work. Battlemeld was designed to not activate triggers, but the twin link was an anomaly that let one think that the other’s body was actually theirs, if they got the bond strong enough.

Both Paul and Rio had done this many times before with their padawans and others they were sharing abilities with, but this was the only one they had a countdown on, for the other ‘temporaries’ required an internal alignment they could produce while sitting there, whereas stress and fatigue had to be garnered through physical activity. They’d practiced many times over the past weeks after workouts, trying to shorten the connection time and by now they had it down to a step by step process that brought them closer with each connection. After a few seconds the two began to lose their individuality and think as a pair, with Rio’s biomonitor popping up to 3 green soon thereafter.

Rio could see it through Paul’s eyes, so there was no need to talk. Their twin link was now unnecessary, but they held it up until he reached 1 yellow, at which time Paul broke free and Rio concentrated internally, though the other titan did establish a regular Ikrid link to help him stabilize the growing storm inside.

“Patience,” he urged. “You’re not going for it this time.”

“Killjoy,” Rio said as he fought to keep the storm brewing inside him without snuffing it out entirely. The plan was to stay in yellow and not hit red, allowing his body to start prepping for the flash growth later so to avoid the cascade that Paul had experienced, though with an extra Tier 3 to his credit, Rio’s would probably be even worse. “I got this. Just stand by in case I lose it.”

Paul withdrew his deep stabilizing presence and just observed what was happening. Unlike his own, Rio’s ascension prompt started stronger, but still weaker than the other psionics. Perhaps that was because their bodies knew the toll that this was going to take under the cascade or perhaps something just unique to Jumat. Either way, Rio had to go against his standard operating procedure of pushing for red and this time try to avoid it and make the process linger in order to prep for the transformation later…and by later he meant not today, which Paul knew would require him pushing himself to the trigger again tomorrow or the next day, and perhaps several times more to get Rio where he needed to be.

After about ten minutes, with Rio still holding his 2 yellow bars, a rude Artoo bleep indicated that Paul had slipped beneath the trigger level.

“I’m out,” Paul said.

“I’ve got it from here. Go ahead and get back to normal training.”

“Training? I’m going to get some Mariokart action in then head to bed. I’m exhausted.”

“Don’t rest up too much. I’ll need you to hit it again tomorrow.”

“Two days…don’t push it.”

“Fine,” Rio grumbled.

“Don’t go red,” Paul warned, standing up.

“I won’t. Thanks, buddy.”

“I’m serious. Don’t go there yet.”

“Dude, I’m not lying. Playing it the wussy way.”

“You don’t want that cascade, trust me.”

“Last one was bad enough, thanks. I’ll take the slow route this time. Just don’t like having you trash yourself over and over again to get at it.”

“It’s a tradeoff. My skill work is sucking, but it’s getting easier to reach this level. A century or two from now I’ll probably be hitting the trigger in daily workouts without trying, so I’m guessing this is as hard as it’ll get.”

“Still think you’re going to catch Morgan?”

“I am going to catch her,” Paul said firmly. “In about 7 months if I don’t have too many guests come looking for psionic handouts.”

Rio smiled. “I’m not going to be able to pass it on, you know.”

“I know, but as long as Morgan is out there fighting she’s losing ground to me. This overload training is useful, but it won’t factor into the scaling until down the road. I’d prefer to get top spot back soon, but I can wait as long as necessary knowing that I’m pulling ahead of her off the charts.”

“You are one badass muther.”

“Ya mon,” Paul said, accepting the compliment and walking off to let Rio spend as much time as he wanted, or could, in the ascension…which amounted to a good hour and a half until his grip slipped and he started to head up into red uncontrollably, at which point he forcibly ended the ascension, with the mental storm disappearing and Rio left with a bit of a headache.

By that time Paul was gone so he let him be and went back to bed, letting the prep work soak in and getting back to his own training the next day. No calls came in for him, just as Paul had said, and he wondered if his fellow trailblazer wasn’t pushing himself to that level or had just turned his calling device off. Either way, Rio got in a good day’s training and entered his next sleep cycle, which was offset from Paul’s given that they each had a different length of training day.

That meant he was woke up in the middle of his night again when the call came, with Rio happily getting out of bed and tracking Paul down inside the sanctum. This time he was running laps on the halo track, so Rio jogged over to the transition incline and ran up onto the ‘wall’ and took off to the right, disappearing into the tunnel that ran a complete circle more than mile wide. It’d taken some reworking into Atlantis’s architecture, but the standard quarter mile oval was no longer useful to the trailblazers. The speeds they ran at were hampered by the sharp turns, hence the halo track had been developed that had no turns, rather they ran in a straight line that gradually bent upward and looped back on itself, with artificial gravity allowing them to run horizontal around the inside of the hoop while feeling as if they were upright.

With that large of a track it took some time for Rio to catch up to Paul, but he had taken off the opposite direction so to meet up with him as quickly as their paths crossed rather than trying to race to overtake him the hard way. When he eventually did see Paul’s feet appear far ahead he slowed to a stop and let the sweat-soaked Archon come to a stop next to him. Both sat down off to the side of the road-sized track and linked up, with Rio’s body/mind thinking Paul’s status was its own and the trigger popping him into another ascension.

“I’m going to take it slow, but I’m going for this one.”

“Big surprise,” Paul said, releasing the twin link.

“Might be a good idea to get a medical scanner on me.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “That it would. Can you walk or do you want a ride?”

“I’d rather stay on top of this,” Rio said, with him already 3 bars into the yellow.

“Turn inward and I’ll get you there without any bumps.”

“Hopefully they’ll learn a bit about the cascade when I’m fried,” he said before blocking out most external stimuli and turning inward as Paul suggested.

“Let’s hope it’s less this time,” the level 134 titan said, telekinetically lifting Rio off the ground on an invisible plate that allowed him to still sit crosslegged. He started walking forward with him in tow, then got tired of it and just ran. It looked weird, but Paul’s Lachka was more than strong enough to do it, and he even added a wind shield around him so Rio wouldn’t notice.

When he got to the nearest track entrance, for there were many on the giant hula hoop, he transitioned back into a walk and headed through the sanctum and out into Atlantis’s corridors drawing odd stares from everyone he passed with his floating passenger in tow. He got Rio into the closest lift car and transitioned to the medical wing where Vortison was busy at work on something when he entered the main lab. He saw the man do a double-take from his office, then jump up from his console and come out into the larger work room.

“He’s working on his second ascension,” Paul explained, “and is going to push it through to completion. Thought you’d like to get some active sensors on him.”

Vortison nodded. “We never have seen you guys actually go through the process. Put him on that table,” the medtech said, pointing to one of their work stations, “and we’ll bring the equipment to him. How long does he have?”

“I’d guess he’ll be working on it for an hour or so, but there’s no way to tell. When your control slips you either have to push it through or cancel it.”

“Quickly people,” Vortison said with a snap of his fingers and his team splitting up like an angry hive of bees as they moved around to grab whatever tech they required.

Paul set Rio down on the workstation, which was at the moment deactivated so his butt wouldn’t be pressing any buttons, and left him there just as he had been on the track, turned inward and processing. He gently grabbed his wrist and took a peek inside his head while noting that his biomonitor was at 4 yellow.

We’re here and the medtechs are setting up. Can you give them a few minutes?

I’ll be at this longer than that. As much as I want Jumat I don’t want my head to explode.

No promises. You can still cancel out and go for it on a third try.

No, I’m going for it this time. Need a baseline to figure out how much processing others will need to go through to avoid the cascade. If I cut it too short we’ll know what not to do.

Well that’s brilliant.

Am I wrong?

No…just reckless. As usual.

For all of us.

Shut up and focus. I’ll make sure they have a regenerator standing by.

Don’t use it unless I ask for it. Gonna try and stick this out the hard way if I can.

Alright. Do what you need to do. If you want help stabilizing I’ll be here poking around in your head.

That’s comforting.

Sorry, no hot chicks available this time.

On that note…

We’ll deal with the dream later. Get this thing now.

I intend to.

Paul let their conversation end there and stayed with him through the latter stages. He did ask for help then, trying to ride out 4 red for a while longer in the hopes of minimizing the pain to come. Eventually Rio warned him off and Paul broke the link, then his biomonitor started flashing red and he saw Rio’s body wriggle around a bit like he had an itch running down his back that he couldn’t scratch.

The holographic monitor off to the side displaying Rio’s body exploded with fireworks that showed the flash tissue growth inside of him over the next few seconds, with all of the medtechs going wide eyed when they witnessed just how fast and widespread it was. While his mass didn’t change, only repositioned within his body, it looked like he gained over a pound and a half of tissue, accounting for .9% of his biomass…which was insane, judging from Vortison’s expression.

Soon the fireworks settled and Rio slumped over, leaning a hand on the table for balance.

“How bad?” Paul asked.

“Not as bad as last time, but it still hurts like a...I don’t know. Get the regenerator.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t as bad?”

“I can’t train like this, and I want to get started tomorrow.”

Paul nodded and turned to Vortison. “Get the wuss his binky.”

Rio’s lip curled in a snarl that was fueled by the pain washing through him. “I hate you.”

“Kerrie’s not here to say it, so I did.”

“She probably would,” he said, leaning back and half falling as his left arm collapsed down to where his elbow hit the tabletop. “Ok, maybe this is as bad as last time.”

“It’ll be over in a few seconds,” a medtech said, bringing the regenerator over to him.

“Wait!” Vortison yelled, and the assistant froze in place a few inches away from making contact with the trailblazer’s body.

“I hate you too,” Rio added.

“I just need a few seconds,” he said, reconfiguring one of the sensors. “If we monitor what the Kich’a’kat repairs then we’ll know how the cascade is damaging you and may be able to create a dampener of sorts.”

“Worth,” Rio said, looking at Paul and adding in a whisper, “Give him 60, then smack that thing on me.”

“Just a moment more,” Vortison said, punching keys and swiping touchscreens in a fury. “Ok, do it now.”

The medtech set the regenerator against Rio’s bare neck and it clung there, melting against his skin and diving into it with tiny tendrils that looked oh so torturous, but Paul knew from experience that he couldn’t feel them, for they were numbing everything as they went. On the monitor the tendrils spread throughout the interior of Rio’s body but didn’t linger for long, eventually pulling back on their tiny paths and healing the microdamage they created during the withdraw. When the tiny bits of machine pooled into globs on the surface they melted back into their original rigid form and the device fell away from his neck with the medtech catching it before it could land in his lap.

“Damn, wish I’d used that last time,” Rio said, flexing his jaw and blinking several times.

“You were right to come here,” Vortison commented, his eyes on his consoles and not the pair of trailblazers. “We’ve got a slew of information to sift through that we’ve never had before.”

“Come on, Gumby,” Paul said, pulling Rio off the table and holding onto his arm knowing that his legs were going to be a bit weak with his first steps. “Nap time for you.”

“No arguments there.”

“Later, fellas,” Paul said as the medtechs were gathering around Vortison and largely ignoring the two Archons.

“Ingrates,” Rio muttered as they left the lab and headed back to their turf inside Atlantis.

Half an hour after Rio hit the pillows and passed out, his mind became blocked to outside vision and he slipped into the recurrent dream again, working his way through a process that he had never recalled before, but when he woke some 13 hours later he gathered his thoughts and found he was able to remember a few new details…or rather details that he hadn’t been able to recall previously. The places he had been, including that particular sky with 4 suns in it, were now almost recognizable, but still just out of mind’s reach, as if he had a word on the tip of his tongue and couldn’t remember it.

What he did remember was a short sentence that he’d constructed while in the dream itself. Something that he had done many times before but failed to remember. He had been trying to send his waking self a message, and this time enough of it remained to survive the passage between dream world and real world.

Indiana Jones find the idol.

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@aerkijyr

1

July 3, 2896

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Jyra Hemman stood in the hold of a Mantis-class aerial transport, fully geared up as the rear hatched opened. She watched as the door transitioned into a ramp as a gust of wind entered, but she didn’t feel the ship’s rapid deceleration due to the IDF, though she could see the snow-covered trees below whipping by. Those trees gradually slowed and the mantis came to hover over a small hillside with an unnatural clearing on top.

Jyra walked out onto the ramp and stepped off, with the Commando dropping a few meters and landing in the six inch deep snow. She dropped into a crouch and her knee hit the ground as her foot slipped, but she otherwise held her form as the mantis gained altitude and slowly accelerated away with her catching a glimpse of its ramp closing before the surrounding trees blocked her view.

“Well then,” she said to herself from inside her helmet as her breath created a small cloud beneath her exhaust ports on her chin. The temperature was frigid, but not as bad as she’d experienced on Vandermen. That mission against the lizards had her unit fighting through snowdrifts taller than they were and a temperature so cold that her faceplate had iced up numerous times. This was a vacation in comparison, so long as she had her armor to keep herself warm.

Jyra set the internal controls to station keeping, meaning they’d use power drawn from her movement to operate a combination of heating and cooling units. Her body had gotten used to wearing the armor so much that it felt like a second skin to her now and as a result her body’s internal temperature regulation didn’t fight it much, but she’d usually end up with a slightly sweaty sheen underneath the internal padding.

She took a look around, seeing nothing but a square cut out of the forest the size of a basketball court. That had been created intentionally, for the rest of the forest had no natural gaps, but there was nothing else here. No technology or biology. The entire planet was devoid of animal life, leaving her alone with the trees and snow hundreds of miles away from civilization. Huge tracts of the planet had been colonized, but there were still chunks of it that had been preserved in its natural form for training and other purposes, with this clearing where she’d been dropped off being the start point for her next challenge.

Jyra stood up and started walking, carrying a very full pack with only a pistol for weaponry. That was for emergency purposes, for most of her equipment was supplies. This wasn’t a combat mission, nor was it a training skirmish. This was to be a survival test, with only a small beacon in her pack as a backup in case something went wrong. Other than that she was on her own and not under surveillance of any kind. That had been impressed on her during her briefing four hours ago, for if she wanted to become an Arc Commando it would require long missions away from the rest of the army and she had to not only be able to move and survive alone, but to flourish in that type of environment.

When Jyra passed by the nearest of the trees she extended an armored hand out and touched the bark, seeing her white armor matching the snow plastered on the outer side. It was colored for camouflage rather than the standard Commando colors, as was most of their equipment. She was meant to be as much of a ghost as possible, and even a little thing as altering the armor from dirty white to pure white could make a difference in an environment such as this.

Like the pistol, the rest of her equipment was outfitted for multiple scenarios despite there being no threats here. Corneria was the second most populated planet next to Earth and just as secure. Jyra was here to learn rather than fight, and had spent the previous 3 years doing so after getting the very exclusive invite to train to become an Arc Commando.

At the time she hadn’t even known there were Arc Commandos, aside from rumors. There was no official listing of them in the public databases, and even in the military records that she had previous access to there was no such rank or class mentioned. The same was true of the Arc Knights, but they’d been seen by many Commandos assisting them on the battlefield. Arc Commandos were never seen and many Commandos believed they were either a myth or misunderstanding, and now that she was in their training program the veteran knew why.

When Jyra had been approached by the Archons it had been due to her service record. 189 missions in 26 campaigns over the past 340 years and a level 203 Commando rating put her in the upper 10% of the Mainline army, but at present there were only 600 Arc Commandos in existence, meaning that a lot of other Commandos that rated higher than her had been passed over in the selection process. The Archons had explained that some didn’t want the different duties when offered, but that most were not fit for the special combat units that they were building and they thought that she might be.

They were elite units, she’d been told, and that was enough for Jyra. When she’d signed on she had immediately been removed from combat duty and sent to Corneria only to be subjected to an entirely different brand of training than she was used to, with this solo expedition being yet another example.

As Jyra walked under the trees and got herself acclimated to her surroundings she checked her HUD. In it she had only access to a simple map, for the traditional battlemap of the planet had been blocked. She could reactivate it if necessary, another emergency contingency, but if she did it would disqualify her from this mission and that was something she would never do. The very fact that she had the option, including the pistol and other non-essential gear for this mission, underscored the mandate of the Arc Commandos.

Combat could happen at any time, in any place, and Arc Commandos were selected for their ability to think outside the box. In truth all Commandos were, but Arc Commandos took it to the extreme. Her training since arriving here had not been combat oriented, for she already knew how to fight and had more experience doing so than a lot of Archons did. No, this training was centered around thinking and figuring things out when one didn’t have clear orders to follow or a clear path to attack the enemy. Normally Archons would adapt their orders to the situation, but as Star Force grew by leaps and bounds the Archon ranks were not keeping up in numbers.

Jyra was being training to operate without Archon leadership, and to do that required that they learn to think like Archons…at least as far as ground combat was concerned, specifically small unit tasks. Archons were trained to lead all forms of armies, from large planet-spanning conflicts down to behind enemy lines missions amounting to only a handful of personnel. On top of that they were also masters of all 5 divisions, from naval to aquatics, and Jyra wasn’t going to be able to match them on that. Like the Knights, Commandos were the peers of the Archons, some would say, in their individual disciplines because she and others would train exclusively in one area while the Archons split their time between many…and not only were they warriors, they were builders and diplomats.

Pretty much, they were masters at everything. And Jyra most definitely wasn’t.

But what she was good at was solo missions, and that was why she’d been recruited. Her combat record against the lizards saw her posted to numerous scouting and special team operations, in which she excelled, but her training here had gone far beyond that.

Checking her limited map she saw only a directional marker that pointed north and a distant waypoint that was her first destination on this cross country scavenger hunt. Jyra didn’t know where she was going, only that she had to get to the waypoint and figure things out from there. According to the waypoint numbers it was located some 129 miles away over slightly rolling terrain.

“That’s one hell of a first leg,” she said, transitioning the waypoint to her HUD permanently but dismissing all other data before taking off at a jog through the inch-deep snow underneath the trees. Everything was covered by it but the branches seemed to have collected most of it, allowing her a fairly easy time setting a pace. How to navigate the geography was something she was going to have to play by ear, for she didn’t have a topographical map to utilize, so she started by simply heading in a straight line until she found a reason to deviate from it.

The ‘straight line’ was actually a weave between the tree trunks and scrub brush, for there were no trails nor anything in this region to make them. Thankfully the cold climate and dim lighting, thanks to the snow covered branches, had kept the undergrowth to a minimum, but that only emphasized the desolation of the place. No one lived here, let alone passed through. Aside from the small artificial clearing there was nothing here different from when Star Force had first arrived to colonize the planet and Jyra could feel the disconnect.

That ‘disconnect’ was something she’d been trained to embrace and utilize, for most people, regardless of race, avoided it like the plague. People naturally operated with a hive mind, some more than others, and that left blind spots that could be exploited. It was in those blind spots that stealth was often achieved, and the more she could learn to think as a disconnected entity the easier it would be to identify them. That said, she’d always be able to connect with the army and Star Force. Her 3 centuries of service ensured that, so this training wasn’t designed to replace it, but rather enhance that bond of brotherhood by giving her a second mode to slip into…a mode that could be used to protect and attack as necessary, derived by her own judgement rather than orders.

That new mode was active, for she could feel herself slipping into it now that she was off the grid. She’d been told that other training missions where commandos were sent out alone had always been secretly monitored in order for the trainers to be able to intervene if something went wrong. If the trainees knew about that they’d operate differently, so they had to keep it secret. This fact was entrusted to her and the handful of other Arc Commando trainees she was working through the program with because they would not be operating under similar procedures.

None of them were rookies, for all were combat veterans at least 200 years old. They could take care of themselves, but there was always risk. Star Force didn’t want to lose them to an accident, which was why there were safety protocols in their equipment so they could break from the parameters of the mission if deemed necessary, but that choice was theirs rather than a trainer’s. If Jyra fell off a cliff and smacked herself unconscious there would be no help coming, for she wouldn’t be able to call for it.

Risk was everywhere, and while Star Force couldn’t prevent it they could and did minimize it. Those minimizations were now lessened, but not removed, in order to give her a chance to get away from everyone and operate in the dark for a while. With so much population on Star Force worlds it was virtually unheard of not to see another Human, even if just walking from your quarters to the cafeteria. The same was true in the military, so her being here, surrounded by miles of uninhabited territory, was a rare thing that she’d been getting a lot of in her Arc Commando training.

Enough that she was now comfortable with it, and in some ways preferred it. Not only was she being entrusted with this ‘alone time’ but she and the other trainees were also given special access codes to Star Force databases, allowing them almost free reign to move about through their cities wherever and whenever she wanted. Staying in the dark even when amongst the masses, it had been explained to her, and to that end on a previous mission she had been tasked with making her way through restricted areas under security’s nose. An Archon has been stationed with security to call them off if she was detected, so no misunderstandings could occur, but that hadn’t been necessary for Jyra had made it through in the shadows using a combination of guile and computer codes that security didn’t even know existed.

Her Archon instructors had explained the duplicity to her as an invisible layer of protection. Rather than playing games with their own people, she was learning how to back them up off the grid where potential enemies couldn’t look. While Star Force computer and comm systems were difficult to hack, there was always the possibility of it happening. If it did, an enemy could use their own systems against Star Force, hence they needed another layer of defense…and in this case, that second layer was trust.

The Archons had their own brotherhood that they held to fiercely, and through it all they trusted one another to do the right thing. For the Commandos it was less so. They hoped they would do the right thing, but kept an eye on them just in case. The same was true for the other 4 military divisions, and in most cases that oversight was unnecessary. Where the Archons led the soldiers followed, and so long as the good guys were in charge there wasn’t going to be any fertile ground for misbehavior within the ranks. Jyra knew this from her time serving as a Commando, but she’d only recently come to realize that most of her fellow soldiers were going along with the flow rather than thinking for themselves.

With the knowledge Star Force gave their people through training, going with the flow was a shortcut to understanding how the universe worked. Once a person made it to that point they were unlikely to forget, but they were only learning the knowledge that was passed onto them. The Archons wanted the Arc Commandos to be more than that, and therefore they were recruiting individuals who showed an aptitude to take what they’d learned and expand upon it by thinking outside of what they’d been taught and making new connections…essentially doing what the Archons had done to create that database of knowledge.

Above and beyond that, they wanted individuals that they could trust to use their instincts and ferret out injustice, inconsistencies, anything that might be amiss. Simply following orders wasn’t enough. They had to act on their own volition and not rely on orders. With the responsibilities, equipment, and knowledge that the Archons were giving to Jyra and the others, the most impressive and humbling gift being given to them was that of trust. Trust to act without oversight and to do what the Archons would do.

Except the Arc Commandos were being trained in a very narrow slice of Archon responsibilities, namely the solo and small group combat missions, traveling behind enemy lines and, if the worst came to pass, able to disappear within Star Force if it was ever compromised. The Arc Commandos, in their limited focus, were now another spear tip, with no one to follow. They led the way, not for others to follow, but to aid them by taking out targets and accomplishing missions that most would never know occurred.

That’s why Arc Commandos were not publically recognized and that the military itself didn’t know of their existence beyond rumor…and that level of trust and secrecy was why Jyra had fully committed herself to this extreme training. It was difficult physically, as was all Star Force training, but what made this secret program so extreme was that it required her to become an Arc Commando completely, from her red hair down to the tips of her toes. This wasn’t a job or profession, it was to become her identity.

And that was something she wanted, more than anything in her life. She’d always wanted to be an Archon, but her testing hadn’t warranted it. She’d retaken the tests multiple times throughout her life, each of which was different, but she’d never passed. This new role, which held equal status to the Archons in terms of independence and responsibility was equal to, no, actually better than becoming an Archon.

Naval, aquatic, aerial, and mech combat were interesting but never truly appealed to her, nor were administrative duties and empire construction. Jyra was a fighter who belonged on the battlefield, not a builder, so Arc Commando was a perfect match for her and she was extremely grateful for the wisdom of the Archons in seeing that in her. That vision was one thing that she lacked, but now that she’d found her niche she never wanted to do anything else again. She still had about another year to go in her training, she guessed, and she still had to earn that position, but Jyra had no doubts as to whether it would happen.

There was a way to accomplish it, and if there was a way she’d find it. She was fully committed to becoming an Arc Commando and nothing they’d thrown at her yet, training wise, had been more than she could handle.

This long distance solitary mission was something new, but she suspected it was more of a confirmation ordeal rather than a grueling endurance test. There was no time limit involved, at least not on this stage of it. She simply had to get from point to point across the snow-covered forest and could take as much time as she needed or wanted. That said, with her objective location known she didn’t feel like delaying and set a fairly aggressive pace, tempered by the fact that she knew she’d been running for at least 10 hours before she settled down for the ‘night,’ though with her nightvision tech the time of day didn’t matter, rather it was whenever she became exhausted that she’d stop, and she’d already decided to play it safe and cut off before that happened.

While this leg of her mission might be simple, she had no way of knowing what the next one would entail…and she didn’t want to head into possible difficulty at a disadvantage. So she set a pace that would double as the workouts she was unable to do out here in the middle of nowhere and got to work covering ground, not knowing what was ahead of her other than the tiny triangular dot emblazoned on her HUD marking her target location’s direction.

2

The terrain seemed endless, with forest over rolling hills that was always different yet remarkably the same. If it wasn’t for her HUD and the distant waypoint Jyra would have been thoroughly lost in this wilderness but that one bit of information was all she needed to navigate, with the significance of that razor edge not being lost on her. More so than ever before Jyra was coming to grips with the fact that the galaxy was a wild and dangerous place with no safety nets other than what you created yourself. Star Force had done so well in that regard that most people didn’t realize what it was like outside their cities.

For here and now a single navigational point was making the difference between having a path forward and wandering aimlessly to her eventual death. Yes, she had a backup beacon in case something went wrong, but had that not been the case she’d be relying on the gear in her helmet to survive. If it was lost or damaged then she would be in a world of hurt, unlikely to be able to stay alive longer than her supplies lasted, for these trees were not fruit bearing. Roots perhaps could be scrounged, but that would just be a delaying tactic.

If she couldn’t get to the waypoint she would be lost.

Now that she had plenty of time to consider that, the danger of life began to sink into her. She’d been through numerous battles and never thought of those as ‘dangerous’ because she had a fighting chance, but the idea of being in a no-win scenario was truly terrifying. She was a fighter, and not having some path to victory, no matter how unlikely, left her completely vulnerable and dependent on the little device in her helmet.

She didn’t like being dependent, nor did Star Force, hence the redundancy they built into their infrastructure, but as an Arc Commando she didn’t have that luxury. She had to go where others wouldn’t, or couldn’t, and sometimes that would mean walking the razor’s edge. Jyra hadn’t expected that to be the case on this mission, for it was little more than a long run across terrain, but now that she was here, unwatched, reality was dawning on her.

It was both scary yet liberating. She was in control, so long as her equipment functioned, and unlike being under water she wasn’t going to die immediately if her air cut off or her armor breached…which was one reason why she wasn’t fond of aquatics. No, out here she’d last for a long time, it was that inevitable defeat looming at the edge of her mind that worried her. As a last ditch effort she could always try and make it to one of the distant cities, so there was a slim chance she could survive and that would give her something to fight for, but the isolation here made it feel like the entire planet was empty…and that made her think through the ramifications of being on another world that had no cities, and what she would do then.

The disturbing answer was nothing, for there was nothing to be done but wait and hope for rescue. Dependent on someone else again, unable to win, let alone even fight, if she was lost on a world with no way off it. She knew better than to give up, for there might be some unseen angle she was missing…a way to win that was hidden, and if you gave up you were precluding that possibility, but since this was a theoretical situation she allowed herself to consider the what-ifs of being in a position where there was no way out.

Jyra didn’t have an answer for that. She was a fighter and could never stop trying, it just wasn’t in her nature, and perhaps that is why the thought of a no-win scenario was so damn frightening. It was like a line that you could not cross, yet drawn plainly in front of you, with no one forcing you over it. Knowingly you’d never cross it, but the fact that it was there and danger lay on the other side meant that if you accidently crossed it you’d be doomed.

But then she’d still be in control, wary but wise enough not to cross that line. But what if that line shifted, or she lost her focus and wandered across? That was the truly scary part, that she could end up where she didn’t want to be on accident…and her HUD failing would be just such an accident in this situation.

Normally Jyra’s mind didn’t wander this much, but she literally had nothing to do other than keep running. The terrain was mildly challenging, but not enough to consume her conscious mind so her thoughts wondered up until she finally decided to stop and rest after having traveled some 82 miles, straight line. How far she’d actually ran with all the twists and turns she didn’t know, for her HUD wasn’t set up to track it with this limited capability.

With the terrain all seeming the same Jyra just came to a stop when she felt like it and looked around, finding a suitable gap between tree trunks and walking over to it, then taking a moment to pull her helmet off and breathe deeply, bending at the waist and resting her right hand on her knee. She hadn’t been running fast, but only now that she’d stopped did her fatigue begin to fully register. She could have gone on further with ease, but apparently she’d dipped into a bit of combat mode numbness that had blocked her mind from fully realizing the extent of her physical depletion.

In those few seconds her face and hair frosted over in the cold, but it felt good at the moment so she kept her helmet off as she got her breathing under control and stood up, disconnecting and pulling off her heavy pack. She set it down in the snow and laid her helmet on top before reaching inside and pulling out a small knife that she used to cut away a few bits of scrub brush to form a bigger clearing. Those tumbleweeds she tossed aside into the snow where small rays of sunlight were breaking through the canopy and painting the dim white with numerous bright spots.

Night would be on her soon though, for the planet had a 22-hour day and she’d began just after dawn. Had she not been equipped by Star Force that would have been an issue, for the nights would get considerably colder, but her armor and survival equipment would make that a moot point.

Jyra took a moment to go through a few stretching exercises, making use of the flexibility her armor allowed and working out her stiff body, for the running motion, while dynamic enough, didn’t allow for certain movements and she’d gotten a bit rigid in those areas. Above that the stretching just felt good, especially in contrast with her warm body and chilling head.

Once finished she began kicking away the snow and getting down to the frozen dirt below. When she had her campsite cleared she put her helmet back on to keep from getting too cold and pulled out a cylinder from her pack about the length of her forearm. She set it down in the center of the clearing and pressed a button before taking a step back. Four seconds later the hard canister broke apart and began to unfurl a thin prefab building.

It spread out into a flat octagon, then rose up as it stretched its cloth-like walls rigid around telescoping supports that interlocked automatically. Once the building reached its height of 2.8 meters the material of the walls and ceiling solidified as the tiny segments firmly locked together. Altogether it took 18 seconds to form, with Jyra tapping an armored finger on it to check on its rigidity before grabbing her pack and going inside.

The door was solid but unpowered, operating on a hinge that swung outward. Jyra closed it behind her then walked to the far side of the 6.4 meter wide room and set her pack down, from which she pulled out a small power source the size of her thumb and inserted it into a matching slot in the center of the floor. Once connected nothing happened, but the equally small heating element and light that she unpacked next slid into slots on the ceiling that then drew power from the generator, bathing the interior in blue and starting to warm the chilly air.

More items followed, being plugged into additional slots on the floor and ceiling. Star Force built smaller survival ‘tents’ but on a mission like this there was no need to skimp, though she did have one of their smallest units as a backup in case the one she was in now became lost or damaged. Redundancy was the name of the game, and Star Force had gone to great lengths to devise and fabricate personal gear that could be condensed down to as convenient travel size as possible.

While the chamber warmed Jyra pulled out a roll of what looked like candy discs, popping one into her mouth before stowing the rest. Her body had been fully depleted of ambrosia, she realized after the fact as she sluggishly moved around and her heartrate diminished, with the ‘candy’ being a very condensed supply. Each disc was equal to her typical daily requirement of 13.2 doses, which another roll had small bits in lesser amount so she wouldn’t have to try and break the tiny discs apart to manage her levels. Each roll had been custom designed for the dosage levels she required, and while it wasn’t mission critical it was, to her, one of the most important items in her pack.

One item that was more of a luxury was a chair that she unpacked, setting it into a slot in the floor that locked into place and then expanded in size as the components realigned. It required power, for it was more than just for sitting on. It had a small backrest, on which was a button that altered modes. She punched it with her little finger and saw the seat uncover into a toilet seat as she pulled off her helmet and began taking off her armor. It was a segmented version rather than the all-in-one units that most preferred nowadays, and gave her a slightly greater defense rating due to the rigid pieces. It was also unpowered, which had been a requirement of this mission, but from the inside it felt virtually identical to all the other versions she’d worn, for only under extreme situations did she utilize their powered-augmented movement capability.

The air wasn’t fully warmed by the time she stepped out of her boots and tossed them into a corner with the rest of her sweaty armor but she didn’t feel like waiting a few more minutes, for her bladder that had been quiet the last few hours of her run was now reasserting itself. She pulled off her uniform pants and sat down, glad to have the chair in her inventory, for otherwise she would have had to go out in the snow and relieve herself the old fashioned way and use a portable scraper.

She had one in her pack as well, but the chair had a unit built in so when she finished she hit a button and a cleansing force field scraped across her butt cleaning and sanitizing far better than the old fashioned toilet paper ever did. When she felt the wipe finish she stood up and pulled her pants back on, flicking the ‘compress’ button that would take her waste material and dehydrate it into pellets that she could toss into the forest later. For now they were stored in the base of the chair along with the pure water recovered. That could be critical in other environments, but with all the snow here she wasn’t going to have to worry about water conservation on this mission.

On that note she also pulled out a water bottle from her pack and downed it in one long drink before pulling out some prepackaged foodstuffs that were also volume compressed. She ate quickly then pulled off her clothes once the chamber had fully heated up, stepping into a ring on the floor that she had already installed, along with its opposite on the ceiling. Using her toe she flicked a button on the floor and the two rings encapsulated her in a weak shield tube that she could break out of if necessary. With it a second plate-like energy shield began bouncing from one ring to the other in slow motion, operating similar to the scraper and pulling some of the grime and sweat off her body.

It was nicknamed the ‘tickler’ and functioned as a lesser replacement for a water shower. Originally developed for races that didn’t take well to the water, it was used by some Human civilians that preferred it but mostly used as a backup when water was scarce. It never worked well on Jyra’s hair, but got most of the workout stench off of her. In the field that was a luxury, and on a lot of occasions she slept in her armor, sweat and all, until she could get to a secure facility.

But since there were going to be no secure facilities on this mission the extra amenities were appropriate, and Jyra had chosen to carry the extra weight to accommodate them. This was a longevity mission, and any small augmentations to her survival inventory would factor in down the line. She could rough it out in her armor and no shelter, but that wasn’t a good way to operate long term and Jyra hadn’t been told how long this mission would actually last.

A lot of that depended on how fast she traveled, and with the solitude beginning to wear on her she didn’t intend to linger any longer than necessary. After a few minutes in the tickler she got out and put her clothing inside it, allowing the sweat and grime in them to be mostly removed, then pulled them back on save for the socks. Knowing it wasn’t super cold outside and wanting to give her feet a chance to breathe, she grabbed four small cubes out of her pack and opened the door, stepping out barefoot onto the frozen ground and shutting the door quickly to minimize the heat loss.

Jyra sucked in a deep breath, feeling her body begin to chill instantly and taking a moment to absorb the sensation along with the first few trickles of ambrosia hitting her bloodstream. She looked around in the dimming light and listened, not expecting to hearing anything but taking the moment just the same. There wasn’t anything mechanical or living to be heard in the eerily silent forest, but to be on the safe side she walked out into the snow, feeling and resisting the cold on her tiny feet as she moved out about 20 meters and attached one of the cubes to a tree trunk.

She walked in a long circle around her octagonal structure, placing the other three devices at approximate cardinal points while curiously wondering how long she could tolerate the snow on her bare feet. Residual heat would offer her a bit of a shield, but as it bled off she’d start to get into trouble. She’d never tested that notion before to see how long it would take, and to her surprise she was still ok by the time she completed her circuit and got back to the door.

Jyra opened it and quickly got back inside then wiggled her toes around, finding that her feet had already started to get numb.

She raised an eyebrow, making a mental note to not trust her senses on that one in the future. If they were numbing up that would allow her to move about in the snow better under combat conditions, but it would also not inform her as to their condition and what damage could incur. Cold wasn’t something that you could mess with and was as dangerous as heat in ample amounts, but this environment wasn’t that frigid so she knew a little exposure would be alright so long as she kept it brief.

Yet another razor’s edge to walk, but this little barefoot mission hadn’t gone too far and now she had a baseline for the future…though she hoped she was never caught without her boots or shoes in the future, for that would be a major pain in the ass.

For that reason many Commandos slept in them when in the field. After running for so many hours Jyra knew that would be a bad idea, but if she kept her uniform shoes with her the perimeter sensors that she’d just set up would hopefully give her a few seconds to slip them on if something did happened.

It wasn’t a good situation to be in, for she was alone and there was no one to take watch while she slept, but she had to make due and didn’t want to sleep in either her boots or the shoes that slipped into them. A few Commandos wore the boots without shoes underneath, and they were adjustable for that purpose, but she never did, wanting to have them on for when she got out of her armor.

Jyra configured another device she had plugged into the floor to sound an alarm if any heat or technological signatures came within scanning radius, excluding those already present and extending the minimum range out to the confines of her building so if she moved around inside it wouldn’t go off. If she stepped outside it would, but she also configured the alarm to transmit to an earpiece that she slipped on rather than audible to everyone…which in this case would be anyone outside trying to sneak up on her.

There was no one on Corneria to bother her, not even any wildlife, but she wanted the extra layer of security regardless, for you never knew what unknown factors were in play.

Jyra grabbed her shoes and stuffed her socks into them as she set them to the side and unrolled her sleeping sleeve. She plugged it into the a slot on the floor then slipped her bare feet inside and crawled into the double-sided blanket that would regulate her internal temperature while blocking her external heat signature. There was a head cover that she didn’t bother using, but she did trigger the underlayer to inflate and lift her an inch off the hard floor, along with a pillow section that rose another couple inches up.

Keeping her shoes and socks next to her head and ready to grab at a moment’s notice she closed her eyes and got to sleep quickly, not intending to linger here any longer than necessary for her to rest and recharge. The alarm system had also been configured to wake her in 7 hours, meaning she’d be off before sunrise and onto the waypoint, hopefully, by the end of the next day.

3

July 4, 2896

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Jyra had gotten up just before sunrise and taken off on her second running segment of this journey but had found that she’d pressed herself too much the previous day and intentionally cut it short after only a few hours, took some downtime and a long nap, then went back out to complete the rest of the first leg of this mission, eventually arriving at the waypoint…which was floating in virtual form over top of a small frozen lake.

“So much for easy,” she told herself on the shore as a weak beacon appeared beneath it, indicating that there was something under the ice for her to get to. To that end she disconnected her pack and dropped it into the thick snow before gingerly walking out onto the ice. It was frozen thick enough to hold her, so she moved out further from shore until she was directly over the beacon location and actually standing inside the virtual waypoint. Shutting the vents on her mask and switching over to backup oxygen Jyra jumped into the air, hearing the ice crack beneath her, then pulled her knees up towards her chest midair before smashing her legs back down like a jackhammer and breaking through.

The ice was thicker than she thought and only her legs went through, with the jagged corners of the ice pinning her waist above water level until she added a few fist smashes and her white armor sank below the ice and out of view. All was quiet for more than a minute, but before the water could begin to refreeze her helmet poked up through into the air and an arm came out, pressing down and breaking off another piece of ice.

Jyra clawed further into that small indentation, getting her elbow on one side and reached up out of the water with her other arm to throw a small canister clear before using that hand as a counterbalance to gently ease her upper body out of the water and onto the ice like a worm, crawling inch by inch over cracking ice until she was completely out of the water and could roll to the side a couple of turns and up onto her feet. She walked over and picked up the canister while opening her air vents and allowing her reserves to start gradually replenishing.

The Commando waited until she was back on shore before she chanced to open it, finding only a small databurst module inside. She toggled it on and linked to it via her HUD and got the flash transmission of data…which in this case was just another set of coordinates for the next leg of her mission.

“52 miles. They’re making this too easy,” she said, closing the lid on the canister and leaving it on the lake shore as she grabbed her pack, intending to get another couple hours of running in before she stopped for a rest. Not knowing what would be at this waypoint she’d conserved energy so she could run or fight if necessary, but now that that appeared to be unnecessary she might as well get a move on.

It was already dark, so she took to the forest again using her nightvision before eventually stopping 18 miles later and setting up camp. She took a longer rest there then hit the next section in the daylight and made it all the way up to within a kilometer of the 2nd waypoint before stopping again. Maybe it was another navigational marker, perhaps it was something else, but she might as well find out with a fresh set of legs than when exhausted, so Jyra pulled out her tent canister again and repeated the process that was now becoming routine.

She ate and went to sleep, then woke up hours later when it was dark and packed up, traveling the last kilometer on foot and ready for action when the waypoint guided her to an anonymous bit of forest that had a speeder bike laying on the ground.

“Hello,” she said, cautiously approaching and looking for any booby-traps when she noticed the crate sitting behind it with another databurst module on top inside a clear case sleeve. She pulled the coordinates from it, finding that there were actually 18 different waypoints updated, all of which were scattered around her current position and not in order. No further information was given, and it seemed to her that this was a collection mission now. For what she didn’t know, but having the speeder meant she could avoid having to run out to all of them…which was fortunate, for they were spread over an area with a radius of 130 miles.

Jyra flicked the ‘on’ switch but the speeder didn’t respond, drawing a sinking feeling from the commando. She tried again but nothing, then pulled open the front panel and saw that the bike was in mechanical disarray with missing components and disconnected wires…including a burnt out chunk that functioned as the cooling unit for the gravity drive.

Her eyes flicked to the crate.

“You had better be spare parts,” she said, opening it and sighing with relief when she saw that was just the case. Apparently she had to repair the speeder or submit herself to hiking the insane back and forth distance, for which she probably would have to ration her supplies. That wasn’t doable when one was physically propelling oneself across miles of forest, meaning that if she didn’t get the bike fixed she was in a world of hurt.

Mechanical repair wasn’t something Commandos were heavily trained in, but they were taught the basics of how to tinker with their equipment in the field. That underlying knowledge had been expanded upon heavily in her Arc Commando training, giving her more options for situations just like this. She didn’t carry a full tech rating, but repairing speeders was one of a handful of tasks that she had been taught how to do, along with bypassing the control interface to circumvent any locking mechanisms if necessary, though today that didn’t seem to be an issue. Star Force speeders were typically free use and had no key sequences required, but a lot of civilian craft did, including those that Star Force produced and sold on the open market.

Those didn’t have weapons, but this one did. A single sammy barrel mounted on the front of the bike. Jyra knew it was more powerful than a sniper blast, but not as potent. More for blowing away a chunk of mass than punching a small hole through armor. Why this was an armed variety made her wonder if combat wasn’t forthcoming on this mission…or more likely some type of impediment that would difficult to remove without the weapon.

Didn’t matter now, for if she couldn’t repair the bike she wasn’t going anywhere with it, for the gravity drive would overheat even if she got the power supply hooked up, and it was missing several conduits to both the drive and the controls, which was why she hadn’t been able to turn it on. Going back to the bike she pulled out all the damaged components and made a mental list of everything that was missing, then starting fishing items out of the crate and assembling them up until her gloved hands became too thick to get into some of the smaller areas.

Jyra disconnected her right glove but kept her left on, allowing her thin fingers to slip into certain crevices and keep working up until the cold started to numb her touch, then she switched hands, putting her glove back on and taking the other off. She kept switching back and forth until she got the bike working, then started it up and ran it through some basic diagnostics ensuring that all functions were operational.

With it floating half a meter off the ground she closed the access panel and grabbed her own pack, which she’d taken off when she realized it wasn’t going to be a quick fix. Checking her internal clock she noted that she’d spent some 4 hours working on the bike, most of which was due to a number of unforeseen problems with components that appeared to be intact but were really sabotaged in a subtle manner…and then she had to fix two pieces that she didn’t have replacements for.

Whoever had set this up had made it difficult on purpose, but Jyra thought she finally had everything working and was glad to hear the faint hum of the cooling device and no extraneous noise, suggesting to her that it was, in fact, now working properly. After reattaching her pack she slid onto the small seat that could accommodate two people in a crunch, she gripped the control bars and elevated the speeder up through a small gap in the canopy that she had to search around for, passing through the snow-covered branches and dumping a lot of it off onto the ground as she pushed through…then she was above the treetops looking out at the snow-covered landscape that showed little bits of green in between the white dunes covering the branches.

Highlighting the nearest waypoint, Jyra accelerated the nearly silent bike in its direction and began covering ground in a blink of an eye compared to her having had to run it on foot. Skimming the treetops also allowed her to make a straight line path rather than the weave she had to make around trees and up and down over hills on foot, making her appreciate the speeder for all it was worth as she headed for the waypoint.

Knowing not to run up on top of it, Jyra stopped early and landed, choosing to approach on foot and finding another beacon…but this one was coming from underground. It was two meters down, but there was no visible way to get at it. Frowning, Jyra pulled her pack off and got a small cubical rectangle out that unfolded into a shovel. She began digging, immediately finding the ground frozen and having to chip away at it until the soil softened with depth, but even then it was still firm and didn’t look to have been recently dug up anytime soon.

When she got down to the depth that the beacon was coming from, for she could measure it to the inch on her HUD, she found absolutely nothing. It took her a moment to dig a little deeper, then she tossed the shovel out of the hole and angrily climbed out of it.

“Shit…I’m so stupid,” she said, looking around in the trees above her and in the scrub brush nearby. At first she couldn’t find anything, but eventually she stumbled across a tiny box stuck in the side of one of the tree trunks some 20 meters off, virtually unnoticeable, and Jyra knew it was a signal misdirection device. The actual beacon signal was coming from somewhere else, but with this one transmitting a counter signal it had altered the calculations her helmet was making and caused it to indicate a position that was where neither device existed.

Knowing that she could do the math and use the false point and the actual one of the disrupter to determine the true location of the beacon, she input a waypoint on top of the tiny device and had her helmet do the calculations…which resulted in a third waypoint that she walked over to, finding a ditch that was almost completely filled with snow. She scooped it out with her hands like a dog digging down through sand and eventually found the book-sized box at the bottom. Pulling it out she headed back to where she’d dropped her pack and subsequently retrieved her shovel before kneeling down and opening the box.

Inside it was two foodstuff packets, a small amount of ambrosia, and a puzzle piece-like component that she guessed would interlink with others found to form something, but at the moment she had no clue what it was, for it had no buttons or markings of any kind.

Jyra sighed. “Scavenger hunt indeed,” she said, looking over to the spot where she’d dug that unnecessary hole and wasted so much time. “Guess that’s my punishment for being stupid…all self-imposed.”

Grabbing the items and stowing them in her pack, Jyra took a moment to rest and clear her head before getting back on the bike and heading towards the next waypoint, plotting out a course that would mean the least amount of travel, for her power cell on the bike hadn’t been fully charged and if she wandered around too much she’d end up finishing this hunt on foot. That was another facepalm moment that she was glad she spotted before it’d bitch-slapped her…and she assumed there were probably many more coming her way with equal subtlety.

It was becoming clear this mission wasn’t about overcoming obvious challenges, but rather in picking up on the small ones that could easily go unnoticed. Warning herself to be extra observant, Jyra took off back up through the treetops then accelerated heavily until she could feel the tug of the air against her helmet and torso and held that velocity. The bike could go faster, but the last thing she wanted was to get knocked off it by the turbulence and fall down through the forest only to go on a multiple mile hunt for the bike that would cut thrust and coast to a stop when her hands left the controls.

And anti-grav craft had a tendency to coast a really long ways before coming to a stop…not to mention this bike didn’t have a homing beacon, so all around it was better to keep it fast, but not too fast.

Jyra got through three more locations before calling it quits and setting up camp. Each was different, with one going so far as to have her climbing through the snow in the treetops to find a case that had a vague beacon that was highlighting a region rather than a point. It took her more than two hours to find it, and had she not been wearing armor she would have been frozen stiff by that point crawling across branches that held the snow aloft and even having to dig tunnels through some of the deeper sections.

She fell four times, counting on a branch to be there then finding a way to slip through where she thought her body would catch. If there was an easy way to find that one she missed it entirely and ended up slipping into her blanket sleeve more frustrated than tired. In each of the boxes, though, there were bits and pieces of supplies, which gave her the impression that this mission was going to last long beyond this current scavenger hunt.

Taking that into consideration she decided to pull back on her pace a bit and work through the upcoming waypoints with a bit of ease rather than urgency. Knowing that these challenges were more brain oriented than combat, she told herself to take the advantage of the lack of schedule and work in some down time…else she’d go crazy with frustration at not being able to find these damn boxes in any predictable manner.

She’d gotten in a brief workout before heading to sleep, going for a run outside of armor and doing some flexibility drills out in the snow as long as she could stand the cold, then warming up inside and doing some mediation work to further cleanse her mind enough that she could get to sleep without running things through her head nonstop. Without the long runs to drain her of energy she needed the release of the workouts, not to mention to maintain her fitness levels, which were going to take a significant hit if this mission dragged on as it was with her riding the speeder and not doing much more than looking around and small activities like digging and crawling.

Tomorrow…which would actually occur at night…she was going to start with a workout then head off to the next waypoint, hopefully do three or four then set up camp again and rest/train for a few more hours and continue splitting it up in that fashion going forward. If she tried to plan out a timetable going forward she was going to get frustrated, for these waypoints were meant to keep things unpredictable.

In order to counter that she had to let go of expectations and just play it out as events progressed. Not what she wanted to do initially, thinking of this mission as partially a race, but an Arc Commando had to adapt more than other soldiers, and to be prudent she stopped assuming there would be a finish to this mission and prepared herself for an unending one…which meant she had to sustain herself through training and supplies, to which end she began rationing her ambrosia usage, having a gut feeling that she was going to be maneuvered into a situation where she’d potentially be forced to run out and have to face that headache as well.

A little prudence now could possibly circumvent that, and she’d rather run low now and work through partial doses rather than have none at all later.

Then again she could just be getting paranoid, and that was yet another part of this mission, she was sure. Not knowing what was coming didn’t allow you to prepare for it, so it was left to guesswork and improvisation…both of which were unpredictable.

“Live in the moment,” she whispered to herself as her head hit the inflated pillow, “and be ready for anything.”

For now that meant getting to sleep, so she put all other concerns out of her mind and slipped off into blissful rest, grateful to have a warm structure to sleep in rather than roughing it in her armor.

4

July 9, 2896

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Jyra slid the last component into the plate-sized disc that she’d been assembling from all of the puzzle pieces and immediately saw the thing light up with power. Three gold lights appeared along with a countdown timer of 2:28. Frowning with both uncertainty and displeasure, the Commando realized this was another test and that she’d probably only get one shot at it. There were only three buttons on the entire device, each of which sat below the lights, so she pressed one and received a small hologram of a rotating triangle. Recognizing it as a prompt to level the device, she put the disc down on the ground and the triangle disappeared, immediately replaced by a foot and a half tall image of a metal skeleton.

“Oh no,” she moaned as it remained motionless. After a few seconds of it doing nothing she pressed another button that removed the hologram but put nothing in its place. Seeing the countdown continue, she didn’t have time to think it over so she pressed the third button and a holographic map appeared marking a series of locations.

On impulse she brought up her helmet’s empty map, save for the now useless waypoints, and aligned it with what she was seeing before placing new waypoints of her own at approximately the same spots as the map indicated, leaving her with 26 seconds remaining. Jyra hit the other buttons again, bringing back the metal skeleton and removing it with the ‘empty’ button. She tried a few combinations but got nothing new, then tossed the disc away from her and stepped behind a tree.

A moment later it exploded with energy, a bit of which hit her arm that hadn’t gotten tucked in behind the trunk. She felt a slight tingle of stun energy, then her armor pulled it out of her body and returned her limb to full functioning status, but armor or no, had she been holding that device when it went off she would have been rendered unconscious.

Jyra walked out of cover and looked at it, still lying on the ground where she had left it but with the three lights now gone. She assumed it was dead, and knew from previous examination of the pieces that it contained nothing of use, but something in the back of her mind said to take it with her. She had no obvious reason to do so, but if she ended up needing it later she didn’t want to have to spend hours or days searching the forest for this position.

It wasn’t going to fit in her pack, and worried that it might contain a hidden transmitter she decided to simply put a waypoint on this position on her map and leave the device where it lay. If it turned out she did need it later she’d know where to come to, assuming no one was out here and came to mess with it. That metal skeleton was a message, telling her that she was now going to be hunted and that her mission was to avoid capture. She also figured the stun blast was a way of giving her hunters a head start and she was glad she had gotten behind the tree when she did.

But there was still the matter of that second button. It had done nothing, but it did cancel the other two, as if it was supposed to be doing something…or was doing something that she didn’t see.

“I bet they had me transmitting my position,” she said in disgust, knowing that she had to get moving quickly. Investigating the points on the map was a priority, but getting out of here soon was paramount. She didn’t want to lose the speeder just yet, but it was almost out of charge and none of her supply drops had had any additional batteries or a portable recharger in them. She could cannibalize her personal power supply to run the speeder for a short while, but she didn’t want to give up her living accommodations just yet, so she was going to preserve that power supply unless she ran into a pinch.

“Doing it to myself again,” she said as she ran over to the speeder that she’d parked a kilometer away before retrieving the last component from a box hidden in a camouflage blind that she’d only managed to find by tripping over it. She’d spent some 3 hours looking and had wanted to set up camp again, but she couldn’t here and maybe not at all going forward if what was after her was what she thought.

It could be trainers, but odds were they were drones, fitting in with this being a solitary test…and she bet there were going to be more of them than she had shots in her pistol for.

Jyra hopped on her speeder and took off, easing back up through the trees and into the clear air then heading towards one of her new waypoints, knowing that she wasn’t going to get even close to it, for it was located some 149 miles off, but fortunately all of them were clustered around that region within a radius of 20 or so miles. She hadn’t had time to study it intently, but intended to get as much distance out of her speeder as possible.

She kept searching the horizon looking for trouble headed her way, both from ahead and behind her, but nothing showed up during her 34 mile stint that ended with the warning light flaring, indicating that she was almost out of power. She ignored it and got another 2 miles in before the safety mechanisms activated and gradually dropped her down into the trees against her will…which sent her ramming into snow drifts and branches alike for a few seconds before all power went out and the speeder became a dead weight that got jammed on a thick branch before it could punch through the canopy and hit the ground.

“Worth,” she declared, forcing aside branches and crawling out of the gentle crash. Once free she jumped down to the ground and immediately began running, wanting to put some distance between herself and the speeder just in case it was being tracked. She made it some 12 miles before needing to stop and rest, with her setting up her tent-like building and establishing her defensive perimeter before taking a quick tingle shower, eating, and forcing herself to get to sleep…but this time she kept her armor on, save for her helmet, which she had beside her at arm’s reach along with her pistol.

She expected to wake up into a mess of trouble, but Jyra knew better than to try to go without sleep, and not setting up camp would be just as bad as being forced to flee and lose it, so knowing that she could rough it in her armor alone if needed, she’d decided to go ahead and make use of the heated interior and luxuries while she had them rather than to go without out of fear. That sort of self-induced punishment would fit this mission perfectly, and she didn’t feel like indulging her own discomfort.

The armor was cushioned interiorly, but it was by no means the equivalent of her blanket sleeve. That said, she wasn’t going to risk getting caught outside her armor, for it would take too long to put it back on even if she got a perimeter warning first. However the point was moot, because when her alarm woke her it wasn’t the danger version, but rather the time elapse she had programmed. She woke quickly and cleared her head, realizing that she’d gone the entire 7 hours without incident.

Not trusting her luck, she pulled her helmet on and grabbed her pistol, slipping outside and having a look around before shrugging and heading back inside to relieve herself, melt and store some water, and grab a bite to eat before packing up and heading off again. Through it all she kept wondering what exactly was chasing her and if they were out there actively looking or waiting for her to get to the region where the waypoints were.

If they wanted to track her it wouldn’t be hard once they stumbled across her trail. The speeder had avoided any footprints from the site of the message/stun bomb, but from the landing site on, the snow was leaving too good of tracks for anyone to miss. Unfortunately that couldn’t be helped unless she wanted to try and lose pursuit by climbing up into the trees and traveling from branch to branch for a bit, but that would take forever and only get her a short distance…and there was no guarantee they wouldn’t pick up her new trail again, so she just decided to move on as she normally would and wait for the first sign of trouble before deciding what to do.

Knowing that if/when the hunters got to her she was going to be unable to rest, she took short running sessions and longer breaks, almost taunting the enemy to attack her. If they didn’t then she’d get rested up. If they did then she’d get to see who or what was after her well before she got to the waypoints and whatever trouble they represented.

But nothing came for her, and while she counted that as good fortunate it also worried her. Something was in the works, and Jyra preferred knowing what it was and combating it rather than waiting for it to jump her unexpectedly.

Three days later, when she was approaching within a few miles of the first of the destination waypoints, knowing that she was going to have to look around a lot since she didn’t have a precise, to the meter, position on them, a buzzing sound began to approach from in front of her…then a moment later she realized it was coming from every direction. Slipping out her pistol into her left hand she stopped running and fell silent, listening and looking for the source.

She didn’t have to wait long before movement to her left caught her eye and a miniaturized spark drone appeared through the tree trunks…followed by another, and another, and who knew how many more, for Jyra didn’t stay put and sprinted off in a random direction. When she came up on another of the floating devices she fired a plasma lance directly into it and it agreeably dropped to the ground with the single hit. A full Spark-class drone would take a whole lot more damage, but this baby version clearly wasn’t designed the same. She’d never seen this version before but guessed they held weaponry even if they lacked shields and she didn’t want to linger around long enough to find out.

Unfortunately the four others nearby didn’t let her go so easily, firing off pink stun blasts and catching her in the upper right arm and lower left leg as she ran, though many more shots missed due to her agility and the tree trunks that got in the way. Her form got sloppy, but between the glancing hits, her armor absorbing and then soaking the energy that got through it back out of her body, Jyra managed to stay on her feet and running until her left foot suddenly gave out.

She tumbled to the ground, with her pack luckily having been latched on otherwise it would have been sheared off. Next thing she knew a metallic little quadruped resembling a gopher ran into her helmet and she heard/felt another stun blast. Thankfully most of her face wasn’t touching the inside of the helmet and the energy was dissipated around her head save for a patch on top. Her forehead went numb, but her arm swung accurately and punched the little thing off her before it could deliver another jolt.

Jyra climbed to a knee and shot another one of the things before jamming her numb leg into the ground and feeling some sensation return. She knew she hadn’t taken a full hit thanks to her armor, but the slowing effect was bad enough as she limped a single, broken step that turned into a repetitive, ugly stride that gradually smoothed out as she spent most of her pistol’s ammunition on keeping a few of the little machines off her and downing two more of the floating spheres before most of her running gait returned and she was able to get moving at decent speed.

That kept most of the machines off her, but as she stole glances behind at the sound of the persistent buzz she saw that the mini sparks were keeping pace with her, but apparently not firing until they got a decent shot. Weaving between trees as she was they wouldn’t be able to accomplish that until they were right on top of her, and at the moment there were none of the little critters nipping at her feet, but she didn’t have time to take a thorough look at the ground and assumed they were following as well.

Forcing herself to try and outrun them, she sprinted as much as her foot would allow and eventually outpaced them as her feeling returned, though the pins and needles only added to her stumbling until she eventually beat them into submission and had her full range of motion back. Knowing that stopping was a really bad idea she ran on, outdistancing her pursuit and hearing the buzz diminish while another source grew louder to her right. Veering away from it she ran and ran, finding more sources that kept following her.

It couldn’t be heat tracking, for her armor blocked her body’s infrared glow. It could be auditory or motion, but the denseness of the forest should let her get away from that eventually, for with the snow under her feet she wasn’t making much noise and even she couldn’t see the pursuit behind her when she glanced back. It could just be her imagination, but she had the feeling they had an advantage on her and she was quickly running through the available options of how that could have been engineered.

A spotter up top couldn’t see through the trees most of the time, but it was possible. There could also be tracking devices imbedded in the forest in this region, but that would have meant a whole lot of them out here because they didn’t know exactly where she was going to travel through. Beyond that she didn’t think…

Jyra had a flash of insight and a sinking feeling in her gut, then used a mix of audible, blink, and mental commands to search through her limited HUD options. There was nothing on the map save from the waypoints and she had no connectivity to the planetary battlemap, but that didn’t mean this armor’s operating system was any different from the others.

Digging into the options on the run was slow going, but she managed it without running into any trees or tripping over rocks as she checked out her hunch.

“Son of a bitch! I hate you guys…” she said, deactivating her helmet’s transponder that had been sending out a tracking signal. As soon as she did that Jyra took a hard left and ran perpendicular to her previous course, hoping to shake the pursuit behind her. She didn’t stop to try and hide, not sure if the signal had been the only way they’d kept on her scent, but with the other groups around she had to zig and zag quite a bit before she got away from that incessant buzzing.

But still she didn’t stop, running away from the region she was tasking to travel to and just putting distance between her and the machines before eventually allowing herself to rest and taking up position behind a thick tree while she waited and watched. Jyra stayed there for more than 20 minutes before finally allowing herself to sit down and dig into her HUD options again, pulling up the log and finding that the transponder had been activated days ago at approximately the same time she’d completed the disc.

“That stupid button turned it on…I did it to myself again!” she said inside the confines of her helmet, then forced herself to stop. Without instructions the only way to figure out what to do was to experiment, and not pressing all the buttons would have led her nowhere. There was a lesson in this, she realized, and it was that there wasn’t always a clear cut solution to follow. No protocol to trust in. Jyra had to take action and deal with the consequences, for staying put and doing nothing was a road to nowhere. When inaction wasn’t an option, well, she was just going to have to play things by ear and dig herself out of whatever trouble she got into.

Jyra didn’t like that, but this mission was showing her the hard way that the odds of her guessing right and having a ‘clean’ run were laughable. She had to be a scrapper, and mentally kicking her own ass was only going to slow her down. The trainers had set up this ambush and she’d fallen for it, and would probably fall for more to come. If she could avoid a few it would be by prudence and luck, but when she did fall for one she had to act quickly and adapt. Self-recriminations wouldn’t help, and in truth she hadn’t made a misstep, for that would require her having known or been told at some point what to do, and in this situation she was flying completely blind.

“Live, learn, and move on,” she reminded herself, but for the moment she just pulled her helmet off and sucked air, letting her body cool down what heat wasn’t being dissipated by the internal regulation systems as well as testing a theory as to whether or not the machines could track body heat.

A few minutes later when the buzzing started again and grew rapidly stronger she had her answer, with Jyra putting her helmet back on again and running off out of range and into a wide circle that eventually put her back on course towards the waypoints and whatever lovely surprises they held for her.

5

July 28, 2896

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Jyra dropped the final prize in her scavenger hunt on the tabletop in front of her Archon instructor, her body still covered in her white armor but with her helmet tucked under her right arm and a slight breeze carrying in fresh snowflakes through the open doorway to the forest outside.

“For the record,” she said with a stern look on her face. “I hate you.”

“Have some trouble?” San-1299 said innocently.

“Psshh,” Jyra said, closing her eyes and shaking her head.

“Learn anything?”

“Quite a bit, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, sitting in a chair within the small modular firebase that had been dropped into this section of forest.

“How did you know I’d be here if you weren’t monitoring me?” she asked as the slowly falling precipitation outside blew in past her sweat-dampened hair and stuck in a few places.

“Perimeter scans. I only got here half an hour ago.”

“Hmmn…are we done, or is this just another waypoint?”

“This mission is complete, but you are far from done, Trainee.”

“How’d I do on time compared to the others?”

“Time isn’t a measurement on this one, simply completion.”

“But how did I compare?”

San looked up at her from his sitting position. “18th overall, but if time had been an element I believe the others would have gone faster.”

“Just curious as to how much trouble they had.”

“That I can’t tell you. We don’t monitor you, so unless you feel like telling stories, what happened to you out there is something only you know.”

Jyra leaned forward, setting her helmet on the table and propping her torso up on both extended arms. “So no one was controlling those little droids…or whatever they were?”

“Automation only.”

“You’ve programmed them well then.”

“They’ve been in the works for a while now, first designed to test the trailblazers in a special Trial. Since then we’ve found other uses for them.”

“You cleaning up the playground or leaving the ones I trashed out there?”

“The ones that are active will be recovered, along with anything else we spot, but we’re not searching miles of forest to pick up pieces.”

“Sloppy. And I will note that I found one of your earlier pieces with my boot.”

“If you didn’t see it that’s your fault. Plenty of rocks out there too.”

“It was buried in snow,” Jyra said in disgust, but she knew he was right. “It’s gonna get cluttered out there eventually.”

“If we had hundreds of thousands of trainees coming through it’d be a concern, but so far we’re only through a few hundred and this program is already 22 years old.”

“Funny. No one’s ever mentioned that before.”

“You’re training to become the elite of the elite…outside of the Archons anyway. Not even Arc Knights are being given the range and depth of training and responsibility that you are, if you complete the program.”

“Oh? I thought we were pretty much carbon copies.”

“Not at all. The Arc Knights have become public knowledge, more or less. The particulars, which you’ll learn about later, they don’t know, but their role is as limited as the Knights. They’re meant to dominate hand to hand combat, and the Arc Knights do so in much greater effect. You’re being trained to fight in a myriad of other ways, often quiet ways, which is why the few Arc Commandos out there now are active ghosts and we intend for it to stay that way. That’s why you get no special armor, whereas the Arc Knights do, color-wise anyway.”

“So you’re saying they’re just mega bruisers?”

“They’re smart mega bruisers.”

“And they didn’t have to go through this kind of bullshit scavenger hunt?”

“Nope. How are your food and ambrosia levels?”

“I’m alright.”

San nodded. “Some of the others came in on rationing. Two came in with nothing left and in not so good condition, but they chose to stick it out rather than hit the emergency transponder.”

“Would they have gotten a second chance if they did?”

“Let’s just say their course to becoming Arc Commandos would have veered down another path. You don’t get a second shot at this course…and you will never mention it to anyone else, save for other Arc Commandos that have already completed it. Understood?”

Jyra nodded.

“Just know, that this mission was a solitary affair, so you might want to keep what happened to yourself.”

“Why?”

“If you want to become an Arc Commando you need to get comfortable with keeping secrets from everyone else except yourself…and not because the rest of us are untrustworthy. We have to be able to trust one another, from the trailblazers down to the newest tech. But the thing with trust is that we don’t have to check up on each other. Like this mission, you will be entrusted to keep secrets of your own in order to aid Star Force. What they are only you will know, but it’ll be a backup in case we’re compromised someday.”

“Compromised? Are you talking technologically or traitors?”

“Both, though the latter should never happen. That said, we can never be sure. Take off your right glove.”

Jyra raised an eyebrow but did as told, disconnecting the armor piece and laying it on the table.

San raised his own hand. “With Archons you will learn that a handshake is more than a gesture. Take my hand.”

“Going to let me in on one of your tricks?”

“Just one,” San said, feeling her moist hand within his. “I want you to think of an alphanumeric sequence 4 digits long of your choice.”

There was a moment of silence, then San looked her in the eye and said aloud. “H93C.”

Jyra went wide-eyed. “What the hell? You can read my mind?”

San released her hand and waved his own fingers in the air before her. “It requires flesh to flesh contact for Humans, but with other races we can do it remotely so long as we’re not too far away.”

“How?”

“That’s a secret we will keep for now, but know that there are other races out there that can do the same. Fortunately none near the ADZ, but we know of at least one within the Nexus that has telepathic powers, and the Preema also have considerable ability in this area, to what extent we’re still not fully sure. I can tell you that it depends on the strength of the individual, and that the ‘power’ responds to training like other things.”

“You’re afraid of someone compromising security by being brain scanned?”

“It’s not a big worry at the moment, and Humans have some blocks that only allow flesh to flesh connections. That won’t protect the other races in Star Force, but we don’t think the Preema or the Dsevmat have touch telepathy. That should make Humans immune, and there are other ways to defend your mind, but the best defense is the person being interrogated not having the information in the first place.”

“Doesn’t exactly fit with the free flow of information that Star Force operates on.”

“We’re not going to start keeping people in the dark,” San assured her. “But there are already some secrets we have that even a Commando of your rank doesn’t know. It’s not even those I’m referring to when I’m referencing trust, but rather things that you will create going forward.”

“Create?”

“How do you feel when you’re depleted of ambrosia?” the Archon asked, seeming to change subjects.

“Not good,” Jyra admitted.

“Incapacitated?”

“Reduced,” she offered instead.

“Then if someone could destroy our ambrosia supplies we would be…reduced, and at a disadvantage. Unless someone hid a small stash that no one else knew about.”

San saw a spark of understanding in her eyes.

“That’s what I mean by trust. Arc Commandos will be trusted, encouraged, even expected to operate off the grid. It’s not a betrayal of oversight, for those who are trustworthy don’t require oversight. If we all know where everything is, then one of us being compromised, or even turning traitor, allows our enemies a battlemap. But if there are elements they do not know exist, or perhaps even do not expect to exist, they are at a disadvantage similar to what you just experienced on this mission.”

“I can only prepare for what is before me or what I know is out there,” Jyra translated. “Everything else I have to wait to deal with until it ambushes me.”

San raised a warning finger. “It’s not a matter of deception, not regarding other Star Force personnel. Trusting you means I don’t pry, and vice versa. Some people erroneously believe that trust means having no secrets, but in truth, trust means being comfortable with someone having secrets and having no worries about them betraying you. Secrets can be weapons, the more powerful my friends are the stronger Star Force becomes.”

“I get what you mean, and understand the significance of it, but other than playing packrat what do you have in mind for us to do?”

“Arc Commandos are given codes, some of which you are already learning to use, that will allow you to bypass security measures and go where you like. There will also be specialized equipment that Regulars don’t get, and some very specialized toys made specifically for Arc Commandos. But all of that isn’t the point. You have to learn to be sneaky on a regular basis, but to do so without disconnecting yourselves from the rest of us. Your ability to function as a team cannot be hindered. You have to learn how to switch from being a teammate to a rogue unit in a fraction of a second. It has to become a secondary mode that you can slip into, but the only way to train that skill is internally. We can’t train you to do that, or a lot of other stuff that Arc Commandos are mandated for.”

“So we each have to customize ourselves?”

“All people do, warriors more than others, and Arc Commandos even more so.”

“I’ve noticed something before, but didn’t think until now to ask. Why don’t you refer to us as soldiers?”

“I’m not a soldier. Neither are you.”

“I’m not?”

“Not if you’re in this program, no. Ideally no one within Star Force is, though that’s only partly true. What do you think a soldier actually is?”

“Someone who fights in an army.”

“That’s one definition…a simplistic one. Shut the door, it’s getting cold in here.”

Jyra turned around and hit the button on the inside of the door frame, with the view of the outside falling snow being eclipsed by the sliding panel.

“What a soldier actually is,” San explained, “is a hybrid. Take a normal person under the instruction of a warrior and the warrior passes on knowledge through instruction and training that the normal person would never have been able to accomplish on their own. Not because of a lack of time or resources, but because they don’t have an intuitive mind. They’re copy cats, people who grow strong from training but have no idea what they’re doing. They follow instructions but do not know how it is affecting them. I can write workouts for other people because I understand training. The people who do those workouts probably won’t, but by using my knowledge they gain power that they otherwise would never have achieved.”

“Then a warrior is…?”

“Someone who can self-navigate. All Commandos can to some degree, you’re not mindless machines following protocol and nothing else, which is why you’re part soldier, part warrior. Archons are full warriors, as are Arc Commandos.”

“Because we can operate off the grid without instructions.”

“Exactly. Soldiers are created by militaries. Militaries are created by warriors. Star Force doesn’t utilize traditional soldiers, like the lizards or Skarrons or hundreds of other races do. We recruit and encourage people to think, and if you can’t do that at least partially you don’t make the cut. That’s why Archons don’t usually refer to anyone within our military as soldiers.”

“We’ve always used that term as a matter of pride.”

“How so?”

“It separates us from the useless civilians…well, useless as far as combat. Techs aren’t useless. And technically the lazy ass freeloaders serve to increase the population, but being a soldier is a huge responsibility and honor. In a firefight we can’t rely on others to aim our weapons or micromanage our movements. We have to think on our feet and act quickly and effectively, else we’re probably going to get injured or killed. So I guess I’ve always thought of ‘soldiers’ as your definition of ‘warriors.’”

“Then I would amend your definition to include that soldiers operate partially within a framework that connects them to other soldiers, gives them missions, and takes a portion of the thinking process out of the equation. Warriors can and do fight in this manner, but they can also step away from it at will where a soldier cannot. If a trailblazer is commanding a naval fleet from within a nexus I trust they know what they’re doing and will follow their cues, which allows me to be more efficient in my tasks by taking some of the thinking involved and having another do it for me.”

“But if Arc Commandos operate off the grid,” Jyra said, making the full connection, “we have to do all the thinking, planning, and reacting ourselves. We can’t rely on anyone else.”

“And you have to thrive in that environment, not simply survive it.”

“And this mission was to prod those warrior circuits within me?”

“You can’t learn to improvise from others, or by studying. You have to grow through experience…hence we’re giving you an opportunity for that.”

“Without monitoring us to see if we’re succeeding?”

“You made it here, therefore you succeeded. How you did it is immaterial. Each Arc Commando will develop tendencies and skills. You’ll share some with each other, if you choose, and some you’ll develop exactly the same by coincidence. But having everyone operate in exactly the same way makes you predictable, and we don’t want that. Letting each of you develop individually, somewhat in secret, makes you more effective. It also allows you to discover new ways of doing things, which perhaps aren’t the best, but if you followed a protocol you wouldn’t experiment and discover them.”

“So chaos is our friend in this?”

“In the learning process, yes. The bulk of your training over the next year, if you can handle it, will be split between individual drills like this and a lot of co-op with one or two others. Arc Commandos aren’t just soloist, we want you to excel in small team functions as well, but do not get a team identity stuck in your head. You can share what you learn with each other, and we encourage you to, but you have to be able to be a rogue and a teammate at the same time with your peers. That’s not easy to do, even harder to explain, and it’ll be your ultimate hurdle to completing your training.”

“I have no idea how to do both simultaneously,” Jyra admitted.

“Most don’t at this stage. You have to develop both independently of each other before you can try and meld the two. It’s not something you pick up quickly, but we’ll be giving you a lot of headaches to learn from. Unless you gain the skills you won’t complete the final missions…but how you go about doing it is always up to you. One thing that you’re probably already aware of is that there are never any guarantees, and the missions going forward are going to emphasize that.”

“Oh goodie,” Jyra said sarcastically.

“Reality can hit harder than you think, especially in subtle ways. We’re giving you training sufficient enough to give you a taste of that. Going easy on you wouldn’t do you much good.”

“When this is all done and over with I might agree with you, but for right now I’m still pretty sure I hate you.”

San smiled. “That means the training is working.”

6

May 4, 2897

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Jyra held her inverted pose, hands steady on the floor and the blood rushing to her head being kept in check by years of training and prep to her body enough for her to actually be able to meditate while in the handstand. Right now she was in a good place, having cleared her mind and feeling the stress from the morning workouts and the mission the previous day seeping out as only a mediation would allow.

The trick was to remain active on a low level mentally, but not so deep that you fell asleep…which was why Jyra preferred the handstand, which made it impossible to nod off while one was keeping their balance, though at the moment it almost felt like she was anyway. If she stayed like this more than 40 minutes her head would start to pound and the inverted state would begin to get to her, but with each session that she did her elapsed time would increase, and had been doing so ever since her third year as a Commando when she finally learned to do a proper handstand that wasn’t requiring her constant concentration to hold.

Since then it’d become natural, though gravity still eventually won out and her insides would begin to complain at the inversion, but right now she had just enough tension in her body to maintain her form and simultaneously structure her mind enough that it gelled into a neutral state where she was listening to what was around her without making any noise, outside or inside her mind, and being an observer rather than a driver of events.

After a few more minutes she heard someone else enter the exclusive training area reserved for the Commandos invited to attempt the program, of which she was very near to completing. A few more weeks and she’d be at her final trial, but for today and tomorrow she was on a pure training block that was her responsibility to fill. At this level no one told her what workouts to do, for no one knew her body better than her and what it needed at this moment. Training was a way to customize oneself into what you wanted, and the only person that could truly do that for her was herself. Back in her maturia days the workouts had been provided so they’d get the benefits even if they didn’t understand what they were doing, but ever since entering this program she’d never been told to do so much as a pushup…rather given blocks of time such as this to work on her core fitness. The scheduled sessions were always new skill related, or for testing.

Jyra heard someone else join the six of them that were in the gymnasium, but this set of footsteps headed her way and seemed to stop nearby her empty corner where she was paralleling a wall without touching it. She opened her eyes slowly, then saw an upside down version of Keith standing in front of her.

“Need something?” she asked, holding the pose but mildly upset by the disturbance.

“You’re close to the end, aren’t you?”

“So I’m told.”

“How tough does it get?”

“Dude, I’ve told you before I can’t give away mission secrets.”

“I know that…and that’s not what I’m asking.”

“Then what are you asking?”

“Do you think I’ll make it through?”

Jyra sighed and gave up on her meditation, extending a foot back to the wall and kicking off and collapsing over into an upside down ‘V’ that she then stood up from, spinning around to face the slightly smaller man that was one of the newer faces here. “I have no way of knowing that.”

“But do you see any weaknesses that I should address?”

“Honestly I don’t know you that well.”

“Bull shit. If you’re like the rest of us you’ve studied the personnel files of everyone else here.”

Jyra raised an eyebrow. “That’s common practice?”

“You’re saying you didn’t?”

“No, it just didn’t come up in any of my previous discussions. In fact, most of my friends have moved on already.”

“Passed or washed out?”

“I don’t know of anyone who has washed out.”

“Really? I know two who have in the past month.”

“Who?”

“Mark Dalley and Henry Kirshner.”

“Washed out or quit?”

“I…don’t know, for sure. Either way they’re gone and they didn’t exactly stop by to state their reasons.”

“No one is allowed to talk upon departure. When someone passes their final trial they’re immediately removed. We know this going in.”

“What if they fail?”

“Then you wash out and don’t get a second chance.”

“Ouch,” Kevin said, realizing the implications of that. “Even Archons get a second shot at it.”

“Do they? I never heard more than rumors about their training.”

“I’ve got a few that are friends. One actually gave me the referral to this program. She said that if you fail the final Archon trial you have to start the program all over again with a new class…or quit.”

“Archons don’t quit.”

“I think that’s the point. Making them go through it all over again to test their commitment. But why the line of no return for us?”

“It makes sense.”

“How so?”

“You’re new, but you’ll get the vibe later in your training.”

“Vibe?”

“There’s an unofficial moto that’s been passed down through trainees here. ‘Do or do not. There is no try.’ I’d recommend you keep that in mind going forward.”

Kevin thought about it for a moment. “How does that apply to no second chances?”

“You have to find a way to make it happen.”

“That’s counter to everything Star Force stands for, training wise.”

“No.”

“No? What am I missing?”

“Arc Commandos are meant to be the elite, in ways that even I’m still learning. None of us are rookies, and we didn’t earn our way into this program, we were invited. I think the Archons are looking for people with special aptitudes and this training is meant to confirm those picks and enhance what we’re doing naturally. That’s pure speculation, but it’s been echoed by a few others that have come before me.”

“I thought everything could be trained, eventually? That’s why even the Archon tests can be taken an infinite number of times.”

“And yet those that do keep taking it over and over again don’t seem to ever make it.”

“I have no idea. Where did you hear that?”

“San. I asked him why we were chosen rather than tested, and he said they had an eye for talent that precluded the need for public testing…which would also defeat the purpose of keeping us a pseudo-secret. He said those who became Archons usually passed the test the first time, then mentioned something about ingenuity being difficult to measure, and if you can’t measure it you can’t train for it.”

“So why do they allow the extra testing?”

“I asked him that too. He said it was in case they were wrong and missed someone the first time.”

“That could apply here as well.”

“We didn’t come here untrained. Archons typically go in raw.”

“Some don’t.”

“And for some reason those late comers don’t end up setting records.”

“San tell you that?”

“No. I did some checking of my own.”

“You have access to Archon records?”

Jyra winked at him as she turned to the right and knelt down to pick up her water bottle. She stood up, took a long swig of it, then looked back at Kevin. “If you want some advice, I’d say stop worrying about prepping for anything specific and just try to be as well rounded in your skills as possible. They’re not going to tell you what’s coming, so there’s no point in running the possibilities through your head nonstop. Took me a while to learn that. Best to keep your mind empty until you have something current to chew on.”

Kevin frowned. “Weren’t we trained as Commandos to think ahead?”

“If you have something to work with. If you’re going in blind the mental games are just a waste of time.”

“And they keep us blind this entire program?”

“As far as I’ve come, yes.”

“Why?”

“I know now…and you will too, at the end.”

“That’s not helpful, but it is enticing.”

“While you’re here, could I entice you into some sparring?” Jyra asked, letting go her mediation and choosing to move on.

“Fair enough since I interrupted you.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Well if you put it that way, never mind.”

“No, no…you misunderstand. I’m the rookie here, obviously, and I’d like to help out the experienced ones if I can rather than being a drag. San said I should ask for help and advice, but I’d prefer more of a two way street.”

“We all do, so don’t sweat it. I usually end up sparring with bots because everyone else is busy, so if you’ve got some time I could use an opponent that can think.”

“Happy to. How hard do you want?”

“Don’t hold back,” she said, gesturing to an open ring nearby and walking towards it.

“Um, don’t mean to brag, but my Commando ranking is 18 levels above yours.”

“I know.”

“So you want to get beat up?”

“If you want to help me, give me a challenge.”

“As you wish,” Kevin said, stepping into the ring and flexing his shoulders a bit. “How do you want to do this?”

“I need some arm work.”

“Alright,” he said, mentally disconnecting most of his movement options and leg attacks/defenses and prepping himself to go at it with his upper body only in a series of drills that were competitive, but designed to test and train reflexes more than determine a winner. “Ready when you are.”

Two weeks later Jyra met San at a door in the training facility that she’d never seen the other side of and hadn’t been able to use her codes to bypass. She’d spent several hours sneaking around trying to find out what was behind all the locked doors and this was one of the few that she could never access…but to her dismay it opened for San simply as he walked up to it and motioned her to go inside.

She stepped through into darkness, walking into a room that only had the angular slab of light coming in through the door to guide her, then it disappeared plunging everything into darkness. A moment later the lights came on and a solitary pillar stood at the center of the room some 30 meters in front of her in the circular chamber.

“Your final mission,” San said, staying in the small tunnel between door and wall perimeter, “is to reach the top and retrieve the object there. You pass when you bring it back and place it in my hand. Clear?”

“Clear as mud,” Jyra answered as she looked around for potential hazards hidden in the open architecture. “Time limit?”

“Preferably sometime before lunch.”

Jyra rolled her eyes, but San was standing behind her and couldn’t see. “Anything else you’d like to add?”

“Nope.”

“Wonderful,” she said, standing still and glad she hadn’t already set off some sort of trap. The floor was solid and flat, or at least appeared to be. Same went for the walls and ceiling, but the pillar had grooves in it. Irregular pattern and easy to conceal crap in, but it was the smoothness that truly concerned her, for she suspected there was something beneath hidden doors or maybe even camouflaged via holograms out there…yeah, with so much empty space holograms were probably in use.

Not liking this one bit and knowing that failure would see her out of the program entirely, she took a small step forward and waited, getting no response. She took another, again without any reaction and San being totally silent only made the situation worse. Jyra had no idea where the attack would come from, but multiple options were flowing through her head as she thought about what might be here. There was no proof either way, so all she had to work with was experimentation.

To that end she stood still and pulled her shirt off, revealing the jog bra she had underneath as she wadded the garment up into a ball, tying the sleeves together so it wouldn’t unravel in the air turbulence, then threw it towards the pillar. It sailed in a clean arc and hit the side, bouncing off lightly to hit the ground nearby where it rolled to a halt without drawing any reaction whatsoever.

Jyra’s lip curled to the right in a curious frown. That left her with no option other than walking up to the pillar and taking her chances, so she took another baby step and proceeded with that tactic over the next few minutes, taking her precious time and trying to play this safe…but at the same time knowing from all her training that there usually wasn’t a ‘safe’ play to make and that she’d just have to wing this given the lack of data for her to use in order to minimize what were as of now unseen hazards.

Closer and closer she crept, with every step and lack of response making her more nervous all the way up to the pillar. She refrained from touching it and made a slow circle around it, inspecting the grooves carefully and looking for clues. Nothing appeared to be there, aside from useful finger and toe holds, but the lines and indents almost looked like a form of writing. If it said ‘don’t do that’ and she went ahead and did Jyra would be kicking herself for the rest of her life, so she took her time again and tried to decipher what she was seeing.

But it was no use, which left her with two options: keep trying and not rush into a bad situation…or rush into it and avoid spending forever here looking at something that wasn’t actually text. Either way it made sense as a way for her to display her stupidity and punish herself, which was definitely this program’s mojo. One thing she could do was pick up her shirt, so she walked around to it and retrieved her projectile, but before putting it back on she stepped back and hurled it up to the top of the 8 meter high pillar.

She tossed it several times, hitting different sections, but there was still no response. Eventually she untied it and put it back on, then walked up to the pillar and hesitated before touching it, half expecting to get a stun shock from contact. Jyra thought through everything for the hundredth time, but if there was something for her to figure out here she was either missing it or was being duped into wasting time prior to climbing the pillar. She could wait here as long as she wanted chewing on this, for rushing wasn’t worth screwing this up…but at the same time she would be waiting here indefinitely if there was nothing to find.

Once again there was no right course to follow, at least not an obvious one, so she gave herself a few more minutes to think before she started climbing. When nothing came of it she reached out gently and touched the pillar with her left index finger…again drawing no reaction.

Jyra bit her lip and committed herself to this, spotting finger and toe holds a moment before she reached out and got her weight off the floor, hanging a few inches up as she very slowly began to climb. The indentations weren’t deep, but they were much easier to manage than some of the climbing walls she’d been training on. Fortunately she didn’t have to search minutes for the next hold and could make her way up fairly fast if she wanted, but the Commando instead decided to take a ponderously long time climbing as she was looking for any deviation in the pillar or room, for something coming up behind her when she wasn’t watching would fit just right into this situation.

Every meter she climbed she grew more nervous, feeling the moment coming as the distance shrank. When she was hanging directly under the top she stopped, taking another long look around before finally sliding her fingertips up on top of the flat cap while holding on firmly with her other three grip points, expecting to be stunned or attacked in some way that would toss her off and onto the hard ground below.

When her fingers brushed the top…nothing happened. She pulled herself up a bit more and got her eye line over the edge, seeing a small blue orb sitting suspended in a field, either energy or magnetic, but it was hovering an inch over a slight depression. Now guessing that it was either protected or would trigger the fireworks when removed, Jyra moved up more and got her elbow on top before reaching out and waving a hand around the object in multiple directions, feeling for something invisible. Nothing triggered, so she bit her lip again, making sure her grip points were solid, then reached out and grasped the orb.

When her hand hit it she felt a bobble, but otherwise nothing happened. She held it in place for a moment, then pulled it away while glancing around. Wanting her hand free she tucked it awkwardly inside her bra, giving her a third breast, then got her hand back onto the grooves and began to slowly climb down, expecting something to jump or shoot her and monitoring what she could see of the walls and floor intently. Stopping just before she reached the bottom, Jyra extended her left foot out and tapped the floor, half expecting it to fall out beneath her.

Again, nothing happened and she got the feeling that she was about to run into an idiot trap just shy of completing the mission. San had said she had to get it back to him, and he wasn’t walking out to congratulate her. Nor had he moved from the short walkway, suggesting that the floor outside, or maybe the airspace, wasn’t safe. She wished there was a way to smoke out whatever was waiting for her other than using her own body, but that was a luxury she didn’t have in this situation.

She stepped down onto the floor, hanging onto a pair of grooves with her hands just in case, but when the floor didn’t disappear beneath her she began walking around the pillar until she was on a straight line to San.

That might not be a good idea. Maybe she had to approach from a flanking angle to avoid triggering the trap. Damn it, she wished she had something to work with here, but the chamber was exactly the same as it had been when she…

No, wait. Something was different. There was a smell that wasn’t there before. It was faint and coppery, almost undetectable, but it definitely had not been there before. Jyra didn’t recognize it but thought fast, wondering what it could be as the scent increased in intensity. She definitely did not like the feel of this and took another step forward, thinking hard.

Another step followed but still no response. Feeling like she was about to walk into a huge trap she continued forward, for the smell was increasing like a countdown. When she was a third of the way to San she abandoned the tiny steps and just walked normally, looking down and around and on her guard as much as she could be. She got to the halfway point and continued strolling on as the smell increased to the point that it felt like it was starting to clog her nose.

With the tension in her running at an all-time high she walked the last few meters and up in front of San who held out his hand. Glancing right and left she looked for something to attack her at the last moment, then cringed and pulled out the orb and reached it towards him…

The palm-sized ball landed neatly in his hand and his fingers curled up around it as she let go.

“Well done,” he said, tossing it into the air playfully and catching it again.

Jyra frowned. “That’s it?”

San nodded. “What were you expecting?”

“Oh fuck that!” she said, backtracking a few steps and closing her eyes in vexation before clenching her hands into angry fists and mentally kicking herself for letting him do it to her again. “What the hell is this?”

“Your final trial,” he said casually.

“What, climbing that?”

“I said it was your final trial. I never said it would be hard.”

“Fuck you, San. Do you have any idea…oh, damn it. I did it all to myself again, didn’t I?”

“Well, you certainly didn’t set any speed records, but you still completed the mission.”

“So the whole, ‘you only get one shot at this’ was just a load of bull?”

“No, you did only get one shot. If you can’t climb that and grab a stupid ball,” he said, tossing and catching it again for emphasis, “then there’s no way in hell you deserve to be a Commando, let alone an Arc Commando.”

“I really hate you now.”

“I did nothing.”

“That’s exactly why. You made me kick my own ass again,” she said, letting a bit of a smile slip. Through it all she hadn’t missed the fact that she had actually passed, worthless of a final test as this was.

“Sometimes the mission is a lot simpler than you think.”

“Final lesson then?”

“If you ever stop learning, then quit and go civie. We have to stay adaptable. Come on then, what are you waiting for. We’ve got stuff to do.”

“Like what?”

“Like making you an Arc Commando. It’s not just a title you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Follow me and find out,” San said, turning and walking off with the door opening before him again. He left Jyra there until she jolted out of her angry/happy stupor and jogged a few steps to catch back up with him as they left the final challenge chamber and its coppery stench, heading off to who knew where.

7

May 6, 2897

Solar System

Earth

The mantis Jyra and San were flying in set down on a pad atop an unremarkable bioharvest facility in Antarctica, with the Commando eyeing him questioningly.

“Can I talk now?”

San rolled his eyes. “Follow me,” he said as the boarding ramp opened and the two passengers got out, stepping down onto the thin layer of snow amidst a storm that was kept back via a bubble shield covering the landing pads. It was coming down so hard that the few times it had to be lowered to allow ships to come and go the falling snow had blanketed the surface. The temperature was frigid regardless, causing the Archon to shiver a bit when it first hit him, but he walked across the snowy tarmac to the nearest visible bunker that contained a lift down into the facility.

Jyra walked behind him, wrapping her arms around herself and wishing she had her armor on instead of a casual uniform, but they spent no more than 20 seconds outside before stepping through the door and into a lift shaft that wasn’t much warmer. They traveled down a few levels then a wall of warm air hit her as they stepped into the facility and San headed off without saying a word.

“Come on,” she whispered as they passed several workers. “Tell me something.”

“We’re not here for a snack,” he said, then continued on through the unfamiliar hallways making twists and turns as if he’d come here a lot. To her it just looked like a cramped facility maximized for volume output and turned into a cozy labyrinth as a result. She had no idea what they’d do in this place, but she had a sneaking suspicion it didn’t involve food.

Eventually they turned a corner and ran smack into a guarded checkpoint…with six Commandos in armor standing in front of a closed door. San put his hand on a scanner that identified him as an Archon mage, which gave him the authority to bring guests past the doors, though he’d need to have Jyra logged in as well, so he stepped to the side and pointed her to the scanner.

She raised an eyebrow when her ID popped up as a hologram, similar to San’s, except hers was labeled ‘Arc Commando.’ The guards exchanged glances with each other, but didn’t say anything. They let them both pass and San opened the door with a special code that he tapped into a rubrics cube-like color system.

“What you see beyond this point doesn’t exist. Understood?” San asked as he was punching squares with his fingertip.

“Understood,” Jyra said, her curiosity and eagerness spiking.

The doors pulled open and revealed a personnel lift, into which the pair walked but San didn’t turn around to face the door. Jyra mimicked him and kept her back to the guards, then the doors shut and they began to move, though neither could feel it given the IDF field insulating them from inertia. Should the lift fall they’d live through a crash…so long as something spikey didn’t come shooting up through the floor to impale them.

“Where are we going?”

“To the beginning,” San said cryptically. “What you’re about to see is why Davis began Star Force in the first place, and why we’re in constant danger.”

“Danger? From the lizards?” she asked, expecting that not to be right.

“No. They’re pushovers. You, me, every Human in existence descends from Zen’zat, which are an altered form of Ter’nat. Zen’zat were never meant to reproduce, so our psionic legacy has gone dormant over time. I was brought here to wake mine up when I became an Archon, and the same is true of the Arc Knights. More recently the Arc Commandos have joined us and a limited number of highly placed civilians. I have dozens of abilities, but all of us have a basic 7. Yours never developed because they were genetically inactive. By the end of today that will no longer be the case.”

The wall in front of them opened into a concealed set of doors leading them out onto a wide landing platform…save for they were underground in a very tall chamber, on the other side of which was an angled wall made of a green/black material that was unlike anything Star Force used and clashed with the walls and floor halfway up to it, then the footing changed over to the same material.

“Welcome home,” San said, starting to walk across the artificial platform built to nestle up against the tiered nature of the huge structure in order to create a flat plain that stretched off into the distance so far that Jyra couldn’t see the end of it, but she did see a couple of parked mechs nearby, both combat models, along with a host of industrial mechs, hover trucks, and smaller bits of equipment.

“What is this place?” she asked, wide eyed as a group of workers were shipping Star Force crates in through a gigantic open doorway, ostensibly from another lift shaft more accommodating cargo traffic.

“Davis found it buried underneath the snow of Antarctica and began a clandestine excavation project. It’s a massive pyramid miles wide, built of a technology that we are still trying to master. It’s been driving our technological progress all these years, but we still haven’t caught up yet.”

“These Ter’nat built it?”

“No. Ter’nat are a slave race that Zen’zat are pulled from, then enhanced to function as infantry for a conglomeration of races called the V’kit’no’sat. Their empire suffered a civil war when one of them rebelled and it caused the outer border regions to be abandoned. Earth was one of numerous worlds that held colonies out in what is the wilds as far as the V’kit’no’sat are concerned,” he said as they crossed from the Star Force deck plates onto the green/black stone. “A battle was fought here, in which the rebels won. They trashed the planet and left, but apparently a few Zen’zat were missed and became our ancestors. Abandoned here and choosing to reproduce against their mandate.”

“Mandate?”

“Zen’zat serve the V’kit’no’sat as individuals because the Ter’nat race is considered inferior. When one is upgraded into a Zen’zat, they are forbidden from reproducing in exchange for the enhancements given to them. Passing on those enhancements to offspring is a treasonous offense. The Zen’zat and their offspring would both be killed. If the V’kit’no’sat ever return to reclaim their lost colony they will kill us all.”

Jyra considered that for a moment, still not fully understanding but making several connections. The purpose of the Archons and the military throughout Star Force history now got a thorough revamp in her mind, leading to the obvious question.

“Where are they?”

“Most of their empire exists in the galactic core. We only have outdated maps, but it stretches to cover so much territory that it makes the Skarron domain look small.”

“Shit,” Jyra said as they approached the doors and a row of mongooses parked outside.

“Climb on behind me,” San said, sliding onto the nearest one. “It’ll take forever to get around inside if we walk.”

“Who are these other races that make up the…Vick.”

“V’kit’no’sat,” San repeated as she slid on behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He stared up the mongoose and slowly wheeled them over towards the huge doors, avoiding the light traffic coming in and out that kept the pyramid supply lines functioning. “Did the maturias mention anything about dinosaurs?”

“No, but I’ve heard of them in some video games.”

“The dinosaurs are the V’kit’no’sat. We found their skeletal remains long before this place. Everyone thought they were primitives, but in truth they’re superior to Humans.”

“Superior how?”

“Smarter, stronger, sometimes faster, and a whole lot bigger,” he said as they passed through the doors and Jyra could see the size of the interior hallways. “Hence the supersized infrastructure.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, taking it all in as San drove them on.

“Nope. And even after eight and a half centuries, with this place and their database fully at our disposal, we still haven’t caught up with them tech wise. Psionics, however, we’re a bit more even. We even have a few advantages that we don’t…or more accurately, the trailblazers do. That’s a story we’ll get into later. The reason you’re here, in addition to letting you see all this, is to use the medical tech to give your genetics a scrubbing and get rid of all the rust. It’ll also enable you to grow the tissues you’re missing without complications and do so in a matter of seconds. We can’t match that yet with our own tech, but every year that passes we come closer.”

“So you’re saying we all have dormant superpowers?”

“The basic 7, yes. Upgrades have to be earned through the unlocking of genetic triggers. You have the potential for those, but the Archons have figured out how to share them with each other. When I reached padawan rank I was given a lot of new ones by my mage master. For Arc Knights and Arc Commandos it’s different, and to be honest we’re not totally sure about where both will go, but that won’t matter to you for a long time, because Archons have to be a mid level ranger before they’re even physically capable of sharing abilities. We’re not supposed to be able to do it. It’s a glitch we stumbled upon, and yet another reason why the V’kit’no’sat will kill us on sight.”

“How many people know about this?”

“Every Archon and a lot of upper level personnel. Pretty much those who need to know and those we trust not to spill the secret.”

“And there haven’t been any leaks in 800 years?” she asked disbelievingly as San drove them up a ramp next to what looked like oddly shaped, giant-sized stairs.

“About this site, no. But people know Archons have powers, even if we never officially confirmed that.”

“Do our allies know about this place?”

“No. And only Humans within Star Force know of it…save for the Dragons.”

“There are dragons?”

“Long story. And it’s something most Archons don’t know about either.”

“So you can’t tell me?”

“I can, and will, but there’s a lot for you to absorb and I don’t want to jump ahead to the details when you’re just learning the basics. In fact, you’ll know a few things that most lower level Archons don’t after we’re done, so keep them to yourself.”

“What about other Arc Commandos, or Arc Knights?”

“Arc Commandos you can discuss anything with. Arc Knights have a different mandate and do not have a full picture. They’re brought here and let in on the secret when they get their genetic wash, but their focus is on dominating hand to hand combat. Yours is more broad in scope and you need to be in the know.”

“Makes your pain in the ass training worth it,” she said, looking around at what appeared to be a busy city with Human techs and a few Archons moving about everywhere. “Almost.”

“If it was easy anyone could do it.”

“I’m not going to argue with you today.”

“That’ll be new,” San said, transitioning over to another up ramp. “The Zen’zat levels are near the top. After you get your treatment we’ll spend a couple days exploring and get you up to speed…somewhat.”

“How much danger are we in at the moment?”

“We never know. The V’kit’no’sat are too far away for us to spy on, and we’ve decided not to try, else we risk revealing ourselves. We’re basically holding our breath and hoping they don’t show up today, and it’s been that way ever since day 1.”

“That’s crazy.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“How far ahead of us are they, military wise?”

“We can scratch them now navally, and Zen’zat vs Archon is pretty much even, but bottom line is we can’t stand toe to toe with them and hope to survive. If they come we have to run, and will probably lose a lot of people anyway.”

“I thought you said we had their database? What’s in it?”

“Everything. But their tech is so advanced we’re still trying to figure out the intricacies of it. Now that we have the star forges we’re making more rapid progress, but we’re not going to get caught up anytime soon.”

“What’s a star forge?”

“Mining facility that pulls rare materials out of stars. The V’kit’no’sat weapons and other tech require compounds that we couldn’t synthesize or mine prior to the star forges’ development.”

“Where are they at?”

“When you get your real codes you’ll be able to fish that out of our databases. The ones you’ve been using in training were limited.”

“I get the feeling that Arc Commandos are a bit higher level than I thought.”

“You’re an experiment,” San said honestly. “What you become is ultimately up to you. We’re giving you our tools and knowledge with a much smaller focus. Even though there are only a few hundred of you right now, and there are over a million Archons, we don’t have enough Archons to accomplish all we need to. Some of those duties, specifically strike missions, will be given over to you, but what your eventual incarnation will be is still up in the air.”

“So you’re basically giving us all the cool toys and saying ‘impress us?’”

“Pretty much.”

“No pressure,” Jyra said as they passed, or rather were passed by a group of what she assumed were Archons out of their armor and running in formation along the traffic flow, then darting off across a huge cavern that had Star Force buildings set up inside it.

“One step at a time, youngling. And your first step is getting your basic psionics. After that things begin to get interesting.”

“And this isn’t?” Jyra said, referring to everything around her.

“Right now you’re the equivalent of a tourist. Once you get your psionics you’re going to see things in entirely new ways…especially considering one of them, called Pefbar, allows you to see in every direction simultaneously.”

“How?”

“It works like a sensor, and there’s no point in trying to explain it now. You’ll have your own inside the hour.”

“An hour? This treatment works that fast?”

San laughed. “Remember this moment when we discuss flash growth and ascensions later. Your tissue growth is going to be painless.”

“And yours wasn’t?”

“Like I said, things get interesting, and very complicated, going forward.”

“I’m game.”

“Good, because you’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

8

May 12, 2897

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Jyra rode her speeder just above the treetops, save for these weren’t covered with snowdrifts. While a lot of her field training had been in the frozen forests of the planet, a few missions had been to the warmer regions but none had been to the southern hemisphere’s region 3 that she was now zipping through. The forest was denser here than anywhere else on the planet and bordered on jungle humidity, making it impossible to fly through the trees at any speed.

She couldn’t feel the heat in her armor, but that wouldn’t be an issue either way today. She was no longer being sent on training missions, for with her Tier 1 psionics being unlocked and her enlightening tour throughout the V’kit’no’sat pyramid, her time in the program was at an end. When she had returned to Corneria it was as a full Arc Commando with a new assignment.

That assignment hadn’t been spelled out, though San had insisted that this wasn’t another test. He said she’d get all the information she needed when she arrived on site, so Jyra had grabbed a speeder from within one of the cities that ringed the region 3 forest and headed for the coordinates he’d given her.

It was a long way to travel, but on a speeder it was easy enough. A few hours of zipping over the treetops brought her to the upper third of the unused wilderness area where she saw nothing on the battlemap. Not a city, building, outpost, or relay beacon. It was called a wilderness area for a reason, and there was nothing here as far as the interlinked Star Force comm systems could tell, but San had also given her a code to use at these coordinates, so when Jyra hit the approximate area she typed it into the speeder’s comm board and transmitted it in a single pulse.

She got an instantaneous reply, also a single pulse, that updated her battlemap with a ghost icon…meaning that it wasn’t an active signal, but a memory of the location the pulse had identified. It wasn’t exactly matching the coordinates that San had given her but fairly close by and only took Jyra another 3 minutes to get there.

The Arc Commando slowed to a stop, looking down at the thick trees and seeing nothing despite sitting directly on top of the waypoint that was on both her helmet and her comm board. She sent out the signal again, but this time there was no response. Jyra tried twice more but nada. The transponder was silent.

“Single use code. Savvy,” she said, looking for a place to push down through the treetops. There was literally nothing below her, so she flew off a hundred meters or so to the south and found a nook that she very carefully lowered her speeder into, finding it a shallow depression rather than a shaft to the ground.

“Crap,” she said, not seeing where to go and also not wanting to just try and break branches that she couldn’t see through the leaves…or could she?

Concentrating, Jyra was able to turn her new Pefbar on and see all around her. The sense still freaked her out a bit and only stretched a couple of meters, but it let her see each and every leaf, including the branches they were attached to below her. Her mind was overwhelmed with sensor detail and she couldn’t hold it for long, but she got just enough information that when she did release it back to her normal senses she knew to move the bike two meters to the left then depress one.

Jyra sank on her metal steed with a sea of leaves moving in around her standard issue, dirty white armor as she turned her spherical sight on again and plotted her next bit of movement…which was forward a meter and a half, then to the right one. After that her head sank into the leaves and out of the sunlight, with her continuing to navigate down through the thick canopy until she finally got her speeder into the void below.

Very little light made it this far down, leaving it perpetually dark with just a green glow emanating from above like a nightlight. Aside from a bit of hardy grass there was no underbrush, just tightly packed tree trunks that looked like toothpicks for their lack of limbs this far down. Jyra had to move slowly, making constant twists and turns, but she was able to find enough gaps to fly between the trees and back over to the waypoint.

“Hiding in anonymity, huh?” she said as she parked her speeder on the ground, deactivating the anti-grav after extending the landing gear. She slid off the pommel seat and walked a few steps over to the simple circular hatch just sitting on the forest floor. It wasn’t camouflaged at all, but it was flat to the ground without so much as a lip sticking up, meaning you’d have to be standing next to it in order to see it, and with hundreds of miles of forest to search through, this was pretty much as hidden as you needed.

Still, Jyra thought you could have covered it with dirt and left a smaller marker up top.

The newly minted Arc Commando took a knee and slid her armored fingers into the small lip near the edge, finding an overhang to give her enough grip to lift the circular plug up a few inches but no further. It took her a moment to realize it was on a pivot point, then she rotated it around to expose a short shaft and ladder that bottomed out about 4 meters below, though she had to use her nightvision to see that, for the forest was too dark and her Pefbar wouldn’t reach that far.

Jyra stepped over the edge and climbed down the ladder, leaving the hatch open for the moment, and eventually stepped off into a small room barely wider than arms’ reach. A glowing marker on the wall was visible, but only in nightvision, highlighting an area with a simple circle. She walked over to it and ran her hand along the wall, finding nothing there. Feeling like this was another test, she used her knew psionics to look into the wall where she saw a small interior switch.

Jyra bit her lip. Her telekinesis, which the V’kit’no’sat called ‘Lachka,’ was very hard to use and she had almost no power in it at all at this point, but apparently the switch had been designed with that in mind. Using her Pefbar to watch and control the Lachka, she reached past the solid wall and just brushed the stick-like switch inside. It moved slightly, but apparently that was enough, for a section of the left wall pushed inward then transitioned to the side revealing a lit hallway that stretched on a considerable way before dead-ending.

“Cool,” she said, walking down the very narrow walkway that would force anyone passing another to scrunch up against the walls. The ceiling was low too, so much so that a Knight would have to duck down…or a Zen’zat, for they were the size of Knights.

When she got to the end of the hall it had a stairway descending to the right, which she followed down for some distance as it curled around itself in a boxy corners, eventually dumping her out into a wide room that had a thick, but open door. It was what one would call a ‘blast door’ but at the moment it wasn’t attempting to keep anyone out, and considering the two turrets built into the walls flanking it, she was pretty sure this was a kill box that could be used in case of attack to defend whatever was beyond this point, for all she could see was a short hallway leading to what looked like another dead end.

Jyra walked past the retracted blast door, seeing that it was about 14 inches thick. Overkill, unless what was down here was really important.

When she came to the end of the hallway there were two staircases headed off in either direction, but they were only a few steps deep and allowed her the view of a large room in each. She went right, then realized that it was actually one giant room that the hallway was blocked from view of.

There was no one here, but it was definitely meant to be lived in. There were couches, vid screens, tables, stools, what looked like a kitchen and storage cabinets. Jyra walked further in, then saw that on the backside of the stairway ‘T’ was a wall with a holographic scene playing out from Star Wars, particularly the battle of Nephosis in episode 19, but when she got within a meter of it the sight of Jedi fighting off rock monsters disappeared and a real life Commando replaced the fiction.

In front of him were three colored orbs, which Jyra knew were message prompts. She touched the green one first, for basic information was usually colored as such.

“Hello, Arc Commando. This facility is what we refer to as the ‘Nest.’ Archons have their sanctums, we have our nests. This is where you will do the bulk of your psionic training, though in a pinch you can also use the sanctums. You have code access, and if a lower level Archon questions you being there, just show them your psionics and that should confuse them enough to not bother you. Right now only rangers and above know about Arc Commandos, so feel free to masquerade as an Archon in order to get your workouts done in the field that require the special training equipment for your psionics.”

“But usually we will come to a facility such as this to do the majority of our training in private. This is where we develop and hone our skills, as well as share experience and help one another when we cross paths. The Archons have left instruction manuals on the psionics, but they will not teach us how to use them personally. They want us to develop them on our own, tailoring their use to our needs, and perhaps discovering a new trick or two that we otherwise wouldn’t if we just patterned after them.”

“The bottom line is, this is Arc Commando territory only. Even the Archons don’t come here and it’s completely off the grid. No battlemap location, and information is acquired through a landline tap of the closest cities so there is no signal to trace back here. We’re ghosts here, and intend to keep it that way, so don’t ever bring guests.”

“Beyond that we are Arc Commandos and charting our own path. Learn from those that have come before you while also figuring things out on your own. The Archons didn’t develop their corps quickly, and neither will we. Patience, persistence, and ingenuity will shape our legion going forward. Add what you can and welcome to the club.”

The hologram ceased talking, so Jyra hit the yellow button and the image of the armored man disappeared, replaced by lists of data. She realized they were an instruction manual of sorts…and 259 pages long. Not going to sift through that all right now, she pressed the red button and a holographic schematic of the facility replaced the data, with her realizing that this room was but the tip of the iceberg. It was as big or bigger than an Archon sanctum, and from the look of it held numerous training chambers, some of which were labeled for things that she wasn’t familiar with yet, though the track and pool were obvious.

“Damn, we’ve got a halo track here?” she said with a laugh, knowing those were only for individuals too fast to use a standard one. Jyra zoomed in and out on the map, wondering how the hell they had built this place without tearing up the forest above. Remembering what the man had said, she moved around the schematic until she found the landlines, which were buried cables stretching out in three directions from the facility all the way across the forest to the bordering cities.

Which meant someone had dug tiny tunnels across hundreds of miles in order to keep this place off the map. And now that she looked at it, the upper coating of the facility was made of sensor dampening armor, meaning it would be very difficult for orbit or aerial scans to detect the difference between this place and the bedrock it had been carved out of.

“They certainly threw in all the bells and whistles on this one,” she said, disconnecting her helmet and tossing it onto a nearby couch, then thought twice and decided to shed all her armor before she started to have a look around. The pieces of it ended up on the seat cushions as well, then Jyra found one of two other entrance/exits to the commons room and began walking the corridors in her casual uniform, wondering if anyone else was here.

It wasn’t until a few hours later, when she started to rifle through the more than ample food stores that she found the ‘welcome button,’ for that’s literally what it was labeled on the wall behind the holographic Star Wars battle. It was oddly hidden there, for she only saw it during a few sequences where there were gaps to see through.

She poked her head behind the active hologram, then saw a few sentences explaining what it was for. Press the button and a signal would go out through the entire facility letting them know someone had just arrived, so she did just that and decided to hang out here until someone came to her. That said, she knew there were only a few hundred Arc Commandos, so she wasn’t sure how many there would be stationed here for training.

As she walked over and sat down on the couch, pulling up the vid feeds from the cities and finding a movie to watch she realized her speeder was parked up top…and she hadn’t seen any others. With a frown she walked over to a terminal in the room and began going through the database she had found earlier looking for some type of hangar, or at least a protocol for what she should do with it.

When she couldn’t find anything in the search function she went back over to the hologram and tried there, rifling through the pages of instructions that seemed to be for newbs like her. They weren’t indexed, so she had to go through them line by line and decided to make an event out of it, for everything she came across seemed to be of importance.

Before she found out about ‘parking’ she came to a section that indicated they had to check in and out of the facility for it was rarely used. If someone was here a small orb would appear at the top of the hologram. Jyra let it go back to the Star Wars sequence just to be sure, but there were no floating orbs on top of it, meaning that she was here alone.

She read a bit more, then found the command that would log her in. It was another hidden switch underneath the ‘doorbell,’ and when she flicked it with her Lachka a single orb popped up above the hologram no matter what setting she was using. Another switch over the doorbell would log her out and she tried it just to make sure it worked, then logged herself back in, with it only being a presence indicator rather than an ID. No logs were kept as to who was here or not, given that this was a clandestine facility.

“Well then,” she said, thinking about what to do next. There were no instructions about that, and it seemed like she was on her own from here on out. She decided to finish reading the instructions until she came across he query, then went back topside to move her speeder inside a concealment canopy situated half a mile off. Once it was tucked away she headed back down, closed the hatch behind her, then stripped down to her underware, grabbed some sugar sticks from the pantry, and laid out on one of the couches and decided to make a movie night of it…both as a chance to take a rare off day, and to test the nagging feeling in the back of her mind that she was still being watched and evaluated.

She didn’t think it was true, but being totally off the grid and without assignment seemed so odd she needed to poke it with a stick to make sure it was truly her imagination…and an imitation of laziness would be the best way to draw a reaction.

In the meantime she’d just visibly chill, while trying to work through in her head what her next move would be. If she really was alone and free to do whatever, then she needed a plan and a damn good one. All throughout her training she’d been goaded into figuring things out on her own, and it seemed like this was now going to be put to practical use. She had to learn to use her psionics and turn them into both weapons and tools…and how she did that was totally up to her.

But first things first. Pretend to be a lazy twit and do all sorts of things a soldier/warrior would never do and get a feel for this newfound freedom by being a bit stupid, then if she was still left alone, get to work on developing the skills that she never thought she’d have. Superpowers were for Archons, and they’d deemed her worthy enough to share.

Jyra wasn’t totally sure what that meant going forward, but she expected it to be something big…though getting to that point seemed to be another challenge without a clear cut path. One thing she knew was that whatever she did, she needed to do it her way from here on out.

Now she just needed to figure out what her way was…

9

November 22, 2897

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Jyra stood in one of the training chambers in the Nest, this one tailored for some wild Lachka work that she was nowhere near ready to try, but it also had some novice settings and the one she was using now had a small thud suspended in an IDF field three meters in front of her. Where she stood was outside the field, with the transition being invisible to the eye but noticeable in her Pefbar. It was a thin barrier, but the energy made a small ripple in her spherical vision, which at this point she’d learned to focus into a cone to get greater range.

Thanks the IDF, there was no gravity effect on the thud and it floated aimlessly with her tugging on it with her telekinesis. One of the first tricks she’d learned from the Archons’ notes was that she could tie the mental commands to a physical stimulus, and Jyra had been relying on that heavily in her early training as both her skill and raw power grew. Now she was trying to undo that handicap, for her mind didn’t want to use her Lachka without the physical commands.

That too had been detailed by those who had developed these powers before her, but oddly enough it was virtually unmentioned in the Archons’ notes. Rather it was in a much smaller collection of data compiled by other Arc Commandos, and to which she would be adding when she learned anything of merit. Apparently they had encountered the same problem, in which their mind had developed a ‘thinking’ mode and an ‘acting’ mode with the Lachka. The physical theatrics separated the two, and they had also had to unlearn the distinction early on, for a few that didn’t had a world of trouble figuring out how to do things without having a hand or twitching an eyebrow to get it to engage.

Getting it to engage was the problem, for as Jyra made the little thud move ever so slightly away from her she intended to curve it to the right also…but the command never executed. Instead the mashable marble continued towards the back of the cylinder where the edge of the IDF was. When it got there it would pass through and fall to the ground, so Jyra reluctantly raised her right arm and motioned for it to return. Her Lachka engaged without fail and brought it back, allowing her to spin it around in a corkscrew without too much trouble. It was amazing how much control she had by using her arm, despite the fact that it was purely for theatrics. The tissues in her mind were emitting the Lachka field, and she’d wished she started learning to control it directly from the beginning.

It had been so difficult to just get a twitch that using the physical coordination had been recommended by the Archons, but they hadn’t said anything about untraining it later. Maybe they didn’t have this issue or maybe it just wasn’t a big deal for them. They were Archons after all, and Arc Commando or not, they were still far beyond her in multiple disciplines. Perhaps all that intellect they sported made this easy, but for her it had become a pain in the ass.

When she steadied the thud inside the field she let her arm drop back to her side and focused only with her mind, missing the first 3 times before the fourth finally took and started it floating towards her. She tried to get it to move to the right into a crude, box-like corkscrew but couldn’t get it again until the third try. After that it took six tries to make the next turn, then four for the next with the thud getting closer and close to the edge as it spun outward.

But at least she was able to do it every now and then, even if it wasn’t reliable at this point. That meant she could train it, and in time it would get easier…or so the other Arc Commandos had noted.

Just as Jyra was about to use her arm to keep it from flying out again a tone sounded in the chamber that spooked her enough that she lost her lock on the little thud. She glanced up, pondering what the sound was as the thud dropped out of the invisible field and fell towards the floor.

The Arc Commando reacted instantly, reaching a hand towards it and pulling it towards her just in time to avoid it hitting the ground. It flew up into her palm and she clamped down on it tightly with her hand, smirking with the realization that that was both the fastest and strongest pull she’d managed to date, and all on instinct. Maybe her problem was she was overthinking this too much.

But to the sound her mind returned, with one possibility rising to the forefront. She knew there was a ‘doorbell’ but she’d never heard what it sounded like. If that was the case that meant someone else had arrived, which would be her first guest since she’d arrived at the Nest 6 months ago.

Jyra chucked the thud off to the side of the chamber where it would eventually roll into a collection moat, then hit the ‘off’ controls on the way out before accelerating into a jog and heading back through the huge facility to the commons room to find an armored figure looking at the hologram with the introductory data and one tiny orb floating about it indicating her presence here, though she doubted he knew that if he was also a newb.

“Hello?” she said as she stepped inside, prompting him to turn around and stare at her through his solid helmet that gave no clue as to his identity. If she’d been wearing her armor it would have identified him, but on most days she was in casual or training gear, with today being the later.

“Hello,” he mimicked, though his voice was a bit altered by the speakers to give it that telltale Commando tinge.

“You fresh out of training or one of the vets?”

“Just got back from Antarctica.”

“Well then, take your armor off and have a seat,” she said, pointing to a couch while she jumped over the edge of another and laid down with her feet up. “I’ll fill you in on what I can. I’m about 6 months ahead of you.”

A pop sounded as he disconnected his helmet and pulled it off, revealing short black hair and pale skin, but a face she wasn’t familiar with. “You’re Jyra?”

“That’s right. Have we met?”

“Not exactly,” he said, pulling apart his armor and stacking it in a neat pile on the floor. “I saw you a few times in the hallways and other people mentioned you.”

“Sorry, I should remember you, but my mind’s not clicking.”

“That’s alright. It’s not like we were there to socialize. What am I here for?”

“To chart our own course, apparently,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and looking him over. “Nobody was here when I arrived and I’ve been alone ever since. Training and learning, mostly.”

“Is there anything else?”

“There can be,” she said ambiguously. “It seems this facility is completely unmonitored. I did some crazy stuff early on just to test that theory and nobody came to give me a lecture.”

“Six months alone?”

“Yeah. I thought there’d be more Arc Commandos popping in and out, but nada so far.”

“Is that what this place is for?”

“It’s called the Nest and is a huge training facility reserved explicitly for us. I haven’t received a single order since I arrived, and I don’t think I will until I figure out how to use my psionics and the other stuff they have here.”

“What stuff?” the man asked, finally free of his armor and sitting down on the couch.

“A lot of cool toys I’ve never seen before, and a list of codes that will make your head hurt. The ones we got in training were the small ones, it seems. These are very high access and extremely hush hush. Do you have a name?”

“Oh, sorry. My bad. I’m Linty. Linty Innon.”

“Jyra Hemman, if you didn’t catch my last name.”

“No I didn’t. So Jyra, what kind of crazy stuff were you talking about?”

She shrugged innocently. “The kind of stuff you don’t have to explain when no one is watching.”

“So me being here is going to crimp your style, then?”

“Unless you want to join in.”

“Hmmn, I feel obligated to ask what we’re supposed to be doing first.”

“Did you come alone?”

“Yes.”

“Speeder?”

He nodded.

“There’s a hidden parking lot nearby. I’ll show you where in a moment, but for now you need to trust me.”

“Ok…”

“Stand up,” she said, doing likewise.

“And?” he said, looking at her and seeing that they were spot on the same height.

“Take off your clothes.”

“What?”

“Trust me,” she said in all seriousness.

He eyed her for a moment, then decided to just go with it, suspecting some sort of test. When he pulled his shirt off Jyra did the same, mimicking his disrobing until both of them were standing there in the nude.

“How do you feel now?” she asked.

“Odd. What’s this about?”

“Turn around and walk to the edge of the couch.”

“An explanation would be good.”

“Walk,” she insisted.

He sighed, then turned around with Jyra moving in a flash as soon as his eyes were off her. She headed the other way, grabbed two throw pillows off another couch, and winged one at him.

It hit him in the head, spinning him around on instinct. “What is this?”

“Defend yourself,” she said, winging the other one at him then grabbing for more elsewhere in the room.

“Are you serious?” he said in a laugh.

“Defend or be pummeled,” she said, picking up a pair and, instead of throwing them at him, ran towards him and whacked him across the face with one melee style. He ducked the next slash and dove onto the couch, grabbing one of his own before stepping into the throw pillow fight with both of them hitting each other with more accurate and skilled attacks than any sleepover could hope to imagine.

“Is that the best you’ve got, rookie!” she yelled, bringing both in front of her and using them as a battering ram to knock him back onto the couch, then she stood over him and whacked him multiple times before he leg swept her and she fell onto the floor giving him enough time to roll over the back of the couch and escape.

He laughed uncontrollably. “I don’t know what this is about, but I’m really starting to like you.”

“Good,” she said, chucking another pillow his way. This time he caught it out of the air and added it to his own arsenal as Jyra backtracked and went to find more ammunition. When she came back to him the pillow fighting got more serious, with her trying to take him down and him noticeably resisting. She feigned an opening, let him knock her legs out from under her with a pillow whack to the thigh, then she did a somersault curl around his legs to half get behind them, then she knocked his left slightly askew with a pillow hit before snaking her arms through and around his ankles enough to dump him backwards onto the not so soft floor.

A moment later she was on top of him and wresting to pin his arms to the ground, but the best she could do was get them over his chest. She locked him up there, then stared him down.

“How do you feel now?”

“Very confused,” he said with a smile.

“This isn’t all play, I promise.”

“Then what is it?”

“A shortcut.”

“To what, pregnancy?”

Jyra snorted. “Hell no. Besides, we’ve both had our genes reworked so that isn’t possible.”

“You said something about trust earlier. Or is this just the result of you spending 6 months alone and going stir crazy?”

“Maybe a little, but you know damn well we’re training to operate solo for as long as necessary.”

“So then why are we inches away from making magic?”

“Like I said, it’s a shortcut. I’ll admit, it’s a very odd shortcut, but then again that’s the point. I never would have considered anything like this before, but it all comes back to trust. What did San tell you about our mandate?”

“Are we really going to have this conversation like this?”

“Yes, and you’re going to like it. Now answer my question.”

“He said a lot of stuff, actually.”

“What did he tell you about trust?”

Linty frowned, trying to draw a connection and think this through, whereas a normal person would have been just happy to have a hot, nude chick on top of him.

“That the Archons trust us to operate off the grid, no oversight.”

“And how are we supposed to operate?”

“Like ghosts.”

“No, I mean how are we supposed to do things when they’re not watching?”

It took him a moment, then his eyes flashed in realization. “This is your idea of how Arc Commandos should, what, say hi?”

“That’s not a bad idea,” she admitted.

“You are crazy,” he said in a nice, almost complimentary way.

“No, just savvy. I’ve had 6 months to think this through, though I’ll admit only coming up with this idea in the past few minutes. If there’s a fun way to do something, why do it any other way?”

“I’m still waiting on the ‘something’ bit. How does this mission relate, or do you just really need to get laid?”

“We’re not fucking,” she said apologetically. “That would inhibit thinking. I just need us exposed and on the verge to get us fully awake.”

“Oh, I’m definitely awake.”

“Good, now just listen and learn. Or rather, unlearn. I was sent here with no instructions, and I’m assuming you are the same way. We’ve been tasked to operate on our own, and how we train to use our psionics and everything else past this point is totally on us. The Archons aren’t guiding us anymore, we’re on autopilot. It finally dawned on me a while back that they’re not interested in making us into mini Archons, they want us to become something different. Something unique that we create ourselves, so we shouldn’t be holding to Archon protocol, or a lot of other stuff we’ve picked up over the years. First in the maturia, then Commando training, and in the field, and then the training you just finished.”

“So you think we should be sexually promiscuous?”

“Wow. That word is such a killjoy.”

“You know what I mean. The Archons have a strict code, and Commandos usually go along with it.”

Jyra pulled one hand off of where she had his pinned and tapped him on the forehead. “And there’s where you’re wrong. The Archons don’t follow a code.”

“No?”

“No rules. San told me that himself when I asked. He said rules are for the young, the inexperienced, and the untrustworthy. Arc Commandos are none of those.”

Linty looked at her a moment, feeling some semblance of logic working beneath her red locks and intense eyes…then it finally clicked.

“It’s a question of loyalty to the mission, which for us was answered beyond a shadow of a doubt before we became Arc Commandos.”

“Go on.”

“We don’t need the restrictive guidelines and code that helped get us here. In fact, it will probably hinder us in living up to our mandate, therefore we must ‘unlearn’ what we have learned.”

Jyra smiled, glad this little gambit of hers had worked. She’d almost been too shy to even try it. “And everything about this current situation screams a violation of everything we’ve been taught.”

“Yet we’re still loyal to the mission. And when we’re trustworthy we don’t need rules.”

“And when we don’t follow rules we can do things in…funner ways.”

“Like you getting me naked in order to explain this?”

Jyra flashed her eyebrows twice. “Savvy?”

Linty smiled. “And rather than take baby steps, why not jump in head first and strip away the lingering protocol along with our clothes?”

“You are a smart boy.”

“You planning to instruct everyone else that comes here like this?”

“Honestly I have no idea how long I’m going to be here, so I’m just playing this by ear and it seemed like a good idea a few minutes ago.”

“And now?”

“You tell me.”

Linty smiled widely. “Part of me wants to say this is just all frivolous, but another part realizes your logic is spot on. If we’re going to differentiate ourselves from the Archons and other Commandos then we have to break free of established habits…and this is about as fast of a method as I can think of stripping away established protocol.”

“So we’re in agreement? I’m not crazy?”

“Oh you’re crazy…like a fox.”

“Good,” she said, suddenly getting up off him and leaving Linty a bit disappointed. That caught him off guard, but he shook it off and stood up.

“Lesson over then?”

“The lessons are just beginning. Time for a tour and to get you up to speed on what the Archons left for us. What we make of it going forward is anyone’s guess, but there are some notes left behind by other Arc Commandos. Still, we’re near the tip of the spear and don’t have much in the way of trailblazers to key off of. We have to make this up as we go and I’ll be glad for the help.”

“Tour it is then,” Linty said, walking back to the couch to grab his clothes.

“Uhuh,” Jyra said, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder. “Habits don’t break that fast. You stay naked for now.”

“Until when?” he asked with a wry grin.

“Until we no longer feel naked.”

“And what if someone else shows up?”

“Only Arc Commandos come here, and if another comes in we get them naked too. You take the girls and I’ll take the guys and we’ll share what we’ve learned via pillow fights.”

Linty laughed. “And what if they’re older Arc Commandos?”

“Then we tell them what we’re doing and ask if they want to join in. No shame here. We’re not misbehaving, just handling our mandate in a way that most other people wouldn’t approve of. If we’re going to be off the grid, then we don’t need to concern ourselves with what they think, because they’ll never know. We can’t have their rigidity and protocol slowing us down. We have to keep open minds and clear heads, hence the reason why I’m not going to fuck you, despite the urge I have to do so right now.”

“Likewise.”

“I can see that,” she said, glancing down at his waist.

“You said no shame.”

“None at all,” she agreed. “Though that’s got to be awkward walking around with.”

“It is, trust me.”

“How long before you deflate?”

“Good question. If you’re not putting your clothes back on either, could be a while.”

“I would offer to pop you off, but that would be counter-productive I think?”

Linty shook his head in dismay. “I swear, when you first started that pillow fight I thought you were…”

“Out of bounds?”

“Yeah, but to your point. When you’re loyal to the mission, or in this case mandate, there is no out of bounds. I guess this is a weakness I’ve got, and the only way to get used to being around you naked is to see it through the less fun way. Just try not to bump into me or you’ll kill whatever slack I start to get.”

“No promises rookie. I may do it intentionally now. Just enough to keep you on edge and burn away whatever protocol you’ve got clogging your mind.”

“And what about you?”

“I don’t have external sex organs, but feel free to poke where you like. I can take it without losing my head.”

“This is by far the strangest lesson I’ve ever had.”

“Is that a complaint?”

“We really are off the grid here, right? No monitoring at all?”

“Nada. It took me a while to really wrap my head around that and loosen up. Didn’t realize how constricted I was beforehand until it happened…then I got a little crazy to push it further.”

“Well, I like your crazy and see the wisdom in it. On top of that, I think this next stage of training is going to be the funnest of all time.”

“Why not?” she shrugged. “As long as we still accomplish our goals?”

“And keep it a secret from everyone else.”

“No one else is supposed to know what we do anyway.”

“Well, then. If we’re going to jump off this boat, how about we make all leisure downtime nude? Not just for us, but everyone. We can put up a sign that says so.”

Jyra laughed. “I’m glad you didn’t include training. Running naked is…uncomfortably bouncy.”

“Ditto there.”

Jyra raised an eyebrow at him. “Is my crazy rubbing off on you?”

“Looks like.”

“Good,” she said, lightly tapping her wrist against his crotch as she walked by. “Follow me and I’ll show you around your new digs.”

Linty took a moment to center himself and followed her, feeling exposed and stupid, but in a fresh way that, honestly, was going to take some getting used to, but he already could feel a wall forming between himself and the outside world, with Jyra on the inside of it and the both of them being saner for it. He’d never have done anything like this on his own, but coming from another Arc Commando he was less resistant…and it did make sense. Perfect sense. And he wasn’t going to let the fun aspect of it discourage him.

Then he began to wonder why ‘fun’ should ever discourage anything.

10

December 2, 2900

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Mace Ortel descended the T-shaped stairway entrance to the Nest on the left side, turning an immediate right and spotting two people sitting on a couch watching a vid screen. Before he said anything to them he turned the corner and looked at the holo, seeing some 18 dots circling above it. That surprised him, for typically the Nest only had 1 or 2 Arc Commandos in it at a time. Maybe the growing number of their ranks was changing that, but still 18 seemed damn high.

He used his Lachka to toggle the hidden switch, adding another dot as he logged himself in and pressed the doorbell to announce his presence to the facility, though the pair sitting with their backs to him didn’t hear it in this chamber.

“Hi,” he said, retracting his helmet into the lump of material around the back of his armor’s neckline as he looked down at the pair of heads, both of which turned around, apparently a bit shocked to see him. The vid screen was loud, and if these Arc Commandos were new then their Pefbar and Ikrid probably weren’t that advanced yet to pick him up coming down behind them.

“Hey, new guy is here.”

“Old guy, actually,” he said as the pair stood up and he saw that both the guy and girl were naked. “What the hell?”

“That’s the standard reaction we get from new people,” Veronica said, pointing to her left. “Read.”

Mace followed her finger line until he saw an addition to the Nest in the form of a sign on the wall that read:

Sexuality can have a strong influence on the weak minded.

We are NOT weak minded.

So prove it.

“What exactly does that mean?” Mace asked, a bit peeved.

“I thought the same thing when I got here,” Chad said, raising a hand to forestall the typical reaction. “Thought everyone had gone civie and insane, but there’s a method to the madness if you take long enough to think it through.”

Mace looked at both of them in turn, then back at Chad. “Regale me then.”

“You’re…Mace, right?” Veronica asked.

“Yes.”

“Thought so. I tried to memorize the personnel files. By the way,” she said, pointing two fingers at her eyes, then moving them down to her chest, “my breasts are down here.”

“What she means to say,” Chad interrupted, “is that we’ve instituted a…voluntary…program of sexuality training into our private culture.”

“Program, huh?”

“Yeah,” Chad said, rubbing his sandy blonde hair. “You’re the first old timer we’ve greeted. Or rather, that I’ve greeted. Mostly we see newbs coming in.”

“And you just wait here naked as a doorman?”

“Easy, Mace,” Veronica cautioned. “We just got finished with our workouts and we’re on downtime. Everyone else is either training or sleeping. We haven’t gone nuts, just taking an angle on sexuality that the Archons wouldn’t approve of.”

“And that being?”

“We use it.”

Mace rolled his eyes. “Oh boy.”

“Are you the ‘never get laid type?’”

“No, I’m the ‘do the mission, not your buddy type.’”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Veronica insisted, crossing her arms over her chest.

“How about I let you two talk this out,” Chad said, pointing off to the other side of the room. “I don’t have the compatibility to ease the introduction.”

“That’s probably best,” Veronica said as Chad walked over and sat down on a distant couch, turning on another vid screen and ignoring that the two of them were there. “You and I have a lot to go through.”

“That’s right, you were going to explain why you’re not acting like a Commando.”

“Want to have a seat first?”

“No, I think I’m better standing. Now talk before I feel like kicking your ass.”

Veronica’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t let the lack of clothes fool you. I can handle myself.”

“You’re fit, I’ll give you that, but you’re not going to stand up to more than a few punches,” he said, flexing his armored hand for emphasis.

“News flash, bro. We’re basically naked outside of our armor anyway. Putting a T-shirt on doesn’t change that much.”

“Granted,” he allowed.

“We figure that if we’re vulnerable outside of our armor then we might as well have fun with it, so long as it serves a purpose. Everyone here goes naked when not in training. Just a part of our secret little society. No Archon has come to beat some sense into us, like you’re thinking about doing now, so it’s also a way to confirm they’re not spying on us like they promised, but the bottom line is what the sign says. If we’re not weak minded then we shouldn’t have to avoid sexuality. For us, we’ve taken it as a challenge. We don’t avoid it, we embrace it. And if someone can’t keep their focus then they don’t deserve to be an Arc Commando.”

“Then why not go nude in training too?”

“Because most of the time you bounce, whether you’re a guy or girl, and that creates problems, but where we can without disadvantage we do. We even spar nude on occasion, for training sake.”

“Explain that.”

“Battle can come at any place at any time, and our enemies aren’t going to wait for us to get dressed if they catch us naked.”

“What about the ‘bounciness’ then?”

“We learn to work around or negate as much of it as we can, and that requires practice.”

“Is that why so many of you are here? Typically the Nest doesn’t see more than 3 at a time.”

Veronica shrugged. “Maybe. When I got here there were 9. Some have come and gone, including a couple of old timers like you. Once they gave it a chance they understood what we were doing and joined in. If you don’t want to strip down right away that’s fine, just don’t write us off as traitors. We’re loyal to the mission, and per our mandate we’re thinking outside the box. We’re just also thinking outside the Archon box as well. They may avoid sex like a plague, but we’re using it to our advantage.”

“So you’re just not walking around naked, you’re banging each other as well?”

Veronica nodded. “No more than once every three days, which is standard when scheduling will allow.”

“Scheduling?” Mace said in dismay.

“We have to practice,” Veronica emphasized, “in order to learn. Ignoring it isn’t something we choose to do anymore…though to be honest some of us never did to begin with. Now we’ve just taken it from being a random thing and turned it into a beneficial culture.”

Mace shook his head, not believing what he was hearing. “You guys have gone nuts.”

“Please have more faith in us than that,” she said, not arguing but asking openly. “The outside world doesn’t exist here. We’re off the grid and we’ve found a way to maximize that. The Archons wouldn’t approve, but we’re supposed to do things our own way. They didn’t give us a plan for just that reason. We’re meant to improvise, learn, and craft the Arc Commandos into something of our own making. We’re not mini Archons, so why would be pattern ourselves off of them?”

“Because they kick ass.”

“Of course they do. And the ‘no sex’ rule works for them. This works for us.”

“Fine,” Mace relented, glancing over her body again, head to toes and back up. “I’ll hear you out…and me not having to look at someone else’s dick while listening was a good call.”

“Simple biology dude,” Chad said from across the room.

“Lose the armor and we’ll take a walk,” Veronica suggested.

“Do you go topside like that?” Mace asked as he triggered the automatic release and his armor peeled apart, with him stepping out of it a moment later.

“Nope. This part of being an Arc Commando only happens in the Nest. Though there is never any guarantee of safety, this is about as close as it gets. And like I said, we’re pretty much naked without our armor anyway, so we’ve chosen to just go the next step here, but only here.”

“What about the other Nests?”

Veronica raised an eyebrow. “Other Nests?”

“There are two more, at present.”

Chad’s head turned around as they walked behind him towards the door leading to the rest of the facility. “Why haven’t we heard about that?”

“I’m guessing because you’re newbs,” Mace said with some disdain. “Such information travels by word of mouth only.”

“To answer your question, I guess it will eventually,” Veronica said as they passed through the open doorway leaving Chad and the commons room behind.

“If you have your way.”

“It’s not my way, or at least the initial idea wasn’t.”

“Who started this craziness?”

“I’m told it was Jyra, but we’ve been adding other bits and pieces as we go along…like the 3 day rule. We experimented with every day but found it left our minds gummy. 3 days allows us to stay sharp, and we wouldn’t have figured that out without trying to figure it out.”

“Define gummy?”

“Answer my earlier question. Do you do anyone?”

“On occasion, but none since I became an Arc Commando.”

“Why not?”

“Busy mostly. And the other times were special circumstances. I don’t make a habit of it.”

“Why not?”

“The Archons are right in that there is a disadvantage to it, training wise and fighting wise.”

“We know that, but rather than bury it away in our subconscious to the point where it almost shuts off entirely, we take the opposite route, feeling it out and learning how to minimize the disadvantage. What we practice when we fuck is our recovery time afterward. So long as I don’t violate the 3 day rule, or in this case it would be ‘guideline’ since we don’t use rules, I can snap myself out of the daze within a few minutes, for the most part.”

“You time it?”

“Not like that, but only because we can’t measure it. We thought about using biomonitors but that would require letting the techs in on our inner workings, and we do not let anyone know what goes on inside the Nest. That is one rule we do keep.”

“Embarrassed?”

“Nope. I was in the beginning but it wore off pretty quick. Other people don’t understand, so it’s best to keep them in the dark. And it would be a huge mistake living under the constraints of what other people can understand.”

“You’re making a little sense, but I’m not sold.”

“We’re sexual as a default, and even the Archons haven’t tried to genetically strip that away.”

“That’d be cowardice if they did.”

“Exactly my point. A strong mind can override sexuality with ease, so why can it not also function while indulging in it?”

“But why indulge in the first place if our mission is tactical, not reproductive?”

“Several reasons. First is to negate the disadvantages. Would you keep a ship in your hangar that you know absolutely nothing about, or do you fly everything and figure out the intricacies of how they work? We have sexual systems. They may not be very important considering what we do as Arc Commandos, but that doesn’t mean we have to ignore them. And if we can find a beneficial use for them aside from baby making, why not go there?”

“What beneficial use are you referring to?”

“We hardly ever see one another, right? I’m asking because I’m still in training phase and my psionics aren’t up to snuff enough to go out into the field yet, at least not for the big assignments. You do, so you tell me. You said 3 was usually tops for the Nest.”

“You see a lot of your unit, if you’re assigned to one. But no, we rarely cross paths with others.”

“When you’ve gotten laid before, who was it with? I don’t need a name, but what did they do?”

“A few other Commandos and one tech. All of which were situational, no relationships involved.”

“None here either. We fuck everyone and love doesn’t factor in, but we do develop beneficial bonds. That’s something you’re probably not aware of if you’ve been banging for recreational purposes.”

“Everyone?” Mace asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Yes,” she answered automatically until she caught his gist. “Everyone biologically compatible. There are more guys here than girls, so our schedules are always full while the guys usually have holes in theirs…but as we’ve come to say, ‘no whining over missed fucks.’ We do make an exception for new arrivals, so you get priority. Our way of saying ‘hi’ or ‘welcome back.’”

“You’re saying if I wanted to, you’d fuck me right now?”

“No, sorry. I did yesterday, and we only do it on schedule, never impulse. I can bump you into my next slot though, or you can pick some other girl.”

“Just like that?”

“We’ve learned not to be shy, and it actually forms a bond between us that we’ve never had before. Not something sick, but something familiar. We’re separated from everyone else because we’re Arc Commandos, so when we’re in the Nest we take advantage of the time when we’re actually together. We’ve already decided that if we meet up in the field that doesn’t matter. We only indulge this part of our culture here…or in the other Nests, now that we know they exist.”

“Any other guidelines you’ve come up with?” he asked as they passed another Arc Commando in the hallway, though this one was dressed in skintight shorts and running shoes.

“Getting indocted?” Linty asked.

“Working on him,” Veronica said as they stopped. “He’s old school.”

“A challenge then,” the topless and very sweaty Arc Commando said as he looked Mace over. “Sorry, don’t recognize you. I’m Linty.”

“Mace,” he said, extending his hand in greeting and glad that the guy had pants on.

“Back for some additional training or what?”

“Actually I’m here to recruit a replacement for my unit.”

“Replacement?” Veronica asked, her eyes narrowing. “Did we lose someone?”

“No, just a reassignment. We’re adding more teams as our numbers grow and Darren is heading up his own now. We need a replacement for Alpha 9 and I was told to come here to find one…though now I’m wondering if it wasn’t a setup. Has Brandon been initiated into your divergent clan?”

Veronica smiled widely. “Yep. Did him once myself. He didn’t stick around too long, and he didn’t mention anything about other Nests either.”

Mace signed. “Son of a bitch. He didn’t say anything about this to us.”

“Probably knew how you’d react,” Linty said, with his body language suggesting that he was eager to get moving again. “Are you looking for someone in particular?”

“I was told Jyra was here…but now I have my doubts as to whether or not Brandon was serious or just wanted me to pick up his date.”

“She’s on the halo,” Linty offered as he began walking on to wherever he was going next.

“Thanks,” Mace said distractedly. He couldn’t believe Brandon had gone in for this…then again maybe there was some value here he was overlooking. In fact, he realized he was resisting the notion for a reason he couldn’t put his finger on. After a few seconds of silence he realized Veronica was patiently waiting on him, just staring at his face with a devious smile.

“What?”

“Just watching the walls break down.”

Mace sighed. “Brandon has been an Arc Commando longer than I have. If he thinks there’s some value in this…I don’t know.”

“Then let me fill you in further as we head to Jyra,” she said, grabbing him by the elbow and dragging him forward. “We’ve learned a few tricks, and I’m not referring to anything kinky. We’re not doing this to have some sort of orgy, that’s civie crap. We’re just making use of our biological hardward, stripping away all the nonsense and dealing with what’s really there. We’re warriors, not sex toys, and we learned that if we try to be sex toys our heads fog up even more.”

“So you tried the kinky route?”

“Before I got here, but others did. It’s not something to be afraid of, it’s just stupid. They learned from it and moved on. It seems the fictitious stuff that people try to use to raise their libidos is what really messes with your head. Recognizing that someone is attractive does not. It’s the mental simulations that go nutsy. Archons rightly avoid them, but we’ve found that if we indulge in the physical act of mating, giving our minds actual data to process rather than fiction, it also solves the problem.”

“Eating so much candy that you make yourself sick of it?”

“No…but you’re kind of getting the point. We have sexuality and we have mating mode. Sexuality is just the, let’s say ‘sensor package’ that allows us to see who’s hot and who’s not. Mating mode is when your head does go all foggy. Your combat drive is powered down in the process, then comes back online when you get out of mating mode. Thing is people tend to get stuck in it, at least part way, and that is a very bad thing to have happen. We’ve been working on being able to switch in and out of that mode very fast and cleanly. No hybrid states. But to do that we need practice, hence the fucking schedules.”

“And once you learn, does it stop there?”

“No. It’s still a social thing, just between Arc Commandos, when we’re in the Nest. Call it a fun way to continually test your mental caliber. If you can’t shake yourself out of mating mode and get your head all messed up then you obviously don’t belong in the field and need to train yourself back into combat fitness.”

“So you admit it’s partly for fun?”

“Why do we play video games?” she countered.

“Ok, you have a point there.”

“We’re trained to go on very long solo missions and be comfortable with that. When we’re here we go the opposite way, just because we can. If we can’t handle that vast duality, then again, it shows a weakness that a person needs to work on eliminating rather than burying it away out of sight.”

“You’re criticizing the Archons there, I assume?”

“Honestly I don’t know what they do, all I know is what we do and this is smart. It’s unusual, deviant as you said considering normal society, but we don’t exist in normal society anymore. We’re off the grid for a purpose, and this serves a purpose for us. Might not work for anyone else, but it works for us. At the end of the day you just have to try it and risk being stupid for a little while. If that does happen you just shake it off and move on, a few days lost to a cloudy head. Is there a risk greater than that?”

“Theoretically no, it’s just out of habit…”

Veronica raised her eyebrows victoriously.

“…which is what we were trained to break,” Mace finished.

“Keep thinking, don’t block anything out. If we’re all fools then logical analysis should prove it.”

“Why are you starting to make sense?”

“Because it does make sense.”

“What else have you guys learned?”

“Beds are for sleeping, not fucking. Don’t mix the two.”

“Really?”

Veronica nodded as they approached one of the entrances to the halo track. “Best place is in the shower tube.”

“Standing up?”

“Or floating, your choice. But it’s important not to linger or rest afterwards. You have to go straight into a workout to flush the residual fog out of your head. It also trains you to switch modes quickly by forcing the change. A bit awkward at first, because you just want to soak in the moment, but once you make a habit of it fucking just becomes a part of your routine that doesn’t affect anything else. And after a while walking around nude doesn’t turn you on. Maybe it would if you’ve spent 5 years in the field and then come back, but once you’re here for a while you adjust and it’s just normal. Breezy, but normal.”

“And you never go topside?”

“Well…we’re not supposed to, but a few of us have gone on a few nude ninja missions at night just to see how we function in the forest. It’s not really fun, but it does get you used to knowing what you can and can’t do without clothes on. I found I miss my shoes the most. But that’s not part of our new culture here, just something a few of us tried so we could learn from it. We did discuss the possibility of trying some similar missions within the city and avoiding anyone seeing us, but we nixed that idea pretty quick. We want to be able to let our hair down, metaphorically speaking, in the Nest whenever we’re here, which we think will help us rest and recover better from whatever crap happens to us in the field.”

“More like letting your clothes down.”

“Semantics. We’ve learned a few things already, but we’re experimenting and picking up some more as we go, though we’ve got a good structure in place now. Think about trying it and resist the urge to be shy. It doesn’t befit an Arc Commando.”

Mace sighed. “I’m glad we’re not being monitored, because I get the feeling Brandon would be loving this if he was watching.”

“He had a rough time adjusting too, if I remember correctly.”

“And what about you?”

Veronica shrugged. “I was a newb and figured I’d just go along with what everyone else was doing. You’re my peers and supposed to know what you’re doing, so I stuffed my doubts into the back of my mind and just tried it. They said it was voluntary, but with everyone else walking around nude I eventually shed my clothes after a few days and went from there. I’ll admit, it is a bit of a shock at first, but now I’m glad for the bonding it gives us.”

“How does that work guy to guy?”

“I don’t know about guy to guy, but girl to girl it’s a camaraderie thing. We’re in the same club and not hiding anything from each other. We talk about everything, as we’re supposed to do, and share knowledge, but you’re right in that the physical component is missing. I feel the bond more strongly with the guys, but that’s just biology. We’re all on the same page, separated from the rest of society and off the grid. I don’t get a buzz from seeing the other girls naked, but it doesn’t put me off like it did initially, especially when you’d accidently brush up against someone in the hallway. Now I don’t care. They’re not strangers and they’re not sex partners, just sisters.”

“Same thing with the guys then?”

“Well…apparently it’s not as easy for them. Apparently dicks are magnetic and repel each other,” she said with a giggle. “Completely foreign thinking to me, but whatever. Guys do have their erogenous zone on the outside so I guess that makes things a bit more sensitive, bumping wise, but they say they eventually tune each other out. You’re a little uncomfortable even having this conversation, aren’t you?”

“I’ll admit, I am a bit. And you’re right, that’s a sign that I have a mental block that I shouldn’t have.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to,” he said as they were standing on the entrance to the halo track as Veronica pointed through the wall. “Jyra is coming, if you want to catch her.”

Mace had sensed a mind moving at speed towards them, but hadn’t known who it was. “Thanks, I will.”

“Shall I put you on my schedule?” she said with a gleaming smile.

“I’ll get back to you,” he said, waving a friendly goodbye as he jogged up the curved wall and onto the track, turning left and accelerated so he could match the Arc Commando catching up to him rapidly. She wore shorts and a jog bra, standard training gear, while Mace wore a casual uniform with basic shoes, but he was still able to match her stride for stride.

“Hi there,” Jyra said between mild breaths.

“You’re Jyra?”

“Yep. You new?”

“I’m not a newb,” he said as they ran in a straight line that would never bend left or right, but that ever so gradually rose up to loop back around on their position, but to him it felt like they were running on a never-ending road. “I’m here to find you, actually.”

“Why me?”

“I was told to come offer you a slot on Alpha 9, though now I’m not so sure, considering you’re responsible for this nude fest.”

Jyra laughed. “Everyone reacts that way when they first get here. And I only started the ball rolling. Others have been adding to it and made it what it is.”

“It sounds like a nightmare.”

“Feel free to check our training logs. You’re see we’re not progressing more slowly because of it.”

“I also think Brandon sent me here on purpose to get ‘indoctrinated.’”

“Did he tell you beforehand?”

“No he didn’t.”

“Ha. I think he just wants you to go through the same uncomfortable transition as he did. He put up one hell of a fight before he realized we hadn’t gone insane.”

“I’m not there yet.”

“You will be. What’s Alpha 9, exactly?”

“Special ops field unit. We’re expanding the teams and took one of our regulars out to start another, leaving us with the need for a fourth.”

“And you want me?”

“I was told you were spending an inordinate amount of time here polishing your psionics, though now I think I know the real reason.”

“That is the real reason, though ‘polish’ isn’t the term I’d use. Now that I have them, I feel like a freaking newb rather than a combat vet. I want to get skilled enough that I don’t screw something up on a mission before I go back out.”

“Well, you’ll be a newb on a team of veterans, but apparently Brandon thinks you’re ready.”

“How soon do you have to be back?”

“He didn’t say, but I assumed I’d spend a couple of days training here then take you back with me.”

“No good, you’ll need at least 3 weeks.”

“3 weeks?”

“There are seven girls here, times 3 days…”

“I never said I was buying into this.”

“I’ll just wait until you do then.”

Mace couldn’t believe her ego. “Oh really? You’re not the only Arc Commando available.”

“No, and I really do want that slot if Brandon thinks I’m ready. But you need to experience what we’ve got here, so for your sake I’m going to drag my feet,” she said with an innocent smile.

Mace was silent for a moment, not sure what to say to that and looking for something stinging in reply but nothing was coming to mind. “Did Brandon set this up with you?”

“Nope.”

“Feels like it.”

“Don’t confuse fun with stupid. Like the sign up front says, we’re not weak minded. And if there’s even a shred of value in this, why should we not pursue it?”

“I’m trying really hard to find a fault in your logic right now.”

“And?”

“Failing miserably, but it still feels…”

“Wrong?”

“Off mission. If the Archons don’t embrace their sexuality there’s probably a good reason for it.”

“Well, they’re not telling us anything, making us figure out things on our own, and this is what we’ve figured out. Besides, we don’t have armies to lead and cities to build and races to annex. Our mandate is much smaller and more focused. Maybe that has something to do with the difference or maybe they’re just bigger badasses than us. I don’t know. I just know that there is wisdom in using our sexuality rather than shoving it in the proverbial closet and not making use of a biological function we have. That’s as bad as having a rifle in the armory that you’re told never to use.”

“Stop it, already,” Mace pleaded with her, sarcastically this time. “You’re making too much sense.”

Jyra smiled, not saying anything, but threw him a ‘got you now’ look.

“This had better not affect your combat skills,” he cautioned. “I don’t want some lizard shooting me in the back while your head is off in lala land.”

“Never happen,” she said firmly. “Our sexuality gets put into storage when we leave the Nest. We only make use of it here when it won’t be a detriment.”

Mace saw another exit on the track coming up ahead and decided to bail out. “Better be. We’re going to have to slow down enough as it is to accommodate you.”

“I’ll try to minimize that as much as I can,” she said in all seriousness.

“Do that,” he said, coasting to a stop by the open doorway and letting her run on. He stood there for a moment, watching her disappear up the long hallway until only her shoes remained visible, then he sighed and tried to think this all through again.

“Brandon, I am so going to kick your ass when I get back.”

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1

February 24, 2933

Gvaris System (lizard territory)

Nephasil

Sara-012 sat in the nexus onboard her warship, not heavily engaged in anything but keeping an eye on the fleets while they were in orbit of the lizard world sitting too far up the gravity well for the enemy’s anti-orbital batteries to reach them and already having beaten the massive lizard fleet that was on station here. It had taken more than a week to get through the naval battle, for this system was one of the extremely valuable dots connecting the lizard core worlds and their holdings in the chunk they’d bitten out of Skarron territory.

The Voku and Preema had likewise carved a huge chunk of territory out of the far side of lizard territory all the way over to the midline that Cal-com had agreed upon. They stopped there, expanding their wedge of conquest laterally and, in the case of the Preema, all the way to the coreward edge of the galactic arm in order to try and get ahead of the lizard spread there. The ships they were devoting to actually aiding the Skarrons were limited on the far side, but they were taking names and kicking ass all along the closest border to Preema territory and leaving a swath of empty systems for the Voku and others to keep unoccupied.

Star Force had likewise been pressing towards the midline while the H’kar were headed rimward. In truth Star Force was attacking on multiple fronts, but their emphasis was on getting at least a strand of systems out to the midline so they could connect with the Voku and establish a firm linkage while severing what the lizards had. While there were hundreds of systems along the ‘middle’ of enemy territory, the lizards had been fortifying a single line through, expecting to lose the others.

This one had been so well fortified navally that even the huge Star Force fleet Sara had brought with her and Kiran-011 had had its hands full. They’d chewed threw more than a million enemy ships by the time it was done, losing a third of their drones in the process, including six of the new Ravager-class warships that Paul had designed. Each year that passed saw them getting smaller and smaller as the techs refined the Dre’mo’don specs, but the ones that she had in her fleet were among the oldest versions…though still damn more powerful than any of the other drones.

She had 11 left and Kiran had 8, plus 182 Warship-class jumpships between them and 4 command ships, not to mention the supply and transport fleet that was fueling the ground invasion. There were two inhabited planets in this system plus a scattering of outposts and Star Force had chosen to go for the biggest of them first. Right now Sara was keeping an eye on events below, as well as the relatively quiet orbit. There were still some lizard ships out there, she knew, sneaking around the system. If they slipped up she’d get them, but they were no threat to her fleet.

However, if they got to ground they could cause a lot of trouble for their armies, which was why she was standing guard in the nexus for a few hours, taking turns with Kiran and other veteran Archons just in case the lizards pulled something fancy…or kamikaze. Her ship had shields to deal with ramming debris but you had to set it up first, so staying vigilant was essential. Her crew could handle that, but there was something in her gut that told her this wasn’t going to be a regular ‘cleansing’ mission.

The only activity going on right now was the ambush groups around the star. Giving that this was on the lizard lifeline between the two hemispheres of their territory there was a massive amount of cargo transit occurring through this location. Her ships were stationed to poach them as they came into, then tried to round the star and get to the exiting jumppoint for the next leg of their journey. Most of them were easy kills and normally she’d feel bad about that, blasting away at cargo ships that couldn’t defend themselves, but in truth none of the lizard ships could defend themselves against an equally sized Star Force vessel. The tech levels were too far apart, despite the impressive gains the enemy had been making in recent decades.

But the bottom line was that there were too many lizards to play nice with, and even if you did bother capturing them they’d try and kill you the moment they had an opportunity or, barring that, try and kill themselves. Knowing what they were and what they’d done, for instance this planet used to belong to a race known as the Bmat that was now extinct because of them, Sara was comfortable simply blasting away at them as they came within range, for if she let them go they’d only aid the rest of their empire, perhaps against Star Force, or maybe against someone else less able to defend themselves.

If it was the Skarrons she’d think twice about letting them go, just so they could fight it out, but this juggernaut of an empire was just too deadly. Not to Star Force anymore, but Sara could remember back when it had been. When they’d been the lesser and hanging on by a thread. The Hycre had saved them back then, and they’d since repaid that favor with returning the bulk of their conquered worlds back to them, but she wasn’t going to make the mistake of thinking that the lizards were less dangerous than before. She and the others had simply gotten a lot more dangerous themselves, though to unknown races out there far, far away it wouldn’t matter. The lizards would simply run them over and slaughter them.

With that in mind, Sara kept her warships at the main jumppoints with orders to blow away anything lizard on sight.

One factoid that she’d been noticing, and confirming what the Voku had already told them, was that the lizard cargo ships were only full heading coreward, with the bulk of them returning empty. That suggested the lizards were heavily favoring the combat in the Skarron zone…not a bad move considering that Star Force and its allies were winning out here and pressing ever closer to the lizards’ core worlds. If they’d devoted those resources here it would have delayed things further, but not stopped it. Though now that they were effectively blocking off their internal highway those ships and supplies would be staying put and fortifying the rimward half even more.

There were plenty of other systems still in lizard hands to send convoys through, which they no doubt would begin to divert through until Star Force and the Preema/Voku eventually spread out to take those systems as well, but any ships traveling off this line were vulnerable to ambush because there wasn’t heavy lizard defenses waiting to screen for them. If they could break this link in the chain the lizards would either have to risk being ambushed constantly, which they would be as the Voku were already doing a very good job of it throughout this area, or have their empire effectively cut in two.

And it was for that reason that Sara felt uneasy about this. It’d been a hard fought win to claim naval dominance, but her gut said it wasn’t over yet.

When an unusually large number of incoming ships popped up on sensors arriving at a jumppoint on the rimward side of the star she took notice, with her warships and their drone fleets ambushing them as they arrived…but they kept coming in a long convoy that didn’t stop, eventually dumping off enough cruisers to fill the jumppoint with a beehive of contacts that kept getting larger by the minute, for they were jumping in so close to each other that she knew this wasn’t a standard shipment.

Already linked into the nexus she started giving a flurry of orders to both her fleet and Kiran’s. Sara didn’t know where he was at present, but he wasn’t logged into a nexus so she had priority command. Taking control of every ship in the system she began maneuvering her chess pieces around and pouring a chunk of them in towards the star including her command ship, for she couldn’t suffer the lag involved if she was going to micromanage the arrival point battle.

Her connection cut out when the ship made its microjump, with the speed messing with the battlemap reception. Rather than send corrupted signals the technology switched to observation mode until the braking microjump was made and the speeds of location and ship returned to relative stability. As the battlemap updated so did the ship counts, with the lizards literally ramming their empty jumpships into her fleet.

She saw one of the massive jumpships flash into the side of four drones, vaporizing them on impact with a shiver running down Sara’s spine. The drones had been starside, meaning the lizards couldn’t accelerate off the gravitational mass at system’s center. Rather they’d have to push off of distant planets for slow movement navigating the star, but this one hadn’t. Where they normally would have been safe from such a tactic, her fleet was getting hammered by what was obviously an upgrade in gravity drives.

The lizards now had binary versions.

Another flash ended before it began, with a command ship on site bracing against the kamikaze jumpship. The dampening shields had gotten up in time, and given the short distance between the two vessels the lizard jumpship hadn’t been able to accumulate a massive amount of speed. As if punishing it for its impudence, the command ship lit up the jumpship’s surface with dozens of weapon strikes visible at range, including a bloon launch that carved a crater into the bow, spraying debris out in a quickly expanding halo.

Sara made adjustments to her ship formations immediately, recognizing this battle was quickly turning into chaos. The lizards weren’t just trying to damage the Star Force ships, they were buying time for the new ones coming in to dump their cruisers before they could get sheared off their docking ports by Star Force’s superior weaponry.

And there were more and more coming, with no way for her to scan to see how many were on the way. Star Force transmitted signals ahead of them when entering friendly systems, but the lizards were not, meaning there was an unknown number of ships coming in and she was losing drones rapidly from the kamikaze runs, not by the cruisers, but by the humongous jumpships. That was a waste of resources she’d rarely seen the lizards commit, but this system was their lifeline to the other half of their empire and it seemed they were more than willing to commit excessive reinforcements to try and hold it.

That meant they had a genuine war on their hands this time, not the one-sided affairs that Star Force had to work for, but whose ultimate outcome was never really in doubt.

“So be it, then,” Sara whispered, stretching her Sav-enhanced limits and taking a deeper control of the fleet movements, yanking priorities out of captains’ and remote pilots’ hands and making this her personal battle more so than normal.

She broke off a group of drones and sent them bypassing the lizards at the forefront, diving in between their fleets and heading for the incoming jumppoint itself, which was creeping outward into the system like a slowly deploying rug laying down ships. It was there that the loaded jumpships were coming in, and it was those that Sara wanted to hit before they could unload, figuring that they wouldn’t go kamikaze until they did so, as well as realizing that there were other lizards ships in the way up front that they would run into.

With that front line being the collision risk, the trailblazer forced part of the fighting behind their lines, getting far closer than normal. Typically it was Star Force that stood off and sniped from range, but now they were doing the reverse across the battlefield as Sara ordered all incoming ships into pointblank range to lessen the impact velocities of any ramming vessels. She knew she was going to lose a lot of ships, but better to fight this here and now than give them easy access to the system.

Sara kept calling in more ships from planetary orbit, but didn’t pull them all out, for she didn’t want them running reinforcements down to the surface where the ground battles were only 2 months old. The planet was still mostly in lizard hands, and it would be easy to reinforce them if they could get their ships down inside the safety zone that the planetary defenses provided.

She sent a message to the commander there to form a defense line at the jumppoint in from the star and at several of the subsidiaries coming off the planets. If the lizards did try that tactic they’d have to approach much slower or creep in on an indirect jumpline, but for now the battle was here and Sara tried to focus as much as she could without overloading herself.

Minutes passed with the carnage continuing to escalate, then a chunk of the ships under her direct command were siphoned off by another person in the network. The only one who had access to override her was Kiran, whose command ship had just jumped into stellar orbit and was on approach. Thankful for the help, both in firepower and mental workload, the two trailblazers split up the battle into two parts…the front line and the flankers. Sara was already working the flankers in between the enemy ships so Kiran let her keep those, pulling the main defense line to his control and reworking it slightly to fit his combat preferences.

That Sara didn’t mind, for each commander handled things a bit differently. She could see the changes happening as she watched the overall battle in mind’s eye, but most of her focus was on the weapon strikes she was coordinating to cripple jumpships within a few seconds of their shields going down. Boring strikes down deep into the hull to knock out gravity drives and power generators, she left the ships otherwise intact but unable to summon up the energy for kamikaze dives…or at least not very fast ones, for hitting every single gravity drive within a jumpship was difficult, for in the lizard designs they were spread throughout the ship in numerous locations.

But taking out some of their capability left them to limp around to be destroyed layer, for they weren’t leaving the system in such a state unless they wanted to spend years in transit to the closest star system. With her goal being just that, she had numerous drones firing in coordination that a crew of pilots couldn’t handle as well, for all the ships were the pieces of one player, that being Sara, in this computerized hive mind that she was working through.

But there were so many lizard ships now that she was overwhelmed, losing a few drones here and there to cruiser fire or collisions, but unable to stop the wellspring and having it force forward into Kiran’s lines. Rather than let it get to them, both trailblazers did what they had to do…collapse their widespread lines down into solidified groups that could chew through enemy ships. Let them get spread out and the lizards would do the same to them, tech advantage or no.

But that also meant sections of the massive lizard fleet that was continuing to roll in were left to do as they pleased. Many pressed the attack, but some sections of it started to form a wall in space that well over half an hour later shielded for a different group of jumpships to come in. These carried troops and supplies, pooling in a series of groups with escorts and then making microjumps elsewhere into the system while Sara and Kiran were still fighting the warships and just trying to knock them down as fast as they could while they were still somewhat unorganized.

The first reinforcement convoy jumped into planetary orbit behind its wedge of cruisers and empty jumpships that just rammed the Star Force lines, forcing blunt stops and running interference while the support ships flew past and raced towards low orbit and the range where the planetary anti-orbit guns could cover them. Sara and Kiran were out of the loop on this behind far too many seconds of lag, but the mage in command of the orbital defense dispatched small groups of ships to take down some of the reinforcements while the rest were left dealing with the attacking warships.

A swarm of blocky drones shot after the blockade runners far faster than the lizard ships could move, binary drives or not, and came up behind them to open fire where the lizards own planetary weapons couldn’t target them. Chewing into their ships from behind with a ravenous appetite, the drones followed the lizard ships down into the atmosphere, dropping more of them as they progressed down the line as a few huge pink phaser blasts leapt up at them. A few drones got hit and were lost, but the rest stayed tucked in with their prey and continued to kill them up until the point where the lizard ships scattered, forcing the drones to choose who to chase.

But at that point the mage ordered them to hold fire and simply follow the ships at extremely close range to avoid the defense batteries. If they shot the lizard ships down they’d be exposed, and the mage wanted them to get to ground as well. The lizard cities couldn’t admit their own ships with the drones tucked in, so they had a problem to deal with.

When the split happened a lot of the transports got away, but the drones stayed with some and found blind spots in the terrain where the anti-orbital guns couldn’t hit them. Stashing them away there for future use, the mage continued to fight the short-lived battle in orbit only to have another group with escorts coming in.

There were so many lizard ships in the system, both at the star and coming in to the planet, that Star Force couldn’t stop them all. They were destroying them left and right, and taking a beating as they did it, but hundreds and then thousands of ships made it down to the planet in an anti-like flow as the never-ending convoy kept pouring more ships into the system with no end in sight.

2

February 26, 2933

Gvaris System (lizard territory)

Nephasil

Harris-739221 stood atop a lizard building on the outskirts of one of their cities that Star Force had invaded some 4 days ago. They’d met up with heavy resistance but had succeeded in claiming a slice of the southeast quadrant, essentially a crescent moon with the middle starting to widen out and push further in. The still smoking remains of the city’s single anti-orbital battery lay to the northwest, having fallen victim to the costly orbital bombardment that had seen many drones get junked cutting the invasion force a blind spot to land troops inside. Now it was up to them to take out the rest of the planet from the ground.

The ranger had been in 3 large campaigns prior to this one, but none of them had seen fighting like this. Even in this city alone there were lizards pouring in from reinforcement lines as other cities shifted their resources to fight here rather than wait for the invaders to get to them. Six cities lay wasted behind them, with this one and two others currently under Star Force attack with hundreds more across the planet for them to get through, but right now that wasn’t a concern.

From his vantage point up top, while the rest of his unit were taking a quick nap below in a prefab firebase that they’d actually set up inside a gutted lizard building for the visual cover, he could see the mech battles taking place around the city. The lizards were fighting through the interior but also trying to flank the invaders, which was why they’d attacked on a wide swath. It would give them a ‘safe’ zone in the middle that they could fall back to if necessary, but the mechs were determined to keep the tank swarms and fighters at bay. He could see several of the Porcupine-class quadruped mechs patrolling behind the front lines daring the lizard fighters to come within range, but the suicidal pilots were backing off at the moment, with the once barren countryside getting a lot of yellow/tan metallic boulders added to the natural pale pink ones.

With the number of porcupines that they had in play, Harris knew they’d be safe from all but the largest of the wisp swarms. Those had been present when they’d initially attacked the city, but the perimeter had been an easy approach in that there were no boundary walls. Typically lizard cities didn’t have them, for they were constantly growing and pushing out their borders, but they did have defense turrets and towers that a group of heavy walkers had to take down from range. Two Rafael-class walkers, the largest that Star Force produced, had knocked out the visible turrets from afar and were now parked out behind them in what was essentially the middle of the invasion zone. They were too big to enter the city, unless you wanted to squash buildings while walking over them, but they did a remarkable job of keeping enemy tanks away through intimidation alone.

The current engagements were happening further around the curve of the city where their firing lines did not connect. Harris could see a lot going on, and was taking a moment to check out what the battlemap was telling him before he got back into the action. This city looked like it was going to take weeks to conquer, based on the number of reinforcements that were pouring in, but Star Force was grinding its way forward and he had to take rest sooner or later. He’d spent an 18 hour stint fighting before coming here to grab some food and rest rather than redeploying back to a safer Star Force ground base. Many others were doing the same, and now that he was up he wanted to take stock of the larger picture before he got consumed in hand to hand fighting alongside the Commandos and Knights while higher ranking Archons pressed forward sniffing out traps that could collapse buildings down on top of you.

His helmet had a magnification function built into the cameras hidden within the hard exterior. There was no faceplate on this version, relaying entirely on a holographic HUD inside to allow him to see. Some of the old models were still used but Harris, like most other Archons, preferred not to have a weaker section of armor covering his eyes. The plate hovering just in front of his face was the thickest on his body and would allow him to take several direct blasts without penetrating. The fact that he looked like a robot from the outside didn’t bother him, for most of the Commandos with him were likewise wearing similar ‘faceless’ helmets.

With the zoom function expanding out, he was watching one Starbright-class mech battle with a dozen or so lizard tanks when he noticed a dark cloud in the distance behind them. At first he thought it was a storm wall approaching, for this planet regularly had wet weather, which was odd considering the plant-less, rocky terrain. Both lizard and Star Force aerial fighters could navigate through clouds and rain well enough, but lightning strikes were going to make things tricky for them and he wondered if the lizards weren’t going to try and make a play in the storm when it got here.

Harris moved his line of sight forward as far as he could until the edge of the city eclipsed his view. The mech battles were continuing beyond his line of sight, but it looked like there were groups of tanks trying to rush past them and dive into the city streets behind Star Force lines in an attempt to the flank the ground troops within. He saw one Keema streak mildly disrupt the skyline before melting/exploding one of the tanks in a single strike, followed by four more shots in the next 5 seconds coming from one of the rafaels that ended their little flanking run before they could make the buildings.

The lizards had pushed too far and paid the price for it, but the fact that they were even trying showed how desperate they were. No…desperate wasn’t the right word. They had a different feel to them right now, aggressive for sure, and reckless to a fault, but he got the sense that something else was in play. He zoomed out his battlemap to cover the distance mech fights and saw a huge army of tanks behind those within his line of sight, on the order of several thousand all trying to cut in on the edge of the crescent and get behind the troop positions within the city.

Just then a warning beacon registered in his HUD calling everyone to battle, including those on sleep cycles. Harris was already up so he didn’t need to do anything yet, merely waiting on orders for where his unit was meant to go, but wondering what the urgency was beyond the tanks, he expanded his battlemap out to cover the entire city looking for the source of the warning.

He found not one, but six beacon markers indicating extreme threats. Five marked reinforcement lines coming in from neighboring cities on an order of magnitude far beyond what they’d been getting. No doubt a result of the new arrivals that had been pouring down from orbit with naval unable to stop most of them from getting to ground. He’d wondered when those troops would come into play, and unfortunately it looked like they were going to dump them on his position rather than spreading them out piecemeal across the planet.

“Shit,” he said, hoping Star Force was sending reinforcements as well, for there was no way they could hold out against that many…then he noticed the sixth beacon’s location and snapped his head back towards the approaching zoom and engaged maximum zoom, seeing that it was closing on them rapidly. The dark ‘cloud’ was now resolved down to tiny granules of moving objects, which his battlemap was tagging as lizard wisps.

Harris didn’t have anything to say to that, with the approaching doom clamping down on any verbal retort. There were so many wisps that his battlemap couldn’t get an accurate count, and they were all headed straight here.

The porcupines began moving a few seconds later, increasing their spacing while other mechs moved in to flank them. It took less than half a minute after that before Harris’s orders came in, with a waypoint directing him and his unit down into the substructure of the city and off the streets.

The ranger pulled back his zoom and turned away from the approaching wisp storm, sliding off the edge of the roof and dropping down to the alley three stories below where he joined his Commandos coming out and racing for one of the entrances to the undercity and away from the aerial attack about to hammer them.

Harris waited for the last of his men to come out, then followed up the rear along with a pair of Knights as he heard the porcupines’ array of sammies begin to fire off so fast he couldn’t count the number. By the time he ducked into the building entrance that would lead them down and out of sight, the sound of the phaser storm began to build to monstrous levels and he was very glad he wasn’t out there in a mech right now, though when those ground troops got here he didn’t expect to be much better off.

Three days later…

“What have you got?” Jyra asked, walking in with Mace and Leo as Brandon was leaning over a holographic table in their small private chamber onboard trailblazer Sara’s command ship.

“Have a look,” he said, zooming out to a regional map of the planet’s surface where Star Force still held positions. They’d been forced back into three captured cities and two defense outposts they’d constructed of their own, though those were being heavily engaged by the lizard ground troops.

Jyra looked at the basic map, noting a few small updates but seeing nothing of consequence…as far as a mission for them was concerned. Star Force was getting its ass kicked, having to give up ground to avoid being obliterated while a single key strongpoint was being constructed. Right now it lay at the center of their territory inside a captured lizard city. That had seemed odd to Jyra, for Star Force usually preferred to construct its own digs, but for whatever the reason the trailblazers had chosen to set up there and were coordinating all of the retreats to buy time to layer it with tech from the fleet in orbit that was barely hanging on to an overhead slot.

It was a turtling up strategy that was daring the lizards to hit them and suffer the consequences, but it also meant that the enemy could now land reinforcements on the far side of the planet without contest and move them across land or air given enough time. If they tried anything closer they’d be harassed or shot down, and even now there were some naval groups out elsewhere around the planet and system doing just that to the lizards, but the bulk was with the command ship Jyra was on that was protecting the ground troops and feeding them supplies. Without them providing cover the lizards could kamikaze ram their cruisers into the captured cities and it’d be bye bye ground troops.

“What am I looking at?” Jyra asked.

“A nightmare situation,” Brandon said, referencing the entire ground campaign, “but not one without holes to exploit. We can’t do anything about the supplies coming down from orbit, and blowing up a few on the ground won’t do much good, but these lizard cities are still actively producing material and warm bodies to throw at us. If we knock down even one wellspring it could make a sizeable difference over the months to come when you do the math.”

“I think ‘negligible’ is the term you’re looking for,” Leo countered.

“We’re not going to win the war on our own,” Mace agreed with Brandon, “but we can save our guys some trouble by taking out factories and avoiding them having to face off against the produce later on. Almost impossible to measure something like that, but it’ll have a real effect so long as we don’t eventually concede the planet and withdraw.”

Jyra raised an eyebrow. “Is that actually being considered?”

Brandon shook his head. “I don’t know, but unless the trailblazers can pull some magic on a scale I’ve never heard of, there’s no way we can win this without a lot of reinforcements. Even then this is going to be a bitch on the ground. We could be looking at a decade-long planetary engagement.”

“Or worse,” Leo added.

“So one factory out of commission adds up to a lot of stuff not being produced over that timespan,” Brandon summed up.

“Alright then. Where do you want us to go?” Mace asked.

Brandon pointed to one city in particular, then looked at the other three Arc Commandos for their reactions.

“Behind enemy lines?” Jyra spoke out what the other two were thinking.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Brandon offered.

“This,” Mace said, pointing into the hologram of the city that spanned more than a 60 mile radius, “would be a first. Our troops only took down a tiny slice of the exterior. That means it’s still lizard central and it’s where they’re routing the reinforcements through.”

“Part of the reinforcements, and it’s not the front line anymore thanks to the ass kicking we’re getting down there. That means it won’t be heavily defended. They’re throwing everything at our troops, not putting up defenses in the rear.”

Leo reached over to the controls, nudging Brandon aside, and zoomed in on the city in question. He brought up the formerly Star Force section of it and jabbed a finger at the new construction zones popping up.

“They’re rebuilding the turret defense.”

“Which will take time. We’ve got a window of opportunity to hit them where they’re not expecting us to. If we wait it disappears.”

“Most of their troops are moving through,” Mace commented, thinking hard. “They’re not hunkered down in defensive slots, which is odd if they were worried about counterattack, especially with their shield emitters being slagged.”

“They’re not even thinking about a counterattack,” Brandon emphasized.

“How much damage could we do?” Jyra asked.

Brandon zoomed in again, showing several markers he’d placed earlier on key facilities, including the bigger defense turrets near the city center.

“We can’t touch these, they’re too well defended. But these,” he said, bringing up 19 different locations spread across the entirety of the city, “I think are doable.”

“All of them?”

“No, unfortunately. We can’t carry enough explosives for more than two, I’d guess. And unless we want to get really bold and put them on long timers, we can’t come and go several times to get them all loaded up. If we can sneak down to the planet and patiently work our way in, I think we’ve got a shot at doing this once. More than that, at this location anyway, would be pushing it.”

“And you think this isn’t pushing it already?” Leo asked.

“If we stay in the shadows no. The question is whether we’re sneaky enough.”

“If we’re exposed we’re as good as dead,” Mace commented.

“We can go underground as a backup. Hide out and make them chase us, so it’s not an instant death fail.”

“That’s so reassuring,” Leo mumbled.

“If you want to nix it, just say so. We can find somewhere else to pitch in.”

“No, you’re right,” Jyra said, looking at the map. “This will matter if we can pull it off. Putting us four on defensive engagements doesn’t gain much. We need to go on the offense and hit something big.”

“Unfortunately the ‘big’ stuff is out of our reach,” Leo argued, looking back at Brandon. “What’s our exit strategy…other than running and hiding?”

“Arrange an evac point outside the city and sneak back out.”

“After we blow it?”

“We can set short timers, I just don’t want to leave the bombs where they can be found over the course of time.”

“Bombs as in what?”

Brandon frowned. “Nothing pretty this time. Just what we can carry in our packs along with survival gear for a few weeks.”

“So not much then,” Mace summed up.

“We’ll have to be creative in the placement.”

Jyra looked at Mace, with both of them in agreement, then she glanced at Leo and gave him a mental ‘boink’ sound and question mark in a telepathic burst.

“This is dumb,” he said plainly, “which is why the lizards wouldn’t see it coming. If we can stay dark it’s doable, otherwise we’re toast. I’m game if you have a really good plan.”

“I do, but I haven’t cleared it yet. Needed you guys onboard first.”

“We are,” Leo confirmed. “Call it in.”

Brandon walked away from the holo table to a pedestal on the other side of the small room, putting his back to his team as he placed a bare hand on it, linking into the telepathic device interface and connecting to the ship’s nexus where the trailblazer was. Through it they had a brief conversation even as she was guiding ships in orbit and coordinating the fighting retreat on the ground. Alpha 9 was the only Arc Commando team involved in this campaign and she’d been saving them for special missions, letting them choose when and where to get involved, but even Brandon wasn’t sure she would go for this one.

He sensed some hesitation when he had completed his proposal, but within a few seconds he got confirmation along with an added wrinkle to the plan to give them some better insertion cover. The Arc Commando withdrew his hand from the pedestal, severing the connection to the computerized hive mind that was organizing this invasion, and turned to his three peers.

“We’re approved and on the clock. 33 minutes to get geared up and in position. Our ride is going to be a bit more flamboyant than I had planned.”

3

The command ship moved down into low orbit as far as it could without endangering itself from the anti-orbital batteries, though some of them were painting its shields will diffuse blasts that were exceeding their effective range. While they did so a portion of the shield was lowered while a few railgun-equipped drones flew down in the shadow of the ship then flanked it, loosing their slugs at the lizard cities without the ability to aim properly given the distance, though hitting their miles-wide shield plates wasn’t going to be an issue.

When the first few fell to ground the anti-air batteries hit them, but couldn’t stop them. Slightly deformed from the light strikes they rammed into the flat shield discs over top the cities and began draining them of power…but at a rate far too low to be effective on a planet-wide assault, else the invasion force would have come equipped with far more. Lizard shields had upgraded to the degree where physical impact didn’t drain them as much as it once had, ironically giving them more of a defense again the kamikaze attacks they themselves employed regularly.

The railgun slugs were basically that, though on a much smaller scale. The anti-orbital batteries couldn’t track and hit them, given the speed at which they were falling, otherwise they never would have made it to ground. After a couple minutes of bombardment the command ship joined in, save for the fact that it didn’t have any rail guns.

What it fired down towards the planet were much larger objects, but at the same insane speeds. Essentially large asteroids, these slugs would do considerably more damage when they hit…but they weren’t aimed at the cities, rather a stretch of uninhabited land in between where they came crashing down with huge craters being carved out from the impacts and the resulting dust clouds filling the air even as a rainstorm was wetting the ground.

All together the command ship sent down 134 objects, with the drones’ railgun bombardment continuing a few minutes more before cancelling the attack well prior to the massive shields being penetrated. The ship and its escorts retreated back up to its holding orbit, with the anti-orbital guns ceasing their likewise ineffective attack, leaving all quiet for the moment at the attack sites while the ground battles continued to occur in 5 locations to the east.

Where the dust cloud was being chewed into by the rain, what remained of the asteroids were shielded from lizard view being located at the base of the newly formed craters. The giant ‘rocks’ had held together fairly well, with the exterior having been deformed by the impact, though the shields protecting it had done well to soften the blow before they breached and the material took the rest of the hit. But inside those house-sized rocks were hollow pockets with IDF protecting the contents. So long as the shells didn’t breach or the fields overload, the Spark-class drones inside didn’t feel a thing in the crashes, soon coming online when the cases were explosively released opening up the contents to the falling rain.

With controllers in orbit handling them, the little anti-grav spheres lifted up out of their protective cocoons having bypassed the planetary defenses and were now located behind enemy lines a bit. Each of the 134 craters were spaced out so none ran the risk of hitting each other on impact for they were totally unguided on reentry, so each of the little groups of sparks began to flow out of the craters like a line of ants heading towards mutual rendezvous points where they would form up into 6 different columns, traveling overland rapidly towards the flank of the lizard armies that were continuing to push Star Force’s troops backwards.

But these sparks weren’t headed for the main battle, rather they were headed for the lines of reinforcements feeding them, intent on ambushing those overland convoys for while a lot were being moved in vehicles there were so many lizard infantry units in play that they were approaching on foot from the nearest cities. Those were exposed while the bulk of the wisp swarms were well ahead playing tag with the Star Force anti-air defenses.

Whether they stayed there or redeployed to counter the sparks wasn’t an issue. Getting those units into the field at the position they did was key, for it was outside the ‘safe’ corridor that Star Force had blown into the anti-orbital defenses and where they weren’t expecting anything containing cargo or troops to come down in. If the sparks were all destroyed by the wisps before they could get to the infantry columns then so be it, for that would give the defenders a much needed break from the persistent air attacks and an opening to counterattack, briefly, on the ground. Either way it was of strategic value, however costly in terms of equipment and ammunition. They couldn’t employ the same tactic again, not from this command ship anyway, for Sara had sent down their full complement of drop pods.

As the sparks left their one-way transports behind the interiors of the empty shells began to fill up with rain water, a few inches at least by the time Alpha 9 decided it was time to get moving. They’d come down inside one of the pods, huddled up in a smaller cocoon with a backup IDF in case the main one failed. It hadn’t, and now the four man Arc Commando team was on the planet behind enemy lines in the middle of nowhere, hopefully undetected and going to stay that way.

Inside the hollow sphere where a few sparks had ridden were several other packages, from which four speeder bikes were removed and loaded up with cargo canisters where applicable. Jyra climbed onto her floating steed with extra fuel packs and supplies stashed around the seat with just enough room for her to slide her legs over, then she pulled a special sleeve that covered the front of the bike up over her head and attached it to the rear giving her the aerodynamic look of a fat needle.

The other three did likewise, obscuring each other from view save for a tiny spec of a camera on the nose of the bikes that fed into their HUDs. Through that they could see ahead, but not behind or to the sides. That wasn’t the best feeling in the world, but Jyra knew it was a necessity as she hit the interior button that activated the cloaking sheath. Her bike vanished from view, replaced with a black blot that no light was being emitted or reflected from. The other three did likewise, turning into phantoms that rose up into the rain under the dark of night undetectable to lizard sensors or eyes. Had they come in the daylight the black blurs would be noticeable, but at night it was almost impossible to tell dim light from nothing at all so long as the concealed bikes didn’t pass in front of a light source.

It wasn’t a scifi ‘cloaking field’ in the traditional sense, but it would allow the Arc Commandos to move around the countryside unnoticed so long as their ruse had worked and no one was nearby to pay attention to the crash site…with the cloud cover and rain being an added bonus that virtually insured they’d go undetected.

They still had half the night to work with, but they couldn’t take a straight line approach to their destination city. The four of them hovered out of the drop pod in sequence then took off into the night navigating solely by telepathy to keep from bumping into one another, for the dark shadows the bikes made in the rain were almost indistinguishable from the rest of the night even when they were directly in front of you.

That meant the four of them had to stay close together given their limited Ikrid range, with Jyra’s being the weakest. They kept her in the middle of their tri-point formation, with Brandon’s speeder ahead. She could see a bit of his distortion wake as his canopy busted through the raindrops in her nightvision, but he was too far away to see with her Pefbar, though every now and then she could catch a glimpse of the ground beneath her as they skimmed a ridge. There were minimum altitude sensors underneath the bikes that would keep them from dropping too low, but in order to keep from bouncing up and down constantly they were flying in as straight of a line as possible.

All she had to do was follow Brandon, for it was his job to navigate as best he could without good vision or lateral sensors, and he had them traveling at considerable speed. They could always increase altitude, for the bikes had no maximum, but the more they could hug the terrain the better they all felt, so they were playing it cagy and a bit reckless at the same time.

But she trusted their team leader and just did her part to keep up. The few times he eased out of her Ikrid range Mace and Leo were beside her to orient off of. They had greater range and didn’t lose track of him, allowing her to creep back up to the point where she could sense his presence, though his bike was still thoroughly a blank spot as far as her nightvision was concerned.

As far as navigating to their destination they had no help there. The bike’s navigation systems could pick up the orbital signals from the warships to give them a read-only link to the battlemap, but those systems were powered down when underneath the stealth sheath, for it would block all incoming signals. That meant Brandon had to play it by ear and guestimate their heading and distance traveled up until he found some convenient terrain and they stopped within a steep canyon.

By that time they were out of the rainstorm and the first hint of light began to illuminate the western horizon, with them parking their bikes between rock formations where they’d be all but impossible to see. They kept their cloaking sheaths on, making only a visible inspection from directly above possible of spotting the black dots and hopefully they would be in shadow once the sun rose, but the four Arc Commandos slid out from underneath their rides and had a look around the area, finding an elevated position from which to get their bearings.

Jyra crawled up top a small mount next to the other four as the sky began to brighten to hazy blue, barely enough to make out the first bits of sight without their nightvision, but the distant lizard cities were easy enough to make out, for their buildings rose up well above the terrain. There were three within easy viewing and a scattering of others whose tips were just poking above the horizon. None of them were their target, meaning they were going to have to lay low throughout the day and travel another leg over the next night, but first they needed an accurate vector.

Jyra saw a new waypoint uploaded onto her HUD from Brandon’s helmet and synced with the battlemap being transmitted from orbit, but per their sneaking orders they’d set their own transmitters to stay silent aside from a very weak signal that would only register within a few dozen meters. That may have been a bit paranoid considering their comm signals were already camouflaged, but with the ever increasing level of lizard tech they didn’t want to take any chances.

“Looks like we’re clear,” Leo commented, the first words any of them had spoken all night long.

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Brandon said, continuing to have a look around. “I don’t think the lizards have any reason for being out here on foot, but I don’t want to take the chance of a stray ship spotting us. If anyone sees a nice camping spot, don’t keep it to yourself.”

“I’ve got a ledge to the south,” Mace commented. “Plenty of boulders to find some shady spots.”

“I suppose a cave is too much to ask for?” Jyra said, looking around with the others in her nightvision.

“How long do we have to look?” Leo asked.

“About 5 minutes.”

“Couldn’t you have put us down sooner?” Mace complained.

“Woulda, coulda, shoulda…it’s a moot point now.”

“I’ll take the north,” Jyra said, crawling over the top and sliding down the rocky hillside there.

“South,” Leo said, taking off the opposite direction and leaving the other two the remaining cardinal points. They scrambled around on the ground, running once they were below vision height of the surrounding area, and looking for the best cover they could find, hoping they wouldn’t have to be stuck in a square meter or two for the next 19 hours.

Mace won out in the scavenger hunt, finding a deep overhang that was essentially a wall-less cave on three sides. It wasn’t big enough to bring all their bikes under, but they did head back to them and retrieve bits of equipment that they then hiked a short distance and out of sight of the bikes to dump underneath the overhang as the sun finally broke over the horizon.

“Good one, Mace,” Jyra said as she pulled off her helmet and tasted the slightly pungent air that had oxygen levels higher than Star Force standard. “Who wants first watch?”

“I will,” Brandon offered. “Get your digs set up and chill. No workouts, unfortunately.”

“At least we can get out of our armor,” Leo said, pulling his helmet off as Jyra began unpacking their portable tents.

“No, use the big one,” Brandon told her.

“Will it fit?”

“I think so. Try anyway, we’ve got plenty of time to kill.”

Jyra shrugged and pulled out the larger unit as Leo smoothed off the ground as much as possible, kicking some small rocks out of the way before she deployed the canister and they all stepped back from the perimeter but still stayed under the aerial cover of the ledge. The pale pink rocks would stand out in stark contrast to their pitch black armor, for they’d chosen that color for their nighttime operations in the hasty prep they’d had on the command ship prior to insertion.

The tent rose up and kissed the ceiling, getting pinned there a few inches from full deployment.

“Close enough?” Mace wondered.

“It’s not rigid,” Jyra pointed out.

“Will it still work?” Leo asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Never had to deal with this before.”

“We don’t need the walls, it’s the stuff inside.”

“Well,” Jyra said, pushing the door flap aside and walking in. “The floor and ceiling are solid, and I assume the power lines in the walls are either flexible or in the poles.”

“Try it,” Brandon said, tossing her the power pack.

“Please work,” she whispered. “I really want a shower.”

She slid the small device in then got handed the other pieces of equipment through the doorway by the others. When she plugged them in they lit up with power, but it wasn’t until she stepped inside the shower ring and tapped the button with her armored toe did it come on. She let it scrub the outer layer of her armor until it did a full circuit up and down, with the few missing inches of height apparently not affecting it negatively.

“Seems ok,” she said, turning it off and stepping out.

“Something to add to the Nest notes,” Brandon said, staying outside. “I’m on watch. Get to sleep.”

“How about some cards?” Mace asked.

“After we relieve ourselves,” Leo noted. “I’d prefer to do that in private, thank you very much.”

“Yeah,” Jyra agreed. “Go ahead. I’ve got second.”

“Are we showering in private too?” Mace wondered.

“Let’s just camp outside and give everyone some alone time,” Jyra suggested. “Though it is weird that the idea of showering in front of you guys doesn’t bother me, but I really don’t like taking a dump with you watching.”

“Ditto,” Leo agreed. “Might as well give each other some space while we can.”

“Let us know when you’re done,” Mace said, walking back outside and finding a bit of ground to sit on looking out at the ever increasing sunlight kissing the rocks. A huge shadow was overtop the ledge and most of the canyon, but he could see the sunlight line on the walls was moving ever so slowly down.

Jyra sat down next to him, with Brandon to the far left still with his helmet on. He’d stay that way until his watch was over, with the other two letting him keep the look out while Jyra leaned back on the ground and stretched out, literally, after having been cramped up on the speeder for hours. She yawned, not really tired but thoroughly bored.

“Should have brought a game mod,” she said, sitting back up and mentally settling in to the process of waiting for nightfall to come again.

4

February 27, 2933

Gvaris System (lizard territory)

Nephasil

Jyra and her team packed up their gear just before sunset and crept over to their speeders when the light finally went down. Throughout the entire day they hadn’t seen or heard so much as a peep from the lizards, but with their lives hanging on by a thread they didn’t want to take any chances. When deep night finally reigned they mounted up and took off on the next leg of their journey, traveling north around a city then angling northeast in a zigzag between two others before finally finding some less than suitable terrain to lay low in during the next day.

There they didn’t have the luxury of an overhang, barely finding enough boulders to hide their bikes in and having to stay in armor tucked into crevices for most of the day. When night finally fell they took an hour to set up camp and shower, then they immediately packed back up and headed off on their bikes towards their destination city.

They got to the perimeter with a few hours left to spare but didn’t think that would be enough time to accomplish their mission, so they searched around and actually found a cave to hide in about 20 miles outside the city. There they waited through the day cycle, sleeping in turns while one always kept watch with a fair amount of air traffic passing nearby them. They weren’t disturbed and no wisps or transports did a double pass so the team assumed they’d gone undetected, then when the day began to wane it was almost time to get going and make this happen, with Jyra watching battlemap updates being transmitted from orbit detailing how the ground battles were faring.

She wasn’t pulling live vids, for she couldn’t request additional data with the blackout protocols, but the basis statistics showed that they were losing, but in a controlled manner. Bleeding the enemy of troops as they slowly withdrew, but Star Force only had so much ground to give. The ‘had to hold’ points were still secure, but the pressure on them was mounting and Jyra wasn’t sure what the outcome of this one was going to be unless they got reinforcements…for the enemy’s never-ending stream was going to wear down their troops eventually, with the lizard body trails already being visible from orbit.

“Anyone else thinking that we might be a bit too late?” she asked, sitting on the edge of the cave where she could get decent reception on her helmet, but just far enough in side that she was still in shadow.

“Looks that way,” Mace answered. “But if Sara let us come down here, then I’d guess they don’t see it that way.”

“We’re going to need backup.”

“Might already be on the way.”

“Regardless,” Brandon added, “we haven’t seen this much resistance on the ground since…well, as long as I can remember.”

“I don’t think the lizards want us severing their empire’s lifeline,” Leo summed up. “I think we’re in for a whole new level of spamming here.”

“Not us, if we do our job right,” Brandon corrected. “Let’s hope their backline is asleep.”

“When do they sleep?” Jyra wondered. “And how much?”

“A good question,” Brandon agreed. “Let’s not try and a find out this trip, okay?”

“Not like I was going to go around interviewing them,” Jyra mumbled. “Just wondering how much a slice of day they miss in snooze zone.”

“Once every three days, give or take,” Leo answered.

Brandon turned his helmet to look at him. “How do you know that?”

“Recon report.”

“By who?”

“The Queen of Diamonds. She’s pulled a lot of solo missions behind enemy lines studying them. I’ve been able to get into most of the reports. Makes for good reading.”

“I didn’t think our codes would work on the trailblazers’ stuff?”

“She’s not one of them.”

“Scuttlebutt says she is,” Jyra disagreed.

“No, she just has some experimental flying armor,” Mace explained.

“Have you found confirmation of that?” Brandon asked.

“In reports, no. But I have pulled visuals from some of the battles she’s been in. Those aren’t hard to find.”

“Ok, lizard expert,” Brandon said. “Anything else we should know before heading in there?”

“They don’t like losing,” Leo said, watching his own HUD with the realtime battlemap.

“Well they’re going to lose a little to us. Let’s get packed up,” he said, grabbing a water jug while the others picked up the spare pieces of equipment that didn’t go in their packs and loaded them up while Leo took down their tent and did likewise. When they were all set they mounted up within the cave and eased their way out one by one, hugging low to the terrain and following Brandon out as he navigated their way through the dark getting them closer to the city.

The cameras on the tips of the speeders picked up the aerial traffic easily enough, with ships coming and going constantly from other cities delivering troops and supplies that would then be sent on ahead to the front. No infantry convoys were present, however, but there were a lot of rapidly moving hovertrucks coming in, apparently shuttling the hordes of lizards to this rendezvous point where they could gather and then approach en mass under their own power.

That meant the four speeders had to be careful when approaching to choose a vector that didn’t have traffic, but a couple of miles shy of the outer buildings they stopped their approach and flew low in a wide circle checking the terrain and keeping off the rocky mounts. Eventually they found a bit of cover and set down, hiding two of the bikes there and doubling up on the others. They planned to fly their way over the buildings and through the streets rather than trying to huff it on foot, but if something went wrong and they lost their rides they didn’t want to get caught out in the countryside on foot, for their evac point was far from here.

It didn’t hurt to have a backup plan, but it was a very tight fit underneath the cloaking sheaths with Jyra having to almost lay down around Mace’s waist to fit. Her head wasn’t upright, but then again she couldn’t see anything other than the camera transmitting to her HUD, and that didn’t matter since she wasn’t driving.

The Arc Commando did watch as Brandon and Mace flew up to the outer ring of buildings, picking their spot carefully as they eased up to one and all but landed on the roof of the 4 story tall structure. It didn’t have windows, which was common for their low lying structures. They knew enough about lizard infrastructure to know it was an industrial warehouse of some sort, the contents of which they didn’t know, nor were they going to find out. They had a variety of targets available to them to hit, but right now staying hidden was all that mattered.

Creeping from roof to roof and zipping across sections of city where they found a hole in the traffic patterns, the two speeders stayed together and traveled far inside the outer perimeter, avoiding the heavily defended infrastructure and zigzagging across the mundane structures. Most of those were residential or more warehouses, and they set down on the roof of one residential complex when their primary target came within sight.

Or rather the top of it, most of the hatchery was situated below ground but the entrances were fairly well defended. They were going to have to sneak their way in from here, and the best way they knew how was to go underground themselves and travel over to the facility via the tunnel network.

Jyra slid out from under the cloaking sheath along with Mace and jogged over to one of the roof entrances that Leo was already working on cutting into, for it wasn’t a personnel entrance, but rather an exhaust vent. The Archons might be able to walk down through a lizard building, wave their hands and make all the occupants forget seeing them, but the Arc Commandos’ Ikrid abilities were not so advanced. With the cover of night and luck having allowed them to get this far, and their bikes wedged up against roof outcroppings where they would hopefully not be noticed, they were going to take the ventilation system route to get into the substructure and therefore hopefully preserve the anonymity of their exit point.

But in truth, from here on out they were making up everything as they went.

Leo lifted the grated cover off and Jyra slid into the meter-wide shaft first, having to wiggle around to get her pack to fit inside. With her legs and arms spread out like a vice, she lowered herself with a controlled slide all the way through the building down into the substructure where the environmental systems where gathering the excess heat produced within the building and shunting it outside so the lizards wouldn’t cook themselves in the close confines of their packed city.

This wasn’t the first time she’d been in such a shaft and Jyra knew what to do at the base, using a cutting tool to make a hole just above the bottom that led into a maintenance crawlway. One good thing about lizard infrastructure was that it almost never changed, and each planet had identical buildings created from a very large playbook. Learn it, and you’d be able to get around anywhere within their cities no matter what arrangement they placed the buildings in.

“Clear,” Jyra said over their short range comm as she kicked her legs through the opening and slid out of the shaft as the other three started to come down. Maneuvering with her pack on was difficult, but it was something she’d gotten used to on previous missions and didn’t hold her up much now. Leading the way into an empty room, checked beforehand with her Ikrid, she slid out of the crawlway and got onto her feet, brandishing a pair of stun pistols and walking across to the nearby open doorway and held position there while the others caught up.

“How we doing?” Brandon asked, bringing up the rear.

“Not a peep yet.”

He passed her by and took the lead as the foursome began to move through the bottom of the residential complex until they came to the interconnecting tunnels buried deep underground. There they found their first live lizards in the form of a line pushing hover crates down a long, highway-like lateral shaft.

“Can’t go that way,” Mace commented.

“No, we’re going across,” Brandon said.

“Across?” Jyra clarified.

“We’ll have to distract them.”

“There are too many.”

“We wait for a gap…it’ll work.”

“Too risky,” she urged.

“Not sure what you’re thinking, bro,” Leo added.

“I’m thinking that if we have to take a detour around this we’re going to waste a couple of extra hours and probably have to go back topside anyway.”

“There might be some auxiliary shafts crisscrossing this main,” Jyra offered.

Mace gently shook his head. “It’s a main for a reason. If there are auxiliaries they’ll be power lines or other utilities. We could spend hours looking and find nothing. He’s right, we gotta get across here. I just don’t know a good way.”

“The doorway on the other side is clear, we just have to sprint across when they’re not looking.”

“They’re all looking this way from the left,” Jyra argued, “and who knows when someone will come back from the right side.”

“Mace, you’re up first.”

“First for what?” he asked Brandon, but stepped up alongside him just shy of the doorway and out of sight to the left of the lizards passing by.

“When I say go, quietly and quickly cross to the other side.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes.”

Mace sighed. “Ok, buddy. You better know what you’re doing.”

Brandon closed his eyes and concentrated all his focus in one direction, reaching out with his Ikrid and touching the lizard minds closest on the left. Within his range he could sense six, with a seventh approaching as another crossed their path and he discounted that one. So long as he and the others didn’t turn around they shouldn’t have to worry about them.

It was the ones pushing the crates in their direction that could see them, so he gently froze their perceptions with a light haze, causing their thoughts to wonder a bit while their actions remained the same. They could see ahead, but weren’t paying attention to what was around them, and as soon as he was sure it was working he double tapped Brandon on the shoulder and the Arc Commando jogged out into the open directly behind the lizard that had just passed him.

He crossed two meters behind him, stepping as quietly as he could over to the far doorway and around the corner, getting out of sight.

“We clear over there?” Jyra asked.

“Standby,” Mace said, then after a long moment he added, “Clear.”

“Son of a bitch,” she said in amazement.

“We’re not done yet,” Brandon said, keeping rudimentary contact with the minds to the left but releasing one that just passed them by and picked up another one as it came into range. “Leo, you’re up.”

“Ready,” he said, taking a knee next to Brandon around the corner. He got the double tap on the shoulder then jerked backwards instantly when Mace called him off.

“Wait!” he warned.

“What’s up?” Jyra asked so Brandon didn’t have to.

“30 seconds. Got a roamer here.”

“Just one?”

“Yeah, and he’s taking his time.”

“You ok?”

“I’m out of view, but the doorway isn’t.”

“Standing bye,” Leo announced as they waited…then they sensed a pair of minds coming up behind them.

“Jyra, you’re up next,” Brandon said, changing his mind. “Leo, deal with those two.”

“On it,” the second strongest psionic among them said, backtracking a few meters and ducking into another maintenance chamber with a host of pipes running up and down through the closet-like room. Leo reached out with his mind and caused one of the two lizards to hear something behind him, causing him to turn around and look, buying them a couple more seconds. After that he used a few more Jedi mind tricks to delay them as best he could.

“We’re going to have to move,” he eventually reported. “They’re coming to this doorway.”

“Clear,” Mace reported.

“We can use that,” Brandon said as he sent Jyra on across. “Hide.”

The remaining duo pulled back further and ducked into different side chambers, waiting for the lizards to come to them and having stun guns ready if they happened to be headed for one of those locations. Killing them would send up a smell of blood that the rest of the lizards wouldn’t miss, so stun weapons were what they were carrying for the most part, though the sound alone would be trouble enough.

When the pair got to them they walked on past, out into the subsurface ‘highway’ with Brandon and Leo stepping out behind them and numbing their minds to their footsteps. So long as they didn’t turn around to see them they’d be ok, with Leo keeping both of their minds under his scrutiny while Brandon tricked the crate pushers into ‘seeing’ two more lizards in their place.

The real pair crossed in front of one of the crates and turned left, heading the opposite direction and prompting the Arc Commandos to scurry their last few steps so they didn’t get within their peripheral vision. They ducked into the far doorway and got out of sight from everyone save for the single crate pusher that happened to be passing at that moment. Keeping the ruse in place for him was a bit more difficult because the real lizards were now out of view and there was nothing active for Brandon to copy, but he dampened his mind enough to allow him to pass without looking to his left and seeing them as they disappeared into side nooks.

“See,” Brandon said as he stood next to a bulky pillar that was supporting the structure above them, “no trouble.”

“I wish I could do that,” Jyra said in envy.

“One day, youngling. One day,” Brandon said as he stepped out of his nook and walked down the hallway, turning the corner as the others came out and followed him through the much smaller hallways. They got about 20 seconds before having to backtrack and hide briefly, then it was more of the same moving onwards and navigating by guess given that they didn’t have any blueprints for these lower levels. Orbital sensors couldn’t penetrate beneath the shielding that all lizard cities seemed to have nowadays, so there was no way to know how long it’d take them to get to their target.

It was entirely possible that they would have to spend the day down here hiding out before night came again, but for now they had hours to work with and didn’t intend to waste them if not absolutely necessary.

Unfortunately that didn’t happen, with them having to backtrack multiple times as they ran into bottlenecks that they couldn’t bypass. Too many minds in one place and not even all the mind tricks the four of them could produce would be enough to avoid detection, plus the security cameras that popped up here and there had to be avoided, but those at least were predictable. These were low security areas and not under potential scrutiny up until they got close to the hatchery.

That was when they spent another few hours working their way around the subsurface perimeter looking for a way in and having to choose between several bad alternatives, leading them to run out of night to escape in and forcing them to find a quiet room to hide out in while they took turns making scouting runs of the area and adding it to their battlemaps that they would share when meeting up again. Through that process they began to get the layout of the entire western side of the huge facility while they took turns getting an hour or two of sleep each while another stood watch right under the enemy’s nose.

5

“Alright, Jyra,” Brandon said over the comm. “Go.”

Standing in a wall nook, she stepped out of cover and ran three quick steps down the hall, coming up behind a librarian variant that had just come out of the hatchery complex and stuck her stun pistol into its back and discharged it as quietly as possible. The was a muffled ‘zap’ and it fell over, with Jyra catching it before it hit the ground and dragging the lizard off to a nearby room while the others were providing psionic distractions.

Half a minute later Leo came in, followed by the others with Brandon bringing up the tail end and heading straight for the unconscious lizard lying on the floor. He took his armored glove off and touched the big, angled forehead of the lizard to increase his Ikrid contact and dove into its memories as best he could, looking for recent information about the facility it had just walked out of.

Librarians were always a treasure trove of information, with their minds being the easiest to read of all the lizard types. Brandon only knew about standard varieties from experience, with the librarians being ground crew running logistical operations and kept well away from combat. This was the first time he’d been able to see one in person and as soon as he made contact he felt the difference in its mind. The standard variants were elusive in that their focus lay on the matter at hand, which was always changing. This one was altered, in that its mind was segmented into easily recognizable sections much like a library, making it a simple task to look for and retrieve what you wanted to know.

Brandon assumed that was part of their genetic design, for this one could probably store and analyze data better than the others given this mental structure. It was a thinking mind, not an impulsive one, and thankfully for the Arc Commandos this one was naturally observant, with the path it’d just walked through the facility being mostly intact in its memory, giving Brandon the position of the checkpoints, security cameras, and traffic levels inside the sections it had passed through.

“Damn,” he whispered, looking for some auxiliary information while he had the chance.

“Fortified?” Leo asked.

“No, just impossible to get in unnoticed.”

“Cameras?”

“Several, but it’s the traffic flow that concerns me. Too many bodies around,” he said, then fell quiet as he searched for another way in. “594.”

“What?”

Brandon glanced up at him. “That’s how many lizards this facility produces on average…per day.”

“What’s their incubation time?” Mace asked.

Brandon hesitated a moment. “7 months, give or take.”

“That’s faster,” Jyra commented.

“Looks like they’ve been upgrading their biotech too,” Mace stated with dissatisfaction. “Might not mean a lot planetwide, but if we take this out of commission it’ll make a dent in their future numbers. We just gotta make sure we wreck it good, because you know they’re going to rebuild.”

“That’s still around 120,000 lizards we can kill before they wake up,” Jyra said, doing the math. “Worth it in my opinion.”

“Plus however many they don’t grow while rebuilding,” Leo added as he watched the entrance and stood ready to distract any lizards that veered too near their section of what was a utility promenade around the base of the hatchery, feeding it power, water, and other materials through pipes that passed through this junction. There were a lot of monitors around them, meaning this was a ‘come and see if there’s a problem’ room rather than a workstation, and therefore hopefully wouldn’t be visited.

“Hold on,” Brandon said. “We might have some relocating to do.”

“Meaning?” Jyra asked.

“Carry him,” he said, releasing the lizard’s head and pulling his glove back on. “Make sure he stays out.”

“Looks like I’ve got a date,” she said to the lizard before pumping another stun shot into his chest with the barrel pushed into his flesh, then she pulling him over her shoulders with most of his weight resting on top of her pack as the others led the way out. They used their more powerful psionics to chart a course through the lizard infrastructure and distract where needed until they came to another one of thousands of innocuous rooms along the labyrinth of small, subsurface hallways, with Leo ducking inside the doorway quickly.

Jyra heard a pair of stun shots, but by the time she rounded the corner the pair of lizards in the room were already down. Both were standard varieties.

“One of us is going to have to stay here,” Brandon said apologetically.

“I will,” Jyra offered.

“No, I will,” Leo said. “Your psionics aren’t strong enough.”

“Take these three somewhere else nearby,” Brandon said as he moved to a specific panel and pressed a few of the lizard buttons that he knew how to operate, “then get back here.”

“I’ve got these two,” Mace said, picking up the smaller lizards as Leo took point and went searching for someplace to stash them. Soon Jyra got a waypoint beacon and she and Mace took their prisoners out of the room leaving Brandon to work on opening up the water pipes that led into the hatchery. Apparently the facility used quite a lot, for there were three different links for water coming in, with this being one of them. A lot of other pipes were routed through this room as well, but it was the 1.4 meter wide water pipe that was going to be their ticket inside.

Brandon deactivated the water flow, then took out a cutting tool and began slicing open the top of the pipe after insuring that the pressure on this side was reduced so it wouldn’t spill up out onto the floor, but that didn’t stop a small geyser of water/steam to shoot out for a few seconds when he punctured through it the first time. He waited for it to subside, then turned the small hole into a line that eventually circled back on itself until the chunk of pipe fell down into the water, splashing out more onto the floor from the manhole-sized breach point.

“We’re coming back out this way if we can,” Brandon told Leo, “so keep this location secure.”

“Understood.”

“We’ve got about 300 meters to swim, so give me a couple minutes head start. No point in your wasting oxygen while I’m cutting on the other end,” Brandon said as he climbed up on top of the pipe and straddled it.

“Where does this lead?” Jyra asked.

“To a lot of smaller pipes that we can’t fit into, but we’re getting out early on the other side of the wall.”

“If you say so.”

“Not the best idea, but it’s the only way I know of to stay hidden.”

“Let’s make it work then.”

“Mace second, you third. Trade out your gear for Leo’s explosives.”

“On it,” she said, disconnecting her pack from her armor and setting it on the floor as Leo did likewise.

Brandon took a deep breath, realizing that he was going to be on the clock here, then let it out slowly as he readied himself. Leaning forward, he let himself fall down into the water, which gushed out onto the floor from the displacement, then he began crawling/swimming down the dark pipe using his Pefbar to see the circular walls as his helmet’s air vents automatically closed against presence of the water and his backup oxygen supply kicked in.

His battlemap sensors mapped out the tube as he went, giving him distance markings so he knew approximately how far to go before pushing out his Pefbar to look beyond the pipe. He passed by several chambers that were on the wrong side of the main wall, but he wasn’t sure exactly where it was. Taking his best guess he went a bit further than that, then started looking for minds nearby.

He eventually came across one room that had none in it, with the pipe traveling mostly in the walls and ‘thick’ sections of infrastructure were a person couldn’t fit, leaving him with only a handful of rooms to choose from. Taking his luck for what it was, he stopped his movement and stretched his Pefbar out as far as he could to see what the room was like. It too didn’t have a door on it, just an opening to the hallway beyond, but he didn’t sense any minds nearby at all, so hopefully this section of the hatchery wasn’t staffed.

From the librarian he’d learned where exactly the workers were, with most of the facility being made up of equipment that had to be looked after rather than operated, making chunks of it ghost towns save for the random visit. Hopefully this was one of them.

He used his cutting tool and got to work on the top of the pipe, not wanting to flood the area by opening up the side or bottom, for there was still a whole lot of water in the tube, though he was noticing a few inches of air up top now. Those inside the facility may have noticed the lack of water pressure, and if they did hopefully this room wasn’t where they’d check first.

The water vaporized around the tip of the cutter as he seared through the casing, beginning to trace a slow path around another man-sized hole and making sure to make it large enough for them to exit with their packs on as Mace swam up behind him and stopped just shy of his feet. Jyra showed up as well before Brandon got finished, then the hard casing fell down into the water and he pushed it further down the tube before standing up and having a look around with water gushing out onto the floor but not spreading as far as the doorway.

The room was dark save for indicator lights, which was a good sign. No minds were within his sensing range, so Brandon stepped out and let his oxygen supply begin to recharge as he started taking in outside air again.

“Clear,” he reported, taking up station near the doorway and sneaking a peak outside. Both directions of the hallway were empty, with him breathing a sigh of relief. This was actually doable now.

Mace and Jyra joined him, then the three of them moved out and heading in different directions to start building a battlemap and looking for the nearest minds, spending a few minutes orienting themselves before Brandon got a feel for where they were in the hatchery. This one was larger than the one Star Force had built from lizard tech, but the basic layout was the same, only redundantly made larger.

“Alright,” Brandon said when they’d pulled back to their entry point, making sure no one had stumbled onto their hole in the pipe or the water on the floor. “Time to hide the easter eggs. Set for remote and timer. 10 hours or…let’s just make it 3 am. Place as many as you can, but do not be seen.”

“Sneaking as ordered,” Mace confirmed, with the three splitting up and heading to the periphery of their scouted area. When Jyra got to her section she kept her limited psionics engaged constantly, looking for nearby minds as well as using her Pefbar to see through corners to look for security cameras. She took her time and eventually came to one of the inhabited sections, requiring a bit of sneaking by with the lizards opening up fully developed pods and releasing the adult, but just ‘born’ lizards one at a time.

She noticed one that came out shook violently when it was exposed to the air for the first time, with the three others around it having to physically restrain it as it lashed out wildly until it came to its senses and saw that it was with other lizards. Jyra mentally noted never to wake one up and expect a ‘good morning,’ for it seemed they were always wired to fight as their basic instinct. It was still impressive though, how the brand new lizard actually spoke to its greeting party. That meant they did have knowledge preprogrammed into their genetics…either that or there was some sort of download occurring within the pods.

Jyra avoided that pod and several others that had lizards prepping them for release, instead sneaking over to some that were still in waiting, lined up on a long bay floor in rows that gave her ample cover if she crouched down. She could tell from the construction that they were moveable, with the empty one that the brand new lizard had come out of confirming that suspicion as it sank down into a hole in the floor and disappeared into a recycling facility that would prep it for another occupant.

A moment later another one appeared in its place, coming down from the ceiling, meaning that Jyra couldn’t place the bombs on the pods themselves or they’d disappear with them, and if they did get through 598 a day then most of these would be looked at before the timers expired. That meant she had to find someplace else to stash her first little gem, with a bank of what looked like support lines and tanks on the far wall being the obvious second choice.

As she stalked her way over to them, doing her best Solid Snake impression to avoid the few lizards walking about checking on pods, she pulled a small square ‘hockey puck’ out of her pack and linked to it via her HUD, activating it and programming it accordingly with a few quick commands. The Arc Commando dropped all the way to the floor and scooted as far as she could get between several small pipes, then slid it back under them even further before using her full Lachka power to nudge it along the floor sideways until it was out of sight and resting behind a support strut.

One down, 35 to go.

Brandon had reserved the busiest section for himself, heading to the embryo stages where genetic material was being inserted into tiny pods full of gel that would begin the development cycle. That process was actually pretty simple and quick, but there were teams of lizards moving around prepping empty pods with the gel and hooking them up to the support infrastructure, making it very hard for him to move around unnoticed, with him having to use a mind trick twice to get by bottlenecks.

Being patient and stealthy, he moved around from ward to ward, hiding an explosive or two in each, then moving on to later stages of development. Many of the chambers were the same, but once they reached a certain point in the timeline they were transferred to the larger pods, which was also a beehive of activity. He made sure to drop a present everywhere it would do a lot of damage, not enough to bring the building down, but to junk the internal equipment and cause them to replace all of it. It would also kill the developing lizards, and as much as he hated spawn point camping this had to be done.

These lizards hadn’t done anything against Star Force yet, and if they’d been another race they wouldn’t have been using this type of tactic, but never in the history of Star Force had a lizard not wanted to kill them. These developing here would do the same when they got released, so it was best to kill them now before they could fire their first shot. They were going to be enemies regardless, every last one of them. If there had even been a shred of doubt about that they wouldn’t be here doing this, at least not in this way, but Brandon and the others were sure. They had to be, for one didn’t want to make a mistake and kill someone who wasn’t going to try and kill you.

That was one disadvantage the lizards had…they were all united with a common purpose. After so many centuries of warfare for Star Force to learn about them through, they no longer needed to be careful to not target the innocent bystanders, for the lizards had proved there were none within their race. This planet had been given the opportunity to surrender, which it hadn’t taken, and wouldn’t as the offer was repeated over the coming years, so that meant it all had to be destroyed, right down to every last lizard, including the ones in these pods.

Brandon and the others did keep running through the logic in their minds though, rather than taking it as a foregone conclusion. They had to make sure what they were doing was right, and in this case, on this mission, it was, leaving Brandon without any regrets or doubts. He just hated killing like this, but the lizards weren’t giving the galaxy much choice. It was kill or be killed, and when it came to that Star Force could and would prove itself superior in that skillset…it just didn’t usually show it off, out of caution to make sure it stayed on mission.

But today, on this planet, that mission was destruction, pure and simple.

Brandon kept moving around planting explosives and calibrating them to the clock in his helmet to insure that they’d all go off simultaneously, but there was one more place he had to go and that was in the genetic repository that held the precious little hand-sized crates that could create an army for each and every one of them. Typically the lizards didn’t have many of those on hand, and guarded them carefully against destruction…but since they didn’t know anyone was here, and this hatchery was still fully operational, they should be located in the control areas where the monitoring staff were.

That was going to be the hardest to sneak into, which was why Brandon left it last on the list, for he was going to need the others’ help to get in there.

6

Jyra walked ever so softly in her armor’s boots, coated in dampening treads over top the hardened under soles, trying to be as smooth as possible as she strode past a lizard at a work station. There were 8 of them in the room, all doing this or that with 5 of them staying put. Three others were roaming from station to station, based on the patterns the Arc Commandos had been monitoring via Pefbar through the walls and nearby rooms before sliding a tiny remote camera in through the doorway. They’d used it to get more info on the control room, including the placement of two security cameras that Jyra was walking around…right in view of the rest of the lizards.

Those lizards were attending to their work and she wasn’t noticed, for Mace and Brandon were working them over with psionics during what they thought would be another few minutes of inactivity from the roamers. Right now two of them were seated and the third was standing in front of monitoring displays. It had been doing that regularly before transitioning over to check another, more formal station.

Jyra and the others had spent over an hour watching their movements in order to plan this out, and now that she was doing it she could feel the danger around her. One look was all it would take to blow their cover and they’d be on the run, but they really wanted to make sure the genetic material didn’t survive the explosions and the only way to make sure of that was detonating one of their little hockey pucks directly on them, else their protective shells would more than likely keep them intact.

The three of them had planned this out prior to her entry, and Jyra was walking a very deliberate course around and through the workstation. The lizard directly to her left all but had its eyes on her, but they were tilted down slightly to look at his station screen and a heavy dose of Ikrid influence to make him keep them there.

Jyra moved slowly, at approximately the speed the roamers moved, with that image being put into the minds of any of them that happened to turn in her direction. They couldn’t psionically dampen all 8 at once, so they were working on the ones most likely to spot her with Jyra’s psionics being used as a backup in case something went wrong.

She made a hard left past its station, then ever so carefully dropped to the ground and crawled past another station that had a security camera over it, she turned right and went within a meter of one sitting lizard’s tail that was sticking out the back of its chair, twitching lazily in the air a few inches off the ground. She made sure not to touch it and kept moving.

After a few more zigzags she ended up in the back room where another security camera was covering the genetic repository, which was basically an elaborate closet indented into the wall. The second camera was there, covering it, for which she opened her hand and a small piece of material they’d scrounged from the cover of a supply canister in the pod prep area gently floated up into the air. Her psionics might not be that strong yet, but make the object as light as a big pebble and she could work it around just fine.

It rose up and put its flat width in front of the camera mount, blocking the view and held it there. Both of the others were busy keeping the lizard minds occupied, so it was her job to multitask and keep it aloft in that precise space while she dug into her open pack and pulled out her last bomb. There wasn’t much in the way of places to hide it, but they knew from experience that the genetic material was so dense that multiple canisters would not be needed for months, so the likelihood of someone coming over here to pick up another one anytime soon was slim.

There was a small lip behind the cartons that held the protective canisters and she set the explosive there, making sure it was out of the line of sight of the camera. There was nothing covering it, but Jyra could only make out a bit of it from above when she pulled her arm back, and fortunately the lizards were shorter than her. Confident that it would go unnoticed despite not being hidden well, she began to make her way back out into the control room, tugging the little piece of thin material back into her hand.

If someone was actively watching the cameras then they’d notice an interruption, but they wouldn’t see her black armor. Given how low level the security was here, for there were no invading troops in this city anymore, they’d wagered that not every camera in the entire city would be monitored and were probably there for use in an active situation or for replay after the fact. It was a bit of a gamble, and if someone was watching and came to check on the camera it would increase the likelihood of the explosive being found, which was why as she backed away she toggled the explosive’s settings to include movement detonation.

Hopefully this planet didn’t have earthquakes, for aside from that it wouldn’t go off unless someone picked it up or something really big crashed nearby and vibrated the floor. But if there was going to be someone to find the explosive before the timer expired, it would be best for the rest of the lizards not to know what was going on and give them a chance to search for more. Dead men tell no tales, and that would certainly be the case with anyone who found this one, though the others spread throughout the hatchery were not so set, for some of them were in locations where there could be vibrations, plus they were hid a lot better.

Jyra walked/crawled her course in reverse, then casually stepped out of the control room and turned the corner, breathing a huge sigh of relief as Brandon signaled danger to the right. She stretched out her senses and found another mind approaching from that direction so the Arc Commandos went left down the wide hallway and ducked into a side room to let this lizard pass one way or another.

I can’t believe we pulled that off, Jyra said telepathically as they hid out. It never should have worked.

Never underestimate the stupidity of a lizard, Mace responded.

Or the power of psionics, Brandon added as the one they were mentally watching turned to the right and out of their hallway headed away from the control room and into one of the growth chambers. Let’s go.

The three of them played their now familiar game of hide and seek, crossing the hatchery and taking their time doing it to keep their cover secure, all the time wondering if/when someone would show up to inspect that camera. They didn’t pass anyone that looked to be in a hurry on their way back to their entry point, but the sooner they left the better.

Psionics said the room was empty before Brandon rounded the corner and looked inside with his eyes. The puddles on the floor had since dried, but apparently no one had come in here to see the damage. How long the lack of pressure would go unnoticed he wasn’t sure, knowing that this was only one water feed into the facility. Had it been the only one an immediate problem would have arisen, and in truth he didn’t know whether or not a lizard team was already on the case, for looking at this mundane section of pipe was probably not going to solve their problem…unless they expected an invasion team to cut their way out of it.

“Leo, how we doing?” Brandon asked.

“Good to go. You all done?”

“Headed back through the pipe now,” he said, motioning for Jyra to head in first.

Without hesitation she walked over and pushed her helmeted head into the water, sliding into the pipe with her feet disappearing last. Mace gave her a 5 count then went in after her, with both of them splashing water out, though not as much as last time.

Brandon waited a bit longer, searching the area around him with his Ikrid then checking on the status of the bombs in his HUD. They’d lose their short range tracking signals soon, but he gave them one last pulse command that triggered a return pulse. All of them updated on his HUD with an extra hour on their timers, for it had taken them longer with the control room than he’d thought and it would be best if they could make it back to their speeders before they blew, though even with the extra hour there was no guarantee of that.

He dove into the pipe after one last look around, happy to have gotten this far successfully. Now it was time to run, but they had to do so as carefully as before with a city full of lizards all around them.

That thought was on his mind as he crawled/swam through the dark pipe until he came to the bit of light at the far end where he pushed his helmet back up into the air next to the mental signatures of his team. Leo extended a hand down and helped pull him out, with his armor dripping off excess water within a few seconds thanks to the non-stick coating on the surface.

His boots stepped into a small puddle, but he didn’t linger there as Mace was already out the door charting their way back. Jyra followed him out next, then Leo, with Brandon bringing up the rear. They’d be in range of a kamikaze burst transmission for a while, which could set off the explosives remotely, but the more city they put between themselves and them would diminish the signal’s reach…plus one that loud would be picked up by the lizards, cloaked nature or not. Brandon also knew that it wouldn’t penetrate the shielding the lizard buildings had at surface level, but if they were discovered in the next little bit he could still trigger the bombs early.

Fortunately that wasn’t needed and the trek back across the undercity was much like it was coming in, with the dart across the highway becoming a bit more dicey. The long convoy of crate pushers was gone, replaced by groups of individuals walking in either direction. They had to wait it out looking for an opening then play Frogger to get across one by one while the others dampened the minds closest to them. It took time but they managed to get everyone across, then they worked their way back to the ventilation shaft and sent Leo up first, with him psionically checking out the rooftop.

It was night already, a few hours in, and there were no minds present, prompting him to climb on out and stand up in the planetary atmosphere again after spending so much time buried in infrastructure. He couldn’t feel the wind on his skin, but he could taste the difference in the air as he breathed it in and relished the freedom it invited.

As the others came up he headed over to where they’d stashed their two speeders, relieved to see that they were exactly where they’d left them and that the two dark blots had ridden out the day cycle without drawing suspicion from aerial traffic.

He pulled up the sheath on one of them and slid onto the seat with Mace following him and working his armored body around his fellow Arc Commando’s in a very awkward riding style, but after the climb through the ventilation shaft and the water pipe this was easy in comparison, requiring him to do nothing but hang on and ride.

Jyra took the other bike and Brandon likewise wrapped himself around her waist, then the two speeders pulled up their landing gear and eased up over the rooftop and across to the next building, beginning another hide and seek game to get themselves back to the edge of the city. They took their time, knowing that being reckless right now when they were so close to getting away would be the epitome of stupid, and they were about 2 miles from the rocky wastelands beyond when the timers expired and the bombs exploded.

Jyra didn’t see or hear anything, simply noting that the countdown inside her helmet expired. She deleted it from her HUD and flew on, knowing that the lizards would be alerted to some form of trouble, but right now it was behind them and they intended to keep it that way.

With her and Leo being even more cautious on these last few sections of building hopping and stopping more often than not, they eventually came to the low buildings on the perimeter at the same location as before, passing between defense turrets and dropping to the ground in the night on the city’s edge, then slowly easing their way further out and using what terrain there was to further hide the shadows that were their bikes.

Knowing that they were in the clear now both drivers kept their movements fluid, retracing the path they’d came in by that was still logged in their battlemap and which led them out to the other two hidden bikes that were agreeably still where they’d left them. Jyra let Brandon slide off low to the ground then took a moment to swing her legs off her pommel seat, stretching out a bit before the four of them mounted up again and headed across the countryside for as far as they could get before having to put down and make camp before the sun began to rise.

Six days later Alpha 9 came up on their extraction coordinates, which were little more than an anonymous spot out in the barren countryside near to the front lines and just on the Star Force side…but far away from any of the captured cities or friendly firebases. They set down inside a shallow canyon and sent a signal straight up to orbit where the lizards couldn’t detect it, telling the fleet that they were here and needed to get pulled out. Their speeders’ fuel cells were almost on zero charge, as expected, and they couldn’t fly the rest of the way to one of the Star Force held regions if they’d wanted to, though they didn’t, for that would invite wisp attention that the speeder bikes were ill equipped to handle anyway.

After a couple of hours a dropship was sent down from orbit along with a convoy heading towards one of the secure landing zones. It split off from the group near the surface and buzzed the terrain all the way out to their position with the lizards not bothering to follow it, fortunately. Jyra watched it coming on the battlemap that they were now fully reconnected with given their distance from any functioning lizard city…though there was one about 75 miles out that had been reduced to rubble. It had been the first they’d targeted from orbit and thoroughly razed in order to clear a decent perimeter to set down their first prefab structures around. Since then they’d been taking the other cities over land save for the anti-orbital guns and shield generators that they’d plucked from them.

Destroying an entire city took time and Star Force hadn’t brought many bombs with them, knowing how inefficient such weapons were in a long campaign. The charred wreck beyond them had been taken down with energy weapons only, with all of the high buildings being torn down to the point where Jyra had only been able to see a few jutted pieces on the horizon before they’d come down into the canyon.

There was nothing left there to pick up their signals even if they’d transmitted in the open, so using their normal ‘secure’ signals was of no conceivable threat this far out. And if even they were picked up, there were no lizard units nearby to intercept them…so long as their ride got here, otherwise they’d be in a heap of trouble.

But it came without incident, zipping into the canyon and dropping down right over their location. It opened its boarding ramp midair and the four speeders flew into the hold of the Falcon-class dropship, passing inside its IDF field and allowing the craft to start accelerating away before the door had even began to shut.

Jyra popped out the landing gear and set the speeder down on the deck, with the cloaking sheath having already been powered down but not removed, for it had been firmly attached at a few points before the mission. She peeled it back and climbed off at the same time the others did to find an Archon acolyte standing at the end of the bay looking at them.

“You guys alright?” he asked.

Leo pulled off his helmet and looked at the helmetless Archon that was otherwise fully clad in his silver armor. “We’re good.”

“Blow up anything useful?”

“We didn’t stick around for the fireworks,” Brandon said, likewise removing his helmet, “but unless they found and disarmed the bombs, which I think is highly unlikely, then you can scratch one lizard hatchery off the list.”

“A hatchery?” he said with a satisfied nod. “I was under the impression you were going for some firearms warehouses, or maybe a production facility.”

“Gotta have lizards to shoot them or they don’t work,” Jyra said as she and Mace also pulled off their helmets.

“True,” the Archon said, looking them over. “I gotta ask…why the old armor?”

Brandon shrugged. “We haven’t always used it, but I personally like the extra 7% armor on it.”

“Yet you aren’t wearing the heavy model that has 46% more?”

“A little too bulky for my taste. Maybe if we were as fast and strong as you guys we would, but it slows me down a bit too much.”

“I’m just an acolyte, so my strength probably doesn’t exceed yours…yet,” he said, motioning behind him to the passenger section. “Come on, brought some hot food for you guys.”

“Ah…” Jyra sighed. “I love you.”

“How’s the fighting going?” Brandon asked as Jyra slid past the Archon and out of sight into the forward section.

“Tooth and nail. We’ve got reinforcements on the way, but we’ve got to hold onto our orbital slot and at least one ground site until they get here. Since you left the lizards got one of the anti-orbital guns working again. If we don’t start expanding our foothold soon, we’ll either have to fight another costly bombardment war or pull back our cover of the ground troops…which we cannot do.”

“Damn,” Mace whispered. “I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

“They’re flooding us with swarms of a size we’ve never seen before, from wisps to tanks to infantry, and the cruiser count in orbit is going up faster than we can cull them. I think the lizards have been letting us take worlds while they focused their attention on Skarron territory, but they know they can’t lose this link in their supply chain so we’re getting the full hammer, and they know what it takes to beat us. We’ve given them plenty of lessons in the past of how many troops are not enough. They’re not making that mistake this time.”

“Any word on another mission for us?” Brandon asked.

“Not yet. Eat up, rest, and get some training in. If you think of anything on your own again, don’t hesitate to ask. If you really did get a hatchery, it’ll have an effect. Too bad we can’t confirm it from orbit.”

“Sorry,” Leo offered, heading past the Archon to find Jyra and the food. “Those bombs are too heavy to carry.”

7

March 3, 2934

Gvaris System (lizard territory)

Far Outer Zone (on approach)

Paul waited in the command nexus onboard the Excalibur in the final stages of his journey to the Gvaris System where all available Star Force fleets were diverting. Those closest to the invasion point that had been engaged in attacks on less defended systems had already been diverted to reinforce the foothold Sara had gained on one of the two inhabited planets there, but in her updated report sent out via courier ship she’d indicated that the situation had grown far worse despite the reinforcements.

IT’S GOING DOWN. EVERYONE GET HERE NOW OR WE’RE LOSING THIS ONE.

Per her summarization, he had heeded her request and dropped what he was doing in the ADZ and gathered up as many Clan Saber ships as he could, namely the ravagers that he’d been producing independently from Mainline, but he had also grabbed whatever else he could naval wise and set off to aid the others that were also converging on that point with a variety of fleets.

So it only mildly shocked Paul when just prior to deceleration they picked up a repetitive warning signal being transmitted from the enemy system. It was Star Force, and indicating that a huge swath of the jumpline in near the star was a ‘no go’ zone. That meant something was blocking their path and a collision was imminent, or some other type of nastiness was waiting for them.

Acting quickly, for the signal strength wasn’t up to interstellar relay standards and could only reach them a short ways out, he ordered his fleet to come out at a different jumppoint further out in the system, requiring a much harder deceleration. Had he not been in the nexus someone on the bridge crew would have acted on the warning, but he got to it first and sent the signal out to the ships following the Excalibur and giving them a bit more of a heads up before they all began to push against the limited gravity pull of the star ahead sooner than normal.

In addition to that the Star Force ships exerted more than normal power, for typically one didn’t overexert gravity drives during system to system travel unless you were in a massive hurry. The Clan Saber fleet hadn’t been going slowly and were making good time, but they always kept some engine power in reserve for just this reason. Flying blind into a star system was a good way to run into a debris field that hadn’t been there before, and the lizards had tried that trick at Brenaldfor, damaging sixteen jumpships on arrival but failing to kill any of them thanks to the slower speeds of impact.

Since then Star Force ships entering an unknown system often went in on irregular jumplines or more slowly using a considerable portion of their gravity drives’ tugging power to actually decelerate slightly off jumpline by pulling on a planet or even going into a slingshot deceleration curve around the star where the lizards could not anticipate them.

Paul and the others hadn’t seen many more debris mining attempts, but if they really were pulling out all the stops for this one then it made sense for them to have thrown out a bunch of rocks for his fleet to run into, and cleaning up such things took a lot of time, which was why Star Force didn’t use the tactic, not to mention for the possibility of snagging other ships entering that were not the enemy.

So when the Excalibur decelerated hard, coming out of the jump first in the convoy, Paul expected to receive the battlemap information from the other ships in the system and see debris fields blocking several of the jumplines…and he wasn’t disappointed, save for the fact that the field seemed to cover huge swaths of space around the star, and the millions of ‘rocks’ were in fact lizard ships.

“Damn, Sara,” he said, mentally diverting the Excalibur off the jumpline and sending out orders for the rest of his fleet to do likewise, heading for one of the smaller outer planets where a priority tag was situated, “they really don’t want us getting this one.”

As the battlemap transmissions were picked up, the ship’s computer made them instantly accessible to Paul’s mind, allowing him to read through them far faster than his eyes alone would have allowed. Rather than going through the summaries he instead went straight for the tactical feeds and used his Sav to start running through the battle history since the last records Sara had given them as his ships continued to drop out of their jumps and follow his command ship over to the priority tag slowly.

The situation was not good. The lizards held naval dominance throughout the system save for several points that Star Force was hunkered down in. The main planet still had a Star Force fleet in an orbital slot covering their ground invasion corridor, which had added another lizard city to its possession since the last report, but otherwise was still hemmed in firmly by the enemy in an Alamo-type scenario, save this one was taking place across a region hundreds of miles in radius.

What had not been in the previous report, at least not by the time he’d left the relay network, was Star Force bases on not one, but four outer worlds. Two were moons around a distant and cold gas giant, with the other two being on planets that held no atmosphere at all. Each of them had a defense fleet guarding what was listed as active construction projects, one of which Liam’s ID marker was at, in addition to 3 other trailblazers that had apparently already made it to the system to reinforce Sara and Kiran.

There were also lizard fleets around those planets/moons, spamming swaths with nothing but cruisers, and Paul intended to head not to the ‘safe’ zone above this planet’s outpost, but directly into the lizards to say ‘hi’ on his way in.  He didn’t even bother to wait for the rest of his fleet to catch up, instead barreling straight into the outer band with a quick microjump that wouldn’t allow his presence to be detected given the lag of the lizard sensors.

When the big donut of a ship decelerated he was within 120 miles of the nearest lizard ships and drifting closer on purpose, eventually coasting to a near stop within weapons range as the cruisers inexplicably ran rather than stood their ground and fought. Paul raised an eyebrow and took off after some of them, for while his ship was bigger it was also the faster. He succeeded in killing a few dozen cruisers before a holographic transmission from Liam appeared in his nexus and off his right shoulder.

“You won’t get many that way,” his fellow naval expert advised. “They’re blocking transit of smaller craft but refusing to engage short of insane numbers. If we take after them in force they’ll counter with the same, but otherwise this has become a chess game that we are badly in need of more pieces to move around…especially those ravagers you brought.”

“You’re welcome. Now tell me what the hell is going on? The last report I got didn’t indicate a lizard fleet one tenth of this size. Where are they coming from?”

“Both directions, but the masses are coming from their core systems. I think we’re seeing the reserves they’ve been holding onto, but not the last of them. There’s been a continuous flow of ships coming in, and despite some initial successes at sniping them on arrival, the lizards are doing a good job of preventing that now. I can’t stop them with that many ships around the star, which if you’ll look at closely contains some chess pieces of their own…which are also growing in number.”

Paul bit his lip even as he was controlling the still ongoing hunt for some of the cruisers in orbit with part of his mind while he spoke to Liam. “26 invokers? Please tell me you’ve killed at least one?”

“And 13 assault pillars,” he added. “No, we haven’t been able to get close. We can’t jump in on top of them with so many ships around, and we get swarmed when we try the front door. I think they’re going to mount an attack on our surface troops with the assault pillars, which is why we’re building additional bases out here.”

“Explain that.”

“We need resources to build our own anti-orbital battery.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “Why not request a Sentinel?”

“I get the feeling the moment we bring one in we’ll invite a counterattack to take it out before it can be assembled. I don’t want to risk that until we can properly defend it. We need a strong point, at least one Keema battery that can reach out and pound an invoker or assault pillar and provide a pocket for assembly. Then we can bring in the Sentinels, several hopefully.”

Paul thought about that for a moment as another pair of cruisers bit the dust to drones that had deployed mid microjump and cut them off on their run to a larger group of ships that were also beginning to pull back towards the stellar jumppoint.

“You think we can build one without them knowing about it?”

Liam nodded. “Totally subsurface. I’ve already got the site picked and being prepped, but the lizards are forcing us to use jumpship convoys to get the resources from planet to planet. Dropships are being chased down when we try, hence the chaperones you’re greeting now.”

“And if we kill all these off they just replace them with more?”

“At the rate they’re getting reinforcements we can’t piecemeal them to death. 100 cruisers, 1 drone, if they scatter most will get away and they’ll win the numbers game by the looks of it. We’ve made some deeper attack runs near the star, but those they will not relent on. If you want to do some hunting around the edges be my guest, but your ravagers are going to draw a lot of attention. They know now to focus them.”

“Figured they would. I…damn,” Paul said as his mental update on the battle reports finally came to one particular entry. “They tried to ram an assault pillar into the planet?”

“Thankfully Kiran saw it coming and diverted it. But yeah, they’re gonna use them as big missiles if they can.”

A sick feeling crept into Paul’s gut. He knew the lizards were capable of this, but up until now their kamikaze tendencies had been smaller scale or a last resort. He pulled a bit more of his mind away from organizing the orbital hunt and left that to his bridge crew as he analyzed what had been an approach to the main planet. Kiran had taken his own command ship directly into the cruiser swarm behind a wedge of drones that had acted as blockers, ramming the lizard ships as necessary to get him through.

But then the assault pillar had turned off, apparently realizing it wasn’t going to get within range to hit the ground…or at least not where it had intended, for the command ship could nudge it off course and land it on the lizard-held sections of the planet easily enough. That was one perk for only controlling a tiny sliver of the surface. They had to hit a very narrow target and even a bump at range could send them hundreds of miles off course.

“You’re also worried about them ramming the Sentinels?”

“Less so. They can move if needed, but I think they’ll turn into bug zappers with the cruisers going for them. Big pieces are a liability at this point. We need scores of drones to cover while we place them appropriately. I’ve also requested some special tech from back home, but will try to build some of it here. Right now we need raw materials, so any spare techs you have onboard please send down. We’re more short on hands than equipment at this point.”

“You sent for more, I assume?”

Liam nodded. “We’re building war colonies on these outer worlds while just trying to hold onto our piece of the main prize. That way they can’t take out everything we have in just one surface strike.”

“We need kinetic shield generators…big ones.”

“That’s what I sent off for, but if we’re going to block an assault pillar modular units won’t cut it. Right now a planetary Keema battery is higher on my want list.”

“Why are we still trying to take lizard cities if we’re planning to build our way out of this?”

“For as many reinforcements they have coming in, they’re still building and growing plenty on site. If we can take some of those factories offline, so much the better.”

“And more ground for us to defend.”

“Sara’s on it. We’re claiming a few strategic locations then torching the rest, capturing the cities long enough to gut them. If the lizards want to take them back they’ll find a few surprises waiting for them.”

Paul smiled. “Bit of justified irony there.”

“I know you just got here, but what are your impressions?”

“That we’re fighting the war we thought we’d have in the core out here first.”

“Not quite, but close. They know this will sever their empire in two and that any future convoys will be ambush bait. They either hold here or cellular divide into two separate entities. If we can split them, I think their pushing into Skarron territory will diminish without their industrial powerbase feeding it.”

“It may slow them down, but I’ve been going over the Voku reports in detail and I think they’ve already prepared for that eventuality. They’re bulking up key worlds on the other side of the border in what looks like the outer reaches of a new core network. Not sure where it is yet, but I get the feeling it’s already out there and growing by the day. Too bad the Skarrons aren’t living up to their rep. Even with the light Preema support they’re not making any counter gains, just stemming the tide a bit. Cal-com even admitted that they’ve pushed near to the edge of the galactic arm coreward and beyond his ability to monitor.”

Liam closed his eyes. “I didn’t realize it was that bad. I was working off the maps they’ve given us.”

“Which are no longer accurate. The lizards have not only surpassed our coreward border, they’ve also spread beyond the Voku’s detection range and apparently even the Preema have not been able to keep up with them with Skarron intelligence. There’s word of tendrils shooting off everywhere and cherry-picking going on rather than just a massive wall moving forward. All unsubstantiated, but Cal-com shares such rumors with me. It’s against his nature to report on anything that could be inaccurate, but he trusts me to be able to sort things through myself.”

“Still don’t know why he’s taken to you more than the rest of us, but I’m glad he’s sharing. No help here though?”

“He offered some light assistance, but I told him to make use of it elsewhere. If the lizards are pouring all this here, more so than I realized at the time, then there are worlds out there that won’t be getting supplemented. He’s going to hop the lines a bit too and hit some bigger targets. If he pulls some heat off of us so much the better. If not he should take them a lot easier than previously expected.”

“Assuming we survive this, good call.”

“The lizards aren’t the only ones who can fight in multiple places at once.”

“The Nexus really should have killed these guys when they were weak and small.”

“Agreed, but at least they’re finally pushing back a bit on the H’kar border.”

“Small victories,” Liam conceded. “If you let me handle the Grand Admiral role here, you’re free to go hunting with your ravagers. Just leave me a few extra defense ships if you can.”

Paul smiled. “You know me too well.”

“You designed the crude things, go use them,” Liam scoffed.

“Slight offense taken,” Paul said as the transmission cut out and he was left with his Sav-enhanced mind running through the battle reports, which now increased in pace even as he watched the status of the orbital pursuits that were dwindling down. The lizard ships were slower than theirs, but they also knew that and were taking the scattering technique to heart. Paul was going to have to poke them somewhere they were willing to fight, which meant either the main planet or back at the star.

To that end he finished up reviewing the reports and then began to pick out his best hunting grounds, intent on starting to rack up his own kill count in this massive campaign, hoping that a lot more Star Force ships were on their way and trusting the other trailblazers to scrounge up what was needed, even if it meant abandoning other war fronts. This was a must-win system for the lizards, meaning they weren’t going to pack up and run. They were going to hold to the last, and with their industrial capability that ‘last’ might never come. If Paul couldn’t eventually gain control over stellar orbit he had no doubt the reinforcements would continue to pour in indefinitely.

8

January 2, 2936

Gvaris System (lizard territory)

Inner Zone

Sen Legat Remmington-A002-92 watched from the command deck onboard the King Kong-class seda RTL as the massive battle station made its slow deceleration into the Gvaris System. Slow because the gravity drives were ill-equipped to move something so large at jumpship speeds, made only worse by the ponderously slow transit required into this particular system in order to avoid the lower stellar orbits. As it was they were going to arrive perilously close to the lizard fleets guarding the star, but he’d been promised support upon arrival if he could time it close enough.

And the Canderians had not failed in that regard. They were arriving within 20 seconds of the allotted time, a few early in fact, with the RTL being first in line of a long convoy of sedas and drone warships. If the lizards were waiting for them, so be it. He could fight his way through them if needed. This system had becoming the largest campaign in Star Force history, and now that they’d received permission to come Canderous was going to do their part.

The hyper-accelerated light coming into the seda’s sensors was being toned down by the defense shields, but a piece of it was allowed through to give them a visual regardless. That image of the central star grew steadily larger as Remmington watched, then when its size began to stabilize the color returned to it along with a host of tactical data as the seda’s speed matched that of the system and the battlemap signals became recognizable…as did the signatures of the hundreds of thousands of lizard ships waiting directly ahead of them and currently engaged with a much smaller Star Force fleet that had cleared the path for their arrival.

“Helm, move us off the jumpline but drift towards that engagement. We’ll be the fulcrum with the rest of the fleet redirecting. Bring warships into escort formation as they arrive, but keep them behind us,” he ordered even as the big spherical station began to reposition and the visual displayed across the entire forward wall of the chamber showed the ongoing firefight. “Initiate battle spin and give me safe targeting lines. We’re going to clip a few enemy ships if we can.”

The RTL wasn’t the largest Seda in Canderous, but it was the second largest by class and the biggest being brought into this system. At 72 miles in diameter it was far larger than a Sentinel, though somewhat less powerful weapon wise. What it made up for in combat was its bulk and its ability to act as an instantaneous placement of an orbital colony, complete with all facets of industry, bioharvest, military, population, and everything condensed down into a nearly self-sufficient system that could anchor a campaign like this.

But Remmington wasn’t here just to feed supplies to the rest of the combined fleet. He was here to fight as well.

“We have navigational orders from trailblazer Paul,” one of the command deck staffers said aloud. “Outbound vector to one of the smaller rim planets.”

“Get the fleet moving there immediately, but we lag behind as rear guard,” he said as another seda, this one Donkey Kong-class, emerged from just behind a fleet of some 24 warships. Each was bigger than the drones Mainline and the Clans used, though small for a jumpship. They were all unmanned, like a Sentinel, and flown by remote pilots within the seda. “Do we have a targeting lock?”

“All the attacking ships are cruisers. It seems their larger vessels are not engaged in this battle and beyond weapons range. However, the smaller ships are coming to us around the flanks of the Mainline fleet.”

“Target the densest clusters and fire at range. Launch all starfighters and give me some initial kills. Orders to pilots to not go deep into their lines. Just engage the periphery as it pushes towards us. Warships to interspace between them and us leaving beneficial firing lines for our main batteries. Fire at will.”

Remmington remained silent for the next few minutes, watching more sedas and warship fleets coming out of their deceleration jumps and pivoting around to move off the jumpline, then back out to the edge of the system that seemed to nominally be Star Force territory, but in addition to the hundreds of thousands of enemy ships engaged ahead, there were literally millions indicated on the battlemap spread across the system…along with over 300,000 Star force ship icons ranging from the tiny Cutter-class drones to full blown jumpships.

There was not a Sentinel in play yet, and the reasons for that had been explained to him by trailblazer Greg when he’d accepted the Canderians’ request to participate. At present there was not a safe location to set up a Sentinel, and they feared that any attempt to do so, even on the system’s edge, would draw an immediate attack to deny the segments from being assembled. In the past that wouldn’t have been an issue because the lizards had lacked binary gravity drives. Now Star Force no longer possessed that advantage and the enemy could get to wherever they went, albeit a bit slower.

His sedas, however, were fully operational upon arriving, evidenced by the super-heavy Keema batteries sending slightly distorted, yet clear beams of raw destructive energy into the lizard cruiser swarms and piercing ships at distance, sometimes two or three at a time. Even the misses destroyed ships when the beams lost cohesion and fanned out, for their power was so intense that even the ‘spit’ was dangerous for a distance afterwards.

This seda carried the largest Keema built for space, equivalent in yield to what a Sentinel had, though less of them. Only planetary defense batteries were larger, one of which was said to have been under construction. Not on the main planet, but one of the smaller uncontested ones without an atmosphere, though by ‘uncontested’ he knew that meant on the ground, for he could see even now that there was considerable naval activity around the planet where he was sending his fleet.

But there was a Star Force arrival committee there as well to insure they didn’t get ambushed, though they’d make any attackers pay if they did.

Remmington was one of only 72 Sen Legats in Canderous, which equated to their leadership cadre of regional commanders. In some ways they were structured like the Archons’ trailblazers, without a single head position and made up of peers, but it was beyond rare when 2 Sen Legats were in the same system at the same time, and today was no exception. He did have 6 Kit Legats with him, each of which was accustomed to leading the affairs of an entire star system worth of sedas. This campaign was deemed essential enough to bring them all with him, and there had been a waiting line a mile long full of volunteers.

He was going to need them, though, for the Canderians were not just here to defend orbital slots. They’d brought their armies of infantry, aircraft, and mechs along with them, intending to take the fight to the lizards on the ground when and where the trailblazers allowed. Remmington fully expected Canderous to be fighting in half a dozen different locations simultaneously going forward, and he couldn’t oversee all of it at once…at least not to the degree of detail his men needed, hence the Kit Legats had been brought in to enhance the leadership effect when the already chaotic scene escalated further.

Right now the Kit Legats were transitioning with their sedas and the convoy away from this battle, but after several minutes of holding position and lightly engaging the enemy cruisers that stupidly dove towards them, an unusual prompt flashed on the main screen…one that the Sen Legat had only seen twice before.

“Paul is requesting control of this seda,” a staffer informed him unnecessarily, for the trailblazer’s icon was emblazoned on the link-in request. Canderous warships and sedas had their own sovereign control system and shared data with the larger Star Force battlemap network, but remote control could not be taken externally without internal overrides being enacted, which the trailblazer was now requesting.

“Give him control,” Remmington ordered. “Pilots, do us proud.”

A few seconds later the wall-sized screen changed, gaining a golden trim that was instantaneously followed by commands being issued to the Canderian pilots, with their warships being ordered forward into the space brawl…then the Sen Legat realized that the seda was also moving forward.

“That’s not me,” the helmsman said, raising his hands in the air for emphasis. “He’s assumed navigational control directly.”

“Main batteries too,” another Canderian said, sitting back in his chair now without a task to deal with.

“My friends, stay at your posts and await the moment he relinquishes control, for it may come at any time,” Remmington said wistfully. “But make no mistake, we are to be used here and now, not as a space station, but to kill as many of the enemy as we can. Paul has sensed an opening and is taking it. Mark my words.”

The trio of command ships before them grew steadily larger as the seda accelerated forward, then suddenly Remmington saw the Keema batteries go offline. He frowned for a moment, ignoring similar glances from others as he sought to find a method to the madness…with the answer coming as the shield generators received the additional power and the invisible shell around the seda grew steadily stronger as they approached the trio of donut-shaped ships, each the size of a small seda themselves.

The three realigned their positions into a triangle, with his seda heading for the center and the Canderian warships being flown into the shadow of the artificial moon. Remmington ground his teeth together in anticipation, thinking he understood what the trailblazer was doing.

All assets forward, close formation. Deny the swarm its area of effect and punch a hole straight into it. There weren’t any assault pillars, invokers, or jumpships nearby to go after, so he wasn’t sure where Paul was taking them exactly, but the movement had drawn all the lizards off their pursuit of the still incoming convoy…with them all heading towards the seda and closing in around it like a giant beehive hand with dozens of fingers comprised of the tiny yellow/tan warships.

To his chagrin he saw the starfighters being recalled into the seda, approaching from the back side and told to park inside rather than take the fight to the enemy. The Archons never did like using starfighters, even unmanned ones, but this battle was Paul’s to command and Remmington wasn’t going to second guess him, though he had never fully understood their dislike for the tiny, agile ships that could fly rings around a lizard cruiser.

He checked their kill stats, seeing that they’d already knocked down 13 enemy ships during the ‘light’ skirmishes, though a few of those were probably cleanup runs after the warships knocked them down a peg. Didn’t matter now, he’d have plenty to review later if/when he got the chance, for he could already see from the system-wide battlemap displayed in holo beside his command chair that this system was active and he didn’t expect it to ever settle down, given the size and scope of the conflict happening here.

A secondary warning flashed on one of his personal displays, indicating that seda OEG had been engaged at the head of the convoy as it entered planetary orbit. Remmington pulled up another holo of that location and set it to his left so he could keep a wandering eye on it, seeing that the Mainline fleet was there with them, so he assumed they’d get into position without delay, though maybe taking a few scratches in the process.

Just then all the secondary weapons on his seda opened up, firing directly ahead along with the command ships as a tendril of cruisers flew right at them. Many of them were shredded, with the debris continuing to move forward on a ballistic trajectory, but the intact cruisers didn’t alter or slow their approach. Instead they stayed on the same course as the debris and suddenly the shields were being rammed by both at considerable speed.

Not a few collisions, but a deliberate pounding by the enemy fleet. The sheer audacity at seeing hundreds of warships flying suicide missions directly at his seda shocked him, but then he understood the need for additional shield power. Paul had known this was coming, and even now Remmington could see their defensive power lessening under each hit. The debris was forced aside, with the giant sphere acting as a snowplow against it and clearing the path for the warships to follow…and not just the Canderian ones, but the Mainline drones as well.

“Evacuate outer hull, collision protocols,” he ordered, not knowing how much of this pounding was going to occur. “Lock down the Keema batteries, full shell mode, but leave the other guns operational. If we take hits I want them to be bee stings only. He’s using our mass as a shield, so let’s turtle up as much as we can. Shunt all outer ring systems to automatic and cancel any damage repair teams until I order otherwise,” he said, finally rising up out of his chair and choosing to stand as they dove into the enemy horde. “Expect a pounding.”

And a pounding they got. Like bugs to a bug zapper the lizard cruisers came, feeling they had an opportunity to damage or destroy the massive station…and they did, had the crew been inept, but his people weren’t anything but skilled combat veterans and they had a trailblazer personally leading this battle, meaning the lizards weren’t going to do squat. That said, Remmington conceded the fact that his seda might be significantly damaged in the process, but if that was the case so be it, for it would take that damage away from the drone fleets that were much more vulnerable.

Paul had them plow directly into the center of the hundreds of thousands of cruisers ahead of them…something that he didn’t think the lizards expected. They poured in on them like sand collapsing into a sink hole, with his seda and the 3 command ships taking the heaviest of the pounding, most of which came from collisions. But the genius of it all was the fact that the incoming lizard ships were moving slower than even his seda, and they couldn’t ram it en mass without making tiny microjumps. Those jumps couldn’t happen through their own fleet, so they had to ram it at slower speeds in groups that also had to adjust to the forward momentum that somehow Paul was succeeding to randomize with constant gravity drive adjustments to not only the seda but the entire fleet simultaneously.

They moved left, then up, then down and through a variety of small, yet mathematically significant alterations that did not allow the lizards to anticipate where they were going to be in order to set up more damaging assault runs. He was lessening their damage potential with navigation and forcing the lizards to act more spontaneously…which with their limited life expectancy kept them from having any veteran commanders, Remmington suspected. Such newbs, no matter how much genetic knowledge they were gifted with, would react with less efficiency than commanders who had been in tense combat multiple times before, not to mention relentless training simulations that honestly made this level of insane combat feel…familiar.

Once the seda and the command ships made it through the entire lizard fleet, punching a hole clear through to the other side, the seda’s shields were down to 12% and still taking additional hits, but rather than run Paul had them come to a dead stop and the command ships move out like extending flower petals as they turned back on the chasing enemy that the drones, that had been taking shelter in the mass shadow of the bigger ships, were now attacking in a frenzy like a bottle of soda that had been shaken up and held in check up until now. Those tightly packed fleet formations were exploding outward into the the lizard fleet and began to eat away at it from the inside as more and more cruisers continued to pour into the seda’s shields.

The enemy had a choice to make, with it seeming to want the big station dead. Remmington held his teeth firmly together, knowing what this would mean. They were the anvil on which the lizard hammer was going to fall…all the while the smaller fleet of warships were going to devour that hammer from the handle on up. The only question was how much of his seda would remain once the shields fell, and how well had Paul calculated the potential damage.

A quick check of the larger battlemap indicated that there was no immediate lizard reinforcements coming. This massive fleet they were engaging was to be their only opponent so long as this didn’t drag on hours…which it very well could. Right now though the lizards had either been caught off guard or they were confident that they could do what was necessary on their own without additional ships.

Remmington didn’t know if they could or not, the numbers involved were so large he didn’t have the ability to glance and assess the dangers involved. He hoped the trailblazer could, but regardless of the outcome Canderous served the Archons and would follow them into any battle anytime, anywhere. If they did die here, which he thought would be unlikely given how much mass this seda held and the bunkers at the center that would preserve them against almost any pounding, then so be it. It wouldn’t be a waste. He trusted the trailblazers enough to insure that, but found it much more likely that Paul’s cunning would win out today as it had numerous times throughout Star Force’s history.

And the bastard was probably going to do it with the starfighters parked in the hangar bays.

9

January 4, 2936

Gvaris System (lizard territory)

Planet 13

Jasmine-CT294-17 ran into the hangar bay along with a few other crewmembers and up the ramp onto the Pantheon III-class dropship and took her seat, allowing the others to get situated in quick fashion and clear the narrow hallways allowing the copilot to come forward after securing the rear hatch and insuring that all were onboard. They lifted off from the RTL’s hangar deck and flew out the containment shield and into space accelerating heavily. Though born and raised in space, Jasmine still took a long, deep breath, knowing how vulnerable they’d just become.

But then again the pantheons had been designed for just this type of hazardous duty, carrying more armor and engines than Mainline dropships to get crews and cargo up and down from a planetoid faster and more reliable under combat situations. The tradeoff was that they carried less cargo, but as Jasmine agreed that wouldn’t matter if they didn’t make the trip in one piece.

Planet 13 had never been inhabited, by the lizards or anyone else known, hence it didn’t even have a name and in the two days since she’d got here she hadn’t been informed that anyone had given it one yet. That seemed rude, for both Star Force and the lizards were paying the world a lot of attention right now with the sedas ringing the small planet like a necklace and orbiting over the construction site constantly with the lizards trying to send cruisers down into the gap to catch some of the thousands of dropships transiting to and from the surface.

Both the Canderous and Mainline fleets were repelling them, but she’d previously seen one or two make it through and the dropships had to go evasive to avoid it. They were smaller and more maneuverable, but even with their armor and shielding they couldn’t stand up to much pounding from a cruiser. That danger wasn’t deterring the flow of supplies and personnel, though the lizards had made much more of a fuss about it yesterday, the debris from which was still visible in orbit.

The monitors in the passenger area showed the RTL as a wall of green metal at first, slowly expanding to encompass the curves of the giant sphere. The damage on the surface was obvious, with huge chunks having been torn out by ship impacts. Jasmine knew that repairing such damage would take years, and as long as they were in this system the wounds would simply be patched over and contained while all available materials were being sent down to the construction site that she had been assigned to along with a host of other Canderian techs.

All of them were also trained soldiers, but they wouldn’t be needed in that role in the coming days. Still, it felt comforting to know that she would be working with other Canderians and not just the Mainline techs. They had some combat training in their maturias, but it wasn’t anything compared to what Canderians had to endure. Jasmine was a solider, but one who had chosen to focus on tech duties in order to fight the enemy by other means…means that were being relied upon heavily here to gain Star Force the true foothold it needed to conquer this system.

Her pantheon zipped down from their fairly high orbital position to the airless planet’s surface where some 18 Mainline drones were sitting on the rocky ground acting as temporary defense batteries around the construction site, which on the surface stretched about 2 miles in diameter, but she knew it was much more sizeable underneath where there was already well over 50,000 crew working on harvesting resources from the planet, as well as to construct the makeshift colony that was centered around the planetary defense battery that was still under construction.

When the pantheon got to ground it floated down into a rocky, rectangular hole until a lateral bay became visible with two other Canderian dropships coming back out. They gently passed each other by as more came down behind Jasmine’s ride, then hers set down on a crowded deck and the passengers jogged out much like they had coming in, saving a few seconds here and there that would amount to a full round trip eventually. A little prudence now could have an effect down the line, and all Canderians had been taught from birth not to waste time or resources, for both could be critical in combat and survival operations.

She hadn’t brought any gear with her, not even a datapad, but everything she needed to work was already on station, sent ahead by other Canderians, and Jasmine immediately joined the work crews that were helping the Mainline techs construct the massive weapon. It was housed well below ground with the corovon-laced armored doors being the first items that were constructed. Those covered what would be the surface of the battery, though even they were encased beneath dozens of meters of rock so the lizards wouldn’t be able to see what they were building and strike it before it was completed. Shield generators were already up to protect the site against kamikaze strikes, but the enemy had more than enough ships to overwhelm them if they so chose.

Anonymity was the defense here, and it was her job to help get the battery operational before they realized it existed. The technology was the same as the smaller models within the seda she had been living the past 52 years on, though it wasn’t her origin. That seda was CT and located back in Sol, one of the permanent stations that could only be moved around by cradle, for it didn’t have its own interstellar-capable gravity drives. It was also a lot smaller than RTL, but it was where she had been born and gone through her maturia training, hence it was a part of her name and her memories.

She hadn’t helped build RTL, but she had assisted in the maintenance of the Keema batteries and was familiar enough with the tech to be assigned to one of the teams working directly on it while most of the others were going to the mining or construction sites that were expanding on the war colony. Living space was nil, with the Canderians having to be shuttled back up to the seda after a few days of long hours and brief naps to recharge and refuel. Other than bottles of water and snack rations, Jasmine was going to have to make do with her current energy reserves, for until ample living quarters could be established they were all going to be migrating to and from the sedas on a regular basis along with the supplies, for there was almost no industry present down here either…at least not compared to what they now had in orbit.

Already the amount of raw produce coming back down from the seda had exponentially increased the construction rate of the battery, and the more raw materials that could be harvested from this planet and others throughout the system would only snowball it further. The sedas were the Canderians’ homes, and with them came everything they needed to survive and flourish in the harshness of space, including the industry to produce every bit of technology that weapons and ships required.

Some duplicate facilities had already been built underground by the Mainline techs prior to their arrival, but they had little to work with. Jasmine was mildly impressed with how much they’d been able to build without even an MCV-class jumpship to work from, but when she got to the battery itself her feelings plummeted. There was a massive chamber dug out of the planet’s bedrock, inside of which there was very little weapon constructed. There was, however, a flow of Canderians moving about the place in nothing but their black/green uniforms that appeared to be getting a more robust effort into motion.

Jasmine had no construction armor either, for there wasn’t enough for all of them. This chamber was pressurized and heated, but they all wore a small armband that held an emergency shield generator that would encapsulate them should the pressure drastically fall off, giving them a few minutes of life and oxygen recycling during which they could hopefully find their way to safety…though if a warship came crashing through the armored doors above she knew there would be little point in that.

The skeleton of the weapon was partially complete, and she was directed to head to the ever growing barrel to join an all Canderian crew that was receiving structural segments and attaching them Lego-style into place and forming what looked like a crane ladder. It would stretch nearly the full length of the spherical battery when completed, but barely looked like a stub protruding up from the floor at this point.

When Jasmine got down to there, being flown over on a small, four-man anti-grav sled, she realized that they were going to be working in natural gravity. The hangar where they’d landed and the facility they’d walked through had been AG equipped, but in this chamber there was none, nor an IDF field to give them a 0G environment for construction. It felt like .3 or under to her legs, and while that would make lifting things easier than normal, it was going to slow things down. An IDF was preferable and she wasn’t sure why one hadn’t been built here yet.

Maybe it was also on the work schedule, or maybe they were prioritizing resources to the battery itself. If that was the case she could agree, for getting this thing built as soon as possible was key to this campaign, and if that meant some awkward construction environment then so be it. She and the other Canderians were up to the task, and she didn’t doubt the Mainline crews would be either.

Jasmine climbed off the sled and onto a catwalk network that had been built up around the growing barrel, found a tool set and was given a post waiting for another segment to come down on the western side. A much beefier sled carried it overhead and lowered it into position while more than a dozen Canderians climbed up onto it and guided it in, setting it into exact alignment using some calibration brackets while the sled continued to hoist the majority of the weight.

When she got the word, Jasmine found one of the seams and began sealing it with an injection filament, which looked like a straw the length of her arm. She slid it into a hole on the new segment, with it inserting at an angle that brought it down into the base piece. Once in place she activated it with another device and the rod melted, with the liquid disappearing down the hole. Had this been a 0G environment the tool would have pushed it in, but in this case gravity was helping as the temporarily liquid material filtered down through smaller and smaller passages and settled into the microscopic gaps between segments.

The top segment had a hole in the base that the plug on the bottom fit into, and that would hold the majority of the sheering stresses, but this Syfonate would allow the minor positioning that the size differential from plug and socket allowed. With everything in place she used her datapad and sensor to confirm adequate levels across all bonding points, then realized she needed to insert another half rod.

That was odd, so she did another scan and realized that the segments were cut wrong. The plug was too small by a fraction, then she realized it was probably due to an unanticipated difference between Canderian and Mainline molds. The new piece was probably one of the first built by the sedas over the past day and a half, with the one she was standing above having been built on site by the makeshift factories.

But it would still work. She inserted another rod and used a different tool to cut it off before liquefying it. She had to add a touch more before getting full saturation, then Jasmine inserted a prompt into the hole that made contact with the liquid there. She hit a button and sent a triggering burst of energy that traveled the length of all the liquid filaments that she had inserted, initiating a 6 second solidifying process that firmly bonded the two frame segments together.

Another scan confirmed it, then she waited in place a few minutes until another segment was brought down and she got the base of it as well while the other techs were working on the lateral connections. The barrel was in grid form at the moment, with more holes than casing, but it was interlocked with secondary structural supports and even smaller tertiaries. By the time Jasmine got through with the second one she and the other techs had established a rhythm that kept them motoring through some 36 more segments until they ran out of parts.

Beefy as the sedas’ industry base was, they could only produce so many so fast, so Jasmine and the others were shunted to another work project, then another, and another. Each was building a piece of the mile-wide weapon, some on site while others were being assembling in nearby caverns only to be moved into the main when they were finished. Had Jasmine not worked maintenance on the Keema batteries before she would have been thoroughly lost, but as it was she knew what everything was and how it had to come together even as it was lying in bits and pieces across a labyrinth of tunnels and rock-carved chambers that hadn’t even had walls and framework built into them yet.

This was definitely a makeshift site, but it was an orderly one that allowed her and the others to get to work immediately and stick out an 80 hour shift before heading back up to her seda for a 20 hour rest/training block, then she was shipped back down to work another shift and would continue to do so indefinitely. Time blurred away and she knew to simply delve into the work else she’d get distracted. When she returned to the seda she didn’t check the status of the battles, focusing instead on her needs and compartmentalizing herself to the task at hand.

The work had to be done and done right the first time, as quickly as possible. She could get caught up on current events later. Right now all that mattered was this Keema battery, and if others were able to find or ship in the necessary raw materials to allow the sedas to fashion all the necessary components…which she considered the truly hard part in all of this…then she was going to be damn sure the assembly went off without a hitch. They didn’t have a schedule to follow, working with what pieces were brought to them when available and adapting as they went, but the skill and speed of both the Mainline and Canderian crews was admirable and she doubted the lizards could have done the same.

It took them another 11 months after she arrived to get the battery constructed, which was breakneck pace considering the situation. When it was completed that wasn’t the end of her stay, for there was even more work to do on the surrounding structures. Star Force needed to expand their base and construct a legitimate war colony underground, which meant getting rid of temporary structures and building proper ones.

The Canderian construction crews were given priority over most of that while the Mainliners were shipped off to secondary sites retrieving raw materials or expanding upon those temporary bases elsewhere in the system. That suited Jasmine just fine, and though the architecture wasn’t Canderian specs she found it reasonably familiar as all Star Force tech was, and more than one of the other workers had noted that this construction effort was less building a base on the planet rather than turning the planet into a makeshift seda of its own.

That wasn’t even near to accurate given the size of the planet, but something about it rang true regardless and from that day on she started to think the same, with the Canderians building another home in the rock rather than in the void of space.

And once the Keema battery was built she allowed herself the luxury of watching the battle updates, for scuttlebutt said that the finished construction was going to usher in the next phase of the invasion. She didn’t know what that would be, but was interested in finding out. Protecting this planet with the big gun made sense, but not when the sedas in orbit were already accomplishing the same task. She also felt something was in the works, and was working in one of the residential facilities installing a door when word was passed from worker to worker.

A relief fleet had just arrived, which wasn’t uncommon given the size of this campaign, but with this one had come something unexpected…in the form of Sentinel segments.

Lots of Sentinel segments.

10

February 12, 2937

Gvaris System (lizard territory)

Inner Zone

Paul stood in the Excalibur’s nexus as he watched the clock ticking down. The lizards still controlled low stellar orbit despite his many attempts to root them out of it, due in no small part to their ever flowing river of reinforcements. No matter how many ships he destroyed more would come to replace them, and without controlling the inner zone he couldn’t ambush them on the way in. Furthermore, there were cruisers being built on the two inhabited planets round the clock, adding to the number of orbital fleets that kept growing and growing despite the rising number of Star Force vessels in the system.

Every time a convoy arrived it had to do so on a predetermined schedule so Paul could get to its jumppoint and screen for them. A few ships could arrive easily enough and avoid the lizard swarm near the star, but a long convoy was an invitation for them to come further out and jump it before they could all safely arrive…and this one coming in was going to be the largest and most important to date.

With a thought he sent the warning signal out from the Excalibur detailing the exact jumppoint he wanted the convoy to arrive at. The lizards had been pushing their fleets further and further out, forcing incoming convoys to brake hard and exit early in the weaker outer system gravity and come to a stop before they reached deep into the inner zone. It was a fuel heavy maneuver, but doable so long as the convoy wasn’t traveling at too great a speed.

With less than a minute remaining Paul sent his drones on ahead in a small microjump to get into position, heading almost directly down the jumpline the convoy would be arriving on and attacking the lizard ships already drifting out in their direction. He kept the signal transmitting a bit longer, then jumped the Excalibur itself up into position and plowed into the growing lizard fleet, destroying many of the cruisers and pushing the others back for fear of being destroyed prior to gaining sufficient numbers to do the damage they knew was necessary to take down the drones, let alone a command ship.

It had been a long time since one of the donuts had gone down, but the lizards had never forgotten. Paul hadn’t been there, but he’d reviewed the mission reports in detail. Most of the crew had survived, thanks to the rest of the fleet surrounding the dying ship to cover for an evacuation, but the Evanescence had been so badly damaged it could no longer move. System purges had been enacted to erase data from the ship’s computers, but that had been a moot point. As soon as the weakened fleet pulled back with the evacuees the lizards chipped away at the ship until it became a debris field.

Paul thought that was more out of vengeance than prudence, but ever since then the lizards had been more coy about attacking the command ships. They knew how much it would take to damage one, and even with the tech enhancements that both sides were escalating through they could still guess at the changes. The sedas were another story, for they weren’t used to fighting constructs of that size. The assault pillars and invokers were still sitting quietly in the stands watching this campaign unfold, but Paul had a feeling that today that would change as soon as they saw this convoy arrive.

The first ship to enter was a Warship-class jumpship, followed soon by two more only seconds behind that immediately linked into the battlemap system and Paul incorporated them into his fleet. He had them launch drones immediately after moving forward off the jumppoint and began to spread his umbrella of protection out further to the sides as more and more ships came in.

In response the lizard fleet came out in even greater numbers than before, knowing they’d have to up their game to get to the convoy this time, but Paul thought they had another agenda in play. For these holds meant he had to fight them straight up, and he thought the lizards were just trying to take out Star Force ships whenever and wherever they could, then rely on their industrial might to replace whatever they lost. So far it was working, save for the fact that Star Force was also sending in replacement ships, but the lizards seemed to be gaining the advantage as time passed…which is what he hoped they would think.

When the first cradle came through carrying a 12-kilometer long piece of Sentinel everything changed. The other lizard fleets throughout the system began to move, knowing that they had to destroy it before it became operational. The sedas were already giving them considerable trouble, able to take such a beating and keep on fighting, and they knew the Sentinels were worse. They had no crew, no living structures, not even a single hallway. They were simply a mass of weapons, armor, shields, and power generation…and Star Force was bringing six of their biggest ones in today, each in four piece segments.

Those segments were a pain in the ass for the jumpship cradles to carry, for unlike the new sedas the Sentinels couldn’t travel on their own. Their gravity drives were small, enough for maneuvers around orbit or a slow hike from planet to planet insystem. They could not travel from one system to another, nor were they meant to. They were defensive strongholds, typically meant to be built on site, though Star Force had gotten in the habit of designing them to break down into ‘travel carry’ size. It would only take a matter of minutes for them to be assembled, not days, and once they were they would put out more firepower than even the largest of the sedas…and they were expendable, so Star Force wasn’t shy about having them eat up as many lizard ships as they could before being destroyed.

The lizards knew that about Star Force tactics, which is why after a delay even the assault pillars and invokers started moving. It was going to be too late though, for as soon as the first piece arrived Paul had it move off the line and make a microjump out deep into the system. It’d have to run its engines hard to slow down again in that limited gravity, but it would take it well away from the lizard fleets that would have a harder time of chasing it…yet chase they did.

Numerous cruisers disappeared from the battlemap as they made their own microjumps to go after it and the escorts Paul had already traveling there from elsewhere in the system. There would be a massive fight out there, with the second Sentinel piece arriving a minute and a half later and moving out to join them. The two pieces were meant to fit together, but the third one that came in was not. It was a duplicate of the bottom segment that had already gone out to the edge of the system, with Paul sending it on microjump in another direction towards a rendezvous with a second escort fleet even as his neighborhood was filling up with ships rapidly, including the first assault pillar to arrive from its parking position deep in near the star.

The cruisers in front of it split, opening up a corridor through which objects were hurled at controlled speeds. When they hit the Excalibur, if they ever got that close, they’d do some damage to the shields but not nearly as much as a kamikaze cruiser. No, these were meant to relay the firepower from stone to stone and hit his command ship outside of the Excalibur’s range to return fire.

But as soon as the assault pillar launched the first object he knew something was wrong, for it wasn’t shaped the same way they typically were. Six of them were released and traveling towards his ship, about to get picked off by his defensive guns and picket ships, whichever got to them first, when they exploded on their own. Not in any damaging way, but fragmenting into a halo of pieces that did not scatter. Rather they held their ring-like shape up the line all the way back to the assault pillar, which then emitted a blinding aqua-colored light that passed through each of the still moving rings and hit his command ship’s shields.

The blast didn’t abate, but kept grinding off shield energy like a firehose. Paul knew from his connection to the computer exactly how much shield damage it was doing and the fact that if the Excalibur just sat here it was going to penetrate within 42 seconds. After less than 2 seconds he already had his drones moving to a position to target the first of the rings, but when they destroyed it with ease the beam only scattered a bit, enlarging its footprint on the shields and lessening the overall damage a chunk, but it was still draining them.

Paul had the command ship move to the left, but somehow the rings also moved laterally. They must have had gravity drives of their own for they brought the focusing power of the beam back onto the Excalibur, catching a corvette in the process. It blocked the beam for a few seconds, then was burnt through in a popping explosion that let the rest of the beam get back to draining the Excalibur’s shields.

Paul raised an eyebrow, noting the design upgrade and the fact that this energy was not their invoker style arcs nor their phaser tech. This was something new, but it wasn’t going to be enough. The trailblazer moved his escort ships out of the way then executed a short microjump out of the firing line and drifted back in towards the lizard cruiser swarms while the assault pillar moved forward towards the now exposed jumppoint as drones were headed towards it and cruisers were forming up in defensive screens.

Paul sent another signal up the line, telling the incoming convoy to break harder and move the jumppoint out while he slugged his way through lizard ships and used the fleet of drones to go towards the assault pillar…not to shoot it, but to shoot the focusing rings it was launching towards the next incoming Sentinel segment. Simultaneously he had another command ship move in to block the firing line for when the huge chunk of relatively unprotected tech appeared insystem, long enough anyway for it to make a microjump out to head to site number 2.

But despite the lizards’ cunning, and the fact that two more assault pillars and an invoker were heading to the jumppoint, this was all a diversion. The Sentinel segments that were being pursued were not going to stop and try to assemble. They were merely drawing large chunks of the lizard fleet out of position. The next Sentinel segment to arrive jumped to a third site, but the following one, which based on the pattern would follow it to mate up, did not. It jumped to Planet 13, then three more segments came in with very little spacing in the deceleration jumps, all of which followed it as Paul took the Excalibur directly for the invoker, intending to fight it head on while the rest of his fleet was going to delay the assault pillars as best they could.

The four Sentinel segments that headed for the planet were met up in orbit with a defense fleet there that was screening against the entire orbital fleet the lizards had. A massive battle was already underway, but the Sentinel segments were maneuvered down into low orbit and into a holding position that required a lot of tugging by the cradles to keep them from falling down onto the planet. Until their own gravity drives segments got powered up they were going to have to hold them in a mutual IDF field, which was difficult but not impossible to manage while their own gravity drives held the whole assembly aloft.

Trick of it was they had no power left for shields, so it was up to the fleet to defend them while they hastily assembled the four pieces into the thick Sentinel ‘rod’ that the lizards had come to fear.

The ships that had left to pursue the other pieces were now too far away to get back to Planet 13 to stop this Sentinel from being assembled, but many of the others weren’t. All across the system ships with decent jumplines took off towards the outer planet and began spamming orbit, first with cruisers, then four invokers arrived ahead of six assault pillars just as the first two pieces were assembled.

The numbers, however thinned by the subterfuge and the Sentinel pieces continuing to arrive that were moving off to yet other rendezvous points within the system, were not in Star Force’s favor. Thanks to Paul’s update, Liam was able to get drones into position to snipe at the first of the ring targeting relays and take them out as the assault pillars launched them, but soon those ships were overwhelmed by cruisers and destroyed with Liam keeping them there as long as possible to delay the big enemy ships from firing on the helpless Sentinel segments or the cradles keeping them from crashing down onto the planetary base directly below them.

Except it wasn’t exactly underneath, with a small chunk of the planet’s surface cracking apart and being shoved aside like a mole moving dirt to expose thick armored doors set just below ground. Those doors then parted, revealing the aperture of the planetary defense battery. It rotated in its spherical socket and took aim under Liam’s personal control. He altered the beam width into a very narrow cone then targeted a group of cruisers where there were no Star Force ships engaging them.

The almost totally clear beam leapt up from the surface and disintegrated 27 cruisers in a matter of 4 seconds, with the excess energy that missed them moving off into space past the engaging fleets. The big gun suffered a recharge period while its capacitors filled to the brim, then Liam fired again taking out another swath of cruisers before lining up a shot at one of the invokers that was coming in to engage a fleet of drones. He had the drones part ever so slightly as they danced around the energy arcs that were covering the big ship in a bush-like shroud of rainbow light, then he dialed back the conical spread to as fine a beam as he could manage and put a shot straight through his fleet formation with it passing unseen into the maelstrom.

Instantly that tumble of energy reduced, with visible gaps forming in the cascading arcs. It didn’t stop its forward progress though, heading directly for the Sentinel pieces and intent on either ramming them or burning them if it had any weaponry left. Liam accounted for the first possibility by sending ships to push the invoker out of alignment, but first he had to get it disabled or any ships getting close enough to yank it away with an IDF field would be shredded by what looked to be standard invoker weaponry, though perhaps beefed up in intensity a bit based on how some cruiser debris literally puffed into dust upon impact with it.

Liam fired another shot, then two more before the energy arcs all but went out and the invoker was clearly aiming to ram either the Sentinels or the base below, but a swarm of drones rushed to it like pilot fish and pushed it aside using both IDF and their own hulls that gently rammed the sides then pushed into it, often imbedding themselves in the craft as their gravity drives shoved the invoker off its path.

The now dark ship passed by the Sentinel segments with 7 kilometers to spare…a near miss considering how big these constructs were, but more than adequate. Now all Liam had to do was repeat the process and use his fleet of drones to harass the assault pillars a bit longer, for the third Sentinel piece was now locked into place with only one more to go.

The lizards knew they were out of time, but Liam’s fleet was too well arrayed and the planetary battery was delivering too much firepower to let the big ships ram it. One assault pillar tried though, positioning far out for a jump that Liam knew was coming. He forced a group of drones through the lizard lines, losing more than half of them in the reckless charge, but the others he had break through the shields at two points with concentrated attacks enough to slip a few drones through and onto the hull where they became engines that he could use to steer the assault pillar a bit.

It still made its jump, but sailed past the Sentinel and hit the planet a few hundred miles away from the base. The impact was massive and sent tremors across most of the planet, not to mention debris all the way back up into orbit that would be raining down on the planet in the days to come, but it had failed to take out the Sentinel before the fourth segment was attached.

When that happened the internal components realigned and the power cores came online…along with the shield generators and all the weapon systems. Its Keema batteries weren’t as large as the planetary one, but this Sentinel had 24 of them…not to mention other short range weapons and a few tricks to avert collisions.

Liam linked to it with his Sav-enhanced mind and added its firepower to the ground battery and began tearing through the lizard fleet that was surrounding it as the cradles fled. The Sentinel floated over the planet, now suspended by its own gravity drives, and Liam nudged it further up towards the bulk of the lizard fleet killing cruisers with single hits and often taking out two with one penetrating shot.

When he got the short range weapons into play the lizard fleet did not turn and run like it should have, rather the assault pillars and invokers both attacked along with the cruisers, intent on taking it out no matter what the cost.

Liam admitted this one might be lost, but even as he pushed it further out into orbit more Sentinel pieces jumped down into the gap with the planetary battery covering them while the Sentinel fought the lizard fleet. It wasn’t exactly a ‘safe’ zone for assembly, but it was far more resistance than the lizards had expected and Liam knew they’d get the others online, for all the pieces that had fled to other parts of the star system and were being continually chased eventually headed to Planet 13 and began assembling side by side.

There was no way to stop them all now, and by the end of the day three of the massive defense platforms would be destroyed, along with a fourth being heavily damaged, but two would remain intact protecting the planet, and from that point on Star Force had its foothold, as well as a temporarily weakened lizard fleet to contend with.

And both Liam and Paul knew it was only going to snowball in their favor from that point on.

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1

May 3, 2938

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Hightower stood in his office, surrounded by nothing but blackness into which a number of holograms were situated. There were no windows or doors visible, and not even the floor registered to his eyes. All that existed was the pertinent data, and he’d found that this configuration helped him to think more clearly. He’d gotten the idea from Paul long ago, but hadn’t ever truly considered it until the past century. What had been artwork in the original was replaced with maps for Hightower, along with statistics that he was currently viewing directly ahead of him while a close-in map to his right showed a Sentinel defense station disconnecting one of its five segments.

He was watching the disassembly occur, having made the choice earlier and wanting to keep appraised of their progress, though not because he was concerned about its implementation. The Sentinels were designed to be taken apart and moved if needed, but he knew taking away pieces of the defense network he’d been layering on the system for centuries was not something to be taken lightly. There hadn’t been an attack here since the earliest days of colonization, but one shouldn’t assume that it couldn’t happen. That was an invitation for the bad luck monkey to punch you in the face.

Keeping himself wary of that fact, he made a point of watching this Sentinel be disassembled as most of his focus was on the economic statistics for the entire Star Force core region excluding Epsilon Eridani and Sol. The industrial powerhouse of those two fed the rest of the empire, with the core systems being the closest neighbors and almost exclusively Human-occupied. Epsilon Eridani was one of the few exceptions, given that they also housed a Hycre world, and if/when the V’kit’no’sat ever came back it was this region that they would hit first.

Hightower didn’t know how exactly they’d respond, but he figured the Human worlds would be the first targets. They might then go on to eradicate anyone who had had contact with them or their tech, or some version falling in between those two nightmares. While the lizards were the current concern they were not the major one, nor the only one. Star Force had many enemies out there, and even within their own borders. While Hightower was definitely aware of the lizards and the pushback the Archons were making into their territory, he had the responsibility for seeing all the puzzle pieces in motion.

With most people focusing on the lizards he felt it was needed that he pour more focus into the ‘other’ threats, along with an eye towards the V’kit’no’sat. Hopefully they stayed in the galactic core for a very long time, but if they did return to Earth then they’d be at Corneria in the blink of an eye, for right now it took less than a day for Star Force ships to make the jump between the two neighboring systems. They were also the most heavily defended systems in the empire, but Epsilon Eridani was Hightower’s to command.

Though by ‘command’ many people could misinterpret his role. He was in charge of the system and shaping it to his designs, but the Archons were always in charge. They didn’t outrank one another, for that’s not how Star Force’s leadership worked, nor did its lower levels for the most part. Everyone was loyal to the mission, and took responsibility on themselves to see that it got done. Hightower’s role was to sit here, build, and prepare. The Archons were the ones who took action, always on the move, and they needed people like Hightower who had the luxury of staying put…just as he needed people who could bounce around from place to place as needed, for an interstellar empire didn’t function like most people assumed. It wasn’t a single entity, but rather a conglomeration of little kingdoms.

Even with the relay network and the proximity of Sol to Epsilon Eridani, the two systems might have been on the other side of the galaxy from one another. They were totally disconnected, with only a limited flow of ships moving between them. That ‘flow’ was huge in number, but small in percentage to the commerce and activities taking place within each system. Most things were accomplished locally, making Hightower’s system a private fiefdom that he controlled, not for his own sake, but to facilitate others.

Likewise Davis ran Sol, but even if he’d wanted to he couldn’t micromanage Epsilon Eridani, let alone the rest of the systems spread across the empire, not to mention the factions. The very definition of an ‘empire’ was that it had different layers and sections, not that it was controlled by one ‘emperor.’ In fact that was laughable, for while Davis was definitely in the lead, he didn’t control much at all. It was a team effort, and without that team functioning in unity an organization this large would quickly collapse on itself.

Structure, wisdom, and trust kept it all together and functioning efficiently, and Davis had been totally responsible for designing and implementing it all. Others had added to it, like the trailblazers who had designed their entire military from scratch, but it was Davis’ genius that had made it all possible from the outset, not to mention him continually tinkering to guide them forward into uncharted territory. The larger Star Force got the more it could do, but it was also more of a challenge to manage. Things could be happening in another star system without Davis’s knowledge, even entire wars if the relay network went down or someone chose to withhold information. The disconnected nature of interstellar empires was one that prevented the kind of oversight that many less inspired cultures relied upon.

Trust was the only way an empire could function across star systems, and while Star Force’s internal structure was layered into tiers, there were always some pieces that operated independently of the others…because their trust was absolute. The trailblazers were one example, but Hightower was another. Davis watched what happened in Epsilon Eridani, as he did in all systems, but he was not involved with it unless there was a special situation that arose. He ran Sol, that was his personal kingdom, while he’d entrusted Epsilon Eridani to Hightower.

That was out of necessity, but it also was a bold statement to the rest of the galaxy. Whereas others would have competed with each other internally in power grabs, Star Force laughed at such notions. They were united, and behaved as such, with Hightower ‘ruling’ here adding to the power of Davis in Sol rather than challenging him. The same was true of the other ‘Monarchs’ as they’d come to be called.

Davis had started the program back with the Clans when he’d assigned Hightower as Marquis of Clan Saber so he could learn to operate independently. And it was still true that no Duke achieved that rank without first being a Marquis and running a Clan that spanned multiple star systems. Though Hightower only controlled one now, that one was so big it eclipsed what any dozen Clans could amount to combined.

That’s how big Epsilon Eridani was, and how important it was. Sol was even bigger, with the two of them being the crown jewels in the empire that just happened to sit next to one another.

But because Epsilon Eridani had gotten so large and important it exerted an influence over the rest of Star Force territory, almost as much as Sol did, with the two systems ruling the rest through materiel and personnel. All Star Force systems were built to be self-sufficient, but when problems arose it was the two big systems that were turned to for help, so not only did Hightower have to consider his star system and those nearby, he was partly responsible for the entire empire, along with Davis, and required a slightly different mindset from the Duke that he had been for many, many years.

Davis maintained the title of ‘Director’ but had promoted Hightower and Vectir to the position of Arch Duke. While Sol and Epsilon Eridani were the big boys within the empire, Rotunna was their aspiring little brother. It wasn’t located within the core region, but down in Beta and Randy’s personal stomping grounds ever since the Skarron war. But as an Archon, Randy had to move around when needed and spend a lot of his time training. Arch Dukes trained, as did all Star Force personnel, but Hightower’s workouts took him less than 2 hours a day when Archons were known to sometimes spend all their waking hours in a sanctum pressing their skills to new levels.

Randy couldn’t run the system, and as needed a Duke had been assigned to oversee and grow it. Rotunna, with 7 habitable planets and two habitable moons, was geographically more valuable than either Sol or Epsilon Eridani, though it hadn’t been built up nearly as much. That wasn’t due to resources, but time. It was a newer system, but one that was coming into prominence as another ‘watchtower’ for the empire, and as such it required an equivalent to Davis and Hightower, in the form of only the second Arch Duke appointed to date.

The trio of Davis, Hightower, and Vectir were supplemented with well over 100 Dukes, all of which had cycled through the Clans at one point. Those Dukes either ran systems or oversaw less developed regions, but common to all was the lack of oversight. Each was entrusted to make things work in their personal kingdoms, and due to that fact there was no overlap of monarchs.

There were a few currently in Epsilon Eridani, but only Hightower was assigned here. The others were passing through, doing research, or taking various forms of vacations. Now that Star Force had a large pool of personnel to pull from, Davis had implemented the new policy of using high level Administrators to oversee planets within a system such as this rather than assigning Barons or others that would be somewhat conflicting with the Arch Duke. Davis wanted each monarch to be in sole control of their assignment, and going along with that motif Davis had made them all trans-tier positions.

At present Star Force had 9 tiers within their hierarchy, and as the empire grew they were adding new ones. Davis had originally held the highest tier along with the trailblazers and a few others, but he’d changed that to make the leadership cadre above the tiers. There were many level 9 Administrators working for Hightower and helping him run Epsilon Eridani, but while they oversaw planets that were far larger and a greater challenge to manage, a Baron assigned to a frontier startup colony still outranked them.

It wasn’t the type of ranking that allowed one to travel into someone’s backyard and supersede their authority, but then again it kind of was. The trick of it, though, was in understanding that someone completely new to a planet or system wasn’t going to have the knowledge needed to just jump in and start reworking things, so there was an almost default level of deference in such matters. But all Administrators knew why the Barons outranked them, despite their posting…and that was because they had no one telling them what to do, with the outcome of their assignment entirely riding on their judgement and decisions.

Hightower’s Administrators operated off of his playbook and it allowed them to compartmentalize. Monarchs did not have that luxury. Some Administrators would end up advancing into the Monarch ranks down the road, many would not. Though they appeared to be similar, if not identical roles, there was a chilling difference between the two that not all people were well suited for, and some did not want to be Monarchs for just that reason. They were comfortable in their leadership roles, but wanted to be assigned a mission with parameters. Monarchs operated without parameters, setting them for others to follow.

That was why Davis had made the change to not have Monarchs operating in the same system at the same time, unless two planets were completely unconnected from one another. On the frontier that was possible, but with well-established systems like Epsilon Eridani Hightower had oversight on everything, including some other regional systems that were being run by Administrator and not by a Monarch.

Those were usually locations that were not tasked for major development, mining sites and such, and Hightower had oversight on four of those, including the Merovingian System that held the Prometheus star forge. But the data he was looking through now was not limited to just his command offshoots, but the systems controlled by Barons, Counts, and Dukes. The Marquises were exempt, because their mandate kept their economies separate from the rest of the empire, but the influence that Hightower exerted from Epsilon Eridani could reach every other system in the empire, and as such he had to monitor their activities in order to know where to use his influence…and to do so without stepping on Davis’s or Vectir’s toes.

The latter part was difficult with communication lag, but they coordinated with each other well enough. Most of Hightower’s efforts were monitoring and anticipating problems before they occurred, with him currently spotting a potential corovon shortage on the outer edge of Delta Region. There was no issue yet, but move the economic chess pieces around and he could see it occurring soon. Given shipping delays and the need to get ahead of problems, he pulled up another holographic panel that glowed blue in the pitch black room and input a transit order to ship 30 cubic meters of raw corovon from his Epsilon Eridani’s surplus stores to Duke Methis, with a note telling her to sit on it for potential shortages and a posting to Davis and Vectir so they were aware of the transfer in case they were watching the numbers and thinking of doing the same.

A few seconds after he finished a flashing orb appeared to his left and he tapped on it, accepting the incoming comm with the orb flashing into the upper torso of one of his personal staff that handled the majority of the regular Administratorial duties for him so he could be left to mentally roam and put out fires before they even began. That said, some things needed to be directed to him to handle personally, so it wasn’t uncommon for him being interrupted. The orb was there so he could choose whether or not to accept the comm without it becoming a full interruption, but nothing he was doing now was so important that he couldn’t take a short break.

“Yes?”

“A request from the Hycre for a direct line.”

“Put them through.”

His staffer nodded, then the Human’s hologram disappeared and the floating gas bag that was a Hycre replaced him, filling most of Hightower’s view. Below the hologram was an ID tag, allowing the Arch Duke to identify who the caller was, for his skills in picking out differences in Hycre physiology were still lacking, though this one he was familiar with.

“Hello, Nephanie.”

WE HAVE A REQUEST TO MAKE, the Hycre said via computer translator.

“Make it.”

OUR FLEET IS DEPARTING SOON TO THE HECHMA SYSTEM. WE ANTICIPATE AN EVEN BATTLE AND HAVE DECIDED TO AUGMENT OUR INVASION FLEET WITH OUR DEFENSIVE FLEET. OUR WORLD WILL BE WITHOUT PATROL. WE DO NOT EXPECT AN ATTACK HERE BUT WE DO NOT WISH TO CHANCE. WE ASK THAT YOU COVER OUR WEAKNESS SO THAT WE MAY PRESENT A GREATER THREAT TO THE CAJDITAL.

Hightower smiled. “You should know by now that I’ve always got your back. If the lizards poke their nose anywhere in this system we’re going after them.”

THE CAJDITAL ARE NOT THE ONLY THREATS IN THIS GALAXY.

“True,” Hightower granted.

IT IS BETTER TO ASK BEFORE SUCH REINFORCEMENTS ARE NEEDED. WE DO NOT WISH A RAIDER TO MAKE ITS WAY INTO ORBIT AND STRIKE A SHIP FOR LACK OF A PATROL.

“I’ll cycle some drones out to Threshold to replace your patrols. Hechma isn’t one of your former systems, is it?”

IT IS NOT. IT IS THE HOMEWORLD OF AN ALLY THE CAJDITAL ERADICATED. WE INTEND TO AVENGE THEM AND TAKE SOME SMALL BURDEN OFF YOUR FORCES AT THE SAME TIME. WE ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE GROWN BEYOND US, BUT THE CAJDITAL HAVE ALSO BECOME NEARLY OUR EQUALS. WE CANNOT EXERT THE INFLUENCE WE ONCE HAD. WE CAN TAKE THIS SYSTEM FROM THEM. I HAVE INFORMED THE ARCHONS. I NOW INFORM YOU AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR COVERING OUR PATROLS HERE.

“Happy hunting,” Hightower offered, then the Hycre cut the transmission. He didn’t take offense at that, for the Hycre social interactions were always a bit stiff, though practical. The Arch Duke pulled up another prompt and sent the order to cover the gas giant Threshold with a drone patrol to replace the considerable amount of Hycre warships that were always present there. The planet and the orbit around it was filled with both ships and stations, and if someone want to make a mess of things they could with a sneak attack…but the odds of that happening here were nil. Though like Nephanie had said, you could never know for sure.

Even though the drones were military, Hightower could still send them where he wanted. If the Archons needed them they could always reposition them where they liked, but they had a workable relationship that didn’t involve any sort of tug of war over ships. Even the Sentinels hadn’t been ordered away, rather the trailblazers had informed him of their need and he’d decided to start compromising this system’s security in order to give them what they needed to defeat the lizards in Gvaris. He’d been monitoring that conflict with keen interest, for it was the largest Star Force had ever fought to date and the sort of scale that he’d been preparing to defend Epsilon Eridani against should the lizards ever feel like hitting Star Force at its heart.

Paul had told him the lizards were holding back, and now he was seeing in detail just how much naval muscle they had with so many ships continuing to pour into the system that the Sentinels were needed just to stem the tide. A few dozen had already been set up but there weren’t enough new ones available coming out of the shipyards to give them what they needed, so Hightower was sending them some of his. He didn’t like lessening his defenses here, but he did have over 700 of them spread out across the system.

He glanced back at the hologram of the one Sentinel as a jump cradle moved in and slowly wrapped its long, spindly arms around it, encasing it in an IDF field so it could carry it away to the distant battlefield. Paul needed them right now, but Hightower knew better than to ever grow complacent. Epsilon Eridani was a fortress system, but even fortresses could fall…and it was often that they would get hit when they were temporarily weakened.

This wasn’t the first time Star Force had to pull reinforcements from defensive fleets to the front, but it was the first in recent memory. Star Force hadn’t been pressed this hard since the Skarron invasion, but Epsilon Eridani existed for just this reason…to send support to other systems and the front when needed, and he had no doubt Sol would be doing the same. They both had Sentinels to spare, and if Paul needed to spam them against the lizards then that was one tactic Hightower was going to give him.

He might not be his Marquis anymore in title, but the relationship between the two had never ceased. His trailblazer needed backup, and the Arch Duke was going to send some of his own big guns into the fight rather than sitting on them here. He could build enough to replace them eventually, and it was better than Epsilon Eridani suffer that time lag than Paul did. They could afford it, barring something catastrophic, and if the lizard core worlds were going to throw their industrial muscle into this fight it seemed only fitting that Epsilon Eridani and Sol do the same.

2

December 12, 2938

Gvaris System (lizard territory)

Inner Zone

Captain Moffis watched from his bridge command chair onboard Cradle 183 as they made the long, hard deceleration jump into the Gvaris System. It’d taken them long enough to get here from Epsilon Eridani, but this last leg had to be taken so slow it was almost painful. He blamed the lizards for that, because they were blockading the preferable jump points around the system’s star. With those out of the option bucket his cradle had to exit further out in a more difficult to reach location.

His ship had no choice, for it was a speck attached to a huge Sentinel segment that was a dead weight until it was reactivated. Why they hadn’t been designed to at least help in the transit he didn’t know, but right now it sat within the cradle’s huge IDF field riding along without incident while the tiny ship did all the pushing necessary.

Right now that pushing was a long braking maneuver against the star that had the glowing orb in front of him on the viewscreen growing rapidly in size. The closer they got the greater the star’s gravity affected them, offering them more pushing potential. Hit the lower altitudes and it was like slamming into a brick wall, but this far out they were only sniffing at the weak gravity and applying a lot of engine power to begin whittling off speed before they ran out of room.

The math was predictable enough, but it had necessitated a slower than normal departure jump that led to a long coast phase that was just now coming to an end. Moffis watched as the star enlarged and changed color, then tiny dots appeared before it, zipping towards him like a swath of bugs that slowed down rapidly. They resolved themselves into warships, Star Force warships, that were blocking for their arrival as planned…but beyond that there was a sea of lizard ship icons just beginning to register on the cradle’s sensors as a priority move order was emblazoned on the tactical hologram beside the Captain’s chair.

“Helm, make it quick,” he ordered his 9 person bridge crew. The entire ship only boasted a complement of 56, all of which were naval Regulars. That made it seem like a small time posting, but Moffis had had to spend some 236 years in the fleet to obtain a Captain’s slot, then another 54 before ranking up enough in experience points to get a cradle command. Likewise his crew were not rookies, but experienced vets. Some had combat records, but most were involved in the cargo shipping wing of the Star Force fleet.

They all knew how to fight, both hand to hand and navally, but that was really backup training. The cradle only had one weapon, a compact cleansing beam that was more of a tool than anything else. It had been powered down since he had taken command of the craft, tucked away beneath decently armored hull plates for the rare occasion when it might be needed. If this ship had to fight then something was very wrong, for its sole purpose was to carry pieces of equipment too large to mount in a jumpship’s external docking slots.

He’d carried small sedas around, cargo clusters, space stations, and picked up a few stranded ships from other races. The missions were varied, but they were always accompanied by a military escort to protect the cradle. It wasn’t a warship, nor a cargo ship, though it was a jumpship…and one that was all engines and IDF generators with a few shield generators thrown on for good measure. Right now they were protecting the cradle itself, but if necessary they could extend a very thin protective barrier around the entire Sentinel segment. Enough to protect against dust and debris, or as of a few seconds ago interstellar radiation, but in combat they were next to useless.

Right now they were being constricted to the thick body of the cradle and its tendril-like arms that were the emitter pylons for the IDF holding the Sentinel attached without there being a physical lock. Small tractor beams within the arms bumped the mass around as needed, but were usually powered down. Once settled, the mass stayed put as if the cradle wasn't moving…which was the beauty of IDF.

The downside was it was a power hog for something of this size, especially during the braking maneuver, which had drained the cradle’s capacitors down to 7% with them only now beginning to refill. 7% was enough to execute a microjump, which they had to do in order to get off the jumpline. To set up for it the cradle drifted a bit to the left as the helmsman ‘turned’ them away from the insane number of ships ahead that were lit up with a myriad of tiny blazes that were weaponsfire.

But that wasn’t why they had a priority warning…a group of lizard cruisers were flanking the defenders and heading towards them. There were Star Force ships in pursuit, but they weren’t going to get to them in time.

“Shit,” he whispered. “We’ve got incoming. “Make the jump now, I don’t care how slow it is.”

“Almost in position,” the helmsman differed. “12 seconds.”

Moffis grabbed the armrests with his hands, squeezing them tight as he watched the cruisers approaching. There were over a hundred of them, lessening by the second as the naval drones were picking at them from the flank with long ranged Keema strikes, but they were nearly up to the cradle when...

There was a flash and several of them disappeared into hazy lines…then the Sentinel segment within the cradle’s grasp began to move out of alignment.

“Lock it down. We have to jump now!”

“Working on it,” another crewmember said as she used the tractor beams to get the huge mass settled inside the IDF. If even a piece of it drifted outside the field while they were accelerating it would tear the segment free of the cradle and take several of the arms with it.

Just then another cruiser kamikaze rammed the Sentinel segment, propelling it a bit more to the left…but the crew were anticipating it and had cut the IDF completely, repositioning the cradle off center and catching the Sentinel chunk in its sweet spot again. As soon as the IDF snapped into place the approaching ships disappeared into streaks as the cradle made a slow microjump and out of harm’s way for the moment.

“Damage?”

“Looks like some armor breaches. We’re fine, but the Sentinel got gut punched.”

“Is it operational?”

“The armor took the hits with minor interior damage. I think it’ll be alright, and I’m crossing my fingers with regards to the interlocking components. One of the craters is practically on top of a swapping channel.”

“Bring up the system tactical data,” he said, knowing that it was now dated and would remain that way until they slowed down. Their jump wasn’t fast, but it was still messing with the Doppler effect and that practically nixed any chance they had of deciphering the intricate comms security that Star Force used, though if they needed to transmit in the clear they could still do so for those targets ahead, which would then unravel the compression upon reception and get the data being sent.

He’d only gotten a glance at it before, namely the far too many ships at their arrival point. This was his second trip here and the last one had been congested, but this was far more than he had expected. The lizards had been said to be ramping up their numbers, but unless they’d been laying in wait they should not have had that many ships that close to the jumppoint.

But they did…and it wasn’t just at the jumppoint. There were lizards everywhere across the system in huge fleets, including another jumppoint a third of the way around the star where there was an active incoming convoy of their reinforcements. Moffis pulled up the time compression on that, seeing that they’d gotten data on the past two hours or so before making the jump, and the enemy convoy had been spilling more jumpships into the system that entire time with no Star Force response.

The fleet waiting to protect it was so thick with ships it would have been suicide challenging that, especially if they were willing to go kamikaze at the drop of a hat.

Looking ahead to where they were going he realized it wasn’t to any of the planets, but rather a null point in the system that was going to require them to brake hard again. At least there were ample Star Force signals there and no lizards at present.

“Do we have enough juice to pull a null burn?”

“Yes,” the helmsman said. “Jumping out again will be dicey if we can’t stall a bit. We can do it, but it’ll put us into the danger zone.”

“Understood,” he said, knowing that the ‘danger zone’ was a margin of error that ships were meant to avoid. Draining capacitors all the way would leave a ship unable to make all but the smallest of jumps if they ran into a situation where they needed to immediately move again, and he didn’t mean trolling around orbit. If the enemy was at your braking point you’d have to face them while waiting for a partial recharge, and in an all but defenseless ship like a cradle that meant you were as good as dead.

Right now though he and his crew were in fleet hands, with multiple trailblazers in system to see that they got to where they needed to go. That gave Moffis some comfort, but pulling a null jump didn’t put him at ease. Little gravity on decel also meant little gravity on acceleration. The star was close enough to use in both directions, but unless your destination was on straight line trajectory you were going to have to heavily push/pull on laterals to compensate and that largely depended on the current location of the planets in their orbits.

Looking at the map he saw that there weren’t any nearby. That made navigation difficult to get to that location, but then again that was probably the point, for the lizards would be hard pressed to get there in any ample numbers using the same techniques. The might be clogging the jumplanes insystem, but the null points would offer some temporary safety.

When the cradle did finally decelerate to the rendezvous point it was met with a few hundred drones and one warship overseeing them, with Moffis getting back on the comm grid and his ship downloading more data directly from that warship in addition to picking up the active signals from around the system. He also got a navigational prompt from the warship indicating where they were supposed to go next once their capacitors were sufficiently recharged. Apparently this little fleet was meant to buy them some respite before sending them through the gauntlet again, for their destination was Planet 13, which was showing a massive lizard fleet holding its distance around a chunk of orbit outlined by some 18 Sentinels with overlapping fields of fire and a few other cradles and cargo ships sitting inside while the rest of the orbit tracks were essentially blockaded where there weren’t sedas.

“Assembly area,” he said to himself. If they could get in there they’d be ok…but the lizards probably knew that as well, which was why they were physically blocking any direct jumps into the area. He was going to have to take them to a nearby jumppoint and run the cradle through with the help of an escort fleet and hope they didn’t get hit again.

“We’ll go when we hit 16%,” he announced. “If we can make it here,” he said to his bridge crew, highlighting the position in orbit of the small planet, “we should be safe. I want enough juice to pull some bad-angled stops. If we take it slow we’re asking to get hit, and it’ll put our escorts in greater risk the longer we stay out there.”

“So many,” the IDF operator said, seeing the half million cruisers around the one planet alone.

“Space is big,” Moffis reminded her. “If you’re going to try and build a wall across it, you need a lot.”

“Don’t suppose there’s a backdoor?”

“If there was the other cradles probably took it and now it’s being watched. Looks like we’re going in the hard way. Inform the warship when we hit sufficient charge. Until then just hold position and wait, but put all shields on us. If we go down the Sentinel piece is ballistic and probably lost. It can take hits better than we can.”

“We can’t take a ram,” the helmsman reminded him.

“No, we can’t,” he agreed. “But we’re not the big fat target. Actually, spin us ventral side forward. Don’t let them get a shot at us from the front and request a ship or two to block us over top.”

“Gladly,” the comms officer said, relaying the request. After that everyone just waited quietly until it was time to go…though by that time another cradle had jumped in near to them and was waiting through its own recharge period.

“Alright people, cross your fingers and hold your butts. They know we’re coming,” he said, looking at the helmsman. “Jump.”

A few seconds later they accelerated slowly for a microjump, but the ships outside disappeared within a second regardless and the tracking signals disappeared in the acceleration wash. Some 23 minutes later they decelerated into a wedge of drones that immediately fell back to surround the Sentinel segment while an even bigger wedge collapsed around them and pushed forward, getting some considerable distance on the cradle so they could engaged and take the hits plowing the path before the Captain’s ship and cargo came within weapons or ramming range.

The lizard cruisers were far enough ahead that they looked like gnats, so many in number they formed waterfalls of ships that descended on the drones with a few tendrils getting through and heading for the cradle. The second line of defense ships intercepted them and took them out all the while the big mass was moved deeper into orbit headed for the ‘safe’ zone and having to pull heavily on a distant planet and one of the bigger sedas to get the necessary lateral tug to creep them into position. It was far too slow for Moffis’ liking, but with their cargo onboard the cradle always moved at a creep.

He watched while his crew flew the cradle, seeing numerous drones destroyed to buy them their ticket into orbit. Dozens were taken out acting as blockers and stopping ramming cruisers with their deployed dampening shields intercepting them by the dozens. Then those ships engaged them at close range and the drones tore them apart, but more and more came in and a few got hit by kamikazes themselves. Star Force tech was superior, by far, but throw enough ships at you and eventually they’d hit your limit break and take you out.

The lizards were spending an awful lot of ships trying to get at them, but the route they’d taken put most of their blockading fleet out of position. Moffis had probably been given a different route than the previous cradle had come through and that was the only reason they were making headway, for the lizard fleet was adjusting and pouring ships towards them with the second wave sending some behind the cradle to block for it as he’d requested when the chasers began to catch up with the slower mass of Sentinel that was about to make all this worth the effort if it could find its sister segments and link up.

Their trip in wasn’t a clean one though. Two kamikazes got through from the rear, ramming the Sentinel chunk but hitting in places that hadn’t seen damage before, thankfully. They tore into the armor but didn’t do much internal damage, but then another three ships decelerated just shy of collision, dropping them inside the escorts.

The three cruisers shot the Sentinel component with their phaser beams but did not hold position, for they were flying up and around it heading directly for the cradle. Fortunately the group of drones overhead reacted instantly and met up with them before they had a chance to pull a slow speed ram into the wispy ship, though three phaser bursts did his the cradle’s shields before the lizards were destroyed.

“No damage,” his crew reported.

Moffis nodded, blowing out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. This wasn’t over yet, but they’d just dodged a bullet…literally.

The carnage continued all around them with the lizards losing so many ships they were laying down a trail of debris behind them that would block any further transits through this area, so it was a good idea to have the cradles take different routes into the perimeter. Unfortunately a small, but hefty percentage of that debris was coming from Star Force drones. They were being thrown at the numerically stifling enemy to block for the cradle, with there being next to no chance of them all surviving. Thankfully Star Force didn’t have crews in the drones, otherwise this would have been a bloodbath.

It certainly was for the lizards, but for Star Force it was just weapons being lost. Costly, but acceptable to get this precious cargo into the safe zone…which the cradle began to approach with the first Keema batteries from the Sentinel perimeter reaching out to swat cruisers from the black sky. Only a few at first, but the closer they got more Sentinels came within range and the lizards began losing the initiative. A few more made runs in and got some weaponsfire off at the Moffis’ cargo, but no more kamikazes made it through.

Two were stopped just kilometers away, with the escorts that were left ahead of the cradle cycling back to the rear to catch any more coming in with their sail-wide invisible dampening shields. Like bugs getting stuck to a window, the kamikaze cruisers were prevented from getting to either the cradle or the Sentinel segment as the weaponsfire was getting so intense from the perimeter that he lizards were forced to break off their now pointless attack.

The swarm of cruisers moved back as the Sentinels swatted more of them down, leaving the broken escort fleet to follow the cradle in past the perimeter where it then dispersed to other assignments with a few recovery ships coming out to pick up and deal with the damaged drones while Moffis carried his cargo into a point near the center where he was directed via waypoint.

There the cradle settled, then finally released the Sentinel segment to a group of specialized construction tugs that were better suited to putting the segments together than the cradles. Glad to be free of the dead weight, he took his ship over to where the other cradles were waiting for an exodus convoy to be formed, for they couldn’t leave the system on their own without escort. It wouldn’t be as massive of an affair as their entry, for they could use a much more distant jumppoint, but they weren’t going anywhere in this mess of a system alone.

“Mission accomplished,” he announced to the crew. “One more puzzle piece added to our side,” he said as he saw their segment immediately being pulled towards a half completed Sentinel alongside two others that were also under assembly from the same convoy, with the fully operational Sentinels sitting in a distant sphere around them keeping the enemy at bay.

Just then a plethora of lights lit up a region nearby as dampening shields were stressed to the point of becoming visible as a dozen lizard cruisers made kamikaze jumps into the interior and were caught by a shield being generated from seemingly nowhere. Once stopped, the Sentinels took them out within 3 seconds, but the long range kamikaze attack shook Moffis. The ‘safe’ zone was still dangerous.

“What caught them?” he demanded to know.

The sensor officer shook his head for a moment, then smiled cruelly. “I think some of the drones in here are decoys. They’re shield boats, but the lizards can’t tell them apart from the warships.”

Moffis sighed, feeling a bit better. “People, that’s why we have Archons leading this fight. Never underestimate the cleverness of a trailblazer…or the audacity of the lizards.”

“Thankfully one seems to cancel out the other,” the helmsman replied.

“In our favor,” Moffis added. “For now, anyway.”

3

April 2, 2940

Gvaris System (lizard territory)

Nephasil

Iden-202747 stood shoulder to shoulder with his padawan behind the twin pilots chairs in the cockpit of a Michelangelo-class heavy walker as they led a convoy of 32 similar and smaller mechs across the wastelands in between cities. It was rocky, barren terrain covered in pale pink ‘dirt clods’ that crunched beneath the wide feet of the hexped walker, but it also gave the lizards easier bedrock to tunnel through.

He wasn’t concerned with those right now, though his walker and the other 6 heavies were scanning the ground beneath them just in case they came close enough to pick up on one. The rest of the mechs were bipedal escorts and not outfitted with the heavy sensors, built more for combat than being mobile chess pieces in the ground combat that was about to be escalated to the extreme.

As it was Star Force had taken down a few more surrounding cities since the first of the Sentinels arrived. While that drama was taking place further out in the system a defense fleet had fought hard to hold onto the orbital slot directly overhead, shielding the few gains Star Force had made on the ground and preserving their foothold which had been creeping out gradually over the past few years without any serious push. There had been numerous behind the lines sabotage missions, but until they could get a stronger presence in orbit they couldn’t push too far else they’d lose their protective umbrella.

In the past week 3 Sentinels had made their way across the system and parked overhead. Ever since there had been an ongoing effort by the lizards to displace them before any more could be added. One had been destroyed and the fighting continued, all the while the trailblazers were mounting other attacks across the system so the lizards couldn’t focus all their attention on one area. Iden and the other ground commanders had been ordered long ago to reinforce their defenses in case the orbital fleet was dislodged, for the lizards had so many ships in the system that if they all chose to come and push this point there would be no way to hold out against them.

The trailblazers had made it clear through their strategic placements that this ground op wasn’t their only point of contention, so if the lizards wanted to devote enough resources to wipe them off the map they’d be critically wounding their ability to defend the rest of their assets in the system. That threat was what Iden believed was keeping their kamikaze tendencies reigned into a waiting game, for every week that passed had more lizard reinforcements arriving. If they let them pool up too much he knew it’d start raining ships down on top of them, hence it was better to give them a wider swath of ground to target.

But for as many ships that arrived the trailblazers were doing a decent job of thinning their numbers. The tallies were still rising, on both sides, but the lizard count would have been much higher if Paul and Liam hadn’t been pushing for naval conflicts. The one in orbit now was not of their making, but Paul was up there defending the two remaining Sentinels and taking the opportunity to kill as many ships as he could prior to the incoming convoy of ground troops.

Iden had been told they’d waited long enough, and that there was not going to be a naval victory in this system prior to a ground invasion. They were going to have to take this planet out from under the lizards while they still held stellar orbit and a lot of other naval turf. That was an entirely new scenario for Star Force, but not one that they hadn’t conceived of long ago. The threat of lizard ships coming down and ramming the walkers he was in or pulling a microjump into one of their bases was always a risk, but going overland on foot or in small numbers would make them all but immune to that tactic.

At the moment these walkers were protected by the ships above, which would divert to intercept any lizard cruisers coming down from orbit or overland to attack them. If they were coming over land that would be a fair fight, for the michelangelo he was riding in had a big Keema battery onboard that could hit a cruiser at range and they couldn’t ram them from afar due to the curve of the planet. The heavy walkers could engage the cruisers well enough in firepower and armor, but not from overhead ramming. Their shield generators weren’t dampening-equipped for anything that large, but they did have a setting to knock down missiles before they could hit the hull.

That was a sweet upgrade he wished they’d had back in the Skarron war, and although the lizards did use missiles on occasion, most of their weaponry was phaser-based and there wasn’t a straight up counter to it. It had made them considerably more lethal, but compared to the Keema the phasers were little more than bee stings.

“We’re coming into spit range on the nearest turrets,” the mechwarrior informed him.

“Hold fire and keep walking,” Iden cautioned. “We’re going to get busy pretty soon.”

“They’re not sending out any tanks after us,” Ciatra-295333 noted as they watched both the forward visuals and the battlemap display in the cramped cockpit that sat nearly dead center in the giant machine.

“They’re not going to. Not after us, at least. We’re the hunters here.”

“Can’t hunt them if they don’t come out.”

“They’ll come. If not we’ll start knocking down their perimeter turrets just for fun.”

“Fun?”

“Bonus damage. We’re not going to have to wait that long, I think.”

“You know something I don’t?” his padawan asked.

“Just got a comm from Paul. They’re jumping in within the minute.”

“Hello…” Ciatra said appreciably. “How long do you think it’ll take before they wise up?”

“Not sure,” Iden admitted. “Take us to here, and hold,” he ordered, pointing to a spot nearby on the battlemap a couple kilometers away.

“What happened to sniping turrets?” she asked.

“The tanks are faster than us. We need optimum position to intercept.”

“We running from here?”

“No…maybe,” he said, unsure. “We’re gonna play this by ear after the fireworks start.”

“Bring it,” Ciatra said eagerly as they waited and watched both the surrounding area and orbit above as numerous jump streaks appeared on the battlemap as the start of an incoming convoy from Planet 13 began to arrive in the midst of the ongoing naval battle. The cargo jumpships slid into the engagement behind drone screens and were escorted beneath the umbrellas provided by the two Sentinels at the lower edge of the defense fleet. There the jumpships began dispersing dropships and the larger transports down to the surface carrying far more troops than Star Force currently had on the ground.

It was the beginning of the main invasion, with the descending troops being entirely made up of Bsidd. Calavari, Scionate, and Canderous would soon follow, but the initial breakout would be fought with the Humans already on the ground and the numerically superior Bsidd that the lizards did not want to let through. As difficult as the Human infantry was to fight, the Bsidd were even worse when not counting Archons. They were larger and had so many appendages that there was literally no way to get the jump on them…plus the fact that they had no center of mass and some of the lizards’ phaser fire would often miss through one of their torso gaps.

Iden watched as the first wave of dropships came down behind them in the distance like a tendril from the sky, then he looked back at the other battlemap that was centered on the city ahead of them.

“Come on…you’re not just going to sit there and let us unload. Send them already,” he said impatiently, for his and Ciatra’s mission wasn’t going down unless the lizards counterattacked.

“Patience,” his apprentice mocked. “It’s not like we can unload everyone in an hour. Give them time to think it through.”

“They don’t usually do much waiting. More of a reflexive…ah, there. See?” he said as a plume of wisps began to emerge from the city’s hangars and pool in the sky just below the defense shield that had been rebuilt over the past 7 months, though the anti-orbital battery wasn’t yet back in working order. If it was then the fleet above was going to get picked at and forced to take it out again, wasting drones in a redundant surface attack that Iden and Ciatra intended for them not to have to make anytime soon.

They were going after the battery before it could be totally rebuilt, knowing that the in-city defenses surrounding it would not be operational before it was. The lizards had rushed the shield before even beginning work on the battery so they had a way to cover it, and it looked like they weren’t wasting resources on side projects when the big gun was the one that mattered…then there was the fact that when they did get it operational Star Force was just going to blow it up again and anything nearby it, so what point was there in building anti-tank and anti-infantry turrets around its perimeter without an immediate use?

“You think they’re heading for us?” the mech copilot asked.

“Not with two armadillos,” Iden scoffed. “At least not until they can get sufficient numbers, anyway. They’ll avoid us and go straight for the dropships when they feel confident, but they can’t mount a decent attack with just wisps. They know we’ve beefed up our anti-air defenses. They’ll have to bring in their ground troops.”

“You mean flood in,” Ciatra corrected.

“That’ll take a bit of time to organize, but they’re all there. They’ve been saturating the cities with them prior to our next attack. No way they’ll just sit there and wait to be overrun with Bsidd.”

“I heard they hate them more than Humans,” the pilot said.

“I can confirm that,” Iden answered.

“Why exactly?”

“Because there’s so many of them. When we deploy Bsidd we usually send them in numbers. The lizards’ swarm tactics are diminished when they’re having to fight a smaller swarm themselves. They know by now that when the Bsidd show up, a lot more are on the way. That’s why I think they’re not going to wait too long to go after those dropships. No matter how many troops they’ve got waiting to fight us, they can’t let the Bsidd unload and get grouped up. They’ve got to hit us now, and if naval can keep their cruisers away the only option they have is to start their primary ground push immediately, before we start to get too numerous to overwhelm.”

“So you’re bringing them down first as a goad?”

“Wasn’t my call, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that was considered. Primary reason is that they counter the lizards best. Calavari might be able to take them better hand to hand, but the Bsidd have so many variants they can field a much better ground team across the board.”

“Slight offense taken there,” the copilot said. “We’re the ones that have been holding out down here, without the insane numbers.”

“And there’s a reason why the Bsidd weren’t sent in first,” Iden added. “If you have a ‘have to hold’ scenario, you send the Clans. Bar none.”

“That’s more like it.”

“Even if you are Clan Caitlyn.”

The pilot coughed. “Archon or not, do you want kicked off this ride?”

Ciatra snickered. “We’re getting off anyway,” she said, seeing that they were almost to the holding point.

“Yep,” Iden agreed, seeing the first of the lizard tanks appearing along the edge of the city. “Coordinate with command and delay them from getting within firing range as long as possible.”

“I thought you wanted to get closer?” the copilot asked.

“I do, but my gut says to get off now.”

“Good luck then,” the pilot offered, then added, “Jinx scum.”

“Come on, Ciatra. Let’s go cause some mayhem,” Iden said as he backtracked a step then turned and walked out of the cockpit into the narrow hallway that connected it to the rest of the mech’s interior. Most of it was mechanism, not a troop carrier, but it held a small hangar with a few auxiliary chambers, including a medical station. The michelangelos could be used as a mobile outpost in a pinch, but they were primarily designed to soak up damage while simultaneously dishing it out.

There were no other crew onboard besides the two pilots, so Iden walked over and hit one of the three door releases, exposing a circular hatch two meters wide near the starboard wall. There was a retractable ladder that would reach down to the ground but he left it alone, sitting down on the rim and putting his legs into the hole. He steadied himself for a moment then glanced up at Ciatra.

“You up to this?”

“Always.”

“Don’t get stepped on,” he said, pushing off and falling through the hole.

Ciatra sat down and put her legs through, giving him a moment to clear then pushing herself off and letting gravity pull her down into clean air. She fell several stories down to the ground, cushioning her landing with a pulse from her jump pack, and landed a few meters past Iden. She followed him as he ran backwards between the rearmost two legs as the huge walker moved on, then he diverted slightly to the right and got into a shallow wash, sprinted a few seconds then ducked behind a neo before running off sideways for a good 200 meters or so where there was a 15 meter cliffside with a shallow V in it.

He and Ciatra both stopped there, pressing up against the wall and crouching down while they watched the rest of the mechs stroll past.

“We’re on our own from this point,” Iden reminded her.

“If you can make it, so can I.”

“That’s the thing,” he admitted. “I never know if I will until it actually happens.”

“We’re a team,” she reminded him. “And you’re better off with me than without.”

“No argument there,” he said as he glanced skyward, seeing the orbital tendril of ships coming down and now starting to go back up as well, with empty cargo holds that would be refilled as soon as they got back into space. “I get the feeling this is going to be the biggest ground campaign in Star Force history. We should be able to lose ourselves in the mess and slip through, but if we don’t make it I hate to take you down with me.”

Ciatra glared at him through her helmet. “You’re not the only one in the empire that gets to be reckless, Iden.”

He smirked, though she couldn’t see it behind his solid blue faceplate. “Spoken like a true Jinx. Alright then, reckless it is. Let’s do this.”

The two Archons fist bumped then waited, knowing this was the last place the lizards were going to hit. They would be going around the mechs and trying to get at the landing zone, but until they started to move they had to sit tight and wait for an opportunity.

And in the meantime they were going to get a grandiose view of the fireworks about to break out.

4

A mild visual distortion crossed from far right to directly ahead of Iden as he was running a zigzag course across the rocky ground trying to keep to the lower spots. Even over the small ridges he could see the source, that being the michelangelo that he and Ciatra had been riding in. It had wheeled off to the right in a wide arc that brought it closer to the city and within Keema range as it and part of the mechs were heading towards a line of thousands of tanks that were pressing out of the city towards the distant landing zone where the first of the Bsidd troops were coming down and swarms of wisps were already picking at the edges of Star Force’s defenses.

All the heavy walkers were firing at the tanks as they tried to race pace kilometers away and out of their own return weapons range. Some of the neos were racing on ahead to get to them, running across the ground in similar stride to what Iden was sporting on foot. The mechs had come a long way over the centuries and were now more a mobile battle suit with agility that no other mech design allowed. It didn’t make them the fastest on foot, but in close range fights they could literally dance around an enemy and if they got up to the tank columns they’d do heavy damage there so long as they didn’t run face first into a mass salvo…which they probably were about to do if the heavy walkers couldn’t bust up the lizard lines prior to their arrival.

So there were nearly invisible Keema lances shooting out regularly, but this one had fired the opposite direction and hit an anti-infantry turret on the city’s edge. Just the one shot as the walker wheeled around to head towards the tanks to the north while a few of the mechs headed towards another column coming up from another city to the south. Those were being followed by infantry transports and widely spaced troops on foot bringing up the rear, with the spacing being a result of Star Force punishing them previously for getting their units so closely packed together and making sweet aerial targets. Typically the skeets didn’t carry bombs, but in response to the infantry carpets that the lizards had been deploying they’d refitted slightly, loosing apple-sized bombs that would annihilate a few hundred lizards per hit.

That meant to the south, barely visible when Iden’s head popped up over a ridgeline, were dispersed carpets of lizards spread across miles of terrain following finger-like tendrils of tanks heading out at speed to catch up with the wisps, and included in them were anti-air platforms. They looked like thick, flatbed trucks and Iden knew they were fire and forget packages that would turn the air above them into a very dangerous place to be. If the skeets weren’t careful to avoid them they’d go down with a single hit from the cluster fire, but fortunately that massive army was staying south and making a direct line for the Bsidd landing zone…or zones, for there were several placed in close proximity within the center of the bit of Star Force territory on the planet.

The forces to the north were just building, with infantry to follow soon. The area in between where his mechs had been stationed was now barren, for they’d all peeled off and the lizards weren’t trying to push anything in their direction. They were trying to flank them and avoid a confrontation with as many troops as possible, knowing that any delay would mean more Bsidd getting down and organized on the ground.

The lizards were in a frenzy and Iden could see some of their tanks bobbing over the uneven terrain as they pressed their speed hard. Floating on anti-grav could give you some impressive speeds, but the tanks weren’t built for aerodynamics and that limited them. Still, they could move faster than the mechs at full speed, especially the heavy walkers. It was the aerial craft they couldn’t outrun, but at the moment those were busy with the wisps, leaving the tanks with a clear sprint forward so long as they could avoid the mechs.

That single Keema shot was easily missed in the maelstrom, probably put down to the heavy walker just shooting at a target in range as it turned, but it had been deliberate. That infantry turret was located where Iden and Ciatra were going in and would have had an easy shot at them on approach. As it was there were two anti-mech turrets that were going to be within range of them but they didn’t have the tracking speed needed to hit really mobile targets…which the two Archons currently were.

They were still several kilometers out, but were running at 27 miles an hour over the rough ground. Iden could go faster, so could Ciatra, but he didn’t want to risk pushing too hard and leaving her behind. Likewise he didn’t want them winded when they got to the city’s edge and have their reflexes dulled as a side effect. They weren’t moving at a jog, to be sure, but most races couldn’t achieve this speed on foot and the two of them were crossing ground at the speed of slow vehicles as they both watched the city edge ahead while the fighting continued to escalate behind them.

Iden felt a battlemeld prompt from his padawan and accepted it, suddenly getting her senses added to his situational awareness…in addition to his Ikrid range. Their combined strength and skills now let them feel ahead to the remaining turrets and sense the pinprick of minds inside. Iden had wondered if they were manned constantly or not, but at the moment at least they were. Rather than risk getting shot by the anti-mech versions getting lucky, he kept the pair zigzagging on approach to reduce their silhouette and stretched out their combined ability as far as they could and began to blanket the lizard minds with a simple sense of sleepiness.

They couldn’t knock them out from this far, but they could incentivize them to stop paying attention. There was no guarantee here, and even if they didn’t shoot the Archons on approach there was a good chance that they were still going to be noticed entering the city with a subsequent alert being sent out. What Iden was counting on was the confusion of the mounting battle and getting lost in the frenzy, for once they got inside they were not going to lay low and wait to be found. They were running and gunning as much as necessary to get to their target and back before the lizards realized there was a serious threat in their midst.

He still didn’t know how well that would work, but one never knew for sure before you tried and now was the time. With their combined Ikrid getting stronger with each step closer they abandoned their weave and headed on a more or less straight line towards the city edge, bobbing up and down over the little undulations in the ground that would have made them easy targets for the now smoking remains of the anti-infantry battery the michelangelo had so easily taken out from range.

Live dangerously, Iden said mentally.

And kick ass, Ciatra finished a moment before they both accelerated up into a low sprint and covered the remaining distance as quick as they reasonably could while still maintaining their psionic blanket on the turrets. The pair wasn’t headed towards a gap in the buildings, but rather to the blunt side of one that doubled as a thick wall outlining a tiny piece of the city’s edge. When Iden got to it he activated his jump pack and leapt up some 7 stories to where he stuck on the side spiderman style with Ciatra arriving on his right a second later. Both held there, crouching down into launch positions, then jumping up after their packs had a moment to recharge.

The second leap got them to the top and the pair of Jinxes took off running across the rooftop not bothering to look back at the war breaking out behind them. Their focus was ahead and keeping away from the army formations within the city that had yet to leave their corrals. Knowing that going rooftop to rooftop was a good way to get spotted in daylight from above, they were counting on the fact that the lizard wisps were all out engaging the landing zone defense forces. If that held true then this was better than going down to street level or subterranean and dealing with run-ins that would undoubtedly raise an alarm.

Iden didn’t expect to go unnoticed, but he wanted to stretch their window as far as they could. If a lizard looked out a window and saw them, well, there was nothing they could do about that, but by the time they reported them the Archons will have moved off another kilometer or two, which would make tracking them difficult if you didn’t have craft in the air following the pair.

To her credit Ciatra stayed with him smoothly, to which he did not attribute his own training. Padawans were not students, but rather fellow Archons that needed to add advanced psionics to their personal arsenal. Each of them came with a plethora of skills already, as Iden had when he’d been taken on by a mage. Now the roles were reversed and while he was the stronger of the two she was not holding him up. So long as he didn’t go full out she stuck with him, and with their battlemeld still active there was no chance of her accidentally falling behind, for he knew where she was constantly, as well as how hard she was pushing herself.

Ciatra had maintained a bit of a cushion in the effort department, but not much. He’d done the same when he was an apprentice or just paired with a higher ranking Archon on missions. Sometimes the slower one would go first and the faster would follow, but the quickest way to cover ground was for the faster to lead and navigate, with the slower just keeping up and not worrying about anything other than their footsteps and effort. That was how Iden preferred to move with his padawan and Ciatra understood the inherent advantage, with the responsibility on her to keep moving at such a high rate indefinitely, taking what small breaks they had when possible.

Not many of those occurred on their leaping course across the city, but when they got near to the construction site they did slow and drop down to street level a few times to take advantage of the cover as they approached the partially built battery that looked like a thick cylinder reaching up into the sky. The weapon itself was encased inside of thick armor that wasn’t fully applied yet, nor was it full height. Construction crews were everywhere, meaning that the pair had to pick their mode of attack before heading in, for there was no way this was going to go unnoticed.

With the two staying in battlemeld they knew what each other was thinking so no discussion was necessary, but they did keep looking at new angles of attack and weighting their effectiveness. They didn’t have any explosives of their own to use, so they were going to have to improvise…and it was going to mean they had to split up.

Without hesitation the pair broke, with Ciatra heading up to a nearby rooftop and Iden going down to street level. They released their battlemeld before the connection broke and Iden dropped down on top of several lizards that didn’t expect him to be there. He knocked them back with a telekinetic burst then took them down to the ground with his Fornax but didn’t waste the time to kill them as he sprinted off into the construction zone that was still a crater around the anti-orbital gun where the surrounding buildings hadn’t yet been rebuilt, though the debris had been cleared away.

In its place was a myriad of equipment and supply stacks, giving him ample cover to disappear within once he got off the street. He couldn’t hide from the lizards, for they were all over the site, but he could get out of view of all but a few of them as he darted from one crate stack to another heading to an onsite fabrication machine that was spitting out fresh structural beams that were then being carried up to the top of the tower by anti-grav chutes.

Iden ran up and into one of them, passing through the clear containment shield and jumping upward, with his momentum carrying him up into the sky thanks to the 0 G inside. He lightly bounced off one side of the shield as he careened into it, then began an agile bouncing fest as he passed several haulers coming back down and even overtook a few going up. They were little more than a lizard with a thick backpack tugging the now weightless pieces up the shaft, but there were so many of them that it felt like a vertical highway at rush hour.

They saw him go by, but there was nothing they could do other than report in if they had comms. He didn’t stick around to check, getting to the top and bouncing his way out the side of the shield where egress was intended. There he did let loose with his pair of pistols, killing some two dozen lizards on the wide top platform and continuing to shoot all those he could find as he made his way across the football field-sized parking lot where the components were being stacked for use just below by the assembly crews.

Iden found one of the ramps down and jumped over the edge, coming down on top of a tram and shooting the lizard driving it in the head. Without its pilot the stubby flatbed continued to move up to the top of the ramp then motored on in a straight line to the edge, bouncing up and over the small retailing wall there and careening over the edge. It fell the full height down to the ground where it landed like a bomb into a stack of metal rods, spilling them off their clusters and sweeping away a few lizards who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Iden ran across the catwalks that were underneath and stretching down to the actual construction points on top of the growing structure. They were rising up in one place a few meters as that assembly was complete and ready for the next structural beam up, but the Archon just bypassed them all and jumped over the edge, falling down through the beams and into the empty heart of the tower where the actual weapon was being built several stories down.

When he landed there he didn’t shoot the work crews, instead grabbing hold of one of their minds and ordering it to turn the big machine it was piloting against the delicate machinery it had been carefully assembling by cutting into the panel that had just been freshly placed over a completed segment of the firing matrix.

Iden just stood there and watched until one of the other lizards tried to stop his puppet. He shot that one with a single, high intensity plasma lance and the lizard collapsed onto the walkway and rolled off it, falling deeper inside what was the base of the firing barrel. The Archon guarded his post and his helpless assistant until the casing had been cut free, then he jumped across the barrel gap with some help from his jump pack and landed next to it, rendering the lizard inside the machine cockpit unconscious with a strong Ikrid push before firing multiple pistol blasts into the innards and beginning to telepathically pull the pieces out as if he was shoveling snow.

Save for this snow was charred and metallic, and he was sinking deeper and deeper into it as he dug his way through the freshly built mechanism until he disappeared from view entirely, with only the spray of debris coming out and falling off the edge to the barrel’s bottom marking his position.

5

Ciatra watched as Iden made his way up the anti-grav lift as she launched herself off the nearest rooftop at a sprint. Using her jump pack she got halfway across the barrens around the tower, coming down atop a crate stack that was itself as large as a building. She ran across it for a few seconds then dropped down to the ground and began shooting every lizard that she came across as she zigzagged the ground traffic enroute to the base of the tower where there normally would have been anti-infantry defenses.

Given that it wasn’t finished there were none whatsoever, just a lot of construction crews that obligingly tried to throw themselves at her in the hopes of a mass tackle. If they did get her pinned down it could be trouble if there were armed troops on the way, but right now she was in dominance over the construction site and chose to make use of it by blasting herself a path in to the tower base through the throngs of workers now dropping what they were doing and coming at her.

She hoped that meant Iden was being mostly ignored, but that wasn’t the point. Ciatra needed to get inside and aside from jumping over some clumps of lizards there was nothing in her way to prevent it. Cutting around the side of a massive hover truck, she darted through a pack of 6 lizards that were in the way, shooting the first and knocking the others down as she moved through the doorless entryway and into the incomplete structure.

Some walls were in place, others were just ribs allowing her to move through areas that normally one couldn’t. Her objective was either the main power feed or the backup reactor, not knowing which was complete at this point. To get to one she had to cross laterally to a vertical line, to get to the other she had to climb six levels…which with her jump pack was a piece of cake.

The inside of the structure was full of lizards as well, but situated in specific sections that were under work. They weren’t so numerous as to give her trouble while on the move, but once she jumped/climbed up through the open structural lattice that made up the base of the tower she got to a middle bit of floor around the reactor that had several work crews on it. Ciatra dispatched those with her plasma rifle, taking a minute to go on a killing spree and give herself some room to work on the reactor.

Glancing up she saw that connective lines were already in place all the way to the actual weapon base. Iden was up there somewhere trashing it from the inside out, and she knew as well as he did that whatever damage done the lizards could just rebuild. The trick was to do it in such a way that would keep them busy the longest, which in this case meant forcing them to disassemble what they already had constructed before rebuilding.

Her familiarity with lizard tech wasn’t great, but with everything stripped down as it was and bits of sunlight coming in through pieces of the far wall that were missing to facilitate parts inflow she was able to find the reactor access hatch. It and the rest of the reactor core were already complete, but the question was did they have the fuel rods inside yet?

And by fuel rods she meant the lizard form of a battery that would physically store potential energy tapped from the main line, then be able to cannibalize the molecular structures in a form of fission that would run for a very long time if main power was cut. When it was reapplied the rods would begin the reverse, turning from their base slurry back into a thick, solid rods. It was one of the lizards’ newer engineering feats and gave the anti-orbital guns the ability to keep firing even if the city’s main power supply went offline.

When Ciatra pulled open the panel there was a short crawlspace that she dove into, eventually coming to another panel that she removed and found that the fuel rods, all six of them, had not been put in place yet. That was just fine, as far as she was concerned, because this whole reactor assembly was something that you couldn’t just replace with spare parts…and if she did her job right they wouldn’t even know about the damage until much later.

Using her Pefbar and Lachka, she reached into the walls of the small fuel rod chamber and started to bend and twist things where no one could see, snapping connections and crossing others. Ciatra allowed herself a few Ikrid scans of the exterior to monitor the construction crews and pushed her timetable a bit, wanting more small scale damage so that they wouldn’t be able to fix this thing and be forced to replace it entirely.

“How you doing?” Iden’s voice said in her helmet.

“Redecorating. You?”

“About to scatter.”

“I need a couple more minutes. Make a ruckus on the way out will ya?”

“Hurry,” he emphasized, leaving her to work in quiet.

Not knowing the situation outside she took heed to that warning and forced herself to three more bits of sabotage before pulling out and shutting the chamber. When she climbed back through the crawlway there were lizards on the outside very angry and unable to do anything with her inside. They all dropped to the ground wriggling with muscle spasms as she crawled out, then she went around and shot each and every one of them, hoping that her sabotage might go unnoticed. She shut the outer hatch and tossed the bodies over the edge of the platform, dropping them like bombs down to the lower levels where others were scurrying around.

She followed them down, but only a few levels. There, in plain view, she moved to the central power line that was rising up from ground level to the base of the reactor and began firing into it with her rifle and then a pistol when she ran out of ammo. She burned enough of a hole into it that the internal mechanisms were junked, effectively cutting the power transfer possibilities and forcing the lizards to replace the line.

Ciatra tucked her pistol back onto her weapon rack and flipped her middle finger at the lizard construction crews below before jumping/crawling her way through the rib cage of the tower to one of the slits of light on the armored exterior. There she went out a hole meant for supplies to come in and got onto a small temporary catwalk on the outside with a good view over the construction site to the east.

“I’m done,” she reported.

A waypoint popped up off into the city, different from Iden’s current location, and Ciatra knew that was to be their rendezvous. A quick scan of the sky showed no fighters coming in to harass them, but there was a number of civilian craft up there just hovering in place, probably to give eyes to the site and allow them to figure out what was going on. They couldn’t shoot at them, but it was clear that their surprise attack advantage was coming to a close and they needed to get out of here ASAP.

Ciatra backed up into the gap, then pushed off with her right hand to help accelerate herself into as much of a sprint as possible over the few meters she had to work with and jumped off the catwalk in a huge arch that dropped her to the ground with a gentle landing and into a zigzagging run through the cargo stacks. She knocked aside a few lizards with her Lachka or Fornax but refrained from shooting them as she kept her pistol on her back and her arms pumping for maximum speed.

Just before she got to the edge of the construction site one of the vehicles above nearly rammed the Archon, with her Pefbar just catching it coming in time for her to jump to the left. The car-sized craft hit and scraped into the ground digging a long furrow in the hard packed dirt, missing her by a couple of meters. Angry, Ciatra ran up to it, hopped on top and kicked the lizard driver in the head as she passed, then hopped off back to the ground and disappeared into a narrow gap between buildings.

She telekinetically knocked down the first of several lizards there, with more behind them arriving to either see what was going on or do something about it. None of these had weapons, yet, so she decided not to play with them and grabbed a bit of wall and started climbing. The adhesive sections on her fingers and toe-tips worked well enough, but you had to take your time and Ciatra was getting impatient. She had her jump pack as a backup so she pushed the limits of traction and raced her way up and away from the lizards below her, stopping when she did finally slip and taking the moment to gather her legs in a crouch before launching herself straight up with a boost from her pack.

The padawan grabbed for traction again much further up and continued to climb until she got to the rooftop. There were several aerial vehicles waiting for her, with a single lizard phaser rifle greeting her. Her shields took a hit, then both the lizard and the weapon were pulled off the floating vehicle and fell to the rooftop below courtesy of Iden who was approaching from another direction and just now hopping the gap between buildings.

“I got the reactor in a way that shouldn’t be easy to find,” she reported.

“I was less subtle with the firing array,” he said as she hesitated a few seconds for him to catch up, then the two of them raced off side by side across the rooftops. “We’re going to have to ditch these watchers.”

“I know,” she said as they came to the edge and ran straight off it, hopping the gap to the next building and falling several stories in the process to the much lower rooftop. Iden caught the landing in stride, but Ciatra had to do a dive roll to keep moving…which wasn’t all that easy with a pack on your back. She fell behind a couple of steps then sprinted to catch up just in time to follow Iden over the next gap as he slid on his hip and dipped over the edge, dropping down to street level.

When she came over Ciatra saw him partway down and clinging to the wall as a window blew out just in time for her to duck inside. Iden followed her into the building and the two of them started a hasty descent through the structure not even bothering to waste ammo on the lizards they encountered, but Ciatra thought she killed at least one with a punch to the neck on the way by.

Iden led the pair down below ground level then traveled a bit of distance in the undercity before coming back up in a different building. Reversing their course, they busted out another window and climbed up to the rooftop, careful to not get spotted. The watchers were several buildings over, still above the building they had disappeared into, and the pair of Archons snuck off across this one and began their journey across the city again, for the moment undetected, as they headed back to the far perimeter with a lot of buildings and lizards between them and clear ground…

Ciatra hit the rocky surface at the base of the perimeter building first, landing hard to avoid the single wisp that had been chasing them the past 3 minutes. She knew better than to stand still, so even before Iden came down the padawan sprinted out into the open away from the city, making a plain target for the lizard aerial craft, but one that was not going to be super easy to hit moving at the speeds she was capable of and able to turn at a moment’s notice.

Iden came down with the wisp whipping over the building a split second behind him and blowing out a chunk of roof with a near miss of pink phaser fire. He let gravity pull him as fast as he dared, then decelerated sharply with his jump pack at the last moment, landing so hard he lost his balance and fell to the side, cracking his head on a rock. Fortunately his helmet protected him, but it still rung his bell as the wisp circled around sharply and dove down at Ciatra as she heeded Iden’s advice to not wait up on him.

He got on his feet and ran after her, shaking off his disorientation and getting up to a sprint faster than his padawan was capable of as he began closing the distance with several phaser blasts stitching the ground near Ciatra. He saw her go into a weave even before the wisp opened fire, ducking to the left, then the right before reversing course entirely and backtracking. That allowed Iden to catch up a lot, enough for the two of them to link up in battlemeld and reach out to the wisp on its next pass.

It got off one shot that hit near Ciatra and blew apart a rock into a spray of shrapnel that penetrated her already weakened shields. It pinged off her corovon-laced armor as the two Archons hacked into the lizard’s mind and took control, forcing it to pick up speed and ram into the ground.

It didn’t explode, for it wasn’t that high up in the air to begin with, but it did drag across the ground through a couple of boulders, flipping over twice and getting thoroughly dented. Iden wasn’t sure if that was enough, but it was on the ground so they let it go and just ran straight out from the city towards a small dot on the horizon, behind which there was a storm of activity in the form of wisps and dropships. They were so far away Iden and Ciatra couldn’t make out what was going on, save for the larger transports involved that looked like mere specks against the smokey haze that he knew were ships and not clouds.

The wisp stayed on the ground for more than a minute, then the battered craft got airborne again and circled around a tight spiral as it gained altitude. Seemingly disoriented, it just hovered there for a moment before accelerating towards them as another three wisps were just becoming visible to the north, apparently coming back from duty elsewhere to chase after the Archons, for they were not coming from within the city, nor from the maelstrom straight ahead.

“Do we try all three?”

“No,” Iden said as they both slowed ever so slightly to ready themselves. “Just disorient them and make them miss.”

Ciatra jumped over a boulder, getting a bit of hangtime in the process, then came down and stepped on a much smaller rock causing her to stumble and lose a step as the ground in front of her lit up with badly aimed phaser strikes that were intended to cause the Archons to turn back rather than hit them. Both knew they couldn’t do that so they got a little more spacing between each other and ran on, forcing the wisps to come in at them.

They came together, three wide, and the Archons reached out telepathically to cloud their minds. It didn’t work well enough to keep them from firing, but the shots missed so badly it was apparent that the pilots couldn’t concentrate. As they passed overhead the Archons released two of them and grabbed hold of the third, forcing it to fly its fighter down into the ground.

Off to their right it took a steep nosedive and planted itself into the terrain with a brief pop of smoke as it hit, with the other two wisps circling around to come in for another pass just as a phaser blast hit between the two Archons from behind.

A second one hit Ciatra in the back, knocking her face first into the ground before the damaged wisp came down itself ahead of them as Iden grabbed hold of the pilot’s mind and forced it into a shallow hillside where it didn’t have the luxury of skidding. It compacted in a mild spray of yellow/tan fragments as long range pink spit began to vaporize dust clouds around the two Archons.

The remaining wisps were too far away for Iden to affect, but they were getting closer and looked to want to keep firing the entire way in. With an effort, he telekinetically helped Ciatra get to her feet and start running again, albeit much slower. Their battlemeld had snapped when she fell, but he extended the prompt to her again and felt the light burns on her back when they connected. Both her shields and her armor had taken the hit, but he didn’t have the luxury of inspecting the damage. They had to keep running towards the dot that was getting much bigger ahead of them, and the wisps knew it too.

Which was why they made one last kamikaze run, coming within range of the Archons’ psionics and firing as quickly as they could. Both their minds got a wash of disorientation again, as if their vision suddenly got cloudy, and one of the wisps stopped firing. The other did not, with the phaser blasts hitting near both of them with such regularity that Iden knew a hit was coming. Running ahead of Ciatra he suddenly turned back and wrapped her up in a bear hug, with both of them dropping to the ground behind the closest rock they could find…which unfortunately was only half a meter tall.

They linked up their bioshields and wrapped themselves up in as much of a cocoon as they could, then the pale pink rocks around them got a lot more vivid as phaser blasts rained down. Most of them missed, but two hit and sucked their bioshields into nothingness. Iden’s shields took part of what remained, then it was their armor that had to do the rest up until they got hold of that pilot’s mind and forced him to fly away.

When they did they realized the truth…he’d set his firing controls to auto, expecting to lose physical control. The wisp had honed in on their position and fired on its own.

Clever bastard, Iden commented. He has to die next.

“Run,” Ciatra insisted. “Don’t let them hit both of us again.”

Iden realized through the battlemeld that Ciatra was losing blood, not from a new hit but the old one, and her head was starting to get foggy.

“Move it or lose it, Jinx,” he said, pulling her to her feet and pushing her ahead of him.

“Good idea,” she said, slowing a bit and reaching back to release what was left of her jump pack and supplies. The tattered frame dropped off onto the ground, making her a bit lighter as well as letting Iden see the crater in her upper back where the phaser shot had burnt through in a few tiny spots, leaving a thin shell elsewhere through which tiny streaks of blood were pouring. The cauterization was cracking apart with every movement of her body.

Iden released his pack as well, suddenly getting a boost of agility from the lack of mass he’d gotten used to being there. He ran off to the left and got some distance in between them as she’d suggested just as the pair of wisps was coming back at them. He spotted a larger boulder ahead and mentally told Ciatra to get to it while he kept running, so from the lizards point of view the two targets suddenly turned into one as she dove down and disappeared behind it with a head-first slide.

That left them Iden to target, so he ran back towards Ciatra ensuring good battlemeld range, and the both reached out to the ‘smart’ pilot as he came closer. Iden knew the phaser blasts were coming so he went as evasive as he could, causing several to miss before they got hold of the pilot’s mind and forced him to turn to the right. The two wisps nearly collided, but the second pilot adjusted in the nick of time.

Both flew out of psionic range within a few seconds, though for the moment the phaser fire had stopped.

“Go!” Iden shouted, verbally and telepathically, with Ciatra coming up from her cover and sprinting along with him towards the now very large silhouette on the horizon. They knew they weren’t going to get another chance at this pair of wisps, for they were circling around to come back at them in a wide spacing, meaning there was no chance of getting them to collide again. If they took control of one the other would have a free shot, and if they tried to dampen both the auto-controlled one would get at least a couple lucky shots in that would end them.

Fortunately they had another option, if the timing was going to be right. Squeezing as much speed out of their legs as they could, now lightened without their packs, both Archons sprinted across the ground in as straight of a line as they could manage towards the approaching mech that was also running towards them. It was their ride out of here, as well as their aerial umbrella, with its anti-air batteries already sprouted from its shoulder mounts and ready to fire when they came in range.

The wisps were determined though and didn’t break off, making it a race for distance and Iden not sure who would win out. When one of the wisps ducked down to the ground he knew it intended to ram them, mental interference or not. A moment later he got a warning prompt on his battlemap and the two Archons split, veering left and right with that wisp having to choose who to follow as yellow sammy spurts started to fill the air above them.

The topside wisp took a few hits and veered off smoking, but the lower one was committed and went after Iden. The Archon sensed it was trying to use him to keep the mech from firing at the wisp, so the Archon slammed on the brakes and reversed course…with a slew of sammy shots passing within 3 meters of his head and streaking right into the wisp.

It fell a meter to the ground, caught on some rocks and began a tumble with debris spraying out with each bump. The wisp tore past Iden and came to a halt some 200 meters ahead as he and Ciatra ran back towards each other and the mech likewise sprinted up near them like a giant intent on scaring off any further pursuit. At the moment there was none, so when it came to a standstill the two Archons climbed up its thick metallic legs using their adhesive armor points in lieu of the jump packs they no longer had and worked their way up the mech’s back onto the shoulders next to the slight bump it had instead of a head.

Both of them latched onto it with as much leverage as they could and caused their adhesive points to lock to maximum. Once stuck in place they informed the mechwarrior and he slowly turned the neo around, accelerating smoothly into a jog and carried the Archons back into the ‘safety’ of the warzone beyond the city.

6

July 17, 2946

Shaleth System (Voku territory)

Inova

Cal-com stood in his private oracle studying the recent data update the Preema had sent him. With it his galactic map, or rather only a tiny portion of the mind bogglingly large swirl, updated with another swath of yellow lizard dots being eliminated and tagged neutral grey that the Voku and their pact were tasked with monitoring and keeping clear of reinhabitation. The lizards were constantly trying to expand, even to the worlds they had lost less than 5 years ago. Cal-com had to keep everything under surveillance and his sweeper teams moving around constantly, else the hard fought gains that the Preema were racking up would ultimately be a loss.

Right now the damage they were doing, regardless of how many worlds the lizards colonized, was adding up. The Preema had the lizards beat badly and they knew it, but their empire wasn’t something that could be toppled swiftly. It had to be corralled and shrunken with care, which was a task beyond their current capabilities. While many fronts were being challenged and pushed back there were still regions where the lizards could expand freely. Right now the race to destroy worlds looked like it was winning out, but neither the Voku nor the Preema had eyes on every lizard system and there was no way to be certain where they all were.

If even one jumpship ran away from their territory, heading off into the galaxy in an unknown direction and traveling for 100 years before finding a quiet world to settle down on, they could regrow their entire empire from scratch. That was a threat that Cal-com was beginning to realize would never end. Like weeds growing in a field, all you could do was eradicate the ones you found and stay on the lookout for others. He had no hopes of eliminating the lizards entirely, though the Preema seemed to think it was possible.

The Dafchor felt that was naivety on their part, but the trick in the lizards gaining dominance wasn’t in hiding, it was in putting their territory in plain view and growing it. They might be nearly impossible to destroy completely but they couldn’t wield power without consolidating themselves, and when they did they made themselves a target for the Voku and others. If they could knock them down now, undo the centuries of mistakes that others had made that allowed them to grow this large and widespread, then he could count this mission a success.

To that end they were nearing an important milestone. Star Force’s push into lizard territory was functioning like a blunt knife blade that had reached to the centerline, not far off from the system Cal-com was currently situated in. There were several systems along that border under attack, but most of Star Force’s efforts were focused on breaking the link in the lizards’ primary supply chain while Cal-com’s fleet was hunting down their efforts to establish other ones and smuggle ships through unprotected systems.

In addition to that his forces were razing worlds and protecting others, spread out so far that he didn’t have any one single fleet capable of delivering the hammer blow to the lizards around Paul’s neck, and the Human had told him not to try with the few conglomerates he could spare. His friend had assured him that Star Force could handle this, long as it may be, and that he should use the distraction to his advantage and pluck as many other worlds from the lizards’ grasp as he could.

And that was happening, but more so with the Preema. Cal-com didn’t have accurate numbers of lizard movements in their coreward half but he could guestimate what was happening based off of observed movements through the bottleneck territory that the Voku and Star Force were now contesting. There were just as many reinforcements coming from there as they were from the lizard core systems and Cal-com knew that was why the Preema were rolling along as quickly as they were. Paul’s target system was a hotbed that was sucking in lizard fleets from other theatres and making it even easier for the Preema to advance…and as long as the lizards were committed to holding that system the flow would continue.

If Paul could keep chewing them up then that was an advantage, to be sure, but the sporadic reports he was getting from the Humans were showing a very costly battle for the system. As usually casualties were remarkably light, but Star Force was losing so much equipment that they had to keep their own reinforcements flowing in nonstop. That reduced their ability to expand their territory deeper towards the lizard core, giving the enemy a respite in their weaker systems save for the invasion corridor that the H’kar were pushing with light Star Force assistance. Their ally was next to useless without the Humans giving them directions, but when combined they were very effective at purging worlds.

Unfortunately the Skarrons were not. Cal-com did not understand the inner workings of the Skarron empire, but for one so large they were doing a very bad job of defending their borders…and he believed that they weren’t truly trying. Did they have a greater enemy elsewhere to fight? Or were they simply apathetic and not willing to reinforce the ‘border’ regions? Their territory was so huge, and their command structure so isolated, that Cal-com had never gotten good intelligence from the captured worlds his people were actively taking from them back around their home territory.

The Elders had told them to expand there and they were, but he hadn’t learned much about the Skarrons that he didn’t already know. From the snippets that he did have, and the reports coming in from the Preema, he surmised that the Skarrons were only interested in winning and were willing to lose systems that couldn’t defend themselves. How far would the lizards have to press before that changed he didn’t know, but had he been in control of their military he would have acted strongly far before now, if to only deny the enemy the additional resources it was gaining from the conquests.

The Preema fleets that had been dispatched to the Skarron border were helping to slow the advance, but only in pockets. They couldn’t devote enough ships there while purging from the opposite side at the needed rate, so they were assisting the Skarrons who were fighting hard, just with no support from the rest of their empire…at least not in the numbers that Cal-com suspected they could summon up if wanted.

He couldn’t fault the Preema for trying, but the Skarrons were just as much an enemy of the Voku as they were Star Force and he was glad that the Humans had refused any sort of an Alliance with them. The Preema might be able to ignore the past actions of The Nexus, but the Voku were not so forgiving. Fortunately Star Force wasn’t either, for when one waged war lightly it had no meaning and the definition between friend and enemy got blurred so much that they lost all distinction.

The trust between Cal-com and Paul was different. Their allegiances were firm, and they would not waver in them one iota. Those races that did were without honor and could not be trusted, with the Preema counted amongst them. Cal-com had no firm data to work with, but he knew they were involved in this fight for internal reasons rather than because it needed to happen. If circumstances changed they’d abandon the Voku and the Dafchor knew it. They were a temporary ‘ally,’ and not truly deserving of that title. Star Force was different, and would have the Voku’s back in times of need whether it was to their advantage or not. That was their nature, and it surprised him that they could be so focused without a driving superior.

Everything that Cal-com did was to serve the Elders. They were the stabilizing rod to the Voku, and Star Force had none. Yet they were adamant about their self-appointed mandates, not in words but in deeds. Cal-com was glad that the Elders had instructed him to save them long ago, for they were more valuable than a hundred different races like the Preema. They could be counted on, whereas most others could not be.

A flashing orb caught the Dafchor’s attention and brought his mind out of contemplation. He pulled up the warning prompt and immediately transitioned his oracle over to a command prompt. The floors opened up and the ‘furniture’ rearranged, giving him a control station that he stepped into that allowed him to interface with his subordinates elsewhere on the planet without having to physically relocate to the planet’s main oracle.

“They came into the system only a moment ago,” Nem-tre reported as his hologram and others appeared around Cal-com, making it appear as if he were actually on the primary oracle. “Unidentified jumpships 34 in count and growing, the first of which has made a microjump out from the star heading in our direction.”

“Defensive formation,” Cal-com ordered. “Assume hostile, but do not fire until fired upon or my order. Get a comm prompt open immediately, all known languages.”

“Only the one ship made the microjump,” another Voku staffer noted. “The rest are holding position in stellar orbit.”

“Either a scout or an emissary,” Cal-com deduced calmly. “Either way they know we’re here. After this is over I want the system reswept for probes.”

The orbital map of Inova marked a new icon decelerating to a stop just outside the range of the six conglomerates stationed nearby that were busily breaking apart into more mobile attack ships, drawing a head twitch from Cal-com. Whoever this was had powerful gravity drives to get from the star to here that fast.

“We’re being contacted, generic comm prompt. Languages cycling.”

Cal-com waited a moment while his staff and their automated computer systems used the puzzle pieces of the incoming transmission to match up hopefully one means of communication that both races were fluent in and after only a few seconds one was identified, with it being the old trade language that had predominated this area prior to the lizard invasion. The Voku had acquired it from Star Force, and with it the computer systems were able to translate incoming messages into Cal-com’s native language in the form of text.

He didn’t see it until one of his staffers transferred it to his attention, then the simple message asking for him by name floated in holo before him…along with a holographic request.

“Are we set to translate?”

“Yes.”

“Put it through to me,” he said, hitting a few buttons that eclipsed the view behind him with an opaque energy shield so the newly arrived ships couldn’t see where he was. After a few moments an image appeared of a triangular helmet set over what looked similar to Voku shoulders. All were armored with a glossy blue material that shone with highlights and made a very intimidating appearance.

“Identify yourselves and state your business here,” Cal-com demanded, looking back at the alien from behind his single artificial crystalline eyepiece.

The translation procedure was a bit delayed, as well as configured to answer in the approximate tone of the speaker if applicable, for some races communicated with all but unintelligible squawks and screeches. This one did not, and the voice seemed metallic but almost Voku, with the helmet obviously affecting the individual’s natural voice.

“We are the Shanplenix. You requested allies in your war against the Cajdital. Until recently we did not think you capable of defeating them. Now that we know you have a viable chance, we are offering our assistance.”

“How did you know of this system?” Cal-com demanded.

“We may keep to our own systems, but we watch others closely. This system’s location is not known to many, but we were able to discover it none the less.”

An information terminal to Cal-com’s left lit up with a message from his staff and he gave a displeased look at the alien. “By invading their computer systems as you just tried to do with ours?”

“Yes,” it answered unapologetically. “Most are unable to detect our presence. The fact that you can is encouraging.”

“Cease your efforts to do so or leave this system under my fleet’s guns.”

The alien made a ‘tisk, tisk, tisk’ sound that didn’t translate. “No need for hostilities between us, Voku. We find it easier to learn from computer tap than by conquering worlds. Most are unaware and therefore do not take issue with it. Now that we know you can, we will not attempt to do so further. Rather I will simply ask you to provide us with information.”

“You first. Explain yourselves and what aid you think you can give us against the Li’vorkrachnika.”

“Li’vorkrachnika? So you use their proper name? Most refer to them in a more insulting manner.”

“Answer me,” Cal-com demanded evenly.

“If we wished to destroy you here and now we could, but we cannot contend with the rest of your forces. Our technology and methodology may be more advanced, but our numbers are not. We possess only 3 systems, none of which have fallen to the Li’vorkrachnika, but they are too widespread for us to defeat, hence we have not tried. You seem to stand a chance of doing so and we’d like them gone.”

“Why exactly?”

“Aside from attacking us, futilely, they are exterminating other races. That mindset is unforgiveable. One conquers a race, they do not remove them from existence. A waste of potential and the height of arrogance. The Li’vorkrachnika are a plague in this portion of the galaxy that is only growing larger…until recently. You have made great gains, but victory is not certain. Even now the largest battle to date wages nearby, one which you are conspicuously absent from while your ally fights alone. May I ask why?”

“You have reconnaissance there, or obtained data from outside?”

“Your ally’s computer systems are more robust than your own. We could obtain nothing from them, but we do have a few assets on location to observe and transmit. The Li’vorkrachnika were kind enough to transport them there for us. You are finally engaged in a critical battle, one that the enemy cannot retreat from, so why are the Voku and others not there?”

“Our ally has assured me that they can handle it. How exactly do you propose to assist?”

“Oh we have no want to involve ourselves with anything of that scale. The Li’vorkrachnika are dangerous in such numbers. We wish to coordinate some local resistance, as well as lay claim to a few worlds in the process.”

“Why have you not done so already?”

“The Li’vorkrachnika are stifling trade and transit in the region. If they are gone we will be able to adopt a more public persona…though with the native inhabitants gone, there will be barren worlds up for grabs. We’d like to acquire a few specific ones and not get into a squabble with you over them, if possible. We are willing to help pacify the surrounding regions in a coordinated assault when the time comes, both out of mutual concern for the region and in compensation for the allowance. We seriously doubt your ability to maintain your hold over so much unoccupied territory in the aftermath…beneficial forthcomings assumed…and wish to cement our placement now, as well as to have a hand in guiding whatever colonization efforts you and your allies choose to allow others to make.”

“That will depend on the specifics of your ability to ‘pacify’ and your intentions going forward. You are unknown to us, and any firm agreement will have to be sculpted over time, though your stated intent is not incompatible with our plans, as far as colonization is concerned. The issue of ‘influence’ is one that could be taken many ways.”

“Consider us interested in who becomes our neighbors. We’re not hermits, but we do like a bit of space between us and undesirables.”

“Define undesirables.”

“Those which we do not get along with.”

“With such nonspecific demands I can give you no answer.”

“Nor should you, for we have done nothing yet. When you reach our region of space we can get more specific, but for the moment we are here to declare our intent and offer the service of the fleet you see before you in hitting a few targets alongside you. Without seeing our combat prowess there is little to discuss.”

“I take it you have already seen ours?”

“We have.”

“How do you compare?”

“Adequately.”

“You had better not be boasting. I do not care for liars.”

“We are not, and I will say that there are many more races out there that have been swallowed up by Li’vorkrachnika territory, yet not consumed by it. They merely wait for the opportunity to strike back. If you are savvy, you will have more allies joining you as you progress. We are a bit more forethinking than the others, hence we are here and they are not.”

“And you wish to stake your claim first.”

“Perhaps.”

“Where are you located?”

The alien made a gesture at someone off screen and a burst of data was transmitted. A long moment later, after the Voku computers sorted it out, three highlights appeared on the map within the lizards’ core region.

7

March 27, 2958

Gvaris System (contested territory)

Nephasil

“The Archon team has successfully neutralized the planetary defense gun. Stand by for attack runs following orbital bombardment.”

“Shit. How did they pull that off?” Jared asked the rest of his squadron who’d heard the blanket broadcast as they were holding position some 160 kilometers away from the last intact lizard city on the planet.

“They had a trailblazer with them,” Sharon answered as she eased her heavily laden skeet up to a higher altitude along with the other 9 in her squadron and the 80 others that were joining them for this strike mission. “They can do a lot of things.”

“Which one?”

“Don’t know, but there are 8 here last I knew.”

“Battlemap says Kiran,” Dohoriti clarified.

“Son of a bitch,” Jared said in dismay. “I didn’t think they could go in on special teams to get those anymore. The lizards had to know this one was coming.”

“Whatever the case,” Sharon said, easing to point in their loose formation, “they got it done. Now it’s our turn and don’t get cocky. Their northern LZ isn’t that far off and don’t expect the orbital bombardment to get all the anti-air guns.”

“Relax, sis,” Kressy said from her port wing. “We’ve been doing this for two decades.”

“And I don’t want you screwing up at the end because you got sloppy,” she reminded her fellow skeet pilot, whom she’d grown up with in the same Axius maturia class before requesting identical assignments and eventually making their way into Clan Mantle.

“Well said,” Merty echoed, “but I highly doubt this is going to be the last engagement.”

“Unless we royally screw up, it’ll be the last city attack on this planet.”

“They have another, you know.”

“One at a time,” she insisted as her battlemap began to register explosions within the distant, but visible city. Frowning, she zoomed in on her map and saw the signals from the Archon team still well within the perimeter…but the bombardment was coming down on the opposite half of the city.

“Are they firing with them still in there?” Jared asked.

“It’s a trailblazer,” Sharon reminded him. “Looks like they’re calling down the rain on the opposite half of the city.”

“Reckless,” Ethan pronounced.

“Kiran probably knows the accuracy of those naval guns better than any of us,” she defended. “If he thinks it’s safe enough I’m not going to argue.”

“Look at the lizard LZs,” Pren said with a chuckle.

Sharon switched her battlemap over to the nearest of the three on planet and saw the grounded ships taking off in a hurry with a few of them getting skewered by invisible Keema beams. Without that last anti-orbital battery providing them cover the naval fleet now had firing positions on them from above…so long as the lizard fleet let them get there.

Given that the skeets were lazily easing towards the city, Sharon switched her battlemap up to orbit and saw that things were not so calm there. Six Sentinels had been drifted into position high enough that the now dead planetary defense gun couldn’t reach them but close enough to protect the ground troops as they invaded this last city. They’d been doing the same thing for years, roaming the planet with a few patches of protection in orbit guarding their ground operations. Right now there were a total of 26 Sentinels in orbit of Nephasil, clustered in 2 other locations to protect surface sites that had Star Force infrastructure.

The rest of the planet was wreckage, with dead cities all across the planet. When one region was cleansed it was left alone, vulnerable to lizards returning from orbital drops that the limited fleet in orbit could not stop, and even now there were probably hundreds of lizard units in hiding within the rubble on the planet and being fed by the LZs that had moved sporadically around the surface trying to stay ahead and away from the Star Force advance on the ground and the orbital strike capability of the ‘umbrella’ formations above.

Now with all of the planetary defense guns down there was nothing keeping the Star Force fleets from roaming, save for the massive lizard fleet currently engaging them in orbit. The Sentinels were involved as well, which meant the lizards were serious about this fight and willing to lose a lot of ships to achieve their objective…though what it was Sharon didn’t know. Maybe they had been trying to protect their last city, but at this point there was no way for them to save it short of eliminating the Star Force formation in orbit.

So long as they didn’t do that and this assault continued Star Force would defaultly own the planet, but they couldn’t keep it. They didn’t have nearly enough ships and Sentinels to blockade the entire surface, so most of Nephasil would be perpetually up for grabs and she had no doubt the lizards would keep running ships and troops down to ground. The thing was, now they couldn’t congregate in the open and pour in reinforcements. It would have to be a piecemeal insertion, making the lizard occupation more of a resistance than an army. They’d try to build colonies underground and regrow their infrastructure in hidden places, but Star Force knew how to deal with that and to not let them get a head start, so odds were this wouldn’t be their last aerial assault on the planet, but it would be the last big one.

The skeet squadrons continued to drift their way towards the city as the bombardment continued, then they accelerated heavily into single squadron formations when they got the all clear. Sharon’s squadron was second in line, but when they got near the city edge they all spread out laterally heading to different locations and watching for turrets that the orbital bombardment had missed. Most of the big buildings showed damage, but they weren’t wrecked. Rather than flatten the entire thing and give the lizards more places to hide, the bombardment had been selective.

Now was the second phase of the attack, with the skeets flying in low and diving between the buildings where they released their payloads on different streets, dropping thousands of ping pong-sized balls out of the canisters they detached from the temporary racks underneath. The sheathing disintegrated after a few seconds of falling, allowing the tiny probe droids to scatter and bounce off the ground, walls, and bits of rubble. Once their speeds slowed the tiny anti-grav units in them took over and they began floating around the city searching for lizards on their own or following remote signals from the fleet above as they mapped out and cataloged every street, hallway, and room they came across.

The skeets weren’t going to wait for targets though, with them darting off through the city and shooting whatever became visible. The worthless surrender offer had been given prior to the bombardment and the lizards, as always, hadn’t replied back, so the pilots were here to soften up whatever troops were on the ground before the mech and infantry columns arrived to clean out the city properly.

Sharon took another glance at the orbital battle, seeing it not having abated yet. The fleet was in the thick of it providing them cover, else a swarm of cruisers could be descending to give the ground troops a mess of trouble. The skeets could always run away, but the others couldn’t and they were currently about 20 minutes out and approaching from the east. Once they secured a portion of the city dropships would bring in more reinforcements, which meant naval had to hold this orbital position until they were finished…and that was going to take days, if not weeks.

Maybe the lizards knew that and wanted this fight. Maybe they were just shooting at anything within sight, but she knew they had a much larger fleet guarding the star and ensuring that their convoys could still pass through the system at will. That seemed to be their primary objective, with maintaining possession of the planet a secondary concern, though one they had fought tooth and nail to achieve. This was by far the hardest won world Star Force had ever taken…assuming they finished here…and she didn’t expect the other inhabited world in this system, Thannep, to be much different. It was less populated, but she doubted the lizards would let it go any easier than this one.

As if on cue, a group of wisps were highlighted with a warning beacon approaching from the north and the remains of what had been their LZ.  The orbital bombardment wasn’t going to be a threat to the tiny aerial craft, and though they weren’t in the insane numbers that had been seen on this planet previously, they were going to be tough to take down given the 90 skeets that were on station only had a couple of nearby squadrons pacing the ground troops to call in for help.

“Guys, looks like we’ve got some business to take care of first,” she said to the rest of the Regulars in her squadron as she sent a request ping to the Calavari Valeries. In fact all of the skeets were piloted by Regulars save for two, with Archons being scarce nowadays given how many army units there were to spread them out between. “Let’s meet them over open ground so we don’t get blindsided by a missed turret.”

The ten skeets pulled up from the city streets and accelerated to the north with the other squadrons doing likewise in the face of the approaching cloud of wisps. Rough estimates tagged them at about 8,000 and that was manageable if they could split them up and whittle them down over time. The lizard craft were lightly shielded now, but against Star Force weapons it made little difference. What it did change was their top speed, for the shield geometries allowed them to smooth out their air resistance. The skeets were still faster, and the Valeries more so, but the speed gap between them and the lizards was not as great as it had once been.

That said, they were still able to meet the wisps far outside the city perimeter and give the approaching ground troops time enough to get into the city, for the wisps weren’t bypassing the fighters and heading for them…rather they seemed only to be interested in killing the skeets.

Sharon kicked the top of her cockpit, barely moving it a quarter of an inch but that didn’t deter her. She kicked it again and again, more out of frustration than in an effort to dislodge the pinned canopy. Her instrumentation was out, including the powered release function, but she was pretty sure that she was upside down on the ground in what was left of her ruined skeet. The IDF and artificial gravity within the cockpit was still working so she couldn’t feel her orientation, but when she’d hit the release the opaque armored barrier hadn’t budged.

“Fuck this,” she said, kicking it again and getting the same result. Sharon hadn’t gotten sloppy up there, but the wisps had shot her down just the same…and all because of a lucky collision that tore through what was left of her shields while she was flying an evasive turn after killing two wisps. She’d known better than to go for the third, with others falling in on her tail, and had done the right thing in breaking off and taking her time with her shields already diminishing from multiple phaser hits.

Then a stupid wisp diving away from another skeet had turned right into her turn and they clipped each other. For the wisp it was a fatal hit as it crunched in the entire right side, but for Sharon it had merely wounded her skeet…while in the middle of the furball. She’d tried to make it to the edge and fly off to let her shields recharge but hadn’t made it. The phaser fire added up and the last thing she knew her tail disconnected just aft of her armored cocoon. Power to her forward engines went out and she’d fallen like a rock, with the impact knocking out the rest of her systems.

Inside everything had gone black, for she didn’t feel the impact, but now she was pinned with no way of knowing what was going on outside, for her comm system was also dead. There were supposed to be backup generators in the nose to prevent a total collapse if the main power cell was hit, but maybe those had gone out first, for her skeet had been chewed up thoroughly even before the tail came off. Star Force had built then to take a lot of punishment but there were still limits, and the lizards had pushed her craft past them.

Sharon slid off her back and sat down on the pommel, wanting to punch something else but nothing useful was available. There were still a lot of wisps up there and at least one less skeet to knock them down with, and she hated being on the sidelines watching a fight…even if she couldn’t even watch it right now.

“Things could be worse,” she reminded herself. The lizards didn’t own this planet anymore, nor did they have ground troops anywhere near her position. The wisps were too busy to shoot her downed skeet, though if she had gotten outside they might have made an exception. No, she just needed to sit tight and wait. Help would come or she’d be able to find a way to wiggle out of this predicament eventually.

With a battle going on over her head, playing dead was probably a good idea right now.

Sharon blew out a slow breath, sucked in another and repeated. Calming her battle frenzy nerves and anger, she took the ample free time and tried to meditate to clear her mind. The cockpit was silent and still, but she was not internally. She focused on that to waste time, embracing it as a small challenge rather than just sitting here and going stir crazy. It took a few minutes to hack down her combat state, but eventually she entered the calm, motionless trance that she’d practiced many times before. Clamping down on her thoughts to silence them, then releasing the pressure and allowing the stillness in her mind to exist without force, she became as still as her worthless wreck of a skeet and waited, breathing slow, steady, shallow breaths.

She lost track of the time and embraced the disconnection. Her squadron could take care of itself, and even if some of them got shot down there was nothing she could do about it so she put it out of mind and got a bit of rest, blinking her eyes open for no apparent reason some time later and looking around, finding her anger gone but her resolve burning bright as ever.

Moving around in the cramped cockpit she slid off the pommel then opened up it, finding a stash of emergency supplies underneath the seat. She dug around until she found the emergency comm unit, flicking it on with a small holographic display showing channel options. Sharon hit the ‘retrieve’ icon and let it begin automatically transmitting with an added ‘safe’ addendum. There wasn’t anything else to say so she didn’t try to find someone to talk to, knowing that if her squadron was still fighting then talking to her would be a distraction and she didn’t want that.

Someone would come for her eventually, and if they didn’t she try her luck again with the canopy.

She didn’t have to wait long, for only minutes later her canopy cracked open and daylight shown in. Sharon looked up and saw the ground above her. She climbed ‘up’ with her hands pulling her out of the canopy and her head dipping to the left as gravity pulled on it. Suddenly her entire body betrayed her and she lost all grip points, floating out of the IDF field and having her mind reorient itself to the planet’s center as she was telekinetically spun around and set down a few meters away next to a golden-armored Archon.

“You alright?”

“Uninjured,” she said, looking up and seeing wisps, Valeries, and skeets still battling overhead to the west.

“Good. Let’s get out of here before they decide to take a few more shots at us.”

“More?” she asked as the Archon turned and began to run away. She followed after him, running hard to stay close by and feeling her legs a bit wobbly after so much time spent in that cockpit.

An armored finger pointed to the right and Sharon saw the wreckage of a wisp that had apparently taken a nosedive into the ground.

“I’ll cover you, but we have to move.”

“Where to?”

“A bit further away from here.”

“How many others are down?”

“Six. We haven’t gotten to them yet, but I was close by so I thought you’d appreciate a lift.”

“Thank you.”

“Keep running that direction,” the Archon said, pointing ahead before he veered off and turned around. “Your ride is coming.”

Sharon didn’t argue, but didn’t fully understand. A few minutes later a speeder came across ground from the south and stopped beside her just long enough for her to get on, then it turned and raced away before the remaining wisps could take notice.

“You alright?” the Commando asked as she held on behind him.

“Yes. Who was that?”

“The Archon?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s Kiran.”

“Where’s he going?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. When we pulled out his team he insisted on going after you. Probably going to play with the fighters now.”

“He’s that powerful?”

“He’s a trailblazer,” the Commando said rhetorically.

“That he is,” she agreed, realizing he must have rolled her dead skeet over by himself.

8

December 19, 2963

Gvaris System (contested territory)

Nephasil

Paul returned to his quarters after a short run in the sanctum, showered quickly then sat down at his computer terminal to pull up recent news and events to look through before bed. Without a grid relay in this system there was no news with the outside world besides that brought by courier, but there were still local updates that didn’t always warrant an immediate notification to him when he was in the nexus…which was where he had been spending far too many hours over the recent years.

He was still training but his progression had slowed considerably, as had the other trailblazers here. Paul imagined the same was true of the rest of the troops and had instituted a cycling program amongst them a while back. This invasion had begun three decades ago, and while a lot of people had spent most of that time here they’d always had rotations back to the ADZ, save for the trailblazers. Once they arrived here they did not leave until the job was done, and Paul was seeing the payment for that in his training scores.

But he didn’t have a choice. If he and the others weren’t here leading this invasion, especially Liam, then the lizards would have won by now. The trailblazers had Star Force hanging on by a thread most of the time and were actually eeking out a win over the long haul…but they couldn’t have a single lapse else it’d all vanish. That meant Paul needed to be in the nexus or near to it at all times, with him taking less sleep than normal. Inas had already reduced that amount, so with the restricted workouts that amounted to little breaks from seat time in the nexus his sleep cycle of 4 hours was occurring every 36 hours.

He needed to hurry now, but he couldn’t let himself get so stuck in a routine that he lost track of current events. And while he could, and often did access whatever information he had while in the nexus during slow times, checking in before bed was more of a reminder to focus on the big picture rather than the realtime feeds that he sucked off constantly while mentally connected to the system.

Being disconnected for a few hours of workouts, he found a few updates from the outer colonies that were of interest, along with reports from Nephasil’s surface detailing hunting raids for lizard upstart colonies that they were constantly trying to plant. Orbital insertions could be tracked, but with so many subsurface tunnels still existing on the planet the scaly bastards had a habit of disappearing soon after landing. They couldn’t take much in the way of technology with them but it was clear that they hadn’t given up on the planet yet, even as their other foothold in the system was under assault.

Star Force was slowly eating away at Thannep much as they had here and fighting against a never ending flow of reinforcements coming down from orbit. A few Sentinels held position above the planet, but blocking all orbital movement was impossible. The lizards could get down to the surface if they wanted to, and they were flooding more ground troops into the system at alarming numbers. Though Star Force was winning this long battle for the system, it wasn’t over. Not even close, and a misstep could see it all come undone very, very fast.

The lizards were making them earn this the hard way, or perhaps they were convinced that they’d eventually succeed. The number of ships in the system was the true problem, and even after all these years Paul still hadn’t been able to secure stellar orbit. The fleet there never fully left to engage either planet, though if it had Star Force would have been forced to evacuate. Trick of it was, they would have killed enough lizard ships in the process to leave stellar orbit vulnerable. The lizards didn’t know how many reinforcements Star Force had coming any more than Paul knew what they had in transit, so they’d played it safe and held onto what he figured was their primary prize, that being a secure route between the two now stretched hemispheres of their empire.

Cal-com had been widening the divide between the two while this battle dragged on, taking out weaker systems by the dozens all around them and constricting the lizards down to this one bottleneck…meaning that if they could cut it then the lizards would have to try and establish a new one far from here rather than just going next door, but for the moment the link was intact so long as those millions of cruisers held stellar orbit.

Star Force had its Sentinels insystem as a strongpoint and the lizards had their stellar fleet as a counterpart, with the planets being lesser prizes that the majority of the fighting was playing out on. As far as naval battles went, both sides were limited. Paul couldn’t assault the roaming fleets much other than to cover the ground campaign, and whenever he got another sizeable shipment of drones in they didn’t last long. He needed to fight offensively to whittle down the lizards but was being forced to cover targets and conserve his ships, allowing the enemy to determine engagements.

Every convoy that came in was challenged and he lost drones covering them, leaving him in a perpetual shortage of warships to make use of, otherwise he would have conquered this system long ago. More often than not he was having to come up with victories with far too few ships, as was Liam, and there was only so many times they could strategically pull that kind of magic before the lizards adapted to their tactics. Paul had to keep adapting as well and stalling while the ground troops slowly made progress, with him constantly cursing the lizards’ industrial might, for they were continually amping up their imports of cruisers to the point where if he didn’t make some assaults they’d pool to too large of numbers and the end would come quite quickly for his defense fleets, Sentinels or not.

But more Sentinels were coming in as well, which was helping to offset the numbers game. The cruisers that Nephasil had been actively producing were gone now, and he was glad of that, but the imports had more than made up for them. Both sides were escalating this battle in order to win, making it almost a microwar of its own with the end still in doubt.

Right now the Excalibur was sinking into the upper atmosphere of Nephasil to bombard a few surface locations where lizards were suspected, but that was something the Admiral he’d left in command could handle. Right now he needed sleep, then he could begin the next cycle of this never ending battle and find a way to scrimp up another bit of progress before the entire lizard fleet decided to show up on their doorstep and end this by choking them to death with cruiser spam.

The lizard chess pieces were all gone now, destroyed in previous years and not replaced. Though dangerous in certain situations they had proved mostly useless here and the lizards had opted not to send any more in, relying instead on cruiser swarms that they knew were effective when they reached certain numbers. They had huge supply ships parked around the star feeding them all food and fuel, and though Paul had tried to hit some of those in the past he couldn’t get to them now. The lizards had literally parked walls of cruisers all around them that made it impossible to get through to target them, no matter how inspired of microjumps one made.

And the trouble was, there were more Star Force ships in this system than even in Sol, warship wise anyway. Even with all that naval might the lizards were the stronger. Only the Sentinels kept them from attacking directly and overwhelming them with swarm tactics. This was a must hold system for them and they were not backing down, with the centuries of other races choosing to run and hide rather than fight now being Star Force’s problem, for the lizards were pulling ships from across their vast territory and Paul could only guess at how many more were coming.

But right now time was more on Star Force’s side. The lizards had more ships coming in, but Star Force was claiming the planets and had their tech advantage increasing with every year. There was no way to know if it’d be enough in time, and the part of him that relished the challenge of the situation was thoroughly sick of it. He just wanted to win this and move on, and made sure to rotate his personnel when he could to avoid them from getting burnt out as he was on the verge of doing.

But Paul knew how to refresh himself, so after pulling up a few old reports from the ADZ that he’d never gotten around to looking at he went to bed, detaching his mind from everything and just embracing the moment of rest. When he woke up in the ‘morning’ things would be better with his mindset and he’d get to work again. The lizards were not going to outlast him with suicide tactics. His people were far better because they didn’t die and had time to grow stronger and wiser over the years. Spending lives was a cheap tactic and he was damn sure not going to let it win out here.

Halfway through his sleep he slipped into a dream, a familiar dream once he was in it, but he couldn’t recall any specifics from the last time. It was a hunt of some kind, but he didn’t get very far before a hand on his shoulder woke him up and the dream disappeared from his mind and his memory.

“Sorry, Paul,” Evan-993645 said from beside his bed. “We’ve picked up an incoming signal. Big convoy arriving. 32 minutes.”

Paul sat up, looking at the acolyte. “Why isn’t it on schedule?”

Evan shook his head. “I don’t know. Liam told me to get you up and into a nexus.”

Paul frowned and climbed out of bed, slipping on a pair of casual shoes and heading for the door. When he got outside he accelerated into a jog, heading for the bridge as he left the acolyte behind. Wearing nothing but casual clothes that amounted to a loose pair of pants and a T-shirt, he sprinted across the bridge ignoring the Admiral and crew and went directly into the mind link inside his private nook that they could contact him through with any needed information.

As soon as he was inside he found that the Excalibur was already moving, as well as a message waiting for him from Liam.

He read through it quickly, his adrenaline rising as he sensed the same potential that Liam did. Apparently Davis had been holding out on them and was sending a huge relief fleet that was due to be here within minutes. It had to have its jumppoint protected, and because no scout ship had come through giving away their position, only a super-accelerated signal had been sent ahead to the system while the fleet was in transit.

That was risky, but the nature of this fleet was different and could handle warships waiting to engage them…what they couldn’t handle was running into cruisers before they fully decelerated, so they needed the Star Force fleets to signal them what the proper jumppoint would be, in addition to any help upon arrival, for it would take hours for the entire convoy to arrive.

There were fresh ground troops from multiple factions on the way, scores of naval drones, but more importantly there was a fleet of the newest ravagers, not produced by Clan Saber, but from somewhere else that Paul wasn’t aware of. Mainline had been building them for some time and sending them what they had. Davis must have changed something around somewhere to produce more of them without telling him, saving them up for Christmas day.

Technically it was a few days early, but close enough.

When the Excalibur came out of its microjump there was already a small fleet of drones and four command ships, with Liam’s eye sore of a flagship amongst them. It was painted neon green rather than the standard Star Force grey, and was aptly named the Poisoned Donut, though the green was Clan Neon Squirrel’s signature color. There were layers to sarcasm, but Paul had to admit that the odd color did make his ship look a bit meaner than the others.

More ships were jumping in nearby, coming out of nowhere into short streaks as they decelerated then coasted into formation as the leading elements of the lizard fleet raced towards them, knowing this meant another convoy was about to arrive.

Paul contacted the Poisoned Donut and appeared next to Liam in holo.

“You woke me up.”

“My bad. Figured you’d want in on this…and to be frank, I need you in on this.”

“Trying for a counterpunch?”

“Think we shouldn’t?”

“Oh we’re definitely going to try,” Paul said, eagerness evident in his voice. “I’d just like to know how Davis hid these ravagers from us.”

“He is a sneaky one,” Liam agreed. “Probably pulled some civilian shipyards off order and rushed these. He can read the numbers as well as we can, which is probably why he didn’t wait for us to ask.”

“We’ll know more later. That signal wasn’t very dense with information, but I suggest we stow the questions until afterwards. This is going to get intense.”

“I still want to know what he was thinking. Holding out on us is…something we’d do to him.”

“He is an Archon. Perhaps he’s been taking notes,” he said as the first super-accelerated beacon signal registered on both their nexus readouts, indicating the convoy was less than a minute out. “Let’s get to this.”

“You want rover?”

“Your turn,” Paul said with a smirk.

“Thank you,” Liam said kindly as he cut the transmission and took the Poisoned Donut into a tiny microjump forward. It blinked back into existence beside the lizard cruiser tendril that was racing towards the jumppoint, then turned hard right and dove into the enemy ships weapons firing. Some of them tried to ram the big ship, but a wall of dampening shields blocked them like bugs while the weaponry on the other side of the command ship tore into the aft of the ships moving ahead, allowing Liam to slice through the tendril and disrupt their forward momentum.

That left the first piece of a tendril isolated as the trailblazer began a very short-lived battle with the coming cruisers before pulling out the far side and running laterally, dragging another chunk of cruisers with it and further disrupting their cohesion.

Paul used that thinning of the cruisers to utterly devour them, surging the now 7 command ships and 3000+ drones forward and taking advantage of the disruption before tightening their formation and bracing to hold back the onslaught as the first of the jumpships arrived.

With his mind segmented between various tasks, Paul still raised an eyebrow at seeing the first three ships jump in side by side. That maneuver was tricky, but doable, and he was glad that they were trying to clump up as much as possible, but it was the design that surprised him, for it was something he’d never seen before, not to mention far larger than any Star Force jumpship ever produced.

Liam? he said via mind/voice rather than holo.

I don’t know, he answered, seeing that the jumpships were each more than 30 miles long and carrying huge drones that began to disperse. Paul recognized those, though they were also of an updated design. They were ravagers, and each about 40% smaller than previous models.

Paul linked into them and instantly had them under his control, finding that the weaponry hadn’t been reduced, but actually increased a bit. He pulled the huge drones away from the jumpships and gave them a rendezvous point to move to as another trio jumped in behind them. A few seconds later as the behemoths began to pull off and the lizards were beginning to overrun the containment ‘wall’ and spill a few cruisers around the flanks as more Star Force fleets from across the system were arriving on odd jumplines to assist, a message was relayed to Paul and Liam from the jumpships.

The ID signature was that of Davis, and it was text only.

Payback for Sol’s outer zone colonization. You’re not the only ones who can keep secrets. Now go kick the lizards’ ass please…and Merry Christmas.

A simple flat screen vid followed as an attachment, and a clip from the movie Diehard popped up in the nexus beside the trailblazers with Hans Gruber reading aloud the writing on a dead man’s shirt.

“Now I have a machine gun. Ho. Ho. Ho.”

9

July 1, 2964

Gvaris System (contested territory)

Inner Zone

The Excalibur visibly rocked from an impact that Paul felt all the way into the bridge where he stood in the command nexus. A pair of lizard cruisers had managed a short range microjump into the hull where the dampening shields were down and had penetrated the outer armor layer within half a second. Material had compressed as the two enemy ships were pancaked into flattened bullets now buried inside the hull but the ship was so big even that wound didn’t kill it, though a few weapon systems did go offline.

The rest kept on firing as the command ship was buried inside a swarm of lizard cruisers along with 38 of its twins. Interspersed among them were the Mk.7 ravagers that Davis had sent him, with the bigger command chips providing them physical cover to reduce the amount of weaponsfire hitting them. Allow them to be singled out and the cruiser swarms would take them down, advanced shields and armor not withstanding, but put them in the right place at the right time and they’d do far more damage than the command ships could.

That left Paul’s ship playing blocker while doing a lot of damage on its own, and he was glad that the Excalibur had taken the hit rather than one of the ravagers, for they were downing cruisers so fast it looked like the ships were passing through an asteroid field of debris rather than fighting their way inside the strongest bastion of lizard ships within the system.

Over the past few months Paul had taken the ravagers along with the rest of the Star Force warships and began aggressively engaging the lizards, first taking control of orbit around Thannep, then hitting up secondary positions like the various jumppoints and destroying the fleets there. The lizards had responded by pulling back and grouping up in what eventually became a single fleet in low stellar orbit that they were using to protect their incoming convoys and allow them safe passage through the system, some of which continued to deliver more cruisers to the battle, but most of which were headed elsewhere in their territory.

Right now Paul was engaging that fleet head on, knowing that he was going in over his head, but that was the plan…take the ravagers right into the densest part of the cruiser swarm where they couldn’t line up kamikaze strikes from range and use the ravagers as their namesake implied to remove this impediment and claim control of stellar orbit. He knew he was going to lose a lot of ships in the process, probably more than half his fleet of drones at the minimum, but now was the time to do it before the lizards could amp up their reinforcements and start to close their grip on this system again.

It was possible they were tapped out, but given how well the lizards adapted in the past he wasn’t going to assume that their industrial muscle couldn’t flex a bit more and knew he could take down the massive fleet they had here…all 2.3 million cruisers arrayed in a massive nebula that stretched around the star like a partial halo.

The longer this battle for the system dragged on, the more cargo flowed through what was now the choke point between the two halves of the lizard empire. If they could cut that link it would alter the way the lizards fought, and though Paul didn’t know entirely what that would mean for them the more they could disrupt and isolate the two halves the better, for the strength of one couldn’t back up the weaknesses of another…and maybe, just maybe, the Skarrons could find their footing without the lizard core systems spamming them with reinforcement fleets.

Then again, if they couldn’t send fleets to them they’d just use them more locally…which might make the upcoming battles more difficult than before, though Paul doubted any would reach this level until they actually tried to hit a core world. The H’kar had done that once and shared their data with Star Force, so he knew what to expect from them…which was pretty much what they were getting here. But cut off their link to their new conquests and their ability to send ships or resources back from them and it’d weaken the rimward half. If they could do that they could eventually starve them to death by whittling down their systems as they had been doing, but leave the link intact and you’d be giving the lizards an opportunity to do something innovative and change the game once again.

So this system had to fall, and Paul thought they could make it happen here and now, so he, Liam, Sara, Kiran, Dakota, Logan, Alden, and Riley had gathered all the command ships in the system together, leaving only a few small fleets of drones and a handful of warships to protect the planets, and brought them in towards the star and began engaging the lizards on a wide front before sending this dagger into their center.

It was a bold move, and hopefully one the lizards didn’t expect them to make, for it gave the lizards exactly what they wanted…ships surrounding the enemy in every direction, kilometers thick. The trick of it was, that’s exactly where Paul wanted the ravagers, they just had to keep them alive long enough for them to do their work and chew apart the enemy fleet from the inside out.

With his command ship crew safely in the center portion of the ship behind additional layers of armor, Paul accepted the massive damage to his flagship as necessary and kept moving the formation forward and deeper into the lizard fleet, both to hurt them more and to leave behind the debris field that was accumulating from the damage being done to the lizards. If they stayed put that debris would block for both sides and Paul wanted clean firing lines on the enemy.

Meanwhile the 229,000 drones were hitting the lizards from the outside along a wide front, forcing them to fight head on or retreat, and there was only so much maneuvering room inside the massive array of ships, so the cruisers didn’t have much running space unless it was away from the others. Fight or flee were their only options, for they couldn’t fall back to the safety of the other ships without running into them.

What Paul hoped the lizards also didn’t see was the removal of several Sentinels from orbit around Planet 13. Using their own small gravity drives and a lot of cradles stuck to them like ugly bugs, 8 of the defense platforms were moving in towards the star and would be here within minutes to add their firepower to this insane brawl. So much damage was being done to both sides already that this battle was pretty much going to take both sides out, and once that happened Star Force’s superior tech would win out, whether it be in the few number of surviving ships, the Sentinels that could be redeployed later to stellar orbit, or reinforcements coming in from the ADZ.

If they could remove this pool of lizard ships that had been building for decades it would be virtually impossible for the enemy to replenish it…or so the trailblazers hoped. Paul was banking on that being the case, meaning it was time to go all-in, and the approaching Sentinels were his ace in the hole.

The ravagers were the bait and the distraction, for they were also the primary threat. The Dre’mo’dons they carried were more powerful than the weaponry on the Sentinels, but they were meant for short to medium range combat while the Sentinels could reach out and clobber you from afar. Diving into the center of the lizard fleet was bringing them and their secondary weaponry right into their preferred ranges, so it would make all the sense in the world for the lizards to assume that they were the hammer in this fight rather than the anvil.

And if you looked at the numbers, the lizards had a chance to squash them here and now. It all came down to the details of combat and who adjusted better, for there were so many variables involved with two fleets of this size that chaos ensued…for the lizards. Star Force had never fought a battle of this size, not even close, but their control systems operated perfectly no matter how many ships were involved. Remote pilots had their assignments and higher level overseers, such as Captains and Admirals, would direct them where they needed to go in the immediate area while the trailblazers oversaw the entire battle and made adjustments as necessary to counter the lizards and the unpredictable fortunes of war.

The lizards couldn’t compete with that, fighting more like rabid dogs than the strategic masterminds they’d shown to be before. In this their numbers hurt them, for the more they had the less precise they could be. As soon as Paul had dove the command ships and ravagers into the center of the enemy fleet this had become a free-for-all for them, meaning they were being reckless and sloppy, attacking whatever targets came in range.

The Mk.7 ravagers were smaller than the command ships, but not by a lot. They were elongated like most jumpships while the Excalibur and others were circular and wide, with that width being able to block out portions of the cruiser filled sky around them, allowing the battlewagons to focus their firepower into more specific areas and literally chew apart whatever ships were there like the aforementioned ‘machine gun’ that Davis had humorously cited.

His command ship was at the front along with two others while the rest of the trailblazers were further back with their flagships in what amounted to a long arrow shaft rather than a wedge that was pushing forward like a freight train and leaving a protective shroud of debris around the ships at the back of the penetrating formation that eventually left the drones behind and was eclipsed with cruisers flowing in behind them and chasing them into the center of the lizard fleet.

Paul knew to keep them moving, but once they got to the approximate center and he saw that the lizards were not retreating, rather standing their ground and hoping to be able to take out the entire Star Force fleet in this one engagement, he pivoted their advance and brought the Excalibur to a stop allowing the other ships to pull a hard left as he covered for them, tipping his ship up on its side as it took weaponsfire directly to the hull in most places where the shields had gone down.

His gunners were continuing to destroy nearby cruisers, essentially creating a new debris field that would eventually become a wall blocking more phaser strikes from behind it, but rather than hold position there he fell into the back of the arrow shaft but ahead of a few other ships, taking a spot on the train that wasn’t seeing the most counter fire. So long as they kept moving the enemy couldn’t pick on the damaged Excalibur, with the ships ahead of them plowing the road and leaving the ‘shaft’ to fire laterally at targets of opportunity through the surrounding debris as they passed.

That didn’t mean his ship didn’t take more damage, including another ram that had half the cruiser sticking out the ventral side after it imbedded. A nearby ravager obligingly shot it off, allowing the Excalibur’s shields to reform over the wound as two more command ships came in and made a sandwich out of Paul’s ship and gave him time to recharge.

The same was happening for the other leading ships, including the ravagers, to buy them more battle time before becoming disabled or destroyed. When Paul finally signaled the two command ships to break off and give him room to maneuver he saw the first of the Sentinels arrive on the battlemap behind where the drones were engaging the cruisers in more carnage than the arrow shaft was inflicting, which was a testament to just how many drones Star Force had in play.

Knowing that he had to kill as many lizard ships as quickly as possible, Paul didn’t have the Sentinels join the drones in typical hold/stall/recharge tactics. Rather he had the Sentinels plow right into the lizard fleet and kill as many cruisers as they could before they were taken down, forcing the lizards to focus on destroying them or seal their own fate by letting them roam free and eat up so many ships at pointblank range, which allowed their Sentinels’ secondary weaponry to also get into the fight.

One might have expected the arrow shaft formation to punch out the far side of the lizard fleet and run to safety once the Sentinels arrived, but it did not. The trailblazers and their biggest ships stayed right in the middle, metaphorically punching the lizards in the gut and daring them to either kill them or run away, leaving Star Force with control of stellar orbit.

Typical of the lizards, they chose to stay and fight it out to the death, win or lose, leaving Paul and the others with an uncertain outcome before them, but one that was going to end this stalemate one way or another…

Paul ducked under a collapsed bulkhead and onto the makeshift hangar deck where three dropships were waiting for him and the last of the evacuees from his flagship. There were no proper hangar decks left, so this one had been cut out of a chunk of the ship that had been exposed to space and fitted with temporary atmospheric containment bubbles to allow the crew in the protected interior to walk their way out to the dropships without having to armor up.

Paul was wearing his armor though, having retrieved it from his quarters on the way out. He was the last person to walk onto the smashed rubble pile that the ‘hangar’ had been made of. Some strips of metal had been laid down for walkways out to where the gravity ended, with the crew floating their way to the open doors on the dropships the last few dozen meters.

Looking around at the junked interior of his ship, he said a silent goodbye. This wasn’t the original Excalibur from long ago, but he’d taken the name with him to all of his flagships and this one had been in his possession for several centuries, getting upgrades and repairs as time went along. It wasn’t going to be fixed this time, for there wasn’t much of the ship left. It was floating debris right now, no engine power whatsoever, only a couple of weapons batteries operational, and the TF at the center too damaged to disconnect.

And it wasn’t the only one. More than half of their command ships were now junk, but the crews had all been pulled off post battle. Only three ravagers were still combat capable, and all the Sentinels they’d sent into the battle were down, though one was still salvageable. They had 32,000 drones left in decent shape and another 78,000 in partial working order, which sounded like a lot, but given the numbers they’d stared with Paul’s fleet had lost almost everything…save for personnel.

73 people were lost, 71 of which had been on the command ships, and two others on the Warship-class jumpships that had been destroyed. The protected interiors had failed in a few spots from excessive weaponsfire and it ground on Paul to have even lost one person, but 99.9% of the crews had survived to be evaced out after the fleet had finished off the last of the cruisers…which had stuck around to the last in order to do as much damage as possible to the Star Force ships.

Paul lagged behind as the last of the crew pushed off the last platform and floated forward to the commandos waiting to grab them if they missed so they wouldn’t go floating off into space through the canyon-like trench they were sitting in. The trailblazer looked around at the massive wounds that had carved his giant donut up. This had been an interior section, with more than a half mile of ship overhead that was now missing. It’d been sheared clear off after more phaser hits than he could ever count, but the rest of the fleet had killed the cruiser swarm before it could get all the way to the protected interior.

Paul sighed, then shrugged at all the catastrophic damage. What was left of the ship would remain in stellar orbit along with the new asteroid belt of ship debris for some time. Until either a fleet of salvage ships got here to recycle it or they simply pushed it into a descending orbit and let the star clean up the mess. As it was a jumpline or two were blocked, but they weren’t ones that Star Force used and Paul wasn’t about to waste the valuable materials scattered across the battlefield if they could be recovered later, even if it was decades later. They’d set up a warning beacon for now, telling ships where a safe jumppoint on this line was while marking it off limits to their own vessels.

He doubted anyone would be coming in on those lines, long as they were, but you never knew. Everyone within Star Force, the ADZ, and their associates would have their maps updated eventually, but if someone else came passing through them…well, Paul couldn’t protect everyone, and even a warning beacon couldn’t necessarily be interpreted by incoming ships unless they knew how to read the signal. But still, it was a potential lifesaving measure in some wild circumstances, so he felt better about having it in place than not.

As for the Excalibur, he’d take the name with him to his next command ship, whenever he got a new one, for he wasn’t going to steal an existing one and plaster the name on it. Besides, he wanted a few new tweaks built in anyway.

Taking one glance at the wreckage he shook his head at how much it had taken to finally evict the lizards from stellar orbit. The fighting in the system wasn’t over yet, with another convoy of lizards already having jumped in and then out again before they could be destroyed, and there were no doubt more cruisers on their way, but for now the naval engagement had been won, with insane damage to both sides.

“Worth,” Paul whispered as he stepped out of the gravity and launched himself towards the last dropship as the others sealed up and headed out to space.

10

October 23, 2965

Gvaris System (Star Force territory)

Thannep

Paul stood atop one of the broken lizard buildings searching the area with his Ikrid just in case there were a few lizards hiding in the rubble as the Scionate unit he’d just finished fighting with gathered below for a badly needed rest and some food. Their assigned sector had several Bsidd units engaging and hunting down what was left of the lizard army and Paul’s roving team had come in to help them root out a determined knot of infantry that had dug in to several subsurface levels. He’d been the dislodger in that offensive, with the Bsidd being the hammer and the Scionate the skirmishers that ran down the lizards that attempted to flee so they could set up a few more ambushes before they were all destroyed.

There were other sectors in this city with fighting ongoing but this one was clear, more or less, though one could never be too sure where the lizards were, for they had a habit of spreading back into conquered sections and running a bomb or two up into your face. Paul wasn’t as tired, so he felt his time would be best spent doing a little psionic recon and making sure his team didn’t get hit by a suicide bomber or other nastiness. Fortunately the lizards hadn’t gotten around to creating drones to deliver the det packs, for so long as there was a living person carrying it their mind would stand out like a beacon to him as soon as they got into range.

It would take a few more days to conquer this city, at least, but without the influx of supplies and reinforcements the lizards on this planet had no hope of victory or stalling its conquest. As usual they were ignoring all offers of surrender, but within a year or two this planet would be in Star Force hands, same as the rest of the system. With stellar orbit finally buttoned up, albeit loosely with a small fleet and several Sentinels to provide support, Paul had reassigned himself to help with the remaining ground battles on Thannep and putting the finishing stamp on this long and costly victory.

So many ships had been lost that Star Force’s expansion efforts elsewhere were going to be scaled back for the next couple of decades, which unfortunately meant the lizards would have more time to rebuild and consolidate their forces in near their core worlds, but that couldn’t be helped. This win was far more important, Paul just hated having to go this deep into their reserves to accomplish it. Clan Saber alone had lost 43% of its overall fleet here and wouldn’t recover those numbers for a very long time, how long he didn’t know, for the production of ravagers was taking priority for his Clan…but they weren’t small enough yet to replace the standard drones, so he has going to have to skimp somewhere and he hated doing that.

The sedas that now orbited several planets in the system were likewise damaged and wouldn’t be repaired anytime soon. They were all still functioning, but wounded shy of being the second Death Star at Endor. The chunks bitten out of them were smaller, but still an awful eyesore attesting to the damage they’d soaked up that the rest of the fleet had badly needed to be spared from.

A few more Sentinels were on their way here, to help shore up the system, but now that the lizards had gotten wind that the link in their chain had been severed they hadn’t been back in numbers. Some fleets tried to break through but eventually Paul was able to lock that down and start killing most of them, save for a lucky few that managed to run his limited blockades. Without a lizard defense fleet here to safeguard them, this system was no more strategically viable than any of the others nearby for them to transit through, and the Voku were doing a very good job of being a nuisance and not letting them even start to set up another waypoint.

As of now the two halves of the lizard empire were severed, and once Star Force caught its logistical breath they were going to widen the currently narrow gap considerably.

A ping on his HUD brought Paul’s attention to a falling object overhead, but a quick look at the identification marker on it told him it wasn’t a threat…to him anyway. It was a Stranom mech coming down from orbit and he watched the Voku machine land nearby outside the city, though it came no closer.

“Frel’sa, I’m going to be gone a bit. Assign a couple of lookouts while you eat, just in case.”

“Yes, Archon,” the Scionate responded over the comm from below as Paul ran to the edge of the building and leapt off it, using his jump pack to move from one broken structure to another as he leapfrogged his way to the edge of the city then came down on the grassy fields beyond. He landed heavily, for the gravity on this world was 1.3g, but it was nothing that he couldn’t handle and his troops were better acclimated to it than the lizards were, movement wise.

Paul ran easily out to where the jackal-like biped stood in tier 3 form. That meant it was actually three Stranoms combined into a single unit, making it considerably bigger than one of their standard mech/suits, and dwarfing the two individuals standing near the right foot of it. One was a Voku, standing tall and proud in their armorless combat attire and dwarfing the fully armored individual beside him, with Paul running up to and stopping a couple steps short of Cal-com.

“You sneak in here or was I not informed of your arrival due to the combat?”

The big black shoulders on the Voku shrugged slightly. “We made no attempt to hide our arrival, but I did come straight here without delay. Why your people didn’t inform you I cannot say.”

“I’ve been busy,” Paul admitted. “There’s not much fighting left systemwide, but the lizards are tenacious bastards no matter what numbers they’re in. We’ve got some more work left for us here, but the outcome isn’t in doubt. We just can’t afford anyone getting sloppy.”

“If you will allow it, I can take one of the cities off the map for you,” Cal-com offered.

“Is that why you’re here?”

“No, but we always travel prepared. I have four conglomerates in orbit and see no reason why they should sit there while your troops fight.”

“They still have a good number of planetary defense guns in play.”

“We’ll work around them.”

“Help yourself then,” Paul said, glancing at the other person beside him.

“This is my liaison from the Shanplenix that I spoke to you earlier about.”

“Demmcha?” Paul asked.

“Correct,” the slightly synthesized voice answered.

“And why are you two here?” Paul asked.

“A decision is needed,” the Shanplenix said evenly as he glanced at Cal-com. “And I am told that it requires agreement between the both of you, so I am here to conduct negotiations personally to speed up the process. Time is of the essence.”

“Oh?” Paul said, curious as to why Cal-com would agree to this.

“The Preema have decided not to commit any troops to the future conquest of the lizard core worlds,” Cal-com said with a hint of disgust. “They are going to continue attacking and conquering the weaker systems along their border, but their primary focus is going to be on the other side of the divide. The Skarrons are still responding poorly and the Preema feel you and I have this theatre under control, so they are leaving the key worlds for us to conquer.”

“Since when?”

“16 days ago.”

Paul dug the toe of his armored boot into a tuft of grass, then began kicking it with more and more effort as his anger spiked, peeling back the clump at the roots until it finally dislodged and went airborne.

“Son of a bitch…” he said in frustration, knowing how much of an effort it was to take this system and expecting each of the 40 or so core worlds to be just as bad.

“Which is why I came in person,” Cal-com explained. “We need another course charted going forward.”

“And that involves the Shanplenix how?” Paul said, finding another nearby tuft of grass to beat up and removing it from its roots in three swift kicks. He couldn’t believe the Preema were dodging the hard fights after that long spiel they gave him about wanting to hit them where it would really hurt. Damn hypocrites.

“We cannot replace the Preema militarily, for we do not have their numbers. However, we have been in contact with a number of other races within Li’vorkrachnika territory that have been waiting for an opportunity to strike back. The more systems that fall the more of them will be willing to join the fight, as I have discussed with the Voku previously,” he said with an inclination towards the hulking Dafchor beside him. “If we can rally a fair number of them to our banner now, the Shanplenix can offer a weaker substitute to the Preema to help counter the loss when you eventually strike at the heart of the enemy.”

“And what part of that needs to be discussed?”

“Compensation after the war,” Demmcha said bluntly. “To be fair, if you are able to remove the Li’vorkrachnika from this region of the galaxy you will be in defacto control of a vast domain, of which I am told you plan to do nothing with.”

“Next to nothing,” Paul amended. “We’re keeping this one, by the way,” he said to Cal-com.

“I thought you might.”

“If we assist you in a much larger endeavor than at present,” the Shanplenix continued, “may we have some additional equivalent territorial gains to accompany it, and through which to entice others to do the same?”

“Considering how much we’ve already accomplished,” Paul said evenly, his anger at the Preema creeping over into his response to the greedy request, “what do you feel is fair compensation?”

“If we are able to assemble an alliance of those within the Li’vorkrachnika’s borders to fight against them, we ask that we be able to control an area of influence regardless of whether or not we choose to inhabit every system.”

Paul looked at Cal-com and shook his head. “Uh uh. I’m not giving domain to people that I don’t even know about, for we may have to end up fighting them if they turn out to be unscrupulous anyway.”

The Shanplenix raised his hands in a dismissive gesture. “We only ask this in good faith, and do not wish any ill will between us. If we do not earn our keep them we deserve none, and cemented accords are rarely honored after the fact. I have observed that the Voku value honesty, and so too is your reputation. We are satisfied with leaving the details in your hands, to be determined after the fact with regards to our allotments beyond what we have already been guaranteed. To gain the allegiance of others will require more than that, for as it is they can simply sit by and wait for you to win the war without their assistance…though that presumes much.”

Paul looked at Cal-com. “How have they been doing so far?” he asked, already knowing the answer from the mission briefs the Voku had passed along to him.

“They have sloppy tactics, but decent tech and are effective against small to mid-level targets. I would not make any claims beyond that. They have yet to engage in an even fight.”

“Nor do we wish to,” the Shanplenix admitted. “But we can take the burden of the smaller fights off your hands so you can concentrate on the larger ones…or perhaps elements of the larger ones in order to bolster your strength. We do not wish to lead this conquest, only to aid in it and have a hand in the aftermath if you deem us to have earned it.”

“How many of these others are there?”

“We have spoken with 19 others, though there are more known and rumored to be located in regions of space we have not had contact with before. I can vouch for 3 of them that are ready to fight now, if the occasion arrived, without compensation. Their hatred of the Li’vorkrachnika goes deep and they are eager to strike back. The others are more pragmatic and hesitant to latch onto claims of distant hope. We have fought beside the Voku and seen what they are capable of, as well as have seen through records the same of the Preema and you. The others do not have this knowledge yet, but when they do more will join. Others will require incentive.”

“And if we can do this without any of them?” Paul floated.

“There will still be a great deal of territory for you to patrol and secure, against Li’vorkrachnika incursion attempts and other threats. If you allow us, we can take a small portion of that burden off of you and further our own aspirations at the same time. I believe you have made a similar agreement with the H’kar already. We request something similar, on behalf of ourselves and this potential coalition.”

“Who are the strongest and how strong are they?”

“That we know of, the Neeyvir and the Trinx are the most technologically advanced and far beyond our means. The Neeyvir have far greater numbers than us, while the Trinx are isolationist and we have little data on them.”

“And the weakest?”

“Similar to your Hycre allies. They are called the Oosvah and maintain a naval advantage that keeps their systems secure, though only barely. They would assist merely out of self-preservation.”

Paul reached out to the Shanplenix’s mind to try and gage his sincerity, for the words he were speaking held some wisdom in them if a certain course of events took place, but by the same token they were also a setup for disaster and Paul did not want to relinquish territory to would be enemies or frenimies that he’d have to invade because they wouldn’t hold to a code of conduct.

That code of conduct was about to become the next discussion point when he realized the mind was too easily accessible for a race new to him. He looked at Cal-com and spoke directly to his mind.

Have you seen the Shanplenix without their armor?

I have not, he answered back, thinking the words as Paul had taught him in lieu of the telepathy he did not have. Their contributions thus far have been naval only and all their personnel have been fully covered in every interaction. We have no knowledge of their biology.

I do, Paul countered as he looked back at Demmcha. “I have a request to make.”

“State it.”

Paul mentally hit his own helmet release, with it pulling back from his face and transforming into a small lump behind his neck. “Let me see what you look like.”

“The translation software will not work without my helmet.”

“Just for a moment,” Paul insisted.

“Very well,” the Shanplenix said, reaching up and hitting the external releases on the triangular helmet. He pulled it straight up off the rods in the neck, revealing a narrow, round head that did not match the helmet’s dimensions.

Cal-com took a half step back in shock, only now realizing who it was he had been dealing with.

Demmcha stood there casually, looking at Paul with his glowing yellow eyes and likewise bioluminescent yellow/green skin.

Diehard Clip

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