1

August 21, 4812

Chawik System
(Devastation Zone)

Darlek

10 days…

10 days and everything had gone to hell.

And Rammak was dead.

He wasn’t the only one. There had been 58 Star Force
survivors after the crash. No one had been killed during the wreck thanks to
the preparations that had been made, but in the following days 36 of the
warriors and techs had been killed and it was Esna’s fault. It was all Esna’s
fault.

Right now she was being carried by a Bsidd like a
piece of useless cargo, fighting just to keep breathing as the survivors ran
behind the single speeder they had left. It was sticking below the tree tops,
for the Kat’vo were in the air and had accumulated more kills than the Zen’zat
whenever they had found the survivors…whom they’d been pursuing relentlessly.

And that’s how Esna had got them all killed.

They’d been carrying their supplies on their three
speeders and running alongside as they tried to get further away from the
crashed Kat’vo ship. No dead drops had been found, so they were just trying to
put some distance between themselves and however many V’kit’no’sat survived,
which turned out to be at least 12 Kat’vo and 4 Zen’zat. Three Kat’vo had been
killed thus far, and confirmed dead, but all 4 Zen’zat had been holding back
and letting the aerial attack do the most damage, then moving in and following
up. They’d been very aggressive, but in a conservative way meant to wear down
the surviving Star Force troops who outnumbered them.

Tyrenk was doing everything he could to keep them
alive and had saved her life multiple times already, but she couldn’t keep up
and they wouldn’t leave her. Esna could barely walk now, for after 10 days of
high gravity her body was just trying to keep her heart and lungs going. Her
head hurt constantly and despite the full powered setting in her armor her body
dragged. It could move her around but her internal organs were still getting
crushed. Without artificial gravity, which her armor did not have, that fact
couldn’t be ignored and while the techs were having trouble they were holding
up far better than her.

She was a wreck. Back on Tauntaun in the low gravity
she was slow, but she could at least cover distance. Here, at the best she
could walk quickly. She literally could not run for more than short sprints before
her body got so tired Esna got dragged back down to a stumbling walk. That
meant the group couldn’t move any faster than her, their slowest person, and
after a few miles Rammak had picked her up and carried her, allowing everyone
to pick up speed but not even close to what they needed to.

The V’kit’no’sat didn’t catch up to them for two days,
but had she not been slowing them down they could have gotten a lot further
ahead. With Rammak or a Bsidd or even the Scionate for a short while carrying
her they were slowed considerably, and the speeders were full of cargo. They’d
let her drive one until she started running into things, which had taken all of
a few minutes. Her head was hurting so bad she couldn’t concentrate, and now
after 10 days the best she’d managed was a cocoon of pain in which she tried to
keep it from getting any worse as a mess of mandibles surrounded her and she
had no idea where they were or what was going on.

Suddenly she found herself dumped to the ground,
hitting hard and being pressed into the mud by the gravity as movement blurred
around her. Soon streaks of green weaponsfire shot down through the trees,
hitting nearby and blasting damp branches into instant fireballs.

Around her return fire came, shooting up through the
canopy. Esna could only see out the side of her helmet and didn’t try to move.
Being carried jostled her so much, furthering the damage to her body, that even
in the middle of a firefight the chance to just hold still was too much to
resist…plus there was no way she could do anything to help. If Esna got killed
now she wouldn’t care. In fact, it would give the others a better chance of
surviving, so she just laid still as the sounds of battle surrounded her and she
took a few hits on her shields as Esna fought against the nonstop pounding in
her head while tears continued to be sucked off her face and onto the side of
her helmet by the high gravity.

“Esna, open your helmet,” Tyrenk’s voice said some
time later, jolting her partially out of her pain-induced funk. It took her a
few moments to figure out what to do, then she triggered the release and her
helmet retracted with her head smashing into the mud as the smell of dampness
and fire washed in on her nose…then a Human hand settled itself against her
neck and the Archon used his healing ability to repair a bit of the gravity
damage as he had 6 times previously.

Her head cleared but the pounding was still there,
though more muted now.

“Can you walk?”

“Not well,” she said, still not moving.

“Try,” he said, pulling her to her feet…where she
finally noticed that the speeder had been hit.

“Oh no.”

“You have to walk now. We can’t carry you.”

Esna put her helmet back on and took a step,
collapsing to a knee before she managed a few wobbles that left deep footprints
in the dirt/mud.

“This isn’t going to work,” the Scionate said with a
smoking wound on his envirosuit as he gripped a crate and heavily hauled it off
the speeder with an attachment point on his helmet, then he swung it up onto
his back where it stuck, bending him down greatly, but he was still able to
move far better than Esna could.

“Leave me,” she said, meaning it. “Just go. I’m dead
anyway.”

No one answered her, and that told her they agreed,
but it was against Star Force protocol to leave people behind and no matter how
bad off they were they didn’t want to leave her here to die.

“Dig,” Tyrenk said, running off into the forest again
as two Protovic Commandos appeared, coming back with obvious armor damage.

The Scionate tossed off his crate and ran over to a
spot nearby, then began clawing the ground and moving a lot of dirt. More
weaponsfire sounded further out and Esna saw that most of their remaining
warriors were absent, with the techs clustered around her and offloading what
supplies were salvageable from the speeder. Those they couldn’t leave behind or
they’d starve to death on this world, but sadly they didn’t need as many as
they had a few days ago.

A few minutes later Tyrenk came running back with a
new hole smoking on his right shoulder, but his
movements didn’t suggest that he’d been hurt. He grabbed Esna by the arm and
yanked her over to the Scionate, then pushed her face down into the shallow
hole as a wave of dirt exploded outward, digging it deeper then holding in the
air above it as her dirty white armor fell inside.

“Stay still and keep your mental countermeasures
running constantly. They won’t be able to spot your mind and we’ll try to draw
them off. If we can, I’ll come back for you later, but you have to lay here and
pretend to be dead. No comms, no movement, no sounds. Do you understand?”

“Do it,” Esna said, scared but glad she wouldn’t be
holding them up anymore.

The Archon smashed her further down into the hole,
then the dirt began piling over her save for a small hollow that magically
hardened around the lower part of her helmet where her air intake was.

Esna didn’t see anything else as her helmet visor was
covered in dirt, then there was…nothing.

No comms came in, no telepathic message or even a tap
on her helmet. With her countermeasures up Tyrenk couldn’t contact her mind to
mind and she knew a signal could give them away, even on battlemap, so she
turned it off too, leaving her with no contact to the outside. She played dead
as instructed, feeling the crush of gravity on her but also glad that she
wasn’t supposed to move.

She didn’t expect to survive the next few minutes, but
they stretched into dozens and then hours as Esna drifted in and out of
consciousness. Apparently the V’kit’no’sat had missed her, but right now that
was of little comfort. Her body was trashed and Rammak was dead…the latter of
which had done just as much damage. She’d seen his body get blown apart with
repetitive hits from the Kat’vo, and that image of the hundreds of shots being
fired down from above ripping off his armor and then into his body wouldn’t
leave her mind.

But he wasn’t the only one. Others were getting
massacred too, for the aerial attack wasn’t something they were well suited to
defend against. The Kat’vo’s weapons weren’t any
stronger than the Star Force rifles, but they could just fire into an area and
rack up a few hits here and there, draining shields until their Zen’zat moved
in, darting around trees and making it very hard to counterattack them. They
peppered the techs’ envirosuits, which were little more than shield emitters,
until their defenses breached, after which they were easy kills. Rammak had
died while defending them and Esna, putting his bulk in the way and taking so
many shots that he left himself weakened and bleeding for the flying Kat’vo to
finish off later.

Esna could see him dropping to a knee as one of his
legs went out, then pinned in that spot they swarmed overhead firing hundreds
of shots down, killing him in a matter of seconds then rendering his body so
damaged that he couldn’t be regenerated...but Tyrenk did kill one of the Kat’vo
in the process, exacting a bit of revenge, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly
enough. And Esna had been like the walking dead ever since that moment, for
what was the point in continuing on without him?

Rammak had saved her so many times she couldn’t count,
and if one of them had to die it should have been her. He’d spent 800 years
abandoned on Forso and had finally made it out…to
what? Die here a few months later as he took hits for others, herself included?
What was the point of that?

He deserved so much more, and had Esna not been
slowing everyone down he wouldn’t have had to take those hits, or at least not
that many. He’d saved her and she’d been the dead weight that got him killed.

Whenever Esna thought of it she hurt in a way that she
hadn’t since her brother had died, so in a way the physical pain was a welcome
distraction, but as the Human laid buried under the dirt her body finally
started to adapt to the gravity. It still hurt, but given the chance to rest
Esna finally began to hold her own, at least as far as what was needed to lay
still. The gravity still left her numb under the pressure and her head was
constantly pounding, but she got out of panic mode and her mind cleared…which
was when she desperately wanted to pass out, for the full impact of what had
happened began to work its way through all the torturous permutations as her
guilt choked her.

Esna had nowhere to go, nothing to do to distract her,
so she suffered in silence unable to do more than flex her toes for fear of
moving the dirt and giving herself away. When she was nearly to the point of
insanity and considering getting up and finding the V’kit’no’sat so they could
finish her off she heard dirt start to move, then a strong grip grabbed her arm
and wrenched her up…with light flooding into her faceplate and her eyes
squinting shut against the glare.

“Still alive?” Tyrenk said out loud, but in a whisper.

“I don’t want to be,” she said, now out of tears or
they’d have been running wildly again.

“He wanted you to live. Don’t let him down by giving
up,” the Archon said firmly as Esna noticed his armor was a mess, full of holes
that were showing burnt flesh beneath.

“Are you ok?” she asked, barely able to speak the
words as her body twitched against the high gravity with her emotions swirling
around in such a great torrent that she barely knew what was up from down right
now.

“No, I’m not. I need your armor. Take it off.”

Esna didn’t argue, triggering the release and then
getting a rush of humid air on her already sweat soaked body as it peeled away.
Tyrenk started to take his off, but several parts froze and he had to bend and
twist the pieces until he could get free, breaking one of them in the process
as Esna was able to see the full extent of his wounds. He’d been shot at least
7 times and his white uniform was soaked in blood, but the burn marks were
small…and as she watched, they began to shrink as he flexed and grimaced.

Before her eyes he began to heal, but not all the way.
His wounds reduced in size, then he pulled her Commando armor away from where
she sat in a heap on the ground and stepped into it. It reformed around his
thicker body, then he moved his arms around experimentally.

“Thank you. I’ll be back,” he said, handing her back
her pistol while he recovered his own weapons from his dead armor. “Two of the
Zen’zat are down, and I’m going after the others. Move away from my armor and
find some cover. Shoot if you have to, but just try and hide…and survive.
That’s an order, Esna. Don’t you die on me too.”

Before she could say anything, the mud-covered
Commando armor ran off into the forest and out of view, leaving her totally
exposed, but he’d make far better use of her armor than she would…and if he
died, none of them was going to survive this.

Esna didn’t expect she would, for all it’d take was a
single shot from a Kat’vo to kill her now, but Tyrenk had given her an order
and she’d at least try to follow it. It took her three tries before she was
able to stand up, then another two when she knelt down to grab her pistol. When
she finally got on her feet she took very small steps, feeling like the gravity
was trying to drive her down into the ground like a pole. Inch by inch she
moved, putting distance between herself, the hole, and the Archon’s broken
golden armor.

She didn’t get far before she tripped on a divot,
falling on her face and into soft moss-covered dirt. Her hands sunk in a few
inches as it seemed to want to trap her, but slowly Esna wiggled out and got to
her feet again, finding a bit of strength she didn’t know the source of, then
continued on with more baby steps. She didn’t know how far she went until she
found a large fallen tree trunk, but there was no way she was going to be able
to walk over it…so she let herself fall to the dirt, then began to crawl
forward.

Esna went up and over belly first, but when she got on
the far side she found a puddle a few inches deep. Landing in it her legs felt
the slightly cool water and refused to go on any further. She worked herself
around into a sitting position with her back against the log then placed the
pistol in her lap as her eyes closed and she fought the persistent headache.
Esna hadn’t thought she could walk at all, but apparently there was a bit more
fight in her than she’d realized.

What good it would do she didn’t know, but what the
Archon had said about Rammak stuck with her. He’d died saving her, so the least
she should do was stay alive a few minutes longer and Esna wasn’t going to
dishonor him by giving up. That at least was something she could control.

But as she sat and thought, pain pounding in both her
body and heart, she didn’t feel that she deserved to live. Teren dying had
gutted her, but Rammak had kept her going. Now he was gone, largely because of
her, and there was no way she could make it without him. She wanted to die, but
knew that also would accomplish nothing. Her weakness had gotten Rammak and the
others killed, and there was no way to undo that. All she could do was limp on
in shame, but the small part of her mind that was still being rational told her
that moving more now wouldn’t help…and that if she rested a bit more her body
might be able to keep adapting to the gravity.

The rest of her mind laughed at that idea, preferring
to wallow in guilt and hopelessness, but the spark of defiance in her wouldn’t
quit and the occasional sound of distant weaponsfire drifting her way reminded
her of the fight still going on out there by people far more valuable than her.
They’d been fighting to keep her alive, so who was she to argue with them?
She’d do what she could, little as that was, and somehow managed to silence the
mocking part of her mind.

It was weird, for one moment her head was awash in
multiple voices and ideas, then it crystalized into
silence as her senses became more alert. She realized she’d been sitting here
alone in the forest mentally living out a fiction. Reality was here, and no
matter how bad the situation was, she was still alive and needed to do whatever
she could to maximize her odds. She was in the middle of war, far outclassed,
and she was hurting what small chance she had by doing…whatever it was her head
was just doing.

But it was silent now and she didn’t want to go back
to the way it was, so she kept looking around and feeling her environment…her
guilt present but quiet as well. Rammak was gone and she’d probably be joining
him soon, but she had a pistol and the least she could do was weaken whoever it
was that came to kill her. That might be the difference between one of the others
surviving or dying, and if she could help them she was going to. Her life was
gone if they found her, she knew that, so she stayed alert in the hope of
getting that single shot off before the killing one came her way.

2

Time crept on, with Esna having no way of knowing
where the others were or what was happening other than for a few sounds now and
then. Above her was nearly full canopy, so she couldn’t see into the sky to
spot the Kat’vo but had no doubt they could find her if they came this way. Right
now though her primary opponent was the gravity as she fought to keep her head
clear up until a sound to her right caught her attention.

She spun around, feeling her muscles ache with the
motion, and saw the leaves near the ground moving. Esna held up her pistol with
both hands to steady the heavy weight, then saw a huge snake crawl out into the
open.

She sighed for a moment, glad it wasn’t an enemy, but
then the snake turned and headed for her, wiggling back and forth and leaving a
little furrow in the moist ground wherever it moved.

“Go away,” she said, aiming at its big green head.
“Please.”

But it kept getting closer, flicking the air with its
tongue as it came within 10 meters of her, eyes locked on the Human.

“Go away!” she yelled, knowing that was a bad idea but
it wasn’t stopping and looked to weight at least twice what she did. “Baju,” she swore, then pulled the trigger.

The snake got hit in the side with a winging shot, but it reared so fast it shocked Esna as it
suddenly was standing in front of her in striking pose as the burnt smell of
its flesh reached her. It didn’t run away, so she didn’t have a choice. Firing
two more shots she managed to land one in the head, blowing out its skull and
splattering her with bits of juicy gore as it fell just shy of her feet with a
thud.

Move, Esna
told herself without speaking. She’d already made enough noise.

Dragging herself to her feet, Esna walked around the
dead snake wondering what else was out there waiting for her, but knowing she
had to lose herself further in the forest. With new adrenaline surging through
her she managed a normal walk, but with each step crushing her spine and
sending jolts of pain through her pounding head. For the first few minutes she
was waiting for shot in the back or from overhead but nothing materialized, so
she just kept walking at her own pace as her body reluctantly began to get used
to the effort.

Esna didn’t know where she was going, but away from
where she’d made that noise was the idea. Losing track of time, she ended up
beside a small river and knew she couldn’t cross it without help, so Esna
pulled back under a bush and let herself drop to her knees, feeling like she
wasn’t going to get back up again.

She leaned back against a tree and put her pistol in
her lap, then tried to stay as quiet as possible as her body continued to ache…

Esna woke up, not realizing she’d fallen asleep, but
she was still leaning back against the same tree and thankfully there were no
more snakes around. When she sat up she felt extreme soreness, then belatedly
realized her head was no longer hurting. Wanting to maintain that bliss Esna
took a moment just to look and listen. She had no idea how long she’d been
sleeping or where the others were, but at least the Viks weren’t on top of her.

She was still alive, but there was no way she could
survive out here on her own. She had no supplies and only the single pistol…and
she couldn’t eat the pistol. Esna was also very thirsty, but Rammak had told
her not to drink unprocessed water out of fear of sickness in it. That had
never happened to her on Forso when she’d drank from
their private water hole, but he’d said there could be stuff in the water so
small you couldn’t see that could kill you.

But right now if she didn’t get some water dehydration
might kill her, so she decided to slowly crawl out of the bushes to the river’s
edge, leaving her pistol on dry ground as she slid into the water feet first
and lay in the shallows as her legs were pulled sideways. Esna dug a hand into
the mud to steady her, then she dipped her face down and let the cool water
flow into her mouth where she drank…and drank. As soon as the water touched her
tongue she realized she was far more thirsty than
she’d thought and slowly filled her stomach with water until it would take no
more.

Esna pulled herself halfway out of the water then laid
down, letting the coolness continue to soak into her legs as a little of the
pounding headache began again. Trying to shake that off she just laid there and
let herself fall asleep once more…

The Human woke the second time to a poking in her arm.
It was gentle, but repetitive. She groggily opened her eyes and looked,
wondering if it was some critter coming to give her a kiss or nibble on her
arm…but it was neither as she glanced up into the familiar face of a Kiritas in
an envirosuit.

“You are alive,” he said, looking down on her as she
tried to get to her feet and slipped, falling back face down into the mud. The
Kiritas helped pry her up into a sitting position as she swiped the mess more
or less off her face. “Stay put.”

“What happened?” she asked, with her feet still in the
gently moving river water.

“They killed everyone, but the Archon avenged them.
We’re the only two left. You make three.”

“Everyone?” Esna said disbelievingly, though she had
no tears left to cry.

“The rest of us and the Zen’zat are dead. Two of the
Kat’vo are unaccounted for,” he said, handing Esna back her weapon.

“Where’s Tyrenk?”

The Kiritas raised a small finger and pointed off to
the left. “Close. Can you walk?”

“A little.”

“Try,” he said, helping pull her to her feet. Esna
wobbled, but managed to not fall down as her stiff legs protested and her head
started hurting again, but she didn’t care. Pushing thoughts of Rammak and the
past away, she focused on the future and staying alive now that she had been
found.

“Where to?” she asked, taking small steps with the
shorter Kiritas keeping a guiding hand on her arm.

“Camp. The Kat’vo can’t get close with the Archon now,
so we don’t have to run anymore.”

“Are you sure they’re all dead?”

“We did a head count. None of us were revivable, but
he did try. One of the Kat’vo was regenerating, but we finished it off. Unless
there are more on this planet than those pursuing us, we got all but the two
Kat’vo.”

“How far…to camp?” Esna asked.

“Far. He wouldn’t leave me behind to guard the
supplies and wouldn’t leave you out here. We have to hurry back before they can
find and destroy them.”

“I can’t…move very fast.”

“I know. Do what you can,” the Kiritas tech said as
Esna’s white Commando armor came out of the leaves ahead. It was covered in
melted spots and a few breaches, but it was moving with a speed and grace that
she never could have managed.

“Hati, go. I’ve got her,”
Tyrenk said, dipping down and picking her up over his shoulders.

The Kiritas hopped off heavily, then Esna’s view
started changing rapidly as the Archon carried her face down through the
forest.

“What happened?” he asked her.

“What?”

“With the snake. You shot it?”

“I had to. It came at me and wouldn’t leave.”

“Nice head shot,” he said, but Esna could tell there
was something wrong with his voice.

“Luck,” she admitted. “Are you ok?”

“No,” he said, then carried her in silence all the way
back to where she started to see bodies. Fortunately he didn’t put her down
there, but a little distance further on where there was a pile of broken cargo
crates stashed underneath a rocky outcropping near what Esna thought was the
same river but further downstream.

He lightly dropped her beside one of the crates as Hati began pulling out a tent and setting it up nearby.
Tyrenk sat down next to Esna and leaned over his own knees as the tech worked,
with Esna looking at his dirt and blood covered helmet.

“How bad are you hurt?”

“I’ll live,” he said, voice firm. “I’m glad you made
it.”

“I’m so sorry,” Esna said, managing to tear up a bit.
“I am so sorry.”

Tyrenk turned towards her. “For what?”

“I…got everyone…I slowed you down.”

“Yes you did, but that didn’t get them killed. The
Zen’zat would have been faster than the techs even if you weren’t here. We
couldn’t have outran them, and we definitely couldn’t have outran the Kat’vo.
You being here made it harder, but we were going to have to fight them
regardless. And without your armor, I would probably be dead by now. So you being
here was valuable after all.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

Tyrenk triggered his helmet to release and pulled it
off, for the auto retract was malfunctioning, then looked at Esna eye to eye.

“I’m sorry you had to be here to live through this,
but you are still alive and that’s what matters most. Focus on that, but know
that you shouldn’t be feeling good
right now. I’m not, and it’s not my injuries doing it.”

“It’s not your fault,” Esna said meekly, not sure what
else to say but recognizing the screwed up look on his face that matched her
own guilt.

“But I couldn’t save them. That will never feel right,
but it is familiar. It’s been this way since the war began. Constant death.
Pointless, bloody death on both sides…but they keep coming. Keep attacking.
Keep trying to wipe us out and we have to fight back in the same way. The
difference is they can retreat and go back to their empire while we can’t, but
they won’t. So we’re all here fighting to the death…and for what? We have no
choice. They’re making us do it. We don’t attack like this, where we know we’re
going to lose people. We’re smart. We choose our assaults wisely. But when
we’re forced into a situation like this we have no choice but to embrace the
ravage and hope some of us survive. We’re the few this time, and there are at
least two Kat’vo still out there…and maybe more back at their ship. This isn’t
over yet.”

“The ravage? What’s that?”

“It’s what hurts so much. Taking people’s lives and
tearing them up in a stupid fight. No stunning, no surrender, no driving off.
Just killing and destroying and the losers are gone. Hundreds or even thousands
of years of training gone in a few unlucky seconds and the winners are the ones
who have a few people left, but both sides are wrecked,” he said, drawing out
that last word into a curse. “Warriors don’t fight that way. Savages do. And
we’re pulled into it by the V’kit’no’sat. If we’re attacking we have the option
of backing off, but if we’re on defense and they press us, we have to go all in
and trade lives in order to have any chance of winning. We know how to do it.
We do it all the time in training, but there we can learn from our mistakes or
misfortunes and try again. With no regenerator we can’t try again here, so
everyone lost is just a waste.”

“That’s not your fault. How could it be?” Esna asked,
being visibly bothered by the Archon’s emotional distress.

“I don’t like fighting ugly.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I had to let people die in order to kill the
Zen’zat. I couldn’t stay and defend them. I had to go out on the attack while
the others got killed. If I stayed and defended we all would have died, but I’m
still the one who left. It was the only play we had and we all knew it, but in
some ways I’d rather die side by side than leave someone behind.”

“Like me?”

“Like you. But you lived…thankfully. The others
couldn’t hold out long enough. If I’d killed the Zen’zat faster then…but I was lucky to finish them off at all. This is
ravage, Esna, and it’s ugly as hell. No one wins it, because the losses on both
sides are so great there are no victors. Only survivors. We didn’t win, we
lost. They just lost more…but their objective was to kill us and they mostly
succeeded. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I don’t see why you should be blaming yourself.”

“You’re blaming yourself for Rammak. Don’t lie to me
and tell me you’re not. You didn’t get him killed, but the enemy used the
disadvantage of you being here to help kill him. That doesn’t feel right to
you, and it shouldn’t. And losing everyone but you two doesn’t feel right to
me. I’m an Archon. I’m supposed to turn impossible situations around. I wasn’t
able to do that enough here, and almost everyone died.”

“Wrong,” the Kiritas said, walking up behind the two
Humans. “They wanted to kill us and walk away alive. You took them out, and
there was no guarantee you were going to be able to do that. I’m proud of you,
Archon, and thankful to be alive.”

“I have to be more,” Tyrenk said without arguing. “I
have to save everyone. If I get comfortable with losing people then something
is wrong with me. If I get comfortable with ravage, there’s something really
wrong with me. If I have to I can numb it out…”

“But you have us to protect,” Hati
said. “And you don’t want to go all in.”

“I can’t defend and attack at the same time.”

“We got caught in a bad situation,” the Kiritas
continued, hopping around in front of the Archon. “We shouldn’t have made it to
this planet. We should have died in space. If even one of us survives it is a
victory. A ravage victory, but a victory none the less. If I die here, get that
victory if you can. If you can’t, kill one more of them. If you can’t, spit in
their face on your way out.”

“If it comes to that, I will. And I expect you two to
do the same. You hear me?” he said, looking at Esna. “I know you’re in way over
your head, but survive. You’re still alive, and stay that way as long as
possible. Don’t think about anything else. If you do make it out of here,
you’ll have plenty of time for thinking later.”

“I can barely move in this gravity, but I won’t give
up. Please make sure you don’t.”

“Archons don’t give up.”

“I can hear it in your voice,” Esna said, too
distraught to worry about overstepping her bounds. “You’re barely keeping it
together.”

“True,” he admitted, “but it’s not for the reasons you
think. Good people can’t handle ravage without numbing it out, and neither of
you are warriors. I can’t mentally disconnect from protecting you two in order
to numb it out and become a weapon…and it’s driving me crazy.”

“Just do it,” Esna said. “Just go kill them. That’ll
keep us safe.”

“It doesn’t work like that. I can’t stop caring and
you can’t defend yourselves…and I already had to do it once.”

“The burdens of leadership,” Hati
said, moving in front of Esna. “I don’t envy you that. Come youngling. I can’t
get you out of this gravity, but I can get you out of the heat. Sentries
deployed, Archon. You can get some rest now.”

“It’ll be a while,” Tyrenk said, not moving aside from
his jaw flexing in a contained rage that Esna did not want to get closer to,
despite her trusting him completely.

She climbed to her feet and wobbled over to the now
erect tent, with Hati helping her inside as they left
the Archon to himself.

“You need to get your clothes dry. Take them off and
get clean if you can stand in the shower. A cleanser survived the damage, so I
can take care of them if you’ll give them to me.”

“Thanks,” she said, stripping down and tripping during
the process. She fell heavily, then finished sitting on the floor before
crawling over to the shower and turning on the water as she knelt on one knee,
trying not to think and keep her mind clear as she continued to fight the
gravity, but unfortunately her body was getting used to it just enough to allow
a host of bad thoughts through that left her crying again…until a stomach pain
brought her out of it.

“Hati,” she said, still in
the shower under the heavy rain drops. “I drank the river water.”

“You are getting sick?”

“I think so,” she said, holding a hand against her
abdomen.

“I will get a med kit. Stay put,” he said, opening the
door and hopping out as Esna began to get acquainted with yet another type of
pain.

3

August 24, 4812

Chawik System
(Devastation Zone)

Darlek

“Drink,” Hati said, handing
Esna a small cup that felt heavier than it should, but sometime during her
intestinal distress she’d forgotten what normal gravity felt like. Now that her
self-inflicted poisoning was near an end and her senses were returning to
focus, the planet felt as close to natural as her mind could fathom. Forso and Tauntaun were nothing more than dreams, and what
low gravity felt like was something her brain just couldn’t fathom right now.

The advantage in that was that Esna was adapting to
the heavy gravity, enough at least for her head to stop pounding, though
walking even a short distance was exhausting and she couldn’t truly rest even
when laying down. The worst of it seemed to be behind her, and the loss of
Rammak and the others was a wound she carried still, but her constant fatigue
left Esna without enough energy to keep replaying what had happened over and
over again in her head like she had with Teren.

“What is it?” she asked the Kiritas, smelling what
looked like water, but it was so small in amount that she guessed there was
something special about it.

“A new headache for you.”

Esna cringed. “Why would I want that?”

“You don’t. You want what it provides.”

“And that’s what?”

“You’ll see. This wasn’t my idea. The Archon
authorized it given the circumstances.”

“What is ‘it’ Hati?”

“A very, very small dose of Human ambrosia.”

Esna wrinkled her nose as she looked at the clear
liquid. “What?”

“It will give you strength, but we don’t have the
ability to measure out so small a dose as you need.
This is as small as we could manage, but it will overload you. Hence the
headaches.”

“I really don’t want those again. I just got rid of
them,” she said, not moving the cup any closer to her lips than it was now.

“We can’t stay here any longer,” the Kiritas said,
letting Esna figure out the implications of that.

“Right,” she said guiltily, realizing her weakness was
holding people up again. “You sure this is a good idea?”

“The Archon does.”

“Alright then,” she said, tipping her head back and
gulping the water down. She tasted only a hint of flavor…or maybe that was her
imagination. Either way, she drank the water then waited a few seconds, not
feeling anything as she looked back at Hati.

“Let’s go.”

“I don’t feel any different,” she said, dragging
herself to her feet and following him outside their tent. “Where is Tyrenk?”

“Nearby. The Kat’vo are close, and there are more of
them.”

“Baju,” she whispered,
stepping out onto the damp ground with her casual shoes sinking in, but glad to
have them. Had she not worn any inside her armor she’d been going barefoot
now…which would have been bloody foot, given how many thorns she’d stepped on
thus far. “They know where our camp is, don’t they?”

“They spotted us from the air days ago.”

“Can’t they sense my mind no matter where I go?”

“Yours and mine both,” the Kiritas said as he began
deconstructing the tent.

“So where can we go that they can’t find us?”

“With me,” Tyrenk said, appearing out of the brush to
her left. “If you stay close enough I can shield you from their mind scans, but
I can’t stop their Pefbar without it giving away our location. They’ll feel the
disruption.”

“What does that mean?” she said, shrugging in a twitch
as the gravity reduced the motion.

“I have Da’nu and Va’do.
Da’nu allows me to create a bubble around which telekinesis won’t work,
including mine. Pefbar is the sight that allows us to use Lachka, which is the
telekinesis. By blinding the Pefbar in the bubble, we can’t control our
invisible touch.”

“So they can see the bubble with the…Pefbar?”

“Let me show you,” he said, retracting the gauntlet on
the Commando armor and exposing his hand in a way that she didn’t even know was
possible, then he touched two fingers to her forehead. “Close your eyes, then
see through mine.”

Esna did as told, and as soon as she did Tyrenk’s
vision came into her mind. It was like looking through a camera, only much more
vivid…and she looked only half as rough as she felt inside seeing herself
through the Archon’s eyes.

“This is Pefbar,” he said, with a spike of pain
shooting into her head as she was distorted, but after a few seconds she
realized it had been an overload, for she’d suddenly picked up an entirely new
sense. She could ‘see’ everything within 20 meters or so in all directions
simultaneously. She could even see below ground, but there was no color.
Everything was grainy but she could see inside the trees and rocks in a way
that her mind wasn’t wanting to adjust to, but she could feel Tyrenk in her
head holding her wits together in order for her to process the Archon power.

“Now see my range,” he said, with a thought coming
through that sort of drew a line around him for about 5 or 6 meters. “That’s
the limit of my Da’nu. If we get in a fight, you have to stay within this
bubble or I can’t protect you. I can force it larger,” he said, with the hazy
bubble extending out even further than his Pefbar had been, but she saw it
extended further too and her head hurt even more with all the information
flowing into it.

Tyrenk pulled that back, easing her stress a bit but
held it long enough to make the point as the Da’nu field shrunk back to normal.

“…but I can’t maintain it that large for long. You
have to stay beside me. This is very important. If they get close to you they
will be able to kill you with a thought. Inside my Da’nu they can’t. It’ll work
like the countermeasures in your armor did.”

Suddenly the super senses disappeared and all was dark
until Esna opened her eyes, but the Archon’s fingers were still on her forehead
as it grew very cold. When he released her the heat of the jungle began to
return, along with a tingle present throughout her body.

“What did you do to me?”

“You’re starting to feel the ambrosia. You’ll need
another dose in a few hours, but it will give you more energy and strength to
help you fight the gravity and stay beside me. We have to get away from the
Kat’vo so I can use my Va’do without them knowing
where we are. If I can, we can move around the jungle wherever we want so long
as we don’t get close to them. Problem is, I won’t feel them coming either, so
we’ll have to use our eyes. But none of this will work if you don’t stay with
me. One moment outside my Va’do and they will be able
to spot your mind like it was a beacon saying ‘come here and kill me.’”

“I can’t keep up with you.”

“I know. I’m an Archon. That’s to be expected. What
you have to do is move fast enough to get us out of range before they come in
closer looking for where we’ve gone. When your mind disappears from their long
range view, that’s when they’ll know something is up.”

“If they can sense me from where they are now, why
can’t they kill me?”

“Their Ikrid has a longer range than their Lachka or
Pefbar, a lot longer. They can’t read your mind because of your natural block,
but Hati’s they can, and if they’re strong enough
they can take control of his body too, so he’s worse off than you despite the
shield generator he’s wearing. That’s why both of you have to stay close to me.
If not, you don’t stand a chance and they could make him shoot you then shoot
himself, in theory. Kat’vo usually aren’t that mentally strong, but even being
able to distract you could be lethal if you walked off a cliff or into
something sharp.”

Esna gulped, not liking any part of what she was
hearing aside from the fact that he could cover for both of them. “Ok, so we
stay with you at all times. Got it.”

“And within my Da’nu range. Otherwise they could fly
in and crush your heart in a second if they’re strong enough.”

“Wow,” Esna said distractedly, looking down at her
hands. “This feels…incredible.”

“Now use it,” Tyrenk said, levitating the now
collapsed tent over to himself where he grabbed it and slung it over his
shoulder along with a lot of other gear. Hati also
picked up some, but most of their supplies they had to leave behind…though they
were not here anyway.

“I hid them,” Tyrenk said with a shrug of his armored
shoulders. “With Pefbar they’re easy to find, but hopefully they won’t spot
them all if we need to come back.”

“Where are we going?”

“Losing ourselves in the jungle for now. Give me your
pistol. I don’t want you carrying anything that will slow you down.”

Esna held it up for him, then felt an invisible grip
take it out of her hand. It flew around to the back of his armor where it
lodged itself in all the gear he was carrying, with Esna marveling at how he
was able to work his magic. Star Force called them Psionics, but magic was a
more accurate description as far as she was concerned.

“Now, I need you to set as fast a pace as you can
handle. I’ll follow a step behind you and direct where needed, so you lead and Hati will be behind me.”

“Which way,” she said, sensing the urgency. Once they
disappeared from the mental view of the Kat’vo they would be on the clock.

A mental urge, almost like a way point entered her
mind. She couldn’t see anything, for it was more like a sound coming from a
certain direction, though it was impossible to describe. Esna trusted in it and
started walking towards the tree indicated and found her legs still heavy as
crap, but her muscles had somehow gotten stronger as she picked up the pace to
a fast walk all the way to the tree…then she got a prompt to go right for a few
meters, then a sharp left that had them going downhill slightly.

Esna managed a slow jog on the descent, marveling at
how the ambrosia was working. No wonder Archons took the stuff daily, and if
this is how the Kiritas techs felt on their version of it, that partially
explained their hyperactive work schedule.

“How am I doing?” she asked, having to switch back to
a fast walk at the bottom of a shallow valley as Tyrenk turned her to follow
the muddy creek bed that had her feet sinking in a couple inches with each
step.

“We’ll find out soon. I’m blind to them right now too.
From now on don’t speak unless needed. I can talk with Hati
telepathically, but I can’t with you, so just stay quiet.”

“I can hear you in my head,” she whispered, walking on
as he directed her up and out of the mud, then had them turn around completely
and go the opposite way on the drier ground further up the slope.

I can’t sense
your thoughts without touching you, he said telepathically, going silent
himself.

Esna was going to respond, but took the cue and didn’t
say anything. Moving was hard enough, and she wasn’t going to try and use hand
signals or anything. She’d just have to trust in his telepathic steering and
hope the ambrosia held up long enough to get them away from the Kat’vo.

Realizing that she was really slowing down the other
two, Esna committed herself to being the least slow she could for the following
minutes as they moved through the forest without any sign of the flying
V’kit’no’sat, and every further step that Esna took felt like a victory. Not
just in escaping the Kat’vo, but in her constant fight against this stupid
planet. Her body was still a wreck, but at least she was winning a few small
victories now.

Rammak would have been proud of that, she knew, but it
wouldn’t matter if they got caught and she and Hati
pinned Tyrenk down to a single spot defending them. If he stayed on the move
like he’d done before, Esna doubted the Kat’vo could kill him, but if he had to
stay within a few steps of the other two survivors…

Yeah, he was risking making himself target practice to
keep them safe, so it didn’t matter what Rammak would have thought now. All
that mattered was whether Esna moved fast enough to keep her Archon safe. Do or
do not. There was no reward for improvement in a situation like this.

The last thought Esna had before fully committing
herself to this hike was that was what Rammak would have thought…not what he
would have told her, but what he would have thought himself. Apparently the
Calavari had rubbed off on her more than she’d realized. She just hoped she’d
picked up enough mental strength from her time with him, otherwise two more
people might die because of her.

Esna couldn’t change the past, but there was no way in
the galaxy that she was going to put Tyrenk or Hati
in that position without giving them every ounce of speed she and the ambrosia
could wring out of her pathetic body, so when they hit another incline she dug
in with her hands and climbed on all fours, then came over the top and managed
another jog going down.

Like it or not, ready or not, she had to be a warrior
now and their immediate survival depended on what she could or could not do.
Thankfully cross country treks were not something new to her, and she mentally
dug into those previously learned long sustained efforts and forced it as much
as she could without losing her rhythm as the brush ahead of her kept bending
out of her way before she could touch it to keep from slowing her down even
more.

4

August 26, 4812

Chawik System
(Devastation Zone)

Darlek

“This will do,” Tyrenk said, with Esna dropping to her
knees and hands in relief as they stood before a small cave in the side of a
valley. “Even if they find us, they’ll have to come low to fire in the
entrance.”

“If they don’t have any Zen’zat left,” Hati added.

“Yeah. I’m going to find out.”

Esna looked up, her head hanging heavily but the
thought of losing the protection of the Archon being enough to snap it up in
alarm. “You’re leaving us here?”

“I’m going to scout this area first to make sure, but
the best way to keep you safe is for you to disappear. When I find them and
attack, they’ll be tracking me. Not you.”

“And what if they follow our trail?” the Kiritas
asked.

“I’m going to linger here a while in case they do,
then I’m going hunting.”

“What about the rest of our supplies?”

“If I bring any straight back here I could give away
your position,” he said, setting down the load of cargo he’d been carrying
single handedly the past two days, then he floated Esna’s pistol back over to
her. “So I won’t go after it immediately. We’ve got enough with us to last a
couple weeks.”

“Understood.”

“I don’t,” Esna protested, sitting down as she grabbed
her pistol and it nearly fell to the ground in her grip. “Why come with us all
this way then split? Why didn’t you leave before?”

“I wasn’t going to risk losing you.”

“So why now?”

“There’s no way of knowing how long we’ll be here. And
if there’s going to be a fight, better to get it over with before they use up
all of their supplies and better to
initiate the attack on my terms rather than defend against theirs.”

“Do what you need to,” Esna said, having a hard time
just sitting up after two days of high gravity hiking, but she’d managed to
keep moving at a snail’s pace throughout save for the rest breaks Tyrenk made
them take every few hours. “Thanks for keeping us alive.”

“That’s half my job.”

“What’s the other half?”

“Killing V’kit’no’sat. Don’t go far from the cave, and
set up camp inside. I don’t know how long I’ll be. Wait here until I come back
and rest. Hati…”

“Yes?”

“Makeshift defenses when you get bored, but keep them
concealed. If they fly high, don’t give them anything to attract attention…or a
scout drone.”

“I’ll tidy up. Vengeance be with you.”

“That’s the plan,” the Archon said, then disappeared
running into the jungle in his now very dirty white armor with only a few items
attached on the back and in a bag slung over his shoulder, for Esna’s pack had
long since been destroyed.

“He’ll win,” Hati said as he
knelt next to Esna and sat on his thick tail.

“What can I do to help?”

“Nothing. You have almost no energy left. Fortunately
there is little to do and I can handle it. When I get the tent set up, crawl
inside and stay there,” he said, seeing her wince, but not at what he’d said.
“Are you hurting more than normal?”

“Headache is getting bad.”

“You’re low on ambrosia. I’ll get you another dose.”

“Let it wear off. I’ll take some more when we move
again.”

“It’s not meant to be used that way. Your body gets
used to it being there or not there. Transitioning back and forth causes
additional stress for the experienced. In newbs, it causes havoc with both your
body and mind. You need to keep taking it.”

“Is that good for me?”

“Very. It’s not poison. It’s a powerful asset, but
like everything else, if not used appropriately it can cause problems. The
headaches will tell you when you’re getting low. Learn to judge your ambrosia
level by them.”

“Do I get acclimated to it eventually?”

“Your body will get used to it, but there is no
addiction, if that’s what you are referring to. Ambrosia is a type of fuel, and
in order to operate at your most powerful your body has to expect it to
continually be there, otherwise your autonomic conservation protocols kick in
and reduce your output. Do you know why?”

“So I don’t work myself to death without realizing
it.”

“Mostly accurate. The ambrosia level needs to be as
constant as possible, only then will your body accept it and allow the free
flow of energy it can provide you…in addition to a few other things that I
won’t get into.”

“Why not?”

“I have work and you have rest…after a shower, I
suggest. The humidity makes you Humans leak profusely…then you reek.”

“You don’t sweat?”

“We do, but ours isn’t tainted with additional
compounds. It’s simply water.”

“You can drink your sweat?”

“Theoretically yes, but we don’t produce it so fast as you do, so there are rarely any droplets visible.
Now, stop asking questions and focus your mind on regeneration,” Hati said, moving off to the stack of gear Tyrenk had left,
then into the short but deep cave where he was going to have to adjust the
tent’s height.

Seemingly glued to the ground, Esna waited until he
finished then dragged herself into a stiff walk and got inside. She plopped
down on the floor and undressed there, then crawled a step into the shower unit
and let it rain down on her for a long time, during which Hati
came in and gathered up her clothes. Kiritas, for what little time she’d known
them, seemed to be addicted to work and went to great lengths to find even the
smallest of things to do if they were out of tasks, so she let him clean her
clothes for her without it making her feel more useless. At least she was
giving him something to do to pass the time.

When she finally decided to stop the falling water,
there was a pile of clean clothes waiting for her within arm’s reach and she
pulled them back on before drinking a bottle of water, eating a plate of food
cubes, and sucking down the small ambrosia cup Hati
had left for her. What he was up to now she didn’t know, but was so tired she
could barely keep her brain functioning long enough to finish up, relieve
herself, then crawl into the single sleeping sleeve they had been sharing,
though at the moment it was all hers.

Tyrenk ran through the jungle with his senses open and
scanning, having already cleared the area around the Star Force camp, so he no
longer needed to be stealthy. He was the hunter here, and he needed to know
where the V’kit’no’sat were, but so far he couldn’t sense any of them with his
Ikrid. With his Leechas psionic he could sense further, for it was a range
upgrade for Ikrid that put him well beyond the detection range of the Kat’vo,
but if and when he did find them his own mental radar would alert them to his
presence.

The advantage was that when he turned it off he’d be
out of their sensing range again, but he didn’t think that his Ikrid skills
were so advanced that he’d be able to differentiate the slightest feedback
bounces that enabled true masters to detect without being detected. He was an
Archon Titan, which gave him many more psionics than the Zen’zat possessed, but
his skill in them had to be developed over the course of millennia and he’d
only lived through one so far. He wasn’t a newb, but there was so much higher
end potential built into the psionics that some days he felt like one.

If he stayed passive he might be able to pick up the
Kat’vo at the edge of their detection range without being spotted himself, but
there was far too much territory to cover that way and if the Kat’vo weren’t
actively scanning themselves he could run right by them. No, he had to go
active and search while running at a good enough pace to keep covering
territory. The more time he spent away from Hati and Esna
the greater the chance of them getting killed. He needed to find the Kat’vo and
draw attention to himself, and the first place he was going to try was on a
straight line back to the crashed ships…after a short detour jog so they
couldn’t backtrack his line and find his two remaining compatriots.

It took almost a full day until he came across one of
them at the edge of his Ikrid range. It wasn’t flying though, rather sitting in
the treetops on its four legs. The Kat’vo were flap fliers, meaning they didn’t
have true wings but rather skin flaps that extended between their legs. They
had enough power to fly and gain altitude, but most of their maneuvering
ability was based on gliding.

Still, that left him at a decided disadvantage. Titans
didn’t possess the flight psionic. That was reserved for the highest ranking
Archons and Tyrenk hadn’t earned it yet, but if he could get close enough to
the Kat’vo he’d have an advantage…the problem was they could easily run away,
so as soon as he got a location on one of them he kicked on his Kgat psionic and
disappeared from their Ikrid view, in addition to blinding his own. Now that he
was close, he was going to force them to operate on their eyes and Pefbar, and
taking Ikrid out of the equation was going to force much closer combat.

If they didn’t run, that was, so the Archon climbed a
tree a few kilometers later and peeked up through the canopy to use his eyes.
He spotted not one, but four immediately as they circled above a point further
away than his initial contact point that was close to their crashed ship.
Apparently they weren’t stupid enough to come after him, and if they were
guarding their ship then that would pin them in place, more or less. If they
fled they’d do it without whatever equipment or supplies they’d been able to
salvage from their ship, so him heading their way was going to be a win/win
situation for him so long as he didn’t walk into some form of a trap.

Tyrenk dropped back down to ground level, bracing
against the high gravity with a Lachka ‘bubble’ that he used as a crash bag to
diminish his momentum, then he landed heavily with his Commando boots sinking
into the ground 4 inches. He pried himself out and began running again, heading
towards the V’kit’no’sat fliers’ last seen location, but he stopped short when
a bit of movement caught his attention.

The Archon knelt behind a thick tree trunk and
extended his Pefbar out as far as he could…with the ‘touching’ sense feeling
out every tree, leaf, bug, and other physical objects within his range,
including the body of a Zen’zat.

As soon as his Pefbar touched it the Zen’zat moved and
Tyrenk knew he’d felt him. The Archon abandoned subtlety and took off sprinting
towards him, keeping his Kgat active so the Kat’vo couldn’t pinpoint his
location so easily as he ran the Zen’zat down, but when he got within a few
dozen meters he abandoned the technique knowing that the mechanical armor the
much larger warrior wore would be picking him up at this close range despite the
sensor dampening effect in his Commando armor.

It was almost like Archon armor, but built a bit more
bulky. It wasn’t ideal for him, but it was far better than going at the
V’kit’no’sat without shields and with multiple holes poked in his old armor.
There was little chance of the Zen’zat thinking he was a Commando now, after
being touched by his Pefbar, for Commandos didn’t possess the psionic and Arc
Commandos had never been publically acknowledged to exist. The Zen’zat probably
didn’t think he was the same Archon, but psionics were not something that most
Humans possessed, so as soon as he used one he gave away the fact that he was
an Archon and what type of armor he wore wouldn’t matter.

Some Zen’zat could defeat him one on one, but they had
to really outscale him in strength and speed, for his
numerous psionics gave him one hell of an advantage in combat. This Zen’zat
probably knew that and that was why he was running…but that also told Tyrenk he
had something to run to, otherwise he would have stood his ground and fought.
If there was one Zen’zat still alive here then there might be more, which was
why he kept a piece of his mind actively searching with both Pefbar and Ikrid
looking for more targets as he finally got up to the Zen’zat and used his
Lachka to telekinetically whip the right leg into the left and make the 7 and a
half foot tall biped stumble enough that he bounced off a tree…after which
Tyrenk was on him.

Fists, elbows, and weaponsfire flew rapidly and at
extreme close range as the two fought, shields dropping with each hit as the
smaller of the two men quickly showed that he had the advantage, batting the
bigger mass around with strategically placed kicks until the Zen’zat ripped off
a tree branch and started using it as an impromptu sword, forcing Tyrenk to
dodge briefly as the Kat’vo swooped in overhead and began firing down through
the canopy in a blanket pattern just in front of the Zen’zat.

The Archon took hits, but he launched himself up into
a nearby tree with what his kind called a ‘Jedi jump’ and landed on a branch
where he repeated the process and got up into the sky briefly before the heavy
gravity pulled him back down. He shot one of the nearby Kat’vo with a pistol
twice, then yanked another one down into the trees with his Lachka. The
telekinetic grip wasn’t strong enough to pull it all the way down and it was
able to break free and get back into the air, but because it’s wings were
having to beat at the air hard to gain even a few meters its ascent was delayed
long enough for the Archon to jump back up out of the trees again.

He using his invisible grip to pull the Kat’vo closer
to him and then contact was made, shield against shield as Tyrenk took a
pointblank shot to his helmet, but he weathered it and leveraged himself up
with a hand pressing down on the Kat’vo’s right
shoulder. He rolled himself partially on top of it, then briefly dropped his
shields and released a Jumat blast downward.

It disrupted the Kat’vo’s
shields, but that was merely a side effect. The concussive energy wave, in
conjunction with the planet’s high gravity, knocked the avian down into the
treetops as Tyrenk fell beside it. He grabbed a branch and kicked off as the
Kat’vo struggled to get loose of the mess of leaves and bendable sprouts that
briefly ensnared it, then Tyrenk launched himself back towards the Kat’vo and
wrapped it up in a grapple hold.

The next thing the other Kat’vo saw was the Archon and
their brother sinking out of sight down through the trees, but their Pefbar
allowed them to see the pair fall all the way down to the ground where the
Archon savaged the Kat’vo with the nearby Zen’zat racing to assist.

It didn’t make it in time to prevent the Kat’vo’s shields going down and multiple armor breaches occurring
as a result of blunt force trauma and strategically applied pistol shots as the
Archon was a blur of motion that eventually picked up and threw the quadruped
into the approaching Zen’zat…who caught it and twisted it out of Tyrenk’s
firing line as he got another pistol shot into it.

The Zen’zat blocked two more shots then ran towards
the Archon…who obliged him by holding his ground and letting him get back into
hand to hand range. The giant took damage in order to strip off Tyrenk’s
shields, then the overhead Kat’vo raked him again through the canopy, which ate
up a lot of their weaponsfire as the leaves were shredded and the sunlight
level beneath increased with every shot.

The wounded Kat’vo ran off on the ground, searching
for a canopy break to get back up into the sky, but Tyrenk went after it a few
seconds later, bouncing the Zen’zat into a tree before sprinting off…into a
hail of ground-based weaponsfire as two more Zen’zat appeared on the edge of
his Pefbar. He’d been so busy fighting the others that he hadn’t sensed their
minds approaching, but now it seemed obvious that the V’kit’no’sat had not sent
everything against the Star Force survivors…and that was a mistake that had
cost them dearly.

With the numbers edging out of his advantage, Tyrenk
ran off with the Zen’zat chasing and the Kat’vo peppering him with shots from
above, but he was able to evade most as he circled around to the crash site and
finally got out from under the trees to a long road-like furrow of dirt and
burnt wood from where the ship had crashed and scraped for more than a
kilometer…or rather a piece of it, for there were several in view with the
previous trails of smoke marking their positions having been finally silenced
by the sporadic jungle rain.

As soon as he got in the clear Tyrenk pulled out his
other pistol and began dual wielding them as he ran from the Zen’zat, but he
was shooting up into the air at the Kat’vo whom he’d damaged earlier. A few
shots took its shields down and hit its armor, with at least one hitting an
existing hole. It fell from the sky for a few meters before recovering, then it
flapped hard to peel away, no longer able to fight with its injuries or knowing
that another shot could finish it off completely. Its armor would heal it if
given time, so it fled as the others were joined by more Kat’vo coming out of
the ruins.

Tyrenk counted, seeing their numbers climb to 17 as he
continued to run ahead of the Zen’zat who couldn’t quite catch him and didn’t
have much luck hitting him with shots as he zigzagged in and out of pieces of
debris all the way up to a larger section of the ship that appeared partially
intact. He dove inside after quickly checking the interior with his Pefbar,
then with the cover from the increasing aerial attacks he let his shields
recharge a bit while the Zen’zat did not follow him in.

“Smart bastards,” he whispered, hoping they’d have come
in after him. He needed to isolate the V’kit’no’sat, for he couldn’t kill them
in a group this large.

In the brief standoff he looked through the walls with
his Pefbar, finding that there were multiple chambers only partially damaged,
so he retreated into those and found a weak wall with a few holes of light
poking through. He shot a few key places, then used several Jumat blasts to
open up a second exit for himself to use, but he didn’t leave just yet. If
there were any more V’kit’no’sat out there he wanted them to gather in one
place so he could count, and if it looked like they had him cornered they’d
want to amass as much firepower as possible…

Then two more Zen’zat arrived, coming out of other
pieces of wreckage a few kilometers distant, and one of them casually walked up
to the secondary entrance he’d just made while everyone else stayed back.

“Oh shit,” Tyrenk said, guessing this Zen’zat was
stronger than the others…or he wanted to talk. Maybe he wanted to talk.

“Feel like
surrendering?” the Archon yelled in the enemy’s native language at the
Zen’zat as he continued to walk forward.

“You don’t have
that option,” the giant said scornfully. “You’ve spilt V’kit’no’sat blood. Now you will die.”

“Come in here
and try it yourself.”

“I intend to.”

“Great,” Tyrenk cursed as he got within a few steps.
“They had to have a badass on a scout ship. Damn waste of personnel if you ask
me.”

The Zen’zat ducked down and pushed through the gap,
not even bothering to fire a shot…then Tyrenk hit him with a huge Jumat blast
and knocked him all the way back outside and onto his ass.

“Gonna have to do
better than that, newb,” the Archon said as he stood just inside the debris
and raised his left middle finger at the green/black armor as it rolled back
onto its feet. With an audible sneer the Zen’zat stepped forward, throwing a
telekinetic wall at Tyrenk, who parried it mockingly with a Rentar energy field
that pulled apart the Lachka with ease.

“I’m waiting,”
the Archon mocked, curling his middle finger over in an inviting gesture.

5

Tyrenk slammed into the inside wall, hearing his armor
crack from the concussion a split second before he reengaged his shields to
block the two Dre’mo’don shots from the Zen’zat’s forearm gauntlets…then he
dropped them again as the two bodies closed and the Archon batted away the
Zen’zat’s fist just in time to avoid a third shot.

He had to move his body more than he moved his
opponent’s arm given the sizes involved, but the knee that came up and hit him
in the chest hit armor rather than shields, otherwise it would have drained so
much energy out of them that he’d lose them entirely after several rounds of
body blows…which is what the Zen’zat was trying to do to the squirrely Archon
so he could make the kill from range.

The Zen’zat’s shields were already down, but Tyrenk
had lost a pistol that now lay as a melted heap of junk on the floor somewhere
nearby. He only had the one left and was saving it for a finishing shot as he
took the body blow while momentarily charging his Jumat again. When he released
it a split second later he knocked the Zen’zat badass back more than 5 meters
where his legs hit a low piece of debris, causing him to involuntarily
cartwheel backwards into another wall where Tyrenk heard the V’kit’no’sat armor
crack.

The Archon dropped into a crouch, then leapt forward
as the Zen’zat got up and the cracking disappeared. Little microscopic bits of
destroyed armor drifted off him like dust as the remainder reformed around him,
now just a tiny bit thinner. Star Force armor, on the other hand, had caught up
in technology for the most part but the Archons had chosen a different route
for most of their varieties. Solid plates offered more protection than the
fluid forms that allowed the Zen’zat to retract the armor down into just his
forearm gauntlets, and for Commando armor especially it was how much damage it
could soak up that mattered.

The down side was that once a breach was made it
didn’t seal itself, but when hit with overwhelming firepower in a single moment
the Commando armor would prove more survivable than the Zen’zat’s protection.
Problem was, Tyrenk didn’t have any attack of that magnitude at his disposal,
meaning this was going to be a grinding fight that the Zen’zat’s armor was
uniquely suited for.

Keeping a bit of his attention outside and on the
entrances with his Pefbar, Tyrenk jumped for the Zen’zat as it got to its feet
while he threw a Fornax blast towards him. This one, he’d realized earlier, had
the fairly rare Snu psionic that made a person almost
immune to the nervous system disruption of Fornax, so when he hit him with it
the Zen’zat didn’t lose bodily control and fall to the ground. Rather he
stumbled just a touch, and that split second delay let Tyrenk get to him and
deliver an Archon punch into his abdomen.

The blow was essentially an elbow ram with a torso
twist while running, with the three movements combined adding as much kinetic
energy as possible. When he landed it the Zen’zat doubled over, then the
predictable return Fornax blast hit Tyrenk but he was ready for it. Also
possessing Snu, as did all mid to upper level Archons, he felt a little twitch in his
movements but he’d already given himself enough wiggle room to account for it
as he ducked under and grabbed the Zen’zat’s left arm, dragging it backwards as
the Archon walked his feet up on the wall and to the other side of the
Zen’zat…then yanked hard.

The 340 pound mass of Zen’zat moved thanks to the
Archon’s crazy strength, but not as fast as one would have hoped. As he was
flung around he turned into the spin and used it to his advantage, feigning a
forearm shot at Tyrenk’s helmet that the Archon ducked away from, loosing his foot placement enough that a quick telekinetic
slap knocked a leg out from under him, causing the
pair to drop to the ground together.

The Archon released his grip immediately, trying to
get clear of the larger warrior before he could grab hold but Tyrenk was a bit
too slow and was suddenly thrown into a wrestling match that he knew he was
going to lose. He had to extricate himself from it as the Zen’zat leveraged him
around trying to get a forearm pointed into his body so he could shoot him…but
no. Tyrenk suddenly realized he was reaching behind him, going for his other
pistol, and the Archon quickly got a Lachka hold on it and threw it away from
the two of them.

The Zen’zat reached for it with the same psionic,
forcing a tug of war as the pistol floated in the air two meters away even as
the two physically wrestled each other. Tyrenk realized the Zen’zat had a bit
more Lachka power, probably due to the fact that his brain was larger and
therefore he had more Lachka tissue to work with, but the Archon was more
skilled in the psionic and his fine motor control allowed him to spin the
pistol around even as it inched back towards the Zen’zat.

Pumping the trigger as it floated in the air, Tyrenk
was able to put six shots into the Zen’zat’s back before he finally let go of
Tyrenk and fired a flurry of shots through the air towards the pistol, junking
it immediately and taking away the Archon’s last conventional weapon.

But he paid a price for it as Tyrenk got up close to
him and pummeled him with a kick to the leg and then another up into his head
as it fell, snapping it around so hard the Zen’zat lost motor control for a
moment…with his disorientation getting worse as the Archon unloaded a Saven mental flash bomb into his mind. Even with the Ikrid
blocks, the overload clouded his mind for a moment as Tyrenk punched multiple
times into one spot on the Zen’zat’s armor, just below the neck on his back as
he dropped to all fours, then the very dirty white armor over Tyrenk’s hand
withdrew as he punched with his other twice, then the bare hand shot down into
the cracking green/black armor with straight fingers.

As he did so the Archon used his Ubven, which he’d
been holding back for a finishing move, and a huge Lachka field dropped over
both of them so thick that neither could move…except for the neutralizing
energy that the Ubven psionic also created. It allowed the Archon to move
through the field like a hot knife cutting through butter while the Zen’zat
felt like he’d been encased in concrete. He fought it, moving a few centimeters
as the field strength diminished quickly, but during the hold Tyrenk had on him
the Archon’s fingers, now super hot thanks to his
Rensiek which he’d been charging while he beat the armor down, melted through
the cracks in the armor even as it tried to flow in and reform.

It took several seconds, but with the Zen’zat’s
shields gone and his armor momentarily thinned at that point, Tyrenk was able
to burn his way through to the skin beneath, then jammed his fingers into his
body half an inch…but that was all he needed. This Zen’zat, skilled and
powerful as he was, did not possess Rentar, which was a defense against the
telekinesis of Lachka. The Zen’zat armor offered an immunity to it, one which
Star Force had yet to fully replicate while allowing the wearer to use their
own Lachka, but when the Archon’s fingers got past the armor the interior of
the Zen’zat’s body was now exposed and the only defense he had now was to push
back with his own Lachka in an invisible tug of war.

If he could hold Tyrenk off the Ubven field would
dissipate and he’d be able to fling the Archon and his burning fingers off him,
then his armor would reform and protect his internal organs again, but the
skill with which Tyrenk operated his Lachka split it into multiple tendrils
that he snaked down through his fingers and into the big chest of the
Zen’zat…who pushed back on many of them, blocking their progress as the Archon
kept splitting them up into smaller and smaller ones.

With the flesh to flesh contact he could have tried
hacking into the Zen’zat’s mind now that he was past the Ikrid block, but
that’s not what he intended to do. The Zen’zat did try to hack him, however,
and that effort was enough to allow Tyrenk to create one more Lachka tendril
than the V’kit’no’sat servant could handle…

When the Ubven field dissipated the Zen’zat’s body
dropped to the ground with Tyrenk’s hand still buried in it and the smell of
burnt flesh wafting up from the contact point as the Archon proceeded to rip
apart internal organs as the Zen’zat’s armor tried to repair them. He’d taken
out the heart first, quickly rendering the Zen’zat unable to fight back for
more than a few seconds, so now all that mattered was damaging him enough that
he couldn’t be revived.

The V’kit’no’sat outside weren’t going to stand still
for that though, and they began rushing the entrances as the Archon held his
ground, snapping arteries and Kich’a’kat tendrils that were trying to repair
them as he finally hacked his way into the now dying brain and used what
functionality was left to trigger the armor release.

As the first of the Zen’zat got to the entrance and
dove inside, the protective covering on the dying Zen’zat withdrew back into
the forearm gauntlets that Tyrenk pulled off fast, snapping the Kich’a’kat
tendrils still trying to repair the warrior, but once that connection was lost
it took the Archon only half a second to shred the Zen’zat’s brain tissue with
his Lachka.

Tyrenk took three shots to his shields as he let go
his grip, pulling his hand out of the now dead body and triggering his armor to
cover it again, then as his shields got low to the breaching point he threw a
Jumat blast back towards the entrance and knocked the inferior Zen’zat off his
feet.

Then in a display of pure dominance, the Archon threw
up a bioshield wall between him and the now two Zen’zat entering the chamber as
he quickly deactivated his Commando armor and climbed out of it, leaving him
extremely vulnerable. He felt a Lachka attack from one of the Zen’zat, but
pulsed his own Rentar around him, dissolving the invisible energy tendrils
without effort as he slid the two captured Zen’zat gauntlets onto his arms as
his bioshields started to fail under both weapons’ fire and the frantic
physical beating of the two opponents that were about to be totally outmatched.

V’kit’no’sat armor had safeguards built into it so no
one could access it that wasn’t supposed to, but the coding wasn’t built around
any academic measure. Rather, it was genetic. And genetically Humans and
Zen’zat were identical, so when Tyrenk mentally reached into the two forearm
gauntlets that he now wore they recognized him as V’kit’no’sat and gave him
full access.

Having trained with Zen’zat armor obtained from the
pyramid in Antarctica in the past in order to know how to use it, he didn’t
have much of a learning curve to deal with as the green/black material melted
over his arms and quickly spread over the rest of his body…now giving him two
forearm Dre’mo’dons to replace the pistols he’d lost.

His bioshield was near to failing, but now protected
again he let it drop, conserving what little energy was left in it, then
knocked both of the Zen’zat rushing him back on their asses with a Jumat balst as he stood still and looked down at the fallen
giants.

“One chance
guys. Run while you can,” he said, his tone dripping with lethality as the
Zen’zat ignored him and split up, one trying to rush him while the other
sidestepped and began firing both weapons at him.

Tyrenk sneered in disgust, knowing that there was no
way they were going to beat him now that he had armor that was in some ways
superior to even what Archons normally possessed, and didn’t bother to use his
psionics. He let his tissues replenish their lost energy as he engaged the
rushing V’kit’no’sat hand to hand…which was almost an even match. Angry beyond
measure, the Archon accepted the challenge as the three of them went at it
inside the debris.

More Zen’zat came later, piling in as the Kat’vo
circled overhead and watched with their Pefbar, flying low in order to use
their Lachka to help with the fight, but Tyrenk’s Rentar made him invulnerable
to it as long as he was pulsing the energy. Eventually the Kat’vo all turned
and fled to a nearby section of ship, leaving the Zen’zat there to fight and
eventually die as the Archon killed them all one by one with the powerful
forearm gauntlets doing far more damage than his pair of pistols could have. He’d
expected needing to go back and snagging his supplies from nearby to get more
weaponry, but now that he had the Zen’zat armor there was no need, for its
power level was nearly full to begin with.

Eventually only one suit of Zen’zat armor walked out
of that chunk of dead ship, with Tyrenk leaving all the bodies behind after
making sure none of them could be revived by their armor or the Kat’vo if they
swung back around after he left, then standing outside trying to take a moment
to gather himself as his emotions were pounding as much as his pulse, he looked
around to see where the flying V’kit’no’sat had gone and if any more Zen’zat
were around for him to kill.

The answer to the latter was none that he could find,
but his Ikrid spotted the debris that all the Kat’vo appeared to be
inside…which was perplexing. Their safest option was to take to the air where
he could not go, but they were all clustered inside the piece of ship doing
something. If they were bunkering themselves inside maybe they still had a
weapons battery partially operational, but he doubted it as he ran forward
lightly and focused is Pefbar out into a cone to increase its range.

When he got close enough to see the exterior there
were no visible weapons. Suspecting some kind of trap, he continued slower with
care until his Pefbar crossed over the Kat’vo inside and he discovered that
they were firing their own armor weapons at something inside. Multiple
somethings, for they were not all shooting in the same spot. It took a moment
longer for him to realize they were shooting parts of the ship, then he
sprinted as hard as he could while looking for an entrance.

When he got to the chunk of ship after coming out of a
piece of jungle that had survived the crash, he jumped up on the wall and
climbed the side using the grip points in the fingers and toes of his armor,
doing a spiderman on the smooth hull until he got to
a section that had been ripped off by the impact, then he dove inside and
quickly got to the Kat’vo in the confines of the ship where they were walking
around and blasting apart equipment, looking like big dogs now that their skin
flaps were retracted.

They didn’t even bother to shoot at him, rather taking
what few seconds they had remaining to do more damage to the ship. Tyrenk
suspected there was something of value here that they didn’t want Star Force to
find, but more practical was the fact that they were all indoors and he needed
to kill them quickly before they could flee again. Putting the highest priority
on that, he didn’t bother trying to avoid misses and preserve equipment,
choosing to kill the Kat’vo as fast as possible, but their armor took time to
pound through, allowing them plenty of time to shoot up the ship.

One by one he killed them, and one by one they didn’t
respond until he was on top of them and physically knocking them away from
their targets. They didn’t even bother to help each other when they were only a
few meters apart, and that cold apathy told him there was something very
important onboard this ship and that they’d calculated that they couldn’t stop
him even if they all worked together, so they were doing the next best thing as
he worked his way around the interior of the debris like a Terminator, trying
to kill them as fast as possible but not succeeding as much as he wanted.

By the time he finished there wasn’t much of the
interior corridors left but for bits and pieces of broken and burnt material in
which the dead Kat’vo now rested. Two he had to kill a second time as their
armor healed them, but after taking them all down he made his rounds and
finished each of them off for good, then headed outside and searched the skies
for more.

There was nothing visually in range, and the same went
for his Ikrid. That didn’t mean there weren’t more, for there was a lot of planet
out there to hide in, so he was going to have to be careful. Heading back the
way he’d come, he ran off and back into the jungle where he quickly engaged his
Kgat. That made him effectively disappear from anyone’s Ikrid radar, as well as
blinding his own sight, but unlike the Va’do that
jammed the Ikrid for a radial range, this psionic was meant to make him a ninja
that could sneak up right behind someone without knowing. There would be no
null zone to detect. He was a ghost now as far as Ikrid was concerned, and the
Archon swung around in a wide loop and headed back to the ship chunk where the
Kat’vo had died, sneaking up on it well aware that he could still be seen.

That meant he had to get creative, but ninja-like
stealth training was something all Archons had been practicing from their
earliest years, and he soon returned to a nearby perch in the trees where he
could see the ship segment.

There he waited, playing a hunch that if there were
any more V’kit’no’sat left then destroying whatever was in that ship would be
their highest priority. Tyrenk rested, recovering his psionic energies as the
rest of his body ached from the combat effort. He was also out of ambrosia,
knowing the depletion feeling well but also knowing how to deal with it. There
was probably some wherever the Kat’vo had hidden their supplies…assuming there
were any. He’d have to check on that soon, but for now he was just going to
wait and watch.

It took six hours before a pair of Kat’vo flew in,
then when both entered the debris Tyrenk ran across the open gashes in the
forest that the crash had created and climbed up the wall again without any
Pefbar fields crossing into him. Apparently they didn’t expect anyone else to
be here and weren’t paying attention, for when he dropped into the ship they
still hadn’t detected him.

Then he revealed himself with a Saven
flash that disoriented both Kat’vo as he quickly attacked and killed them,
though they still managed to do some additional damage to whatever was so
important inside the ship.

6

Esna and Hati were sitting
just outside the cave, running bags of water they’d collected from a nearby
icky pool through a cleanser when a rustling of leaves got their attention.
Both Human and Kiritas turned their heads, Hati’s
still in his envirosuit helmet, towards the noise just in time to see a green
quadruped run out and snarl at them. It was smaller than Hati,
but had two not so nice looking fangs nudging out over its lips as its vision
was locked on the pair.

Hati didn’t wait, jumping
back into the cave where a rifle was leaning against the inside wall.

Esna backpedaled a step, then tripped over a crate she
forgot was there as the quadruped jumped forward and sprinted at them. It got
halfway there before a blue Dre’mo’don blast hit it in the leg, then as it
rolled forward towards Esna’s feet two more shots nailed it in the chest and
head as it flopped dead two meters in front of her as she scrambled back onto
her feet as the gravity tried to glue her to the ground.

Breathing heavily with adrenaline pounding through her
veins, she backed up next to Hati and away from the
thing as more leaves began rustling all around them.

“Get your weapon,” Hati
said, backing up to the center of the cave entrance and holding position as two
more of the creatures came into view.

Esna jogged back inside and grabbed her pistol, but
before she could turn around Hati fired again amidst
a jumble of biological sounds, half of which she had no idea what they were.
When she finally got pistol in hand she turned to see not two or three, but
what had to be at least 20 of the small creatures sprinting forward and getting
mowed down by the Kiritas. Esna walked forward, taking a couple steps before
she fired a shot to make sure she didn’t hit Hati,
but already two of the things were at his feet biting at his
envirosuit…futilely. The hard casing wasn’t budging, but Esna didn’t have any
protection on.

She dropped to a knee, then used both hands to steady
the heavy weapon as she aimed and fired, not so much at a single target but at
the area to Hati’s left, hitting quadrupeds just
because they jumped into the way as the smell of burnt flesh and vaporized
blood wafted over her. At first the creatures went straight for Hati, but eventually one of them spotted Esna and got
within a couple meters.

She fired in a panic, falling backwards as she
adjusted her aim just in time to hit the thing in the chest, but it didn’t die
instantly. It got up to and swatted at her leg, ripping her pants below the
knee and scraping her leg deep enough that blood began to flow before she put
another shot into it.

A moment later she saw Hati
stumble as four of the things jumped and knocked him into the wall, then three
more coming up behind them ran at Esna and she knew she was going to die.

A calm settled over her as she raised her weapon,
intent on taking out at least one of them as her rage and frustration boiled
over inside. Her headache returned with a vengeance, and as one of the
creatures fell the others jumped into the air and landed on her, one sinking
its fangs into her left arm as the other hit her chest and knocked her onto her
back, with the weight of the creatures and the gravity making it impossible for
her to get up.

Esna fired a shot that hit the ceiling, then as
another bite sunk into her leg something inside her head exploded and the next
thing she knew her weak kicks and thrashes succeeded in knocking the creatures
aside. Her head hurt so bad she could barely see, but her adrenaline was
running so high that she managed to pull her pistol across her chest and shoot
the twitching creature beside her in the head.

The other one got back up as her head seemed to go the
other way and deflate into a more familiar headache, and she angrily swung her
pistol from left to right in front of her and hit the thing as it jumped. It
bounced into the tent wall, then in a rage Esna dove on top of it, accepting
another bite into her soft flesh in order to get her pistol a pointblank shot.

When it was dead she turned around as fast as she
could manage with at least three deep wounds expecting to get jumped from
behind, but thankfully the others were still focused on Hati
as he knocked one towards her with a tail kick. Esna gladly smoked the thing as
its attention was still on the Kiritas, then a few seconds later the Dre’mo’don
rifle fire stopped as there were no more creatures left standing to attack
them.

Hati hopped over their dead
bodies to get to Esna, but her head began to spin before he could get there as
the loss of blood got to her and she half passed out, falling on top of one of
the dead creatures.

The Kiritas’s helmet was over her, but his words she
couldn’t understand and shortly thereafter her head washed with so much
disorientation that she had no clue where she was or what was going on…then her
vision began to clear and she saw the ceiling of the tent with Hati’s unhelmeted head looking
down at her saying something.

“…then some. Esna, focus.”

“I…” she groaned, with her headache cutting off her
next word.

“…massive blo…you..est.”

Esna didn’t hear anything more, for her vertigo
returned and the whole tent began to spin so much she had to close her eyes and
just curl up in a ball trying to wait it out. She spent so much time in that
state it felt like an eternity of pain and sickness that would never end.

Esna suffered, mightily, and part of her just wanted
it to be over with and die, but she didn’t. The suffering continued until a
cooling wave of relief appeared so fast she choked in response.

I’m here,
Tyrenk’s voice said in her head. Stay
still, you’ve been poisoned.

She tried to say something but found she could barely
open her jaw. It hurt so bad she didn’t try again, clinging to the cooling
sensation inside her as she finally felt the Archon’s hand on her neck. He held
it there firmly as her condition gradually improved enough for her to open her
eyes without the vertigo sending her head spinning…at which point she noticed
her clothing was gone, now replaced by multiple healing patches.

She had one on her right leg, at least two on her
left, more on her abdomen and both arms were plastered with the things.

“I’m neutralizing the poison,” Tyrenk said out loud as
her senses returned to her. “Try not to speak. Your jaw is locked up. Whatever
those critters injected you with is nasty. I’ve got a handle on it, but it’s
actively damaging you as I heal. I’ll win out, but this will take some time.”

Esna’s eyes moved to the Kiritas, and he took a step
closer in response.

“I am so sorry, Esna. I couldn’t shoot them fast
enough.”

“She knows,” Tyrenk said in her place. “She’s just
glad you’re still alive.”

“I had protection,” the tech argued. “I should have
put her in the tent immediately.”

“You didn’t have much time. I can see her memories.”

“What did she do?” Hati
asked. “During the fight. I’ve felt that before.”

“I know. I can see the tissue growth in her head. I
can’t stabilize it yet. The poison is taking too much time, but I am numbing
out most of the pain.”

“Is that a psionic?”

“Yes.”

“How is that possible? I know she’s Human, but I
thought only Archons and Mavericks had them.”

“Something very rare…and dangerous. Humans are
descended from Zen’zat, who have 7 psionics as standard issue. The others are
upgrades. Somehow my ancestors’ psionics went dormant, still in our genetic
code but not manifesting. I didn’t have any psionic tissue until I got a
treatment that activated them and grew new tissue in a controlled fashion.
Somehow Esna spontaneously grew psionic tissue…but it didn’t grow right. Using
it damaged her badly, but not as bad as what this poison is doing. I’m pretty
sure those critters are used to taking down targets bigger than Humans with it.”

“Are there more nearby?”

“I checked a moment ago, but right now I have to focus
inside her. Keep the door closed just in case. I’ll do a sweep later.”

“What psionic?” the Kiritas asked.

“Fornax. And her using it saved her.”

“How did she know?”

“My first time I just felt a mental button and pushed
it. She probably didn’t know what she was doing.”

“Fortunate.”

“Very, but I can’t fix her Fornax tissue. Not
completely. And I can’t get to it for a while. These wounds are too bad. Get me
some food cubes.”

“Can she eat?” Hati asked as
he moved to a crate and opened it.

“She can’t chew, but I can get it in her,” he said,
holding out his hand for the Kiritas to place four in…then one of them seemed
to melt as it was broken down into tiny granules that flew in a stream through
the air to her lips, then snuck through her teeth and down her throat to be
deposited in her stomach.

“She’s lost a lot of blood and internal tissue, not to
mention skin. I can’t pull too much from the rest of her body. She was weaker
than I thought, probably from the days spent here. There’s not much nutrient
reserves left in her.”

“Need water?”

“Yes.”

Hati got some and watched as
the Archon poured it into an invisible cup, then set it between her almost
nonexistent breasts as he put a single finger against her skin there and
somehow got the liquid to soak straight into her body as Esna watched with her
eyes but was otherwise comatose as Tyrenk kept her so numbed up she couldn’t
feel the ravages occurring in her as the poison continued to do damage while
the Archon used multiple psionics to hunt down the tiny globules of it.

They came out one of her fingertips, and Hati brought a small vial over to collect it. After a
several hour process Esna was clear of the poison, but there was so much
internal damage that Tyrenk eventually rendered her unconscious then enacted
some temporary holds within her body as he finally released contact and sat
backwards blowing out a heavy breath.

“Is she alright?” Hati
asked.

“Far from it, but the worst is past,” he said,
frowning. “There are more of those things nearby. We need to remove the dead.
The scent is going to draw them here.”

“Can you provide cover while I move them?”

“Yes. You won’t need your weapon,” the Archon said as
they left Esna to her sleep on top of the sleeping sleeve but still nude save
for her healing patches.

When Hati opened the door
Tyrenk felt several quadrupeds outside the cave take notice and start to make
their way towards them, but when the pair got outside and they saw them, the
critters sprinted for a few strides before skidding to a halt and standing
still calmly.

“It’s alright,” the Archon said. “I have them. Get to
work.”

Hati reached down and picked
up two of the dead bodies, glad that his envirosuit shielded him from most of
the stench as he pulled them over each tiny shoulder then carried them out as
the others preceded him and the Archon. When they got outside others soon came
into view, also under the Archon’s mental control.

“Over there, 300 meters,” Tyrenk said, pointing.
“There’s a small rise. Put them on the other side. I can cover you from here,
but I want to keep them all in the open.”

“Show me where,” Hati said,
with the Archon mentally directing him since he didn’t have Star Force armor on
to link into their battlemap and put down a waypoint. In fact the Archon wasn’t
wearing any armor at the moment, for he still had the V’kit’no’sat forearm
gauntlets on. Esna’s armor, now mostly wrecked, he’d brought back and had it
laying in the cave, but Hati already had had a look
at it and there was no way he could get it functioning again. It was locked
into Tyrenk’s form with multiple damaged spots preventing the adjustment
necessary to fit Esna. Tyrenk could put it back on again, but she couldn’t
unless they were the same size…and Tyrenk was a good 5 inches taller. Odds are
Esna’s feet wouldn’t even reach the boots.

Hati worked quickly,
carrying two dead creatures at a time until there was a large pile of them away
from the cave. When he got back after the last trip the creatures were gone
from the cave entrance, but Tyrenk was still standing where he had been.

“What about the blood on the ground?” Hati asked.

“I’ll remove it. I’m just waiting to make sure they go
where I told them.”

“Not the pile of dead?”

“No. They’ll be back, and when they come they’ll
follow the smell there, but right now they’re chasing a phantom to the edge of
my Ikrid range and I’m planting an impetus to go ever further. So far they’re
all taking the bait, but if one turns back it could prompt the others to, so I
have to make sure they all go.”

“What do you need?”

“Nothing now, but we’re not staying here. Once I get
Esna healed up enough, we’re heading back to the ship, salvage what we can,
then I want you to have a look at theirs.”

“Is it in better condition?”

“Parts are, and something in them they wanted to
destroy before I could get to it. They did a good job, enough that I can’t
guess at what all the pieces are meant for. Hopefully you’ll have better luck.”

“If there are still some alive…”

“They’ll get back there, I know, but as soon as I
recover my strength I have to attend to Esna.”

“You need ambrosia?”

“Yeah, I’m out.”

Hati turned and went back
inside the cave, coming out with a small box from which Tyrenk took a glob of
dark red liquid into the air, split it apart with his telekinesis, then flew a
portion into his mouth, after which he drank some water to get it all down into
his stomach as the remainder went back into the containment vial.

“How do you measure so well with liquid?”

“A combination of practice and enduring the headaches
from an overdose when I take too much. Right now I’m depleted, so I’m not
worried…and better to have plenty of liquid than run out of pre-measured
cookies. How much do you have left?”

“Plenty. Do you want to put some in Esna as well?”

“No. That won’t help in her condition. She needs a lot
of food and water and me to make use of it,” he said, visibly relaxing.
“They’re off. Now I have to take a crash nap. Stay alert or camp out inside the
tent. Either way, I’m not going to be paying attention to the perimeter. I’ll
be in a healing trance to expedite things. Esna needs me as soon as possible.”

“Go. I will watch.”

“In a moment,” he said as a swirl of dust collected
behind them, with the blood soaked dirt being lifted up by the Archon and
pulled out of the cave into a ball of sickly mud that he condensed down into
the size of his fist, then he grabbed it out of the air and threw it off into the
jungle.

“Now it’s nap time,” he said
with a yawn. “Night.”

7

August 29, 4812

Chawik System
(Devastation Zone)

Darlek

It was a long walk back to their own ship after
collecting the surviving supplies that had been scattered in the forest, then
they managed to find some more useful salvage in the crash site before the
three of them relocated to the V’kit’no’sat debris. Parts of it were totally
destroyed, but others were still intact and had simply been severed from the
other parts of the ship and fell onto the surface. It was in one of those
pieces that Esna was set down, for Tyrenk had carried her over his shoulder
while pulling a travois of supplies behind him, given the fact that she was
exhausted from the damage and rework he’d had to do to her.

Thankfully he’d kept her unconscious while being
hauled around, but when she woke again to see his face above her there was
unfamiliar soreness across her body that made her wince.

“Sorry about that,” the Archon apologized. “My
shoulder isn’t exactly cushioned.”

“I’ll live,” Esna said, still with a headache but a
manageable one as she laid glued to the floor in the planet’s high gravity, but
at least now she wasn’t surrounded by vegetation, mud, and bugs. The interior
of the V’kit’no’sat ship looked strange, as if the walls and floor were made of
some kind of artificial stone, but it also had a familiarity to it that she
couldn’t quite place.

“Stay here. I’m going to have another look around.”

“You want me to set up camp inside?”

“I don’t know how much of this is still working. Just
get something to eat for now. Hati, you’re with me.”

“Alright,” Esna said, starting to dig around the pile
of supplies they’d brought with them looking for one of the food cube boxes.

“In here,” Tyrenk said, pointing Hati
towards the area that still held the bodies of the Kat’vo that now reeked with
the smell of decay, though parts of them had been torn out by whatever animals
from the jungle had made their way in here to eat the remains.

“It’s a mess,” the Kiritas noted.

“I know. I’ll move them out while you work,” the
Archon said, activating his stolen Zen’zat armor so it covered him head to toe
and would spare him handling the gore directly.

“I meant the machinery,” the smaller alien said,
hopping over a severed limb to a smashed console that he started to pick
through. “There’s no way to access system control if all the interfaces are
like this…and it looks like they even got to the connection boxes and backups.”

“I got to them before they finished, so hopefully
there’s something here to be found. Work on it,” Tyrenk said, using a mix of
his telekinesis and arm strength to create a pile of dead Kat’vo across his back
that he slowly walked out of the ship.

Hati continued to hop
around, looking at this and that until he saw a piece of crystal-like gem that
he picked up and held in the palm of his clawed hand.

“Now what are you from?” he said to himself, not
recognizing it as any piece of V’kit’no’sat tech that he was aware of.

It took several trips for Tyrenk to clear the debris
of all the dead bodies that he’d worked so hard to create in the previous days.
Not wanting to go far from the others, he piled up the remains in the jungle a
few hundred meters from the edge of the nearest burnt out clearing and left
them there, knowing that the wildlife would take care of them soon. He waited a
couple more days before he was confident enough that there were no more
V’kit’no’sat around to go back and retrieve their own dead, some of which were scattered
over the trail they’d fled on.

Given that they were covered in armor, albeit
hole-filled, the bodies were more or less intact but already in a state of
decay and in some cases infestation with fast growing plants and parasites.
Tyrenk brought them all back, including Rammak, and laid them out side by side
on top of a large pyre of wood he’d spent time constructing the previous day.
The logs from freshly cut trees rose some 5 feet high with smaller brush on top
in almost a cushion onto which he placed the armored suits and the bodies that
they contained, then he got Esna and brought her out to the location, with the
girl managing to walk the half mile on her own.

“It’s the best we can do here. I won’t bury them and
have them rot,” the Archon explained as he handed her
a small cylinder. “Their cores are long gone by now, to where who knows, but
the bodies they worked hundreds of years to sculpt into combat shape deserve a
better end than to be left to rot.”

“So you burn them?” she asked, with Hati still off in the ship debris doing his tech stuff.

“The armor won’t burnt much, but if we get the fire
hot enough the bodies will turn to ash. A quick transition rather than leaving
them to linger. It’s a matter of respect, and fire is the best option we have
here.”

“Rammak left my brother’s body lay on a holotable…but that was right after he died and we had to
keep running from the V’kit’no’sat. What would you do with them if we weren’t
here?”

“We have technology to disassemble them down into base
matter. It’s like a shield wall passed over them slowly turning them to dust,
but only after we let them lay long enough to be sure there isn’t a core still
inside. If there is, we’ll try to revive them.”

“It’s been too long, hasn’t it?”

“I checked. There’s no one left to revive here. Just
their bodies remain.”

“What do I do with this?”

“That holds the datachips from their armor. I took
them all out. If we get back the battlemap records can be downloaded and our
analysts can study what happened here. Maybe learn something from it. Sometimes
friends want to see how they died rather than being told. Rammak’s chip is in
there, so I thought you’d like to hold onto it.”

“Thank you,” she said softly, then her eyes rose to
his set of armor on the right hand side of the long cubical rectangle of wood.
“He saved me so many times, it doesn’t feel right that he’s gone now.”

“Usually it doesn’t feel right. What the V’kit’no’sat
do is wrong. They have their reasons, not all of them bad, but when you hold to
an ideology over doing the right thing you end up doing bad things eventually…and
a good person won’t stand for that. Unfortunately the galaxy is not full of
good people. Good is rare in life, and Star Force seeks it out and cultivates
it. Go somewhere beyond the empire and the universe gets very, very grim. Most
people are not good or evil, they’re followers who go along with the people
around them. In Star Force that means they are drawn into the light. In the
V’kit’no’sat, they are drawn into something honorable yet twisted.”

“They’re evil.”

“Yes and no.”

“No?” Esna asked, not quite understanding after what
she’d experienced with them on Forso, Tauntaun, and
then here on Darlek. “How are they not evil?”

“Their aim isn’t to be evil. Their aim is something
else that sometimes leads them to do good, and other times to do evil. They
don’t care either way so long as their mission is a success. There are some
people out there that want to do
evil, and relish in the pain and suffering of others. The V’kit’no’sat care
about dominance above all else, seeing this as their galaxy and they can do
with it what they want.”

“And what do they want to do with it?” she asked, her
eyes still on Rammak.

“Protect it from a far greater threat at the center of
the galaxy.”

Esna blinked and looked over at Tyrenk. “Protect it?”

“The V’kit’no’sat are not good, and never let yourself
think they are, but they’re not totally evil. What they are is totally
apathetic. They’re blind to good and evil, and to them we are a heresy that
must be destroyed. They have chosen to be enemies, blood enemies, for the genetics
that both you and I have are forbidden and they will not rest until we are all
destroyed.”

“Why though?”

“Because we are the violation of a rule. Nothing more
than that.”

“A rule? How is all this worth a rule?”

“Dominance. They have to be dominant, and anything
that threatens that dominance must be destroyed. Splinter races are not allowed
to exist. The Kat’vo have to be V’kit’no’sat. They can’t choose to go their own
way. If a planet leaves it will not be allowed to stay that way, either
destroyed or reabsorbed. Zen’zat serve the V’kit’no’sat and are forbidden to
reproduce, and any deviation is a threat to their empire. There is no
discussion on the matter. Because they decreed it, it must be true and they
will not question it. You and I did not get permission to exist, thus we must
die.”

“And that’s not evil?”

“It is, but they’re not doing to be evil. They’re
doing it to enforce their rule. That’s why Star Force doesn’t exist based on
rules. A wise man once said, ‘Good men
don’t need rules. Rules are for the young, the inexperienced, and the
untrustworthy.’ Good men lead Star Force, so they don’t need rules. They do
what is right, and you can’t determine what is right from a rule book. You have
to feel it out in each and every situation. If you follow rules sooner or later
you will come across a scenario that doesn’t fit. For rookies rules can be of
help, but once you get wiser and more experienced they become a hindrance. The
V’kit’no’sat live and breathe rules, which tells you they’re not truly good people.
Good people can’t stomach rules when they require you to do something that your
gut tells you is wrong.”

“Then I guess that rules me out. I did some bad stuff
without realizing it at the time.”

“What changed?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you didn’t realize it at the time, how do you know
it was wrong now?”

“Rammak opened my eyes.”

“Not all good people start out good. Some of us do.
All Archons are. We have to be. But there are some good people that weren’t
that way by default. They started out neutral and became good over time. Some
people, it seems, just need to be shown the path and they can take it from
there.”

“Can an evil person turn good?”

“I don’t think so. A neutral that has been drawn to do
bad things could be saved, theoretically, but good and evil are polar
opposites. They can’t coexist.”

“So Archons can’t be evil…ever?”

“No, we can’t. But we can suffer from illusions,
distractions, and other tricks to get us to do things we don’t realize we’re
doing. That rarely happens, but theoretically it could. If we are of clear
mind, then no, we can’t be evil.”

“That must be nice.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, but it’s not ‘nice’
as you suggest when you are surrounded with injustice. It pounds on your senses
and drives you mad. The apathetic don’t suffer.”

“What does that word mean?”

“Apathy? It means you don’t feel. You don’t care. You
are numb to it.”

“So good people hurt and apathetic people don’t?”

“Good people care what happens to others. That’s why
I’m an Archon. I can’t stand by and do nothing while bad things are happening
to others. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed I need a break, need to run away for
a while to rest, because I can never stop caring. I can block it out and focus
on something, I’ve learned to do that, but there’s a part of me that can’t not
care. I can’t be apathetic, and in a messed up universe the good guys hurt an
awful lot.”

“How do you become an Archon?”

“There are tests to determine who has potential. Then
those who pass are put through basic training. If they make it they become
Archons.”

“You have a test for good people?”

“Yes.”

“How does that work?”

“We have our ways. The truest test takes place when
you don’t know you’re being tested, and good people have the ability to smell
out others. You don’t reek of goodness like another Archon would, but I get a
whiff of it from you. You changed when you met Rammak, I’d guess?”

“Sometimes it’s hard to remember the way it was
before. It wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like forever. I can’t imagine
living like that again.”

“One way or another, you won’t have to. Right now it’s
a question of whether the V’kit’no’sat or Star Force get to us first. You’ll
either be dead or in our empire, where the light of good shines bright and
pulls the follower types our way. It’s hard to be evil and live in Star Force.
Apathy is there, in the masses, but few are evil…and those are identified
quickly.”

“What do you do with them?”

“Most people in Star Force are raised from birth in a
maturia, so we train everyone. If someone is born evil, rare as it is, we do
what we can to steer them another way, giving them a chance, but when they are
released into the populace after graduation…if they make it that far…security
watches them closely. When they do, or try to do, something wrong they’re
plucked out of society and put in a Star Force prison where they live in
isolation until their penalty time expires.”

“You don’t kill them? Even if they murdered someone?”

“If we take someone prisoner we never kill them. But
there are times when we track down someone and don’t take them prisoner. Those
times are rare and almost always have an Archon involved, or there’s some sort
of fight happening and the threat is dealt with in the moment. We don’t
mistreat prisoners, we put them away into their own private living space with
all the material and resources needed to improve themselves. We don’t expect
they will, but they’re given the chance while being kept away from everyone
else. But still, most people in Star Force are not good. They may be leaning
that way because they’re followers, but good people are still rare in the
galaxy. Star Force seems to collect a lot of them though.”

“Rammak was good, wasn’t he?”

“I didn’t know him well enough to be sure, but I would
guess that he was at least part way there. You’d be hard pressed to find a
Commando that wasn’t at least part good. Warriors can feel out other warriors,
and if their motivation isn’t right it’s easy to spot. And if you can’t trust a
fellow Commando then they don’t deserve to be a Commando.”

“What happens then?”

“An Archon will remove them however necessary, but our
training has gotten so good that we eliminate the unworthy before they make
Commando rank.”

“Do you think I could be a Commando?”

“Like Rammak? No. You are on a very rare path now,
youngling. You have a psionic, and Commandos do not have psionics.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“Archons have psionics, but we do not get them when we
become Archons. If we pass our basic training we earn our armor and the rank of
Adept. We then go through a leveling up process for about 100 years, more for
some, because we start out level 1 and go up through 99. The next level is
Acolyte 1, and when we make that transition we get the basic 7 psionics that
Zen’zat are also given initially. Except for us they’re not given, rather
unlocked, because our genetic code already has them in it, lying dormant. But
for you, Esna, one of yours has come unlocked on its own. You now have Fornax,
and that is something very, very rare for non-Archons.”

“When did that happen?” she asked, shocked.

“When you were injured Hati
felt you use it. Do you remember anything?”

“Nothing more than a big headache. Everything else is
a blur.”

“Your tissue isn’t quite right, hence the headache.
I’ve repaired you as much as I can, but I suggest you don’t try and use it
again until we get you to a medbay where they can finish the repairs.”

“Use it? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“It feels like a mental button in your mind. If you
look for it you’ll find it, and when you use it you’ll create an energy burst
that disrupts the nervous systems of living beings temporarily. It causes us to
twitch and fall, though you’re immune when you use it. I have another psionic
that limits its effect on me, but most Zen’zat will not have it. You now have a
weapon that can be used against them, even through
their armor, unless they want to blind their own psionics to protect themselves
against you.”

“I don’t feel anything,” she said, searching her mind
and feeling nothing but a headache.

“You will, in time, and when you learn to use it
you’ll have an ability that even the Commandos don’t have.”

“Can I become an Archon?”

“No,” Tyrenk said, slowly shaking his head in apology.
“I’ve been inside your mind many times. You don’t have what it takes, and
rarely does anyone develop what it takes later in their life. A few have, but
they were anomalies. The skillset we’re chosen for is more intuitive than
learned.”

“Then what can I do?”

“A Commando with Fornax would be a very powerful
addition to a fighting unit, but there are many options, all of which require a
lot of training and effort. You’ll have to earn your way, but the testing will
have to be different because of your new ability.”

“But I can fight the V’kit’no’sat…someday?”

“Possibly.”

“But not likely,” she said, looking down at the
ground. “My Calavari mother said hate was a bad thing, but right now that’s all
I can feel. I want to fight back, but I’m too pathetic now. I can’t let it go,
especially looking at them now.”

“You were told not to hate?”

“That’s what she said, Innit, my adoptive mother on Forso. I don’t even know if she’s still alive or not. We
had to run and not look back once it was discovered I was a Human. Anyway, she
said hate was something that tore you up inside, and it was something that you
had to let go of to be healthy.”

“Well she was wrong,” Tyrenk said firmly.

“She was?” Esna blurted.

“Good people hate. We hate evil, we hate injustice, we hate bad things happening. If we can look at something
bad and not feel hate, then we are apathetic. We are supposed to hate. It’s an
emotion that’s in you for a reason. The trick is in not letting it get warped
into something unintended. Just burying the emotion doesn’t work in the long
run. You end up making yourself apathetic, essentially blinding your gut instinct.”

“Like the V’kit’no’sat…” she said, not wanting to be
like them in any way, shape, or form.

“They are more than just apathetic, but you’re not
wrong.”

“So you’re feeling hate right now?”

“No, not this moment. I feel it when I see something
happening, and when I remember, but the memories don’t produce much. I feel
hate when it’s fresh.”

Esna pointed at the bodies. “What do you feel when you
look at them?”

“Loss. Pity. Pride. Determination. And yes, a little
lingering hate, but nothing like what I feel in the moment. Hate spurs you to
take action, either to stop what is happening or to stop those doing it. Good
people hate, Esna. If you don’t, then you’re either not good or isolated from
the evil of the universe.”

“Thanks. That makes me feel better…and makes a lot of
sense, actually.”

“You didn’t grow up in a maturia. There’s a lot you
didn’t learn.”

“I know,” she said, looking at the bodies on top of
the logs again. “How are we going to light it? Shoot it?”

Tyrenk shook his head. “No, that would blow apart the
logs. I can light it.”

“With what?”

The Archon held up his hands and walked next to the
stacked wood.

“As I said, there are seven basic psionics. Ikrid is
the mind power. Pefbar is the ability to see without your eyes. Lachka is our
telekinesis. Sesspik is a healing trance. Fornax is what you have now even if
you can’t feel it. Ensek is a telepathic repeater. And last is Rensiek, the
ability to produce and move heat within our bodies, as well as shield against
it. I can use it to start the fire.”

“You can make fire with your hands?”

“If I have something to burn, yes. Otherwise it’s just
heat. It also means I can run around in the snow naked and not get cold.”

“Do you have one to cool you in this heat?” she asked,
having mostly gotten used to the sweltering planetary climate.

“No, but I can move heat around and expel it from my
body…if I have somewhere to put it. Doesn’t work as well to keep me cool as it
does to produce heat, but I can use it for that in a pinch if necessary.”

Tyrenk knelt down and concentrated, then he touched
his hands to some small branches that held a ball of even smaller pieces of
wood that looked like they had been put there on purpose. With a crackle and
puff of smoke the whole ball erupted into flames on his touch but the Archon
didn’t pull his hands back. He kept them and his forearms in the fire as it
grew larger and larger, then he finally stepped out of it and walked back next
to Esna as it began to spread up and down the length of the pyre remarkably
fast.

“I really wish I could be an Archon,” she said as she
watched the flames approach Rammak’s body.

“A lot of people think that, but they don’t have the
fortitude to handle the infinite training, among other things. You must walk
your own path, and if it’s combat you want, it will be there for you if you
earn it.”

“And if not?”

“Then you stay safely behind the battle lines until
you do, or until the V’kit’no’sat overrun us.”

“Is that going to happen eventually?”

“No one knows. They should have done so long before
now, but we’ve been holding them off. I don’t know what’s going to happen in
this war. I just take care of my little piece of it as best I can,” Tyrenk
said, looking at the row of bodies as the flames began to rise up to them
around the edges of the wood. “And I didn’t do too well here.”

Esna reached out and grabbed his hand, reflexively
flinching when her mind realized that it might still be burning hot, but it
wasn’t. His skin was actually cool to the touch, so she squeezed it and held on
tight, not taking her eyes off the pyre.

“I don’t think they’d blame you. And you saved me and Hati. Thank you for that.”

“You never get used to losing people,” he said,
squeezing her hand back. “But when it happens over and over again, you learn to
process your emotions more quickly. They are gone now, we are still alive, so my focus is on the living. I’m only doing this because we
have the time. One last gesture of respect. But I still failed to save them,
and I do not like that.”

“What could you have done differently?”

“Get stronger. An Archon of higher rank in my position
would have saved them.”

“But they weren’t here, you were. So why blame
yourself?”

“It’s not blame, Esna, just a simple fact. I meant to
protect them and the V’kit’no’sat killed all but you and Hati.
Each of you was a mission objective, and all are failures save for 2.”

“It wasn’t a fair fight.”

“It usually isn’t. Archons have to find a way.”

“You kept us all from dying in space.”

“A small victory there, but I didn’t buy them much
time. Still, we take what we get and what we have now is our lives, three of
them. They meant to kill us all and we’re not all dead. So long as one of us
survives that's a victory, but I’m not ok with failing missions…even the
impossible ones.”

Esna didn’t say anything further, and the two stood
there holding hands until the flames got too high and they had to step back to
avoid the heat, with the lost little Human girl saying one final silent goodbye
to her protector before she did what Rammak would have wanted her to do.

Keep moving and survive.

At least he died with Star Force, in battle. She
thought that’s the way he would have wanted it if he had a choice of deaths,
but Esna knew it should have been her dead body up there and Rammak standing
here alive. That would have been justice after the hundreds of years he’d
survived on his own. Her being here in his place was injustice…and she hated
it.

8

September 27, 4812

Chawik System
(Devastation Zone)

Darlek

Over the following days Esna, Tyrenk, and Hati had little to do but wait and manage their supplies.
All three of them did a little training, with Esna working up to a couple of
minutes of jogging in the high gravity, but that was only to maintain their
bodies. The Archon did a lot more, but far less than usual so not to burn through
so many foodstuffs and limit their time here. They did find some V’kit’no’sat
foodstuffs, but still they had a limited supply and no way of knowing when
someone would find them.

After a while Tyrenk started eating local plants,
which was when Esna learned that one of his many psionics gave him the ability
to digest cellulose…which was something in plants that Humans normally couldn’t
digest. Tyrenk was going around pulling leaves off the trees and munching on
them constantly so he could save more of the foodstuffs for her and Hati, though he still ate some of them along with his
Ambrosia, the latter of which he was still giving Esna tiny bits of to help her
fight the high gravity.

Day after day went by with Hati
making repairs and reworking the interior of the V’kit’no’sat ship debris into
carefully sorted piles of junk he’d been collecting while the three of them
lived out of a tent nearby. Esna wondered why they didn’t go back to their own
crash site and wait there, but all things considered it didn’t really matter.
They weren’t too far apart from the view overhead and the V’kit’no’sat debris
was more intact, giving her some rooms and hallways to explore and clean up
while they waited…and waited.

It was almost a month before a ship arrived in orbit,
and fortunately it wasn’t one of the enemy’s. It was a Star Force ship sending
out a signal looking for the survivors the buoy they’d left behind in space had
signaled there were. Not long after that dropships were coming down and landing
in the burnt out clearing that had already begun to sprout new plants as the
jungle worked ferociously to consume the open dirt/ash landscape.

Esna saw a couple of dropships land in the distance
where their ship had gone down, with another three coming to their location.
She walked out to meet them along with Tyrenk, seeing another Archon come down
the ramp wearing the pink armor of a ViLord. That was one level higher than
Tyrenk’s Titan status, though he’d admitted to her that he’d gotten a few
psionics ahead of time. They were split up into 4 tiers and Archons weren’t
scheduled to get all the tier 3s until they became a ViLord, but Archons could
share their psionics and if a higher ranking one wanted to give them one early.

So Tyrenk was still outclassed by the ViLord that stepped
out of the dropship to meet them, but not as much as a Titan normally would
be…though she could still kick his ass with ease if she wanted.

“Aren’t you a little short for a Zen’zat?” she asked,
helmet off as she looked at the enemy armor gauntlets that he still wore.

“I used up my armor, so I improvised.”

“And you?” she asked Esna.

“He broke mine too,” she said with a tired grin.

“Where is the Kiritas?”

“Still working on the debris.”

“We can’t stay here long,” the ViLord warned. “I’ve
got 8 damaged warships to get to a repair yard and I don’t like sitting still
and waiting to be detected. We have to keep moving.”

“This is worth it. These Kat’vo spent their last
seconds smashing equipment rather than defending themselves against me. There
is something in their ship important enough that they didn’t want us to have
it.”

“Please tell me whatever it is can be moved in a few
hours?”

“Our tech has already been sorting out pieces, but
there are larger components still in the hull. We have to cut those out and I’m
not sure how long it will take, but we need to get whatever it is.”

“And he has no idea what it is?”

“There’s some form of emitter in it, beyond that he
doesn’t have a clue.”

The ViLord blew out a puff of frustrated air.
“Alright, we’ll risk it. I only have skeleton crews. Most of the personnel were
transferred onto operational ships.”

“How bad is the damage?”

“They’re roughed up, but the V’kit’no’sat didn’t get
any big hits in. Lost enough gravity drives to make them limp though.”

Tyrenk nodded, knowing that if the huge control ships
didn’t have full engine power they wouldn’t be able to evade as needed. “We
winning?”

“A lot of damage to both sides, so it’s hard to tell,
but we got the surface evacuated. The trailblazers are staying just so they can
pound the Viks.”

“That means we’re winning. How many made it out?”

“A little over half.”

Tyrenk cringed, and only then did Esna realize they
were talking about Tauntaun, the ice planet that they’d escaped from in the
evacuation ship.

“They’re still fighting?” she asked, aghast.

“Yes,” the ViLord confirmed, looking closely at Esna.

“She’s not Star Force,” Tyrenk added. “She’s one of
two recovered from the Devastation Zone. The other was a Calavari that died
here. She hasn’t been trained.”

“Recovered?”

“Wayward Humans operating beyond our or the
V’kit’no’sat’s reach.”

The ViLord raised an eyebrow. “Now that’s
interesting,” she said as a group of techs moved down the ramp behind her,
stumbling as they hit the high gravity before heading off towards the ship
debris.

“She needs transfer out of the Devastation Zone and
was waiting for a ship on Tauntaun. The V’kit’no’sat hit us before she could
get a ride.”

“We’re not going all the way back. Too risky to travel
that far. We’ve got a rendezvous a few systems away. We can take you that far.”

“Ghostblade?”

“Yeah.”

“That’ll do. Esna, wait inside the dropship until
we’re ready to leave. It’s normal gravity in there.”

“Thank you,” she said as he pointed her up, with the
exhausted Human walking past the ViLord’s
pink armor and stepping onto the smooth construction of the Star Force ramp for
the second time in her life. The first had been on Forso
after almost being killed by the V’kit’no’sat, leading her into a world she
knew nothing about. This time, after nearly being killed by the V’kit’no’sat,
she knew what lay ahead of her and felt even more relieved at the sight of the
pristine white dropship with wide, thick wings that curved down into a plumb,
rounded hull that she climbed into.

The gravity change didn’t hit her until she passed the
top of the ramp, then the huge weight that she’d been carrying vanished in a
heartbeat. It was so sudden that her body didn’t realize what was coming and
she dropped to the floor coughing as her head rushed with pain and she started
shaking. A moment later Tyrenk was beside her with a firm grip on her shoulder.

“Sorry about that. Should have warned you. The
transition can be rocky. Plus you just ripped out some of the repair work I’d
done on your head. Guess I make a lousy medic,” he said, numbing out her pain
as she began to breathe easily again…more so than she’d been able to since
setting foot on this stupid planet.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Spontaneous Fornax development.”

“Wow. Don’t see many of those. Tissue malformed?”

“Yeah, but it was functional enough to save her life.
I’ve done some Haemra repairs, but they’re not enough.”

“Change of plans then,” she said, telepathically
contacting the pilot. “We’ll get her to a med bay now.”

“Sleep, Esna,” Tyrenk said as her head started to get
blurry. “I’ll see you later.”

The copilot came back into the empty bay and knelt
beside the now unconscious Human the Archon had gently knocked out with nothing
more than the touch of his hand.

“I’ll look after her. Anything she needs on the way
up?”

“No, she’s stable enough. Just get her to the medics.”

“Will do,” the copilot said, lifting her up into his
arms and carrying her into the forward compartment where there were padded
benches as the two Archons walked down the ramp and back into the high gravity
that both of them barely felt.

“Archon potential?” Susan-1193663 asked.

“No, not even close.”

“Well that complicates things, especially if she isn’t
even maturia trained. How’d it happen?”

“I’m guessing the gravity. She had to fight hard to
just survive it in the beginning. She’s come a long way in a few weeks.”

“We’ve tried gravity before,” Susan pointed out.
“There has to be more to it than that.”

“Her best friend was also killed here, after saving
her from an Era’tran and some Zen’zat on Mace. Then she got another jolt on
Tauntaun. This one’s been put through a lot in a few months, all of which
started with the loss of her brother, the only other Human she’d encountered
since she was yay tall,” Tyrenk said, holding his hand at hip level.

“Where did she come from?”

“Merchants I’d guess. Her father was visiting the
planet when he was killed, stranding the two of them there. We haven’t been
able to determine where they came from before that.”

“Humans surviving out here beyond Star Force? How the
hell can they manage that with the Viks monitoring everything?”

“She wore armor her entire life. The people on Mace
didn’t even know she was a Human. Hell, Esna didn’t even know the word Human.
The ADZ is so far gone now it’s hard to fathom.”

“There is no ADZ anymore,” Susan corrected him.

“There are people out here that the V’kit’no’sat
ignore. The Devastation Zone is not empty.”

“They’re not ours, which is why they don’t care. I’d
just like to know how a Human could have hid in them, armor or not. Let alone
lots of Humans.”

“We don’t know how many are out there.”

“And it’s not our job to find them. We have to protect
the trillions we already know about. Any idea how they found Tauntaun?”

“No. They just showed up knowing where we were. Unless
someone got sloppy and they observed a ship coming or going, I don’t know how
they found the exact base location. We had it buttoned up tight. Have any other
outposts been hit?”

“Not yet. Everyone is throwing down at the same place
right now with reinforcements continuing to come in for the Viks. I’m not sure
what they’re doing, other than picking a fight to wear us down, but the
trailblazers aren’t calling for a retreat…at least not when we left. How bad
did it get here? You look alright, but a little rough.”

“I’ve had plenty of time to rest. They came after us
hard on the ground and wouldn’t let up for days. I did what I could but it
wasn’t enough. I had to borrow Esna’s Commando armor at the end before I
appropriated this,” he said, gesturing to his gauntlets. “They had a badass Zen’zat
with them that made it difficult, and I think he was there to guard whatever
was on the ship.”

“A badass on a scout ship? Did they intend to board
you?”

“No. They were pounding away with intent to kill,
making his presence unnecessary. There’s gotta be
something vital there and we need to find it…or what’s left of it. The Kaeper
was shadowing Morgan’s fleet, then broke off to kill us. It’s a stealth
version, but there’s something new about it. My tech has identified components
he hasn’t seen before, wildly different stuff, but the V’kit’no’sat did a good
job trashing it. Its puzzle pieces now.”

“Why come after you if they’re carrying something
important?”

“We were alone and too fast for anyone else to catch.
Probably thought we’d make an easy kill.”

“That ramming move was well played, but the feed cut
out right after. Did their entire ship go down immediately?”

“Yeah, thankfully.”

“And they came after you right away or did they play
defense?”

“They were on us immediately from the air, and the
Zen’zat on the ground didn’t take long to catch up. They wanted us dead in a
bad way.”

“Overcompensating to keep you away from their ship?”

Tyrenk considered that. “Maybe. I hadn’t thought about
that. They kept us on the run for a long time before we bled them out, then
they still had troops at the ship that I came back for. They didn’t start
trashing stuff until they knew they were going to lose, otherwise they would
have had plenty of time to finish before I arrived.”

“So they wanted whatever it was retrieved?”

“That’s a fair guess.”

“The ship was never going to fly again, so whatever it
is they wanted it removed. That suggests it’s something hard to make, otherwise
they just would have smashed it to deny it to us.”

“Don’t suppose you have any good techs onboard?”

“Techs, yes, high level ones, no. But Ghostblade
should. We can turn the pieces over to them then get back to the fight…if
you’re up to it?”

“I have to take care of Esna first. A Commando went to
a lot of trouble to make sure she survived, and I’m going to finish what he
started before I get back to work.”

“You need to the break too?”

“No, I need to smash some more skulls, but Esna is a
victory for us that I don’t want the V’kit’no’sat to snatch away. I’m going to
escort her all the way back.”

“As you wish. You did well to keep the two of them
alive, yourself included.”

“They all would be alive if not for this stupid ship.
Running into it was blind luck.”

“It’s a gut punch, but it happens. Hopefully it won’t
repeat for us.”

“You have any drones with you?”

“A handful. The rest are still in the fight, but our
shipboard weaponry isn’t too badly damaged. We can swat scout ships all day.
It’s the bigger stuff I’m worried about.”

“Do the V’kit’no’sat still have the Tauntaun base?”

“No, it’s ours again…what was left of it. We retook it
long enough to look for survivors, then bailed. It was a fully naval fight when
I left.”

“Paul doing his thing?”

“Oh yea, but they’ve got so many ships he’s got his
hands full. If we need to cut and run we can, there’s nothing holding us to
that system anymore, but he intended to fight it out when he sent me back and
was calling for more reinforcements. We’re hammering them as hard as we can.”

“About damn time,” Tyrenk said as they walked away
from the dropship as it finally lifted off and headed back to orbit.

“I just don’t know why they’re sticking around to
fight without a base to hold, unless they’re so desperate to engage us they’re willing
to run into a Paul buzz saw.”

“I have a feeling this ship is going to tell us
something important,” Tyrenk said, feeling a similar unease about the
situation. Normally you didn’t throw down in a massive naval fight if you
didn’t have to, suggesting there was something else in play. “So try not to
step on any pieces please.”

Susan raised an eyebrow his direction, but Tyrenk
didn’t follow up his sarcastic comment with anything else so she let it pass
and followed him inside where their techs were busy cataloging and collecting
ever bit of rubble that didn’t belong on a standard Kaeper-class scout ship.

9

When Esna woke up Tyrenk’s darkly tanned face was the
first thing she saw, then she noticed the ceiling behind him and the fact that
they weren’t in the dropship.

“How are you feeling?” the Archon asked as she slowly
sat up, seeing herself in a room with several people wearing the aqua-colored
medtechs uniforms.

“Weird…but ok.”

“Take it slow, you…” Tyrenk said, stammering on the
last word as everyone else in the room suddenly tripped and fell while a wash
of fatigue rushed over Esna. If she hadn’t been sitting she would have probably
fallen too.

“Easy, easy,” he repeated quickly. “Don’t do anything.
Just be still.”

“What just hit us?” she asked, perplexed while her
head ached a little, but the pounding headache she’d had on the planet was now
gone.

“You did, youngling,” he said, lightly grabbing her
wrist as she felt him enter her mind. “Now focus where I point you.”

In the following minutes no more words were said, not
aloud anyway or in any form Esna could explain, but as the medtechs got back to
their feet Tyrenk showed her around her own mind and where the button was she
had just accidentally pressed…and how not to do it again. When he released his
grip on her flesh the link to her mind ceased and she looked over at the medtechs.

“I did that?”

“Yes you did.”

“I am so sorry. I didn’t…”

“Occupational hazard,” one of the medtechs said,
glancing at Tyrenk. “Are you sure she can handle it? We can disable the tissue
without removing it if needed.”

“She will learn,” he promised. “Are any of you injured?”

“Just a bruise,” another one said. “Easy enough to
fix.”

“I’m sorry,” Esna repeated. “I didn’t do that on
purpose.”

“That’s why we deactivated the Human population in the
first place.”

“What?”

“Rather than remove our genetic coding for the
psionics,” the medtech explained, “we made them all permanently dormant so
people wouldn’t accidentally develop them on their own. When that happens they
usually grow malformed tissue and could die a very long and painful death if
not treated. Now only Archons and a few others get them unlocked. How you
circumvented our locks is perplexing.”

“How old are the locks?” Tyrenk asked.

“More than a thousand years. Most predate the fall of
Earth.”

“Then it’s not due to her rogue bloodline?”

“Not that I can tell.”

Tyrenk nodded. “Good.”

“Good?”

“It means she had to earn it the hard way. That she
had to be stripped down to her essence in order to reset her biology.”

Another medtech raised an eyebrow. “I’m not aware of
any biological process for that.”

“The body reflects the core,” Tyrenk reminded them,
“and we can’t chart it. The trailblazers and second gen Archons had to root out
the first psionics, then find the activation triggers for the rest without
medical assistance. Training and experience change a person, including ones genetic
code occasionally. Unlocking one is less of a jump.”

“Not our area of expertise so we’ll take your word for
it.”

“You’ve never studied pseudo evolution?”

“Briefly. That’s high level biology we don’t have much
use for in the field. How are you aware of it, if I might ask?”

Tyrenk looked at him with a dumb look. “You don’t
think an Archon would be interested in a line of research that suggests you can
upgrade your genetics via core interaction?”

“No I wouldn’t. Everything you guys do is training
oriented.”

“One high level branch of Archon training is core
manipulation. Or to be more accurate, core isolation through mediation. It’s a
form of training.”

“Then I’ll defer to you. You think she overrode the
lockouts in this manner?”

“Has her genetic code altered?”

“No it hasn’t. The locks are still there, including
for Fornax. Somehow her tissue developed anyway.”

“Then I’d suggest you take as many scans as you can
for later research. This has happened in a few other cases, and so far no one
has been able to figure it out. Original Humans didn’t have locks in place,
just generations of stagnation that accomplished the same thing.”

“You guys don’t reproduce, do you?”

“No. Not even vicariously.”

“Then generational wash is out…” the medtech said,
glancing at Esna. “Unless.”

“Her lineage? The few Archon quitters have their
genetics reset and their offspring monitored closely. I doubt she could be of
that line.”

“What about the Arc Knights?”

“Anyone with psionics are held to the same
standards…which means we need to deactivate her reproductive systems.”

“What?” Esna asked, still trying to work around what
was in her head now without touching the activation button and knocking
everyone to the ground again.

“Her locks are in place, so I don’t think it would
matter,” the medic said, talking past her. “She’s quite the anomaly.”

“What about my reproductive systems?” she repeated.

“If a person has their psionics unlocked,” Tyrenk
finally answered, “they have to have their reproductive systems deactivated.
Archons don’t because we don’t have sex anyway, but some of us, mostly the
girls, have it shut down so it’s impossible for them to get pregnant. If I had
children they’d probably be born with my psionics, and that would be a huge
problem. The V’kit’no’sat didn’t design them for infants. All the Zen’zat were
adults when they were given them.”

“Didn’t they have children on Earth that led to us?
How did they deal with it?”

“No one knows. There are no records from that time.
Psionics, Zen’zat, even the V’kit’no’sat were gone from planetary memory until
the pyramid on Earth was rediscovered.”

“So if I got pregnant my younglings would have my
Fornax?”

“Possibly.”

“No,” the medtech said firmly. “It’s still locked down
as far as your genetic code is concerned. You have the tissue, even though you
shouldn’t. It’s almost like we put it into you artificially. Your offspring
shouldn’t possess it.”

“We can’t take the risk. All non-Archons have to be
deactivated. That’s part of the deal for letting them keep it,” he said,
looking at Esna. “And you definitely want to keep it. Trust me.”

“What do you have to do to make me unable to have
younglings?”

“Genetic deactivation,” the medtech said offhand.
“You’ll also stop your monthly bleeding.”

“Really? That’d be nice. Do you have to cut anything out?”

“No, no. We just turn it off. Same thing we do with
the guys.”

“So I can’t have sex either?”

“You can, and it’ll feel the same. We don’t turn off
the sexuality programming, just the reproductive component.”

“Not that I was going to,” she said, looking at
Tyrenk. “I need to train and get stronger. I can’t have people dying because
I’m too weak again,” she said, her voice tightening up at the end.

“If you learn to use this, you’ll be more combat
capable than most Commandos.”

Esna turned to the medtech. “Do it.”

“Step over here,” he said, pointing to a standing
chamber.

Esna slid off the table, landing so lightly it
reminded her that she was no longer in the high gravity that her mind had
gotten used to, and her walking steps were appropriately awkward as her mind
recalibrated muscle movements to this gravity. Esna walked inside the chamber
and grabbed one of the cage-like beams to steady her balance as her body tried
to remember its natural movement.

“Hands on the sphere please,” the medtech said, taking
his position at the control console outside. “This will only take a moment.”

Esna put both hands onto it, then felt them get glued
in place as her body went numb in a few places. She fought the paranoia that
the lack of control pulsed through her, but before she had completely locked it
down her body unnumbed and her hands were set loose.

“Done.”

“That’s it? I don’t feel any different.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“So I can’t reproduce now?”

“Nope. Try all you like, but you can’t get pregnant.”

“And you have to stay that way,” Tyrenk said, “as long
as you have Fornax. If you ever change your mind it has to be removed before
your reproductive systems can be reactivated.”

“So they’re not gone, just turned off?”

“Yes.”

“What if they accidentally get turned on the same way
my For…thingy did?”

The medtech and Archon exchanged glances.

“Never happened to my knowledge.”

“It’s called Fornax,” Tyrenk repeated.

“For…nax,” Esna said, trying
to mentally log the simple word that didn’t want to stick.

“Be careful where you experiment with it,” the medtech
warned. “Archons have an immunity to it. The rest of us don’t.”

“Partial immunity,” Tyrenk corrected him. “It still
has some effect on me. I’ll train you how to use it, but right now your energy
is mostly depleted. You couldn’t release that big of a discharge again if you
wanted to. Your reservoir has to recharge.”

“So I don’t have to…” Esna asked, mentally relaxing as
the button in her mind suddenly pressed and everyone in the room stumbled…but
only one of the medtechs fell this time.

“Sorry,” Esna said, mentally kicking herself as she
clamped down again.

“Now you’re empty,” Tyrenk said. “Go ahead and try
again. Seriously.”

“No. I’ve caused enough trouble.”

“No really, try. I dare you.”

“Dare?”

“Just do it, pipsqueak.”

Esna cringed, then not only mentally relaxed but
sought out the ‘button’ in her mind and pressed it as her face scrunched up in
worry…but other than a slight twitch in the closest medic, nothing happened.

“See? Now relax. It’ll take a while before you can
knock someone down again,” he said, waving her away from the medical chamber.
“I assume we’re all done here, or do you need some specialized scans?”

“I’ll review what we’ve got and get back to you if
anything else is required.”

“Let’s go then,” he said, grabbing Esna by the
shoulder and steering her towards the other side of the room where the exit
was. He didn’t say anything else until they were out in the hallway and well
away from the med bay, then his voice entered her mind.

You’ve
progressed farther than them now, Esna, and you have to start thinking of
things differently. You now have the power to hurt people, a lot, and it’s your
responsibility to make sure you don’t, and that you use your power for
constructive purposes. We’ll find you some willing targets to practice on
later, but right now I need you to understand that you’re no longer Human. You are, but you aren’t, and you need to start
wrapping your mind around that fact. You’re not an Archon, you’re somewhere in
between and that is something very rare in Star Force. Those few that possess
it earn it through training, but you acquired it through another means. There’s
not much of a playbook on how to proceed, so you’re going to have to learn as
you go and create your own little niche in the empire.

Why aren’t you
talking out loud? she thought back to him, but he
didn’t respond and they kept walking until she remembered the mental block.
Esna took his hand in hers then thought the same thing again.

I don’t want
others overhearing. Fornax is something they can’t defend against well. Some
Commandos have trained themselves to become somewhat resistant, but they can’t
block it. If people knew how powerful we really were, and what we could do if
we wanted to, they’d be scared out of their minds. They’re not because they
trust us and because they don’t know the full extent of our power. You are not
an Archon, so that trust isn’t there for you. Learn to control this quickly and
keep it a secret, otherwise you’ll find your presence is going to be disruptive
wherever you go.

Tell me what I
need to do and I’ll do it.

First we need to
get you some isolated quarters so you won’t be messing with people when you
sleep and accidentally discharge. I could get an inhibitor made for you, but
we’re not doing that. You’re going to learn to master this without
technological help. If you can’t, then you don’t deserve it.

“Come on,” Tyrenk said out loud. “With all the
alterations they made to you, I bet they had to chew into your reserves. Let’s
get something to eat.”

“Yeah,” she said, finally noticing how empty her
stomach was, “but does it have to be in a cafeteria. I don’t want to knock more
people down.”

“Suck it up, cupcake. We’re facing this head on.”

Esna groaned, but didn’t disagree further.

“However, if you feel your control slipping, grab hold
of my skin. Not my clothing, but my skin. I can control you that way and keep
you from discharging if needed.”

“Good,” Esna said, relieved, as she continued to walk
hand in hand with him until he pried her grip loose.

“But for now, you’re on your own,” he said as they
came up to a large door blocking the corridor ahead of them. “This way,” he
said, pointing them to the right. “We’ll have to take a detour. There’s battle
damage on the other side.”

“Where are we anyway?”

“A Warship-class
jumpship.”

“A warship? Really?”

“Headed away from battle for repairs.”

“How badly damaged is it,” she said, glancing back at
the huge blast door.

“She took a few gut punches, but is mostly
operational. A bit slow though. Several gravity drives were destroyed. We’re
headed towards a mobile shipyard to make some quick repairs, then these ships
will either head back to the fight or stick around for a full rebuild.”

“We’re leaving the Devastation Zone then? How long
will that take?”

“No, we’re going to a rendezvous point a few systems
away.”

“Another secret base?”

“Not exactly a base, but it is a secret. Something
that doesn’t even exist in any Star Force database in case the V’kit’no’sat
ever broke in.”

“And you can’t tell me?”

“If I can trust you with Fornax then I can trust you
with this, but it’s a secret you have to keep and not discuss with any
non-Archon.”

“I won’t. Where are we going?”

“Ghostblade,” Tyrenk said ominously. “The Clan that
doesn’t exist.”

10

October 9, 4812

Harver System
(Devastation Zone)

Asteroid Belt

The eight Warship-class
jumpships entered the empty system one at a time as they came out of their
deceleration jumps then transitioned around the two stars at system center to
get on a jumpline for a large asteroid belt in the outer zone. It wasn’t until
they got there that they began to pick up the faint signals from the Star Force
ships moving about mining the ore and feeding it back into larger processor
ships…all of which were sensor stealthed to reduce their range of detection.

But those ships, all of which were smaller than the
warship Esna now rode on, paled in comparison to the two super-ships that sat
behind dense clusters of asteroids. One was a thick brick of a design while the
other was a spindly mess of pieces that Esna couldn’t make out. It didn’t even
look like much of a ship until they got closer and saw that the central pieces
weren’t spindly, but rather miles thick.

“It’s a mobile shipyard,” Tyrenk told her as they
watched from an observation gallery that was on ‘top’ of the ship, though in
reality it was deep inside the hull and only made to look like they were
standing on top of the warship via holograms. Esna could see the armored plates
beneath her feet, the stars overhead and all around her when visible through
scattered asteroids, and even the pair of glowing orbs behind them that were
the distant suns, but it was the shipyard in front of them that was growing
larger and larger as they approached. “We can make repairs here.”

“A full rebuild?”

“Depends how they’re set up, but Ghostblade doesn’t
like to sit in one spot for too long and that shipyard can’t haul us along with
it. Those arms retract when not in use, and right now it’s very vulnerable to
attack. Our ships are most likely going to get patched up then move on, so they
can as well.”

“Were are they going?”

“Nowhere in particular. They roam the stars,
harvesting resources as they go. They have no planets, no territory to defend,
no younglings to raise. They’re a fully mobilized Clan that doesn’t have anything
to defend, and they’ve been ambushing V’kit’no’sat ships since the war began.”

“They win?”

“When we get to pick the battlefield we usually win.
It’s when the V’kit’no’sat choose to hit us that we are in trouble…and when we
have a planet to defend, they get to choose when to attack. Ghostblade doesn’t
have that weakness.”

“So why aren’t all the Clans the same way?”

“Because there are disadvantages too. Ghostblade
doesn’t have the industrial might the other Clans do. Instead they’re supported
by the other Clans to some point, but nothing that can be traced. All
Ghostblade members are technically assigned to other Clans, so in records the
Clan doesn’t exist. As for their ships, they build them all out here on their
own. Even I don’t know how many they have.”

“Do they have a leader?” Esna asked, referring to the
fact that the original 100 Clans were founded by a trailblazer each, though
there were some spawned demi-Clans that had come off of Clan Ninja Monkey, but
they all took orders from trailblazer Morgan-063.

“They do, but she’s not a trailblazer…exactly. She’s a
second gen Archon known as the ‘Queen of Diamonds.’”

“Queen?”

“It’s a nickname. Her real name is Kara-317.”

“What’s special about her…other than being an Archon,
I mean.”

“Oh there’s something, but that’s something you don’t
need to know yet. I doubt she’s here. Ghostblade has a large fleet spread out
all over the place in little pieces so that if one group gets caught it won’t
destroy the Clan.”

“Wow,” Esna said as they got closer and she realized
just how far away they still were. “How big is this thing?”

“When stretched out like this, several hundred miles
wide. We’ll slide into one of the gaps near a main strand, then smaller ones
will wrap around to provide access points for the repair crew.”

“How long will we be here?”

“I don’t know. Days at least, maybe weeks. When we
dock I’m going onboard and you’re coming with me.”

“Ok. Is there something I need to do?”

“You’re sticking with me until I can get you out of
the Devastation Zone. Where I go, you go.”

“And where are you going?”

“To see if we can hitch a ride with Ghostblade…”

Esna traveled over to the shipyard via a very short
dropship flight, landing on a deck that was mostly empty but as she and Tyrenk
walked across the bay a few personnel began to be seen. They were wearing
standard Star Force uniforms, but they were mostly white with purple trim in a
pattern she’d never seen before. Two were Kiritas, another one Human, then when
they got further into the shipyard they found a lot of Bsidd and a scattering
of other races.

Following Tyrenk closely so not to get lost, Esna wove
her way through unfamiliar corridors until they came to a lift car that took
them rapidly through the miles of interior decks until they arrived at the
control center. When Esna walked in she immediately felt out of place, with
people all around at workstations and holograms that obviously outclassed her,
but Tyrenk didn’t even hesitate, striding out amongst them and Esna stayed in
step just behind him, feeling like she was going to get in trouble if she was
found her by herself.

Why that was she couldn’t explain, it was just a
feeling that unnerved her enough that she hopped a step forward and grabbed
Tyrenk’s hand as she felt her mental fortitude slipping. His mind immediately
reinforced hers, keeping her Fornax button safely unpressed.
Right now, with all these people around working furiously, would be a horrible
time to have a slip and she really didn’t understand why Tyrenk had brought her
to such a congested place.

“Got yourself a girlfriend?” a Protovic asked when she
turned around in a swivel chair to look at the Archon.

“Jealous much?”

“Always,” she said, looking at Esna and sizing her up.
“Who’s the newb?”

“My ward, at the moment, and she’s having trouble
containing her new psionic so I’m helping her stabilize.”

“Psionic?”

“She developed it spontaneously.”

“An anomaly?” she asked, standing up and walking
closer. The Protovic was just a hair taller than Esna, but her face and hands
were glowing so brightly that it made her persona seem bigger than even the
Archon.

“Yes.”

“Now that’s rare as hell. Which one did you get?”

Esna realized she was asking her. “Fornax.”

“Oh. Well then, by all means, keep holding hands.
Don’t want that going off around me.”

“No?” Tyrenk said, just before the Protovic stumbled
and half fell to the ground before catching her balance.

“You Human bastard,” she snarled, but she stood up
smiling. “I hate it when you do that.”

“That’s why I do it,” he said offhand. “I need a
favor.”

“What kind?”

“A ride out of here. I need to get her back behind the
front.”

“What’s she doing out here in the first place?”

“She was recovered from a destroyed world. She didn’t
originate within Star Force.”

“Recovered?” the Protovic asked, blinking eyelids that
glowed as much as her eyes, though in a different color. “You are a rare one,
aren’t you? What’s your name?”

“Esna.”

“I’m Reana, a very old
friend of your new buddy there, though I could never get him to hold my hand,”
she said, giving him an annoyed glance. “Where did you come from?”

“Forso…I mean, Mace. I was
abandoned there with my brother after my father died. I don’t remember where we
came from before that.”

“Interesting. Surprising, actually. We’ve been looking
for anyone the Viks had missed. How’d he find you?”

“He didn’t. We were both in a Star Force base when it
got attacked, and he kept us alive until we got away.”

“Typical Archon,” Reana said
with a note of respect.

“I noticed a couple hulks,” Tyrenk said, changing the
subject.

“Yeah, we made a couple kills. Recycling them now,
though they have made a few modifications we’re cataloging.”

“I’ve got something else for you to work on. Something
the V’kit’no’sat didn’t want us to get our hands on. They smashed it up enough
that my techs can’t make much out of it, but I brought the pieces.”

“How big?”

“Shipboard component with an outer hull placement.
We’ve ruled out weaponry, but beyond that we can’t make any headway.”

“You had a specialist work on it?”

“No. Just some general techs.”

“Happy to take it off your hands then. Where’d you get
it?”

“Off a Kaeper that took down our evac
ship. They even had a badass Zen’zat onboard, so I’m guessing whatever it was
needed guarding.”

“What blew it up?”

“The crew went at it by hand while I was killing them.
They didn’t even defend themselves.”

“They chose to smash it rather than fight you?”

“Yeah, so it’s gotta be
something important.”

The Protovic nodded. “We’ll figure it out or get it to
someone who can. Any chance they’re chasing you to recover it?”

“We sat for a month stranded until this group passed
through, so I’d guess no. It was a shadowing ship, so I wouldn’t expect it to
be registered as missing for a while.”

“Good, but we still need to make it disappear if it’s
that important. Are you comfortable handing it over or do you want to go with
it?”

“Ghostblade can have it. I just need to get her
somewhere safe.”

“You’re welcome to stay with us.”

Esna looked to her left at Tyrenk, but he didn’t look
back, shaking his head at the Protovic.

“Not good enough. She needs to be somewhere she can
develop her ability and find a niche. She’s not Clan material yet.”

“Why the personal interest? Finally found a heart
somewhere in that firm chest?”

Tyrenk tipped his head and half looked at Esna. “This
is what happens when a very skilled Protovic gets a crush and can’t let it go.”

“Why would I want to? Gives me pleasant dreams at
night and keeps me from wasting time with romancing others when I have work to
do.”

“A ship, Raena. Can you
arrange one?”

“Sure. We’ve got enough scouts running patrols that I
can slip you onto one and have them swing wide enough to drop you where you
want.”

“Thank you. How soon?”

“How about now?” she said, walking up beside him and
smacking him on the shoulder…at which point Esna felt a painful jolt. Her body
twitched, doubling her over as she felt Tyrenk’s grip on her mind slip and her
Fornax release for a split second before the Archon locked it down again, but
not soon enough. Several people around them tripped or slumped in their seats,
with a round of impacts audible as Esna cringed against the lingering pain.

Raena had stumbled too, but
now looked at Esna with a sad expression on her face. “I am so sorry. I didn’t
think that would transition to you.”

“I’m sorry,” Esna said, “my fault.”

“No, it’s mine. I zapped him and it hit you too.”

“What did you do?” Esna asked. “Are you a Maverick?”

“No, she’s a very annoying master tech,” Tyrenk
explained. “Protovic have their own natural psionics, and one of them is
electrical discharge. They absorb energy and can release it by touch. When she
touched my shoulder she hit me with it, and some transitioned into you,” he
said as Raena suddenly floated up into the air with
her hand reaching to her throat. “Don’t…do that…again.”

He let go his telekinetic hold a couple seconds later,
dropping her back onto her feet as half the control room was now watching them
as she felt her glowing neck. “Darth Tyrenk is so sexy.”

Tyrenk sighed and rolled his eyes. “If you weren’t so
good at your job I’d remove you from the Clan.”

“You can try, sweetheart, but Ghostblade would never
allow it. Kara likes me too much, and you don’t outrank her,” she said, looking
at Esna. “I’m sorry that hit you, but he definitely had it coming.”

“I’m alright. Sorry I can’t control myself better.”

“You’ll learn. My own telepathy took a while to get
the hang of, and you’ve got a good teacher with you, even if he is a bit of a
prick sometimes. Sorry thing is I was assigned to a special ops team with him
for three years straight and now I’m hopelessly infatuated. Don’t let that
happen to you. He’s sworn to being a dull badass for his entire life.”

“Three long
years,” Tyrenk amended as he kept hold of Esna’s hand and her mind. “But as
annoying and juvenile as she is, Raena’s tech skills
are worth it. Now please prove me right by figuring out what the junk I brought
in is.”

“I’ll see to it personally.”

“She bothering you?” a voice said from behind them.
Tyrenk smiled sarcastically and half spun around.

“A little, but nothing I’m not used to,” he said,
seeing the ViLord approaching.

“Just having a little fun,” Raena
said dismissively. “I didn’t realize my energy discharge could chain from one
person to another. My mistake.”

“Live and learn. Is there something you need?”

“A ride back home.”

“I told him we could retask
one of the scout ships.”

The ViLord nodded. “Easy enough. Are you Esna?”

“Yes,” she said, finding herself under inspection
again.

“I heard about you. You’ve come a long way. We’ll make
sure you get clear. The Viks aren’t going to catch up to you again. The next time
you see them will be of your choosing. Is Rammak with you?”

Esna frowned. “No. He didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry, I thought he escaped with you.”

“We got hit on the way out of Tauntaun,” Tyrenk
explained. “Crashed onto Darlek and lost most of our
people there. Only three of us made it out.”

“What were you doing in Darlek?”

“Passing through. We had to take the ship down to the
planet or get blown away in space.”

“By what?”

“A Kaeper.”

“What were you in?”

“An evac ship…it was
faster.”

“What race?”

“Kat’vo.”

The ViLord shook his head. “That shouldn’t have
happened.”

“Well it did. The ship was trailing Morgan’s fleet
then came after us. We were able to run through a few systems, but it caught
us. We rammed it then took our chances on the ground. Esna suffered a spontaneously
Fornax development, and I’m keeping her finger off the trigger so long as I
don’t get poked,” he said, glaring at Raena.

“I’m glad you made it,” the ViLord said. “You’re a
victory for Star Force just by being alive. Gaining a psionic makes you even
more valuable. Where are you taking her?”

“Somewhere she can train without worry.”

“I’d suggest Canderous.”

“Why?”

“They’re wanting psionics in a bad way. They’d take
special interest in her…assuming she wants to fight and not just get away from
the war.”

“I want to fight,” Esna said before Tyrenk could say
anything, “but I’m too weak to help.”

“Canderous will want you. I guarantee it.”

“Alright then,” Tyrenk said with a satisfied nod.
“Canderous it is. Can you get us to a seda that isn’t going to get hit?”

“I can have a ship run you all the way to Stargate.
Will that be good enough?”

“Perfect.”

“You want to hang around here a bit or get going?
We’ve got three ships on standby.”

“The sooner the better,” he said, with Esna feeling
him squeeze her mind tight before telling her to hold it together for a moment
telepathically, then he let go of her hand and walked a step towards Raena. “Bye then,” he said, spontaneously grabbing the
Protovic and pulling her into an awkward kiss that lingered for several seconds.

Esna blinked, not sure what was going on, but when
Tyrenk released her he didn’t waste time and spun around, grabbing Esna’s hand
and pulling her with him as he left. She saw Raena’s
face go from one of surprised pleasure to annoyance as she balled a fist and
punched her leg in frustration.

“You jerk! Now I won’t be able to sleep for a month.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, not looking back as the
ViLord smirked and walked with them.

What was that?
Esna thought, not knowing for sure if he would hear her.

Just some
friendly teasing. Don’t try to understand. There’s a lot of history between us
that you’re not aware of.

She was your
girlfriend?

No, Archons
don’t date.

Then why’d you
kiss her?

Because I can,
he said, leaning over and kissing Esna on the forehead. And because it will frustrate her for days to come.

You want to
torment her?

I want her to
learn better emotional control. Exploiting her weakness is a way of teaching
her. Everything we do has a purpose, even if she is nice to kiss.

11

October 13, 4812

Interstellar
Space (mid jump)

Flea-Class
Scout Ship

Esna sat in a small room towards the back of the .9
mile long starship so she would be out of Fornax range of those nearby as she
ran through a mental drill Tyrenk had taught her. She’d done it so many times
now her brain felt like it was unraveling, but she didn’t stop. He’d told her
to go through it 120 times each day, but she’d stopped counting after 200 and
was still going, pushing herself as far as she could but soon a tear worked its
way down her face, startling her.

She didn’t know what it was from at first, then how
much her head was hurting dawned on her and more tears flowed. Soon her control
was gone and she melted into an emotional crash, sobbing against the pain in
her new brain tissue and the weight of everything that had happened in previous
months falling on raw emotions. Too exhausted to punch anything, her anger
turned into despair and left her just sitting in a world of hurt until quiet
footsteps walked up behind her.

“That’s why blocking out your emotions and stuffing
them into a corner of your mind unseen is a temporary skill,” Tyrenk said,
sitting down next to her in a cross-legged pose mirroring her own. “You have to
deal with them eventually, because they’re there for a reason. Tell me what’s
going through your head.”

Esna offered him her hand, but he didn’t take it.

“Too easy. You need to face this, so explain it to
me.”

Recoiling her hand to her lap, she didn’t say
anything. Tyrenk waited, and when she realized he wasn’t going to change the
subject or leave she felt she had to say something.

“My head hurts.”

“That’s nothing new. Tell me what is.”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Then tell me something. A piece of what’s going on.”

“I’m pathetic.”

“This I know.”

Esna glanced at him, not having expected him to say
that, then she returned her gaze to her lap as another tear dripped down onto
her shorts.

“I’m a mess,” she admitted. “I was holding it together,
but now…I don’t know. I just lost it.”

“You’ve been hit with a lot, and a good natural
reaction is to lock yourself down to weather it. When
you get in the clear that lockdown becomes unnecessary and often pries itself
loose at unpredictable times. Just let yourself feel it, whatever it is. That’s
the first step.”

“What’s the second?” she asked with a sniff.

“Asking why. Be curious, about yourself, others, and
the universe in general.”

“What did you mean about that Protovic when you said
she needed to learn emotional control?” Esna asked, seeming to change the
subject but Tyrenk didn’t object.

“Some people lock onto an objective and hold to it
without thinking about why they’re doing it. Reana is
fixated on me. It’s mostly a friendly joke, but there’s an unhealthy
undercurrent there that she needs to address. She hasn’t and fangirls whenever
we bump into each other…which isn’t often, but with all the time we don’t see
each other all she has is her imagination. People can get lost in those mental
simulations, so when I kissed her I gave her a real experience to outrank them.
Hopefully it’ll wake her up and she’ll realize I’m hot, but not deserving of
the fangirling.”

“Can you even mate? With a Protovic, I mean,” Esna
asked, now definitely changing the subject.

“The parts line up more or less, but we can’t
reproduce and the pheromones don’t connect.”

“Did you know she was there before we arrived?”

“I knew she was in Ghostblade, but no, I didn’t know
she was in that fleet group.”

“Isn’t that kind of odd you running into her?”

“A bit, but when you’re over a thousand years old you
get to know a lot of people.”

“How old are you?”

“1127.”

“You have any other would be girlfriends out there?”

“A few. Archons aren’t shy, we just know where the
line is between being friendly and getting attached. Others don’t. And you’re
dodging.”

“I know.”

“I’ve learned that when I get overwhelmed I have to
let the galaxy go, stop caring about it and everything outside of my own body.
Shrink my vision down to the boundaries of my skin and deal with the minimum
possible in order to find my path again. I suggest you do that now.”

“How do I do that?”

“The pain you’re feeling, how much is physical and how
much emotional?”

“A lot of both.”

“How many times?”

Esna cringed. “More than you said.”

“Your tissue is new, overloading it is going to get
painful. Trust me and do what I tell you, no more, no less. When you get more
experienced you can ignore my suggestions. Right now that’s not a good idea
unless you know something I don’t.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re punishing yourself, not me. But that’s
physical, and that’s you, not others. That pain you have to deal with, but what
about the rest?”

“People died because of me, Tyrenk. Yammar and Innit
are probably dead too. I don’t even know for sure. All because I’m a Human and
they took me and my brother in. I’m still not ok with that, but Rammak and the
others are dead because I slowed you guys down.”

“Yes and no, but put that aside for now. What’s done
is done, good or bad, so I need you to pull yourself into yourself. They aren’t
with you. They’re wherever they are now. Let them go. Let Star Force and the
V’kit’no’sat go. Let this ship go. Just be you, in your body, sitting here
right now. Do that and I think the challenge before you will become manageable.”

“I can’t let it go.”

“Then there’s your problem. You’re living a lie that
you can’t shake.”

“It’s not a lie. They died because I couldn’t keep
up.”

“I mean the part about not letting it go. There’s
nothing to hold onto because they’re gone. You’re deluding yourself to think
they’re still here. It’s just you and me in this room. No one else. Stop
chasing phantoms and look at what is right here, right now.”

“I can’t…I’m sorry. I just…can’t.”

Esna felt a hand on her head, expecting the Archon to
reach into her mind again and give it some badly needed structure…but he
didn’t. He twisted her head to the side and smothered her with an unexpected
kiss that he didn’t relent from. He followed it up with two more rapid fire,
making her head swoon to the point she forgot everything else as she relished
the feel of his body as he tipped her onto her back and pinned her to the
ground, letting her breathe only briefly before kissing her again.

That went on for quite a while, then he pulled back a
few inches while still on top of her. She was breathing hard, shocked and
pleased at the same time.

“See, you can do it. You’re living in the moment and
forgetting everything else,” Tyrenk said, his breath hot against her face as
his presence was still having a strong influence on her. “Learn to let go and
move with events as they happen. The past is important, but it can become a
plague if you dwell on it. You exist in the now, and if your focus isn’t here
then your mind is wandering,” he said, kissing her again before finally
retreating off of her.

Esna sat up, her head spinning as a smile worked its
way onto her lips despite her previous emotional state. “So if I stay messed
up, you’ll kiss me more?” she asked sarcastically.

“Not if it doesn’t work,” he countered, returning to
his cross-legged pose that he melted into so easily, demonstrating a
flexibility that Esna did not have. “Now answer my questions quickly and
honestly, no dodging.”

“Alright,” she said, sitting back up and scooting
closer to him, enough that their knees lightly touched.

“How bad is your head?”

“Not as bad as before, but it’s not good.”

“What do you need to do to correct the problem?”

“Rest…and not push so much.”

“Learn when to push and when not. Sometimes you need
to. Who are you?”

“I’m Esna.”

“Who is that?”

“I’m me,” she said, not sure what else to say.

“Why are you alive? What is your purpose?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

“None of us do, in the beginning. We’re born into this
universe randomly with no instructions as to what to do, how to do it, or what
not to do. We have to find our own way, figure things out as we go. What have
you figured out about yourself?”

“I…I want to fight. I don’t want to be protected.”

“Why not? What’s wrong with being protected?”

“I want to earn my place,” she said, half yelling.
“I’m tired of being carried.”

“Why? If others can do it for you, what’s the
problem?”

“I don’t…I don’t want…to be helpless,” she said, with
her dour mood returning like a wall hitting her in the face. “I want to be able
to stop…”

“Stop what?”

“Bad things from happening.”

“You’ll never stop them all,” Tyrenk said quietly and
calmly, acting as a counterpoint to her chaotic emotions. “If you try, if you
mentally tie yourself to the fate of the galaxy you will drive yourself insane
because there is too much misery, too much injustice. At best we can solve some
of it. It’s impossible to get it all, and even if you could more would pop up.”

“Then what do you do?”

“Take a breath, take a vacation, take away all the
responsibility and distractions, and figure out who you are before you try to
do anything involving others. Before an Archon can help solve the galaxy’s
problems, we have to solve our own first. We have to become perfect people.
That doesn’t mean we always win, but it means we never hold ourselves back,
never sabotage ourselves. We have no internal conflict. Our conflict is with
the galaxy and all things external. Right now you’re fighting yourself, so let
go everyone else and get yourself in order.”

“But how?” Esna emphasized.

“Who are you?”

“I’m no one.”

“Archons don’t waste their time on ‘no ones.’ Who are
you?”

“A lost…broken girl.”

“Better,” he approved. “Broken how?”

“People around me keep dying and it’s my fault.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. If I wasn’t there they wouldn’t be dead.”

“That doesn’t make it your fault. Did you cause their
deaths?”

“You know I didn’t.”

“Then why feel responsible?”

“Because I’m baggage that’s getting in the way.”

“Not anymore. You’re not holding anyone back now.
You’re in the clear, so what are you worried about?”

“I don’t…I feel like I can’t move on until I fix the
past. I know that sounds stupid, you can’t change the past, but that’s what it
feels like I need to do.”

“It’s called a Mulligan.”

“What is?”

“When you screw something up so badly you can’t fix
it. You admit it to yourself be declaring a ‘Mulligan’ and resetting. I’ve had
to do it before, when I took on more than I could handle in training. I tried,
like you have been doing, to push through it. Sometimes I was able to make it
work, but sometimes I was in so over my head I just had to curl up in a pain
riddled ball on the floor and let everything go. Just focus on healing myself
and seeing where I was, what assets or deficits I had, and work the problem
from there rather than tie myself to some objective and measure myself off my
distance from it.”

“What?”

“If I believe I’m supposed to be somewhere else and
I’m not, I’m going to be uneasy and unstable the further I get away from that
point. But if my destination point is myself, I can never be drawn away from
it. That’s part of the reason why Archons don’t develop bonding pair
relationships. We always remain individuals rather than tie our emotions or
identities to another person…for if that person is separated from us, harmed,
captured, or killed, it will affect us. We will be incomplete. But if we accept
that the galaxy is a crazy place that we can’t control and we are but a tiny
dot in it, and that dot is independent from everything else, we can have
control over the dot so long as the dot isn’t tied to things we cannot
control.”

Esna sighed in series, almost panting as she couldn’t
control her breathing. Her body was shaking uncontrollably but her mind was
steady enough to realize the truth in what he was saying.

“I don’t want to stop feeling. I don’t want to abandon
people.”

“You don’t do either. When you can help someone you
do, but when you can’t and they’re gone, what exactly are you holding onto? An
illusion, nothing more. Allegiance and loyalty aren’t a noose around your neck,
they’re beneficial. If something is dragging you down, then it’s not. Which is
happening to you?”

“Definitely dragging down.”

“Then the emotional bonds you’ve formed are bad bonds.
Raena has a small bad bond, you have huge ones. She
was persisting through hers, because she is very skilled in many areas, but she
still needs to rework or lose it. You need a complete realignment, and it
starts with your mind containing only you. No one else in the galaxy exists.
Figure yourself out, then determine how you can interact with others. If you
can do that, then you have a chance of figuring out how to form beneficial
bonds that won’t be a hindrance,” he said, leaning over and kissing her gently
one more time. “You can do it. I can feel it. But it won’t be quick and it
won’t be easy. And it isn’t something someone else can do for you. Keep to
yourself until you figure things out. I’ll be here when you do.”

Tyrenk stood up, ruffled her short hair
affectionately, then left her alone in the room with
the impression that she wasn’t going to be seeing him for a while.

Esna leaned back on her elbows, stretching out her
cramping legs and not sure what emotion she was supposed to be feeling. Dozens
were going through her all at the same time, and thanks to Tyrenk one at least
was a very good one. She’d never been kissed by an Archon before and that
wasn’t something she was going to forget anytime soon, and it was helping to
counterbalance everything else going through her mind and her heart at the
moment.

“Damn it,” she said, laying back and staring at the
ceiling. “I am a mess. How am I going to fix this?”

No answers leapt forward to rescue her, so Esna just
decided to do nothing and lay there. No training, no schedule, no
responsibilities. Just this moment, however long it lasted or wherever it led.
She was a mess and it was time to face that mess and get to know it better,
even if she didn’t have a clue how to solve it.

As she laid there in the following minutes her mind
wandered back and forth through many simulations and memories until she just
got tired of it all, realizing how exhausted she was, and let herself surrender
to it. She could think later, right now she needed rest and there was no point
in delaying that need by finding a bed, so Esna just closed her eyes and a nap
gratuitously took her, allowing her a true rest that she hadn’t had since that
hell hole of a high gravity world that had changed her life in ways she still
couldn’t fathom…but she was going to have to, sooner or later, because she
couldn’t keep moving on and burying this. That part she knew the Archon was
right about.

At least that was item #1 on the self-discovery
mission now completed.

12

Esna didn’t say anything to Tyrenk for days, nor did
he say anything to her, as she kept to herself and tried to think through her
situation. After a day of doing nothing but thinking she couldn’t stand it anymore
and started to do some workouts of her own. There was no track in a ship this
small, but there was a series of hallways that stretched .6 miles and a couple
of them were reserved for running. Sometimes the crew would need to go there,
but for the most part they walked other routes to leave those open for their
own training. Esna took the one that was empty and began running back and
forth, touching the wall at either end before reversing direction as she worked
herself into a blissful fatigue.

She repeated that for days, not doing anything more
than a few calisthenics in between. Rammak had taught her to run, and now it
seemed the only safe place for her mind to go. If she could survive for weeks
running across wild terrain then she could push herself for hours here…and
that’s just what she did. Not bothering to count the laps, Esna just ran and
ran. Not trying to accomplish anything beyond finding some badly needed
familiarity, and as the old fatigue, pain, and soreness returned it brought
back a flood of memories that were a welcome change from the mental loops she’d
been going through, although the memory of Rammak kept causing her to cry at
unsuspected times.

He’d taught her so much, and now that the Archon
wasn’t directing her she fell back on what the Calavari had said, trying to
glean a sense of direction. His primary goal had been to keep her alive…and
he’d succeeded. But why was it important that she live? He’d said because she
was Human, but what did that mean? Why was that important?

Esna was with Star Force now, but it didn’t feel quite
right without Rammak. A part of her would have actually preferred being back on
Tauntaun with him…or even Forso. When she had that
realization it stopped her cold and she ran in zombie mode as she tried to
figure out why she’d want to be back there.

It wasn’t for the planet, trashed as it was, and it
wasn’t for Yammar and Innit. She’d like to know what happened to them, and if
they were alive explain everything, but that wasn’t it. Something was missing
there that she didn’t have here and she focused on finding it, sensing it was
important.

The answer didn’t come easily and Esna wasn’t going to
stop running until she found it, fearing losing the mental trail she was on. By
the time the answer finally smacked her in the face she was almost dragging her
legs from step to step and let herself stop and lean her head against the wall
as the simple truth hit her.

Rammak was more than a friend, rescuer, and mentor. He
was the essence of Star Force, having been denied it for so many years he’d
clung to what was important and preserved it, so when Esna had met him she’d
gotten the truth of it without all the extraneous noise of differing points of
view and motivations. Rammak was loyal to Star Force, but also grateful. He’d
saved Esna because she was Human and Humans had created Star Force. He’d also
said they’d saved the Calavari in the distant past. He was repaying a debt to
them, but it wasn’t something that he’d walk away from once it was done.

Tyrenk wasn’t like that. He was an Archon. He was one
of Star Force’s leaders. No one rescued him, he did the rescuing. He was Star
Force, but what dawned on Esna was that Star Force wasn’t one thing. It was an
empire made up of a lot of people that served different purposes. Archons
weren’t Commandos, Commandos weren’t techs, techs
weren’t pilots, and so on. But Rammak had been more than that. He’d been a
survivor thrown out of Star Force into the brutal galaxy and hadn’t succumbed
to it. He’d told her some stories about what he had been doing to help Forso while he was there, not as far as leading it or
trying to rebuild Star Force, but in making subtle changes here and there,
often with no one even knowing who he was or what he had done.

He was a silent warrior, hiding from the Viks for
sure, but also fighting…something. What was it? Injustice she knew. Fate maybe?
He’d been destined to die on Forso and had been
fighting to survive, not as one of the degenerate locals but to remain a Star
Force Commando even in exile. He didn’t like a no-win scenario so he intervened
in others’? Rescuing them when he himself couldn’t be rescued?

Maybe. Esna didn’t think she’d ever fully understand
him, but she realized she’d been keying off him ever since Teren had died and
now that Rammak was gone she was lost. Guilt about surviving when the others
had died aside, she needed Rammak to show her the way and without that she
didn’t know what to do.

But he had.
He’d figured it out on his own when he was abandoned. Not intentionally, and
he’d never thought so, but abandoned by fate as the war moved on and he
persisted in the rubble of what had once been a magnificent world reduced to
cinders…but not him. He didn’t degenerate, he held to…what? What did he hold
to?

Doing the right thing. Being better than the chaos and
apathy that had seized hold of the planet. Rising above those that didn’t.

And there was the answer she’d picked up on before. To
be better than everyone else.

Not that she’d expected to be better than Rammak. He
was what she wanted to be like, and not because he’d saved her. He’d showed her
there was a better way, and it was that way that she needed, and needed badly.

Even on Tauntaun before the attack, she was still on
the run with him. There was a purpose, and her purpose was going with him and
following his instructions as he led her through training and learning all
towards that same purpose…to become better. But as Esna had been slowly
realizing, she didn’t have to become better to stay in Star Force. She could
live as she was now and not change at all. Tyrenk had made that clear. Once out
of the war zone she could do pretty much whatever she wanted in the civilian
population or she could work for Star Force in some way, not necessarily combat
involved.

Esna couldn’t do that. Ever since Teren died she’d
been on the run with a purpose, and that purpose wasn’t gone now. She wasn’t
safe.

But even when they got past the front to Star Force
territory she wouldn’t be safe. Maybe from the V’kit’no’sat, so long as the
defenses held, but that wasn’t the only threat Rammak had been facing. He’d had
to hide from their sight, but the greater enemy he’d faced had been the grim
nature of the galaxy trying to suck the righteousness out of him. He’d had no
one around like him to key off of, no orders to follow, nothing but his own
course to set…and he’d held to the light. That was what Star Force truly was,
even if not all people in Star Force were worthy of it. Esna wasn’t, and they
hadn’t abandoned her. They hadn’t left her to die while they ran. They
protected her like they protected everyone else, and many of them had died for
that.

For doing the right thing.

Esna began to realize, leaning against that wall, that
Rammak had been a notch above the others. His time in exile had been a test
that he’d passed, and it had made him better than before. Maybe not as fast or
as strong, but better. He wasn’t being carried anymore, he sustained himself
and carried others in a variety of ways prior to finding Esna, then he had carried her hard, keeping her alive and bringing
her into the light.

He was superior, and the entire time she’d been on the
run with him her quest, her purpose, had been to become superior. Surviving the
Viks and other threats were up there too, but the main priority above and
beyond survival was to become superior…and for him, to be superior. To do the
right thing, and he’d died doing the right thing. He hadn’t become corrupted on
Forso. He hadn’t left her or others to die to save
himself. He’d stood between them and the Viks, a living shield protecting them,
and though she hated that he died doing that she realized that there was a
small victory in that defeat, because he had died superior. The Viks might have
been stronger, but they hadn’t been better than him. A better person wouldn’t
have been fighting him, he would have been his friend and ally.

Rammak had told her that bad people fought bad people,
but good people didn’t fight good people, other than sparring, of course,
thought that was never with the intent to kill. The fact that the Viks were out
to kill all of Star Force meant they were inferior. Very powerful, very
skilled, but not doing the right thing. Doing the right thing was often harder
than doing the easy or bad thing, and one had to be superior to pull it off.
Rammak had. The Viks, for all their accomplishments, were not truly superior,
and for the first time she finally felt she wasn’t a pathetic weakling. She, in
her small way, was better than the Viks even if she couldn’t fight them and
live, because Rammak had showed her a path into the light and she’d taken her
first few steps there…and that was more than the Viks had done.

Sometimes doing the right thing meant accepting the
help of others, others like Rammak, but most of the time it meant carrying the
burden for others and being a shield against the darkness. To do that you
couldn’t be helpless, you had to be superior or die trying…and that, Esna
realized, is the purpose she wanted. The purpose the Rammak had exposed her to.
It was the reason she existed.

So tired she could barely walk on her now stiff legs,
the hope inside her prompted Esna to limp off through the ship until she found
Tyrenk in his private quarters, the door to which opened on its own as his
mental voice reached out to her.

Come in.

Esna walked in, finding him around the corner near the
wall in a rigid handstand.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were training,” she
said, taking a step back towards the door.

“Stay. I can talk, and I get the feeling you have
something to tell me.”

“Are you sure?” she said, looking at his upside down
head while his feet were up above her head height. “That doesn’t look easy to
hold.”

Tyrenk twisted slightly, then moved sideways enough
that he balanced on one arm only.

“This is hard,” he said, holding it for a moment
before coming back down on two arms. “This is easy when one can focus, and the
point of this meditation is maintaining the physical focus while allowing your
mind to wander to other things. It’s multi-tasking, and talking with you serves
that purpose. So talk to me.”

“If you so say,” she said, taking him at his word
while looking down at his chin. “I’ve learned something…a few things, actually.
First of which is I’m hurting more than I realized. Not physically, but me
living when so many people died to save me hurts. I did bury it down and focus
on surviving, but now it’s coming out and I don’t know how to deal with it.”

“Admitting a problem is the first step in learning how
to fix it. What else?”

“I can’t be a civilian,” she said flatly. “There’s a
war going on, but not just against the Viks. Rammak was fighting that war and
when I was with him I started to do it too. It’s who I am now and I can’t go
back. I don’t want to go back. It’d kill me if I did.”

“Back where?”

“To being normal. To not caring about anyone else and
just living my life doing nothing. To not be improving, to not be doing the
right thing. On Forso…I mean on Mace, everyone there
was alive, but they had no purpose. They were born, grew up, did a lot of stuff
that didn’t matter, had younglings, then died while others repeated the cycle.
When I was there it seemed important, but now my eyes are open and I see that
it’s all pointless. Living just to live doesn’t matter. Living without a
purpose doesn’t matter. At least, I can’t do it anymore. And since Rammak died
I’ve been lost. I’d been following him and he’d been keeping me on the right
path. Now I can’t do that anymore.”

“What path?”

“Doing the right thing. Becoming better than the trash
in the galaxy. And fighting the Viks and others who don’t do the right thing.
Saving people like he saved me. Building great cities to fight starvation and
storms and all kinds of other stuff that tear people down. Star Force is more
than just a great civilization. It’s a fight against bad stuff, and I can’t sit
on the sidelines while others do the fighting…and I don’t think I could stand
to be around people that could. I think that’s partly why Rammak kept to
himself on Mace. If he couldn’t bring them to be like him, they’d try to bring
him to be like them. He thought he could save me, and he did, in ways that I
didn’t fully realize at the time. Hell, I probably don’t fully understand now,
but I know more than I did yesterday. His path is the path I want, but I think
his was more than normal Commandos. Am I right about that?”

“What he went through put him into a different
category. One that even I’m not in, and couldn’t be unless I’d been tested the
same way he was. He never lost himself. He was loyal when loyalty didn’t have
permission to exist. I think rescuing you helped him rescue a part of himself
even before you were picked up by that Ma’kri.”

“Living there must have driven him crazy. It didn’t
for me because I didn’t know any better, but now I do and I can’t go back to
that. I know Star Force is far, far better, but I can’t stop running. Running
made sense, it had a purpose, and I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to be
comfortable. I want to fight and I want to matter. I want to learn to be
superior, like he was.”

Tyrenk finally tipped his feet over and righted
himself, bringing his head up level with Esna’s as she saw his slightly
reddened face as the blood started to fall back down into the lower half of his
body again.

“That’s a lot of introspection for only a few days.”

“I think it’s been kicking around the back of my mind
for a long time, but I don’t know how to be Rammak without Rammak. He taught me
so much, but there’s a lot he never had time to teach me.”

“To be Rammak you have to learn to figure it out for
yourself. That’s the key.”

“I don’t know how.”

Tyrenk held up a finger. “Rammak didn’t start out
knowing nothing. He had Star Force training and a lot of experience before he
was stuck on Mace. He used that foundation as a starting point. Your time with
Rammak and what he taught you is partly your foundation, now you need to get
the rest of it before you can follow your own path to superiority. The truest
test takes place when one doesn’t know they’re being tested, or perhaps when
there’s no warning ahead of time that a test will take place. I hope you never
get stranded as he did, but you need to improve yourself enough to be able to
survive that if it did happen.”

That simple sentence crystalized in Esna’s mind the
thought that she’d been cultivating. It wasn’t a final destination, but it was
the next part of her path and as Rammak had taught her you had to run the part
you were on to get to the rest, even if that meant going all in and exhausting
yourself. You couldn’t predict how much rest and recovery you would get going
forward, so you had to work the moment for what it was, and now Esna had her
mental battlemap course set for the immediate future.

She had to become what Rammak was on the day he was
stranded.

“How do I become a Commando?”

“Do you know what a Commando is?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me?” he said, crossing his arms over his chest
and leaning back against the wall.

“They fight hand to hand. In ground combat, or on
ships.”

“And?”

“They use weapons and fists?”

“You’re missing something that is key, and that is the
difference between me and a Commando.”

“You’ve got psionics.”

“True, but more than that?”

“You’re better than them.”

“Am I?”

“As far as I know.”

Tyrenk smiled. “If I don’t use my psionics, there are
some Commandos that can beat me. Tell me how?”

“I have no clue. I didn’t know Commandos were that strong.”

“It’s about training. It’s all about training.”

“Commandos don’t train as hard as Archons?”

“Depends on the person. The word Archon means ‘leader’
and comes from the distant past before Star Force existed. We lead the
military, more specifically we lead all 5 branches…Commando, Aerial, Aquatic,
Naval, and Mechs. We have to be good in all five disciplines, and our Archon
ranks are measured by our weakest level of the five. That means we have to
split our training up to hit all of them. Commandos don’t, they’re specialists.
They can spend all their time training for hand to hand combat while Archons
don’t.”

Esna blinked, never having thought about that. “You’re
that good only training part time for hand to hand?”

Tyrenk smiled. “Yep. But when Commandos train nonstop,
it means they can fight with us as our equals because they specialize their
training. Same thing goes for pilots, mechwarriors, etc. Archons are the best
of the best, but we have to be multi-taskers. Highly skilled specialists will
exceed us in their chosen areas, and we welcome that. A Commando is a
specialist. An Archon is a multi-tasker. Do you understand the difference now?”

“Rammak was a specialist devoted to one thing and one
thing only.”

“Yes he was.”

“That’s what I want. A clear purpose and a chance to
do my part in Star Force. I want somewhere I belong, not somewhere I’m baggage
that other people have to haul along.”

“Well said, but you are an attractive piece of baggage
that many wouldn’t mind hauling along.”

“I don’t want that. I want to earn my place.”

“There are many ways in Star Force to do that. Do you
want somewhere simple to start, somewhere difficult that you’ll have to race to
keep up, or somewhere in between?”

“I want something hard, but something I can belong to
from the beginning if I work hard enough. I don’t want to be somewhere I don’t
deserve.”

“That would be the Clans, and I agree, you don’t
belong there. Becoming a Commando is difficult, but there are different types
of Commandos. Rammak was a Calavari Commando and they have their own standards.
Human Commandos have theirs.”

“I was told some Calavari were trained as Human
Commandos?”

“It’s rare, but yes. Then we have Knights, who are a
specialist within Commandos that focus primarily on melee combat. They are
weapon trained, but only in limited fashion. Once they know how to use pistols
and rifles they stop training on them and focus entirely on fists, feet, and
blades. They receive growth enhancements to make them Calavari size…the Humans
anyway. Calavari Knights stay the same size. Protovic Knights sometimes
interchange with both of them, but they have their own psionics so they’re a
bit more formidable. You could fit with them, because of your Fornax.”

“I like weapons…and my size. Getting bigger would make
me slower, wouldn’t it?”

“Most likely, but speed and strength would increase
with training after that point.”

“I want to be a Commando then. What do I have to do?”

“What it takes. If accepted, you go into a training
program and don’t come out until you quit or become a Commando.”

“What’s it take to be accepted?”

“The will to act. Wanting is not enough. You have to
work for it. I don’t think you’ll have a problem with that.”

“Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“I have a suggestion,” Tyrenk floated.

“What?”

“Rammak faced something you never faced, and probably,
hopefully never will. There is a Commando program that is harder than other
Commando programs. Most are all the same, but there is a higher level one.
Something Rammak did not go through. You having Fornax is going to be tricky,
because it will cause the testing to go wonky, but adjustments can be made. You
may have to train alone.”

“I’m fine with that. I just don’t want any breaks. I
want to earn it the same way everyone else does.”

“They will make you earn it, trust me. They have the
hardest basic training we allow in Star Force. Archon training is more
difficult, but it’s not as intense. No, wait, that’s not right. Ours is more
intense, but we bring the intensity ourselves. Commando training is more them
pushing you through it, because they expect you to know nothing. Archons are
troubleshooters who are expected to figure things out for ourselves.”

“Put me in the hardest training you think I can
handle,” Esna said without hesitation.

“Good. That’s where I planned on taking you anyway,
but I just want you to know there are many options and the choice is yours.”

“Canderous?”

“Yes. They are all Human and
totally military. Even their civilians have military training above and beyond
normal maturias. They push their younglings as far as possible without breaking
them, and the Archons have defined that line very carefully. Many Canderians
leave when they can, but they don’t accept people in unless they go through the
training as well. You can’t be a civilian living in Canderous that didn’t
originate in Canderous. It’s a closed, and very intense civilization that the
trailblazers crafted long ago. If you want to be a Commando, the Canderian
version is the strongest program available outside of the Clans.”

“How do I sign up?”

Tyrenk smiled. “You just did.”

“You’re Canderian?”

“No, I’m an Archon.”

“And you give orders to Canderous?”

“Esna, we outrank everyone. I can put you in whatever
training program I want aside from the Clans. Those are run by the trailblazers
and a lot of other higher ranking Archons than me, but Canderous, the Bsidd, Calvari, Protovic, Kiritak, etc
take orders from even the lowest ranking Archon, though we know better than to
get involved in things where we don’t belong. Star Force isn’t about a strict
hierarchy, it’s about getting the job done and doing the right thing. Not about
following rules. Canderous will accept my appointment because they trust in
Archon wisdom, and likewise I wouldn’t send them someone unworthy.”

“Thank you.”

“Plus they’re going to freak out about the possibility
of getting someone with Fornax, so they’ll welcome you with open arms as they
work your ass off.”

“Where are they?”

“Everywhere. There are many Canderian sedas at Grid
Point Stargate. That’s where you’ll start, though I don’t know where you’ll end
up. If you can’t handle it you can always drop out and go civilian or try a
different Commando program. We don’t give up on anyone, so you can always try
again and again until you get it or get tired of trying. How you progress is up
to you.”

“Good to know. Hopefully I can make it the first time.
Is there any training you can give me before we get there to give me a head
start?”

“Sure. Go take a nap. You’re exhausted.”

Esna smiled. “I mean after that.”

“I’m an Archon. We live and breathe training. Rest,
then I’ll make sure your next few weeks aren’t wasted. Just don’t think that
will give you an advantage when you get there. It’s going to be intense
regardless of how much you prep.”

“Which is why I need as much of a head start as I can
get,” she countered. “Thank you…for everything.”

“You’re not rid of me yet, youngling.”

“Including the kissing. Can I return the favor, just
once?”

“Are you good now?”

“No, but I have a path now. That’s enough.”

“Permission granted.”

Esna walked up in front of him and gently kissed him,
holding it for a few seconds then quietly walking away, fairly sure that the
sentiments she wanted to express made it through to him when their skin touched
and she gave him access to her mind, for he sent an approving vibe back to her
that made her tingle from head to toe.

The walk back to her own quarters was less exhausting
than she’d expected, then when she hit her bed the fatigue followed quickly
enough and she fell unconscious, waking hours later with a stiff back and a
hopeful outlook. She had a path to walk now, and as Rammak had taught her, she
intended to run it as much as possible, for her destiny lay in front of her,
not behind. Rammak’s influence would carry with her, so there wasn’t anything
to cling to in the past and it was time to start proving Rammak right that she
was worth saving by moving forward and becoming someone of merit.

Another light in the darkness, now that his had been
extinguished.

13

November 12, 4812

Tarric 3 System

Stellar Orbit

When the Ghostblade scout ship entered the system and
Esna saw the map of it pop up on the display she was confused, for there were
no inhabited planets. There were a lot of ships…a lot of ships, but there was nothing here for them to protect other
than some large space stations.

“Where are we?” she asked Tyrenk, who stood beside her
on the edge of the bridge where they had a private holographic terminal to use.

“This is a Tarric System. Tarric 3, to be precise. All systems with that name serve
as guard posts for the Grid Points.”

“But where is the Grid Point? I don’t even see any
planets out there.”

“The Grid Point can’t be this close to a star, so it’s
just next door. It’s large enough to have its own gravity well, but a weak one.
Making a jump from the star to it doesn’t require a lot of travel distance, but
it is a slow jump and leaves one vulnerable coming in and out. That’s why we
have a large defense fleet here protecting it and the commerce infrastructure
set up.”

“That’s what all those stations are?”

“That’s nothing compared to what surrounds the Grid
Point,” he said, expanding the map out so the system became a dot and another
just nearby it materialized. “However, we don’t need to go there to find
Canderous. You see those large spherical stations?” he asked, returning the map
back to the system view with highlights.

“Yes.”

“Canderous is designed to live in space, so those are
their territory. Completely artificial and the size of small moons. That’s
where I’m taking you.”

“So we’re out of the Devastation Zone now?”

“Yes. It extends further rimward,
but this system and the surrounding few are a well defended island that they
haven’t taken. This is safe territory, even if we’re close to the danger, and
the Grid Point links into another far from here that is behind the front.
That’s why it’s so important that we hold this, for us and our allies. They
have several systems nearby with massive shipyards that have been supplying
their fleets for centuries as they fight wars further out on the Rim.”

“What allies?”

“They’re called the Nexus, and this used to be a safe,
quiet little corner of the galaxy while all the fighting was going on out
there. Now they help defend it against the V’kit’no’sat, for if the Grid Point
falls their reinforcements dwindle. It’s not the best situation to be in, but we’ve
held this region for a long time and it’ll take a major push to even dent it.
The V’kit’no’sat know it and they stay away, but we keep this fleet here
guarding the door just in case.”

“And if they get by this fleet?”

“They run into a buzz saw on the other end. The Grid
Point is very well defended, and a sizeable chunk of the fleet you see now is
Canderian. Since there are no inhabited planets here, Canderous has been given
a foothold to fill. The small uninhabited rocks out there are mined, but most
of what you see was shipped in from elsewhere. Their sedas, which was those
spherical stations, are battlestations. The others
you see out there are commerce stations, some starports,
and an assortment of others better placed here than at the Grid Point itself.
Before the fall, this used to be a very heavy traffic center, but now it only
accommodates the surrounding allied systems.”

“And I’m going to one of those seda things?”

“Yes, I’m taking you there to meet with Sen Legat Artu. There are four levels
of ‘Legat,’ which is their highest rank. A Legat commands a seda. A Sa Legat
commands a group of sedas, equivalent to a planetary commander. A Kit Legat is a system commander and a Sen Legat
is like a trailblazer. They run Canderous and there are only 122 of them at
present.”

“I’m that important to them?”

“You will be, trust me.”

“I thought I was just going to earn my spot, not be a
main focus,” she said regretfully.

“Relax. You’ll have to earn it, but Artu will know best where to place you. He’s in command of
this system’s defense, and even the Archons here defer to him often due to his
skills and experience. Canderous may have a lot of operational capabilities,
but sitting in place and holding turf is what they’re best at and those sedas
are very good at it. Better than the V’kit’no’sat, actually, because they’re
designed to be stations and not ships. They can move, but not very fast, and the
smaller engines they require the more interior space there is for armor,
shields, and weaponry. Plus the internal living spaces are a lot smaller since
we don’t take up as much room as an Era’tran or Oso’lon. If the Viks want to
remove them they’re going to have a hell of a fight on their hands.”

“So they’re outposts?” she asked.

“Yes and no. Sedas are where Canderians are born,
train, and live. Those are their homes, and they take them with them wherever
they go. Canderian ships can operate further away, but they always come back to
the sedas. When the trailblazers first created Canderous, they wanted a
population that could be mobile and wasn’t tied down to planets. They expected
the V’kit’no’sat to come back one day and take them from us, and Canderous has
suffered the least losses of any faction within the empire because they were
built specifically for this fight…and to be able to run from it with their
homes intact.”

“Sounds smart. Why isn’t everyone in Star Force living
on sedas?”

“Because planets have a lot of advantages. Canderous
has learned to live and thrive without them, and they’re a bit hardnosed
because of it…but in a good way. They don’t tolerate slackers.”

“Which one is the Sen Legat
on?”

“The biggest one. It’s a Battlemoon-class seda and some
327 miles in diameter. They’re rare, but there are two here. We’ll find out
which he’s on and transfer over.”

“And then?”

“Then you meet your new family and we part ways…unless
you change your mind and want me to take you somewhere else. You can change
your mind later, but you’ll have to arrange your own transport. I won’t be
sticking around in this system for long.”

“Back to the Devastation Zone?”

“Maybe, maybe not. My assignment on Tauntaun got
terminated when the base got blown up, so I’m not sure where I’ll be going
next. Your immediate future is a lot more clear and
involves a whole lot of training.”

“Training I’m familiar with,” Esna said, committing
herself to that course as their ship passed through part of the defense fleet
as it made its way around the star and out slightly towards a clump of
spherical space stations, some 284 in total, while there were many more than
that spread elsewhere around low stellar orbit, but this was the largest
cluster sitting nearby what was marked as the jumpline out to Grid Point
Stargate…with a fair amount of traffic moving back and forth along it.

“Are you sure about this?” Tyrenk asked in a serious
whisper. “It’s going to be hard.”

“I want it hard, just not impossible.”

“Then you’ll get your wish.”

“Do you think this is where I belong?”

“I think you can belong wherever you want if you’re
willing to work for it.”

“But not as an Archon?”

“Archons are everywhere, Esna. We lead the empire,
including Canderous, so you’ll see us popping up every now and then even here.
You will be working with us as a team, but it takes more than work to become an
Archon. It takes improvisation, among other things, and that can’t be
taught…but it can be developed. There is a small chance that in the distant
future you might be able to become an Archon, but the odds of you making that
kind of personal transition are so low I don’t want to disillusion you by mentioning
it. You need to find your niche, and that’s not in the Archon ranks.”

“And Canderous?”

“You’ve got enough grit, the only question is whether
you will see it through. They’re hard, but the only people who fail are those
who quit, or quit trying and just go through the motions. As long as you
maintain consistent effort they’ll get you to the level you need to be, no
matter how long it takes. But it’s usually those who can’t progress fast that
get impatient and quit. I get the feeling you’re a grinder, though, so for you
it’ll just be a matter of sticking with it.”

“Good. That much I know I can handle.”

“You’ve been bouncing around a lot, and Artu might move you to another system, but whatever seda
you end up on will become your home. Canderians don’t transfer around a lot,
and they’ve always got a soft spot for the seda they were born into…or in your
case, where you’ll do your conversion training.”

“Rammak told me about that. He called it
‘Indoctrination’ though.”

“It’s a little different for Canderous, but the same
principle. Theirs is more thorough and not geared toward civilians. They’re
military to the core.”

“Do they have techs?”

“Of course, but they’re all heavily combat trained so
they can fight when needed. There’s no Canderian that can’t step in and fill a
combat slot if there’s a shortage of personnel in emergency situations. That
also means if someone invades a seda, there won’t be any civilians there. It’ll
be a population that turns into an army in the blink of an eye.”

“So everyone is a Commando in some way?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“Then I think you’re right about me fitting in here.
Or at least I want to.”

“Let’s find out where the Sen Legat
is,” Tyrenk said, interfacing with a communications terminal nearby, “then
we’ll head there directly.”

“What if he’s busy?”

“Archons may respect him for his skills, but we’re
still his commander. He’ll make time for me.”

“Hope that doesn’t make him angry,” Esna said,
cringing at the idea of ticking him off first thing.

“Don’t worry, he’s going to be very happy to see you.
I can promise you that.”

14

The seda they boarded was huge and beyond anything Esna had ever dreamed of. Its name was
Seda JOR, but the three letters were nothing more than a way of numbering the
Canderian mobile battle stations/homes. It was the 6,466th seda constructed and
already hundreds of years old, with all the Canderous sedas being remodeled
rather than scrapped when technology upgrades were made, for the most part.
Some of the oldest ones that couldn’t jump between stars had been repurposed
for other uses, but now all sedas were built to last forever and Esna had no
doubt that was possible when looking at the artificial planet they were landing
on…or rather in, for there was no atmosphere surrounding it.

A hard layer of armor protected the exterior and they
were allowed through an opening into a hangar bay that they landed in as if it
was a planet, meaning they had to come in belly first and pass through an
atmospheric containment shield and down into a huge landing field with all
variety of craft, some of which made their dropship seem tiny in comparison.
From there they had worked their way down into the planet/seda that was level
after level of city. They found a lift and it carried them throughout the
interior to where they needed to go with Tyrenk telling her all kinds of crazy
things about what she saw around her and would see later.

Esna listened intently, her excitement and trepidation
growing with every second. This seda made the base on Tauntaun look like nothing,
and the weaponry covering its surface was so extensive even the V’kit’no’sat
would think twice before trying to attack it…and even if they did the seda was
so huge that it could take massive external damage while the interior levels
wouldn’t be touched. The scale of it all blew Esna’s mind…as well as all of the
Humans she saw walking around in almost all black uniforms that looked Star
Force, but the coloration was odd. Mixed in with the black was bits of dark
green that matched the color of the seda, and that deep green was seen
everywhere inside in small amounts as if it were their signature color but one
that they weren’t going to overuse.

The uniforms were trim and came in several varieties,
but the armor that a few of them wore was even more impressive. It was almost
like Commando armor, but styled differently. The helmet was the biggest
difference, with the visor rectangle being extended down the middle so that it
formed a ‘T’ rather than a bar. The armor was black as well with several dark green
stripes, making all the personnel stand out against the light greys and whites
that made up most of the walls, floor, and ceilings along with crisp white
lighting that made everything feel very bright and almost sanitized.

The air was crisp as well, heavily processed so not to
give the stagnant feel that inside air could suffer from, and there was almost
a buzz inherent in everything that made Esna’s energy level increase just by
being here…but it was the sight of so many Humans that made her jaw drop. She’d
gone from only knowing her brother and memories of her father on a planet full
of aliens to seeing scattered Humans mixed in with a varied Star Force
population, and that had been quite a shock, but here everyone was Human and for some reason that was hard for her mind
to process.

Esna got lost in the spectacle of it all and didn’t
realize how far they’d come by the time they’d arrived at the most secure
levels just outside the core of the seda that held the massive gravity drives
and other essential equipment. That meant they were so deep now that enemy
weaponsfire would have to dig for hours to get to them, and it also meant they
were in a place where most Canderians couldn’t even go.

Before Esna knew it they were walking into a room with
a single occupant and numerous holograms surrounding him. The Human stood up
from the workstation he’d been sitting at and walked forward, extending a hand
to the Archon before he looked down at Esna. He wore the same black with green
trim uniform everyone else did, but he had small tattoos on the left side of
his forehead that she hadn’t seen on anyone else. In addition to that, the man
felt so powerful that it rattled Esna, though she couldn’t put her finger on
why she was getting that sensation. After all, she was traveling with an Archon
and who was more powerful than them?

“So this is the one?” he said with a measured and
smooth voice.

“Her name is Esna Donovan and she was recovered from
the Devastation Zone. She has almost no training, and what she has was gained
on the fly running from the V’kit’no’sat. She’s seen battle with them in a
limited sense and wants to learn how to truly fight.”

“I think we can handle that,” Sen Legat
Artu said, staring down at her slightly. He wasn’t a
huge man, barely two inches taller than her, but his arms were thick like
Tyrenk’s without being bulky. He outmassed Esna, but
after spending so much time with a Calavari she would have said he was small if
not for the vibe she was getting off of him. “We’re always interested in
bringing in those wayward few with the will to become Canderians…and your
history makes you not only insanely lucky but a thorn in the V’kit’no’sat’s
side. A rogue Human right under their noses that got away from them not once,
but twice? Yes, you’re definitely welcome here.”

“Three times, actually,” Tyrenk added with a smile.
“We ran into trouble on the way out of Tauntaun and lost a lot of people in
ground combat after crash landing. Only myself, Esna, and a Kiritas tech made
it out alive.”

“Crash landed?” Artu asked
with a frown.

“A Kaeper caught us. We barely made it to atmosphere
in time.”

“They ran down an evac
ship?”

“Yes, and there was something special about this one.
We recovered the debris and the techs are looking into it, but it wasn’t
standard.”

“Debris? You took it down with you?”

“Rammed it.”

Artu smiled, then looked
back at Esna. “Never count an Archon out. They have a nasty habit of finding
ways to beat you even when they appear to be defeated. Canderous has learned
much from them, but there’s still something they possess that we lack.
Annoying, I’ll admit, but also fortunate that they’re on our side. We function
as a team, and if you’re ready we’ll start incorporating you into our part of
it immediately.”

Tyrenk raised a finger. “I held something back in my
message.”

“Oh?”

“She’s a newb, but something happened to her after the
crash…or maybe before, it’s impossible to know for sure.”

“Some type of injury?” Artu
wondered, frowning at the thought of what a regenerator couldn’t cure.

Tyrenk glanced at Esna. “Show him.”

Her eyes went wide. “Really?”

“Yeah. Go ahead,” he said, holding back a smirk.

“Ok,” Esna said uncomfortably, then reached into her
mind to the place she’d successfully locked down over the past weeks and found
the button for her Fornax, releasing a burst that made Tyrenk stumble, but the
Archon stayed on his feet. The Sen Legat did not,
losing all bodily control and falling to the ground in a twitching pile of
limbs until Esna stopped her energy release. The amount she could emit had
increased a decent amount, and she could have held the effect for 6 seconds if
she’d wanted, but had cut it off after 2. That twitching fall the Sen Legat took didn’t look comfortable at all and she didn’t
want to make him any madder than he was going to be.

When she released the field his bodily control
returned and he got an elbow underneath him, prying his torso off the ground
but stayed sitting there looking up at her in surprise as a smile worked its
way onto his face.

“Spontaneously development?”

“Yes,” Tyrenk answered. “This is the part where you’re
grateful, Legat.”

“Very,” Artu said, hopping
to his feet and locking eyes with Esna. “You are most welcome here, youngling.”

“You’re not mad?” she asked hesitantly.

“For knocking me down? Didn’t you tell her anything
about us, Archon?”

“A little.”

“We have no psionics,” he told Esna. “Only the Archons
do, and to a lesser extent the Protovic. They haven’t seen fit to share even
the simplest of abilities with Canderous or the other factions…a point of
ongoing contention,” he said, glancing at Tyrenk before returning his eyes to
Esna, “but there are a handful of individual Humans who attain psionics without
becoming Archons. They are rarer than rare, and Canderous has only been able to
recruit two, both of who possess Ikrid. We’ve never had someone with Fornax,
and if you’re willing we’ll teach you to make the most of it. The Archon said
you wished to fight…why is that?”

“The V’kit’no’sat have to be stopped,” Esna said
simply. “I want to be able to do that someday.”

“They are extremely dangerous, which is why the
Archons don’t let Canderous engage them very often in ground combat. Most of
our encounters are naval engagements, and even when we do go up against Zen’zat
they have an advantage against us. Even with your psionic, you would be
outmatched. We have to fight in teams to be effective, which we can teach you,
but most of Canderous’s work occurs on the Rim where
the V’kit’no’sat aren’t. There you could become very valuable,” Artu emphasized.

“What’s out there?”

The Sen Legat shook his head
at Tyrenk. “He’s told you next to nothing, hasn’t he?”

“There’s a lot to catch up on,” the Archon countered.
“And most of our discussions have revolved around the V’kit’no’sat.”

“Understandable. What he hasn’t told you is that Star
Force is engaged in more than one war. There are smaller threats on our rimward border, and Canderous is playing a sizeable part in
the fighting there. Those enemies do not have psionics, and with time and
training you could become a nightmare for them.”

“So I wouldn’t be fighting the V’kit’no’sat?” she
said, suddenly unsure about this.

Tyrenk put a hand on her shoulder. “Let me explain
something. The V’kit’no’sat empire is so huge there is no way we can defeat
them. If they massed all their ships and came after us we couldn’t defend
ourselves. They have other enemies they fight too, so we don’t get their full
attention. Even then, they destroy so many of our ships that we have to replace
them fast or get overrun. How we replace them involves what is going on out on
the rim. It is feeding us the resources we need to slow the V’kit’no’sat’s
advance and hopefully stop their progression. Right now we’ve slowed it to
almost a stop, but you saw firsthand on Tauntaun that they haven’t given up and
are looking for weaknesses to exploit. We have to keep the supplies coming, and
the rim is the key to that.”

“What are you doing out there?” Esna asked.

“Too much to explain, but the fighting there is more
widespread and there’s more of it than we currently have against the
V’kit’no’sat. Tauntaun wasn’t supposed to get hit, and my assignment there had
me doing other things besides fighting. If it’s fighting you want, the
V’kit’no’sat border is not where you want to go. If we’re lucky we can stall
them there, which would mean no fighting. If we’re not, it means they overrun
us and we have more lopsided fights like Tauntaun where we’re just running and
gunning enough to try and survive. If you want fights that are winnable and
that you can contribute to without having to wait through 500 years of
training, then the rim is where you need to eventually go, and Canderous will
get you there quicker than any other faction.”

“You can count on that,” Artu
promised.

“The key to fighting the V’kit’no’sat is winning on
the rim,” Tyrenk emphasized. “Our most elite troops are keeping the
V’kit’no’sat busy, delaying them as long as we can, but the real work being
done is on the rim. If we fail there, Star Force will crumble under the
constant attrition of V’kit’no’sat attacks. We have to grow the empire on the
rim as we lose worlds here, and if we can manage it, we need to grow faster
than we’re losing. That way they can’t defeat us so long as we can contain
their damage to a few areas.”

“Why don’t they come out to the rim?”

“They do occasionally, but we have roaming fleets to
hammer them if they do. If they have to move through our territory we can cut
off their supply lines and do a lot of other tricky things to make their lives
hell.”

“Plus they don’t like the idea of us holding onto any
systems,” Artu added. “It insults their ego.”

“Which is why they’re grinding us back system by
system and expanding the Devastation Zone. We have to keep expanding the other
direction, and to do that we have to fight new enemies that get in our way while
making allies when we can. If you want to help me and others fight the
V’kit’no’sat here, help us by expanding the empire and giving us more ships to
fight with.”

“And if you go to fight there,” Esna added, beginning
to understand, “it makes the front weaker and the V’kit’no’sat can break
through.”

“Quite right,” Artu
confirmed. “Though it’s mostly about naval forces, and to produce them we need
planets with resources and an army of workers to harvest, process, and
build…and those workers have to be protected while we procure more planets. The
V’kit’no’sat aren’t the only bad guys in the galaxy, they’re just the toughest,
and if you want to see field work sooner rather than later, help us fight
them.”

“And in the long run? Do I come back to the front?”

“Zen’zat have Ikrid blocks, but most do not possess
the rare psionic to diminish Fornax,” Artu said
reverently. “When you become powerful enough, you’ll be the best equipped
Canderian to fight them. But that type of growth doesn’t happen fast. You can
accomplish it in perpetual training or a mix of training and combat. Which
would you prefer?”

“I want to do something of value and will train as
long as necessary for that, but I want to be out there fighting. I want to be a
Commando for real, not just in training. If you need me on the rim, then that’s
where I’ll go until I’m strong enough to fight the V’kit’no’sat.”

“Good,” Tyrenk said with a nod. “Then my job is done
here.”

Esna blinked in surprise, but a firm hand on her
shoulder from the Archon helped to steady her.

“Dive in head first and learn to swim. Rammak started
you off on the path, now you have to pursue it in your own way and on your own
will power. Me sticking around will only interfere
with that.”

“I guess you’re right,” Esna said, suddenly feeling
empty again.

Tyrenk put a finger under her chin and raised it
slightly.

“See you next century,” he said, kissing her lightly
then walking out of the room without another word. He’d really meant what he
said, meaning Esna was on her own now and had to figure out her path forward
with the Canderians on her own. No more mentors. She had to do this.

“Well that was unexpected,” Artu
said after Tyrenk left. “I didn’t think Archons kissed.”

“He does,” Esna said, taking a deep breath and blowing
it out slowly. “Tell me what I need to do.”

“The first step is making you part of Canderous. That
means conversion training. You have to learn everything you didn’t get in a
maturia, but given your age and experience that will not take as long as
others. We have a special maturia program for people like you on this seda and
others. You’ll join them and progress as fast or slow as necessary. Typically
maturias operate with a class of peers, but because conversions happen in a
variety of ways your progress will be individual in nature. As long as you put
forth an honest effort, our trainers will get you to where you need to be
eventually. Right now all you need to worry about is following orders. We’ll
handle the rest.”

“When can I start?”

“Today,” the Sen Legat said
firmly, gesturing to the door that Tyrenk had just walked out. “Come with me
and I’ll see to it personally. Your psionic is a very valuable asset for
Canderous to develop. Take your time and learn, don’t rush it. I know you’re
eager, and that’s a good thing, but the conversion training is more about
transformation than passing a test. This is about you becoming Canderian and
becoming one of us. That won’t happen overnight,” he said as they walked out
into the corridor, with Tyrenk nowhere in sight.

“I’m not entirely sure what that means.”

“Nor should you. That’s what you will learn…along with
a great many other things.”

15

November 23, 4812

Tarric 3 System

Seda JOR

Esna barely made it out of the shower, dropping onto
the bed in her new quarters after doing an easy 2 mile run this morning,
totally exhausted. The remainder of today was a rest day and Esna badly needed
it as she curled up on top of her bed and transitioned into a crash nap. It had
been 10 days of straight training and she had thought after the first day that
they were going easy on her. Nothing they had her do was hard, and a lot of it
was pathetically easy. Running and agility drills, hand to hand form practice,
basic mathematics that were nothing more than she’d taught herself on Forso in order to better understand the technology she and
Teren had been salvaging and rebuilding…

Then there was a lot of smaller stuff, protocols and
other things that required focus and attention but no physical effort. The
second day had been no different, without anything that she could have
considered to be hard, but now she understood what Tyrenk had meant. Canderous
didn’t hammer you into the ground with impossible tasks…they hammered you into
the ground with the sheer number of easy and medium tasks assigned to you. Day
in and day out she was busy nonstop training, with her only down time being
used to sleep. When she woke it was into physical workouts, usually running
first thing, then a long string of activities that she was herded through by
trainers that didn’t give her two minutes of break in between.

It was a continuous grind of easy tasks that had taken
their toll over the past 10 days and she was very grateful for a rest period.
The trainers refused to tell her what their training schedule was, citing that
she had to learn to focus on the here and now and the task before her, meaning
she couldn’t plan out ahead of time how much energy she was going to use. With
Rammak and their running she’d gotten an idea of what was involved when he told
her how long or far they were going and she could set her mind to the task and
pace…but not here. They were keeping her blind, and right now all she cared to
think about was sleep.

Her mind blanked so far it would have surprised her if
she’d remained conscious, but Esna slipped into a 3 hour nap that felt like 20
minutes. When she woke she was stiff and groggy, but shook it off after a few
minutes of stumbling around her quarters. Now that Tyrenk was gone she didn’t
have access to any ambrosia and was really missing the energy boost, but to be
fair she had never earned it and a part of her preferred doing things the hard
way until she did…but her body was regretting not having it now.

One bit of relief was that all of her training hadn’t
involved her use of Fornax. She’d done a few drills on her own the first few
days, following the instruction that Tyrenk had given her previously, but the
continuous grind of training had left her gasping for as much sleep as she
could get and she hadn’t practiced the last few days. She thought about doing
some now, but decided to just do things the Canderian way. If she was going to
become one of them and they didn’t have psionics, she didn’t need to practice
her Fornax unless it started going off on its own again, and thankfully that
hadn’t happened here.

Esna grabbed some ration bars that she’d brought back
to her quarters and a big bottle of water, then plopped down in the single big
chair in the small living area set next to her bed. The quarters were small,
but they were all hers and felt appropriately cozy. Here she could rest, and
rest she was going to do as she turned on the entertainment and news channels
and just let herself process everything that had happened over the past days as
she topped off her stomach, not feeling like going to the cafeteria for a full
meal just yet.

Esna had about 9 hours before she’d go to bed, then she’d
wake up the next day back in the grind and she intended to spend those 9 hours
resting in one form or another, fearful that if she didn’t she might not be able
to keep up with the curios Canderian training regimen. It was hitting her in a
way she hadn’t expected, and they weren’t giving her any tips about how to deal
with it. Each individual activity they were giving her came with ample
instruction, but those were all encapsulated and she didn’t have any mentor or
advisor to help guide her through the overall process. Esna was on her own, and
that was an unfamiliar sensation that was beginning to hit her hard now that
she had time to think.

Back on Forso she had her
brother, Yammar, and Innit to key off of, then Rammak opened her eyes to the
universe and she’d clung to him for direction, knowing that she’d never have made
a tenth of her progress without him. Then when he was gone Tyrenk stepped in
somewhat to fill that void, and while never really accomplishing that he had
given her some badly needed direction…but now there was no one. Just her.

The Sen Legat hadn’t spoken
to her since he’d delivered her to the transitional maturia used for outsiders
coming into Canderous…or trying to, anyway. She didn’t become a Canderian until
she completed the program and the same was true for everyone else. Esna had met
some of them, all of whom had gone through maturia training elsewhere, but they
had to pass the Canderian version in order to join the faction and they were
moving along much faster than her. She was a newb, and there were no newbie
Humans in Star Force now. Apparently there had been a long time ago, and the
training she was going through now was based on what they had done, leaving her
in her own little program on its own timetable.

Even if there had been others in her situation she
wouldn’t have had time to associate with them. Other than her time on the track
or in the cafeteria she didn’t have time to talk to anyone, save for now, but
her body didn’t want to move from the comfortable chair, intent on soaking up
as much blissful rest as possible. As she thought about that she realized there
was no need, for even after completing the program…if she was able…she’d be
assigned somewhere else and not see these people again. Even if it was
somewhere in this seda she probably wouldn’t ever see them again, considering
it held some 1.1 billion people.

That number blew her mind, in addition to all the
other sedas out there, not just in this system, but everywhere. Canderous was
huge, but the scale of Star Force overall was mindblowing
when you included all the different factions, most of which were far larger
than Canderous.

Then there was the V’kit’no’sat, whose numbers dwarfed
those of Star Force. The galaxy was unbelievably huge, and while they had no
information beyond it, they knew there were millions of other galaxies in the
universe. Just what kind of a place had she been born into? The universe was so
big, so vast, and so many people in it that she couldn’t comprehend. She was a
tiny dot lost in a sea of dots within a sea of dots and so on.

But she was here, however that had happened, and her
path was really the only thing she could control. She wasn’t a Legat, let alone a Sen Legat. She
wasn’t an Archon or a trailblazer. She wasn’t responsible for guiding the
empire, or a faction, or a planet, or a station, or even a ship. Esna was only
in control of herself and her path…which was looking to be a very difficult one
going forward. There was no way she could take on the responsibilities of
others, and that fact really grounded her now. Rammak, Tyrenk, Nor’far,
Javvin…only now did she begin to glimpse how advanced they really were.

The training they must have gone through was something
she couldn’t hope to survive. She wasn’t in their league, and that fact made
her feel even smaller…but it was a good feeling. A real feeling. Illusions were
being stripped away and the enormity of what she was involved in was starting
to sink in. Others might have shied away from it, but Esna didn’t. She let go
any thoughts of others, knowing that her task was 100% on her now. No one was
fighting or dying to keep her alive, and if she failed here only she would be
affected by it. There were so many people in Star Force and Canderous that they
didn’t need her…but she intended to contribute, someday at least, and earn a
place for herself here.

And she still had her Fornax. Right now it was
worthless, but in the long run it would become valuable. Now though, she had to
do this like every other Canderian did and that’s where her full effort had to
be placed.

The more she thought about it the more she felt like
she was racing across Forso with Rammak again. Each
day they moved somewhere different, learning and growing and knowing that
things would never be the same. Each day Esna made it through her training it
would put her further away from her former self and she had to embrace that
change, even though she had no idea where she was going. That part was
familiar, at least, and Rammak had taught her enough that she knew what to do
now. This was her journey and she had to take it one step at a time, never
giving up, never slacking off, never letting her focus
waver.

Which was why she knew she had to take advantage of
her rest period and not squander it on extra training, so she made a decision
not to practice her Fornax while going through the Canderian training. At least
not until they requested it of her. She’d just pack away the ability for
exploration later. Right now she was a trainee, with an aching body and a mild
headache, sipping water and eating ration bars with the days already blurring
together. She had to embrace the chaos and find her way through it, crawling if
necessary. If she could there would be a future for her…or she could quit and
make a place for herself in another faction as a civilian.

That would be far better than what she’d known on Forso, but it wasn’t even a possibility in Esna’s mind…it
was failure. She didn’t want to be a civilian, she wanted this…needed this.
This was her path, and the fear of losing it was nibbling at the back of her
mind and driving her to fully commit to the training and find a way to make it
through. If Tyrenk thought she could do it, then there was a way. If not, he
wouldn’t have brought her here. And she knew Rammak would have told her she
could do it…but he would have warned her not to underestimate training that was
supposed to be harder than what the Calavari had gone through.

She had the benefit of his help, his teachings, and
his experience…but she was going to have to do something that he didn’t, and in
a way that meant she was going to be his peer. He didn’t have a mentor, as far
as she knew, when he had gone through his training and now neither did she as Esna faced things he’d never encountered. Canderous
was different from the rest of Star Force. How so she’d be learning in time,
but all the factions had differences. This was one a military faction, and as
Tyrenk had said, they pushed their trainees as far as possible without breaking
them.

“Well, Rammak,” she said to the empty room. “This is
when I get a chance to prove myself. You thought I was worth saving. I hope I
don’t disappoint you, but whatever happens I won’t quit. I won’t quit. I
promise.”

3 months later…

Esna broke the water’s surface, gasping for air as she
swam lightly holding position. There was a thick fog in the air, making it
impossible to see more than a meter or so. The water was warm, but she was
naked. No breath mask, no armor, no propulsion units. Her lack of clothes was
actually an advantage, for her skin was smooth and cut through the water
nicely, but the lack of equipment was a problem as she steadied her breathing
then dove again.

Esna kept her head upright, using her arms to force
her body lower and lower until she hit the bottom of the pool where there was a
handhold. Looping her fingers through it, Esna planted her soft feet against
the hard surrounding artificial rock and pulled, trying to keep the air in her
lungs there against the effort as the seal popped and another light illuminated
on the floor.

Swimming back to the surface she had to fight the
burning in her lungs, then she broke through and sucked in more foggy air,
readying herself for another dive that was part of her emergency training.
She’d already gone through more than a month of swimming drills, both under her
own power and with propulsion units, full and partial suits, and other types of
equipment. But as had been pointed out to her, you didn’t always get to prep
for battle and one had to be able to adjust and improvise under less than ideal
circumstances…which today meant she got stripped down and thrown into the water
from a not so subtle height as the water level continued to rise. If it reached
the ceiling she would have no air to breathe and the training challenge would
fail, flushing the water out so she didn’t die, but if this wasn’t a training
situation and there really was flooding it was better to get some practice at
it now, along with the idea of abandoning your casual uniform because it would
slow you down in the water.

She didn’t really understand that until she’d got
thrown in, having to squirm for every second she could get and feeling the
water flowing over her skin. Her hair was the only drag on her, and when she
was underwater she decided then and there to cut it off by the end of the day.
Esna needed every advantage she could get, and if losing it would speed her up
even a tiny amount she was going to claim that bit of efficiency…but right now
she didn’t have time to think about anything else, for it was taking her longer
and longer to recover her breathing before diving back down again and getting
another seal pulled.

Each time she did the inflow rate of the water
decreased, but she only had a couple of meters of air left. The drop from the
ceiling portal she’d fallen through at the beginning was almost gone now, and
as Esna dove back down through the dark water she doubted she was going to make
it in time. When her feet hit the floor she pulled her hands down below her
knees with a few more swipes at the water and felt around for another seal
handle, cursing herself for every second she wasted fumbling around. The little
lights didn’t provide enough illumination to see by, but they did mark the
locations of the seals she’d already pulled so she didn’t inadvertently pull
the same one twice.

When Esna found another one she leveraged herself into
position and pulled, then swam up what was becoming a longer and longer
distance to the surface as the water deepened. When her face hit air the tiny
lights on the dark ceiling had gone from hazy to distinct, meaning they were
just out of reach through the fog and Esna didn’t have much time left. She
wanted to go back down now, but the wiser part of her mind told her it would be
a waste because she’d have to come back up before getting another seal. She had
to get her breathing under control before going back down…but she didn’t have
the time. It was either wait or go now, and given the two bad situations she
chose to wait, because going now would accomplish nothing.

Esna rushed herself, diving back down a little earlier
than she thought prudent and got another seal, reducing the water flow a bit
more as she swam hard to get back up to the air, kicking her legs furiously as
her control broke and a large bubble of air slipped her lips. She clamped down
on her mouth hard as a bit of water came back in, as well as up her nose, and
she got back into the air without the emergency override kicking in and ending
the challenge. Esna coughed and spat, clearing her lungs as the ceiling was
less than a meter away now. She could see it and could almost reach out and
touch it. Knowing she was only going to get one more, Esna got as much air into
her as she could as the water level continued to increase, then she dove again.

When she got the seal and return to the top her chest
exploded with fear as her head hit the ceiling before she got into the air. Feeling
it with her fingertips and forehead, she flipped herself laterally and poked
her nose and mouth into the few inches of air left, breathing heavily and
carefully as she knew she was about to drown with only the promise of the
trainers to end it keeping her wits together. She knew they would, but the reality
of the rising water was still a real threat and could kill her if they
didn’t…or if there was a mechanical malfunction or if they fell asleep or many
other things that could go wrong. Esna was in danger and there was no way she
could get another seal, so she sucked air as the last few inches disappeared
and she was forced to close her mouth and pinch her nose as it rose above her
ability to draw on.

Panic flooding through her, the water didn’t lower.
She held onto her breath, but nothing happened. All she could do was wait, but
the reality that she was about to suck in water whether she wanted to or not
caused her to clamp down on her nose with one hand and cover her mouth with the
other, pulling herself into a ball and trying to squeeze out a few more
seconds. They’d promised to lower the water, what were they waiting for? Were
they going to make her drown then revive her?

That thought exploded in her mind, causing her focus
to slip and a cough of air to slip through her hand. Water seeped back in and she
started convulsing in panic and trying to direct her mind elsewhere…

Suddenly the pressure of the water around her
disappeared in a flash, pulling down her body over the course of a second and a
half and air returned. Esna coughed and coughed, then wheezed as she breathed
too fast and pulled in droplets of water that caused her to choke as the force
fields held her body in the air as the water drained back down to starting
position. Even though she was in the air now she was not alright, and it took nearly
20 seconds before her body recovered enough that she was able to look at where
she was and feel the energy field wrapping around her now dry body.

A portal opened on the ceiling and she was pulled up,
passing through then dropped on the ground beside it in front of two trainers.
Esna collapsed and kept coughing, then glared up at them angrily. Before she
could get enough air to say anything one of them raised an apologetic hand as
she knelt next to her.

“You failed the challenge and we returned the air as
promised, but we delayed it long enough for you to experience the price of
failure short of actually drowning. It’s not pleasant, nor should it be, but
how you deal with situations like this is important and you can’t get that
experience if you know it’s coming. Nobody passes this
challenge the first time. Everyone fails and has to face drowning. You did well
to hold out as long as possible, and physically covering your nose and mouth is
a strategy that most don’t think of. You’re ticked now, and you should be,
because we shouldn’t have let it go that far. We don’t like doing this, but
it’s necessary. No one drowns here, but we get you as close as possible so if
you do encounter this situation in real life you’ll be able to stay alive a few
seconds longer.”

Esna stood up on one knee, only a few inches away from
her, then promptly slapped her right hand across the trainer’s face with an
audible ‘pop’ that knocked her to the ground.

The other trainer snickered, seeing the fire in Esna’s
eyes, but the one who’d gotten hit didn’t respond other than to step away and
give Esna some space.

“This doesn’t occur a second time,” the other trainer
said, his voice low and respectful, yet obviously pleased with her reaction.
“You will have to hold out in this challenge in the same way, but there will be
a countdown clock so you know how long at the end it will take you until the
reset. You won’t be passing this challenge for a long time, and you’re going to
have to face drowning again. We won’t let it get that far, and if you fail to
control yourself and suck in water we’ll drain the pool immediately, but if you
can’t get all the seals closed you’ll have to survive a set amount of time
without air. You will know what it is, so you can practice and experiment with
techniques to avoid what just happened.”

“I can’t breathe without air,” Esna said, coughing
again, “No matter how much I train.”

“But you can extend your window of survivability,” the
female trainer added, now with a red mark on her face. “And I deserved that. We
both did.”

“Don’t do that again,” Esna warned with venom in her
voice.

“We’re not here to be your friend, we’re here to be
your trainers. Sometimes that means we have to be your enemy. Hate us if you
like, you have reason to, but we won’t let you die.”

“And if we mess up and you do, there’s a regenerator
standing by. We’re not so sloppy to allow it to come to that though. You may
suffer as you learn, but we won’t let you come to much damage from lack of
oxygen.”

Still shaking at the horror she’d just experienced,
Esna’s anger at their somewhat flippant attitude flared and a wave of hate
surged through her. She stood all the way up, then walked in between them with
a look of pure fire in her eyes.

“It will pass,” the female said reassuringly. “In tim…”

Esna didn’t let her finish speaking, reaching into her
mind and surging as much of a Fornax field as she could. Both trainers dropped
to the ground twitching uncontrollably as their bodies lost motor control. Esna
held the field as long as she could, which amounted to 7 seconds of them
banging around on the ground before her strength was exhausted and the nude
trainee walked towards the pile of her clothes in the corner where she’d left
them.

“Experience that,” she said icily as they got to their
feet.

“What the hell did you do?”

Esna didn’t answer, getting dressed and walking
towards the door. “Am I finished here?”

“What was that?” the male trainer demanded, but calmly
so.

“Fornax,” she said firmly. “I am done here?”

“Yes you are.”

Esna spun around and walked out, meeting with the
handler waiting outside that would take her to her next training assignment for
the day.

“She has a psionic?” the female trainer asked after
Esna had left.

“Obviously.”

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t know. I thought only Archons had psionics.”

“Is she an Arc Knight?”

“Her skills are too poor. Did an Archon get laid and
have a youngling?”

“Surely not.”

“Then what else?”

“I don’t know, but we need to find out. If she’d done
that to us next to open water we would drown.”

16

April 2, 4813

Tarric 3 System

Seda JOR

Esna ran up the stone stairs, taking them two at a
time as the sound of footsteps behind her pushed the adrenaline running through
her veins higher. Her pursuit was a pair of trainers operating robotic suits
from a booth outside the combat park, allowing their minds to drive the
movements of the machines while allowing Esna to damage them without worry of
harming the trainers.

They moved like people in armored suits and could run
faster than her. That was a problem out in the open like this, but once she got
to the top of the stairs she turned a hard right and ran into a dense bit of
forest, weaving between trees as she breathed hard then clamped down on it as
she slid to a halt, dropping to a knee and spinning around. Esna raised her
pistol and fired a pair of shots back, hitting one of her pursuers and burning
a little bit of armor off the chest plate before it too ducked behind a tree.
She fired one more shot, missing both, then sprang to her feet and took off
again.

A stun blast shot through the air barely missing her
shoulder with the tiny blue orb smashing into a tree trunk and harmlessly
soaking in. Had it hit Esna a part of her body would have become numb, but it
wouldn’t have knocked her out completely…even if it hit her in the head. The
purpose of this challenge was to practice evasion and be punished for mistakes
on the spot, not have one mistake result in a failure and reset that would
waste valuable time.

Esna had already taken several hits, but if she could
keep running and stay ahead of her pursuit the effect would wear off
eventually, though right now her right shin was still half numb and that made
stepping over roots and rocks problematic. She had to look down far too much to
make sure she lifted her leg high enough to get over them, but soon she came
out onto a concrete plain with no cover whatsoever with tripping no longer on
her mind.

She stopped running, bending over and breathing
heavily as the two machines caught up to her but didn’t step on the concrete.
They didn’t fire either, for she had escaped their section of the park and was
no longer a valid target. That didn’t mean she was safe though, for soon an
aerial vehicle half her size flew in on silent engines that she managed to spot
out of the corner of her eye. She fired several lethal rounds of Dre’mo’don
energy at it from her pistol, missing with all of them as the disc-shaped
device evaded and sprayed a shower of stun blasts so small Esna barely felt
them, but they came down like raindrops over an area several meters wide and
made it almost impossible for her to dodge.

She knew from previous runs that if she delayed the
small numbing effect would add up, so she ignored the drone the sprinted across
the concrete plain and hung a hard left, bypassing the river on the right and
choosing to go through the heat zone instead. When she hit it she passed
through an energy field that the drone didn’t, escaping it but being hit with
air temperatures well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Her breathing immediately became more difficult, but
it was her bare feet that were the biggest problem. Every step she took was
hot, with some areas hotter than others almost to the scorching point. She’d
had to lose her shoes in stage two of the course in order to make it through in
time, and now it was coming back to hurt her…literally, but she didn’t want to
go through the river and underwater tunnel to get to zone 18.

Taking the heat zone was stupid, but it was her choice
and she made it through with only one hit in her right leg by an automated
turret. Coming out the far side ran her into the cold zone with the snap
transition between temperatures really hitting her hard as a waterfall of ice
cold water smashed into her a few steps into the other side.

Esna hadn’t expected it to be there. She’d run through
this course over a hundred times by now, but had only gotten this far 6 times
and gone the cold route 5 of those times. It hadn’t been here before, and when
it hit her the fraction of a second that felt like relief switched into traumatic
shock as her body was thrown in temperature reverse and she fell along with the
weight of the water as it continued to crash down on top of her and flow off
across the ice that her bare hands and feet now pressed into.

Esna cringed, forcing herself to crawl forward enough
to get out of the falling water and onto a snow bank, then she curled up in a
ball trying to fight off the cold as her skin rapidly froze. After a few long
seconds of not moving the challenge end siren blared and trainers appeared out
of nowhere, hauling her out of the snow and carrying her to a nearby wall that
opened up with a secret entrance and got her back into normal air tempts as
they wrapped her up in a blanket that registered her skin temperature and input
or sucked away as much heat as necessary to get her back to normal levels.

“Where…did that…damn…waterfall…come from?” she said
through chattering teeth and shaking limbs.

“Randomization,” one of the trainers said. “You’ve got
to learn to deal with it. In a real combat situation you’re not going to have
the luxury of practice beforehand.”

“It wasn’t there…before.”

“It was, it just didn’t activate. Remember for next
time,” he said as Esna’s feet hit the lukewarm floor as she fought for
self-control. Wrapped up in the thermal blanket she took a few small steps that
built into a normal stride as she shook off the cold. This wasn’t the first
time Canderian training had blindsided her…in fact she thought they prided
themselves on doing it just shy of causing serious damage. She had to complete
this course to advance to the next stage of her training, and it was taking far
too long. Each time she progressed into a new stage she had to learn the hard
way what the threats were and find a way to escape or defeat them…then do it
over and over again as she progressed further and further each time, though she
didn’t always make it this far.

The trainers led her to a private room where they left
her with a countdown clock active. It had 18 minutes and 8 seconds on it,
meaning she had that much of a rest break to recover before moving on to her
next challenge of the day. Esna knew what it was and did not want to go through
it again, but she had no choice…other than to quit…and that wasn’t an option
for her.

Huddling within the blanket as it quickly stabilized
her, Esna’s mind blanked in a technique she’d developed in previous months. She
didn’t fall asleep, but all extraneous thoughts were silenced and she focused
on the moment…and right now she needed to recover as much as possible, so she focused
her attention on that and let herself not worry about anything else. Once that
clock ended she would have to deal with it then, not now, and pointless
worrying only diminished her healing rate, so Esna held her pose unmoving and
feeling her body adjust. Her mind assisted mostly by not getting in the way,
and when the door opened and her handler came for her with her shoes she was
ready…more or less.

It was a short, but brisk walk to another training
chamber that she dreaded, then she pulled her shoes back off again along with
the rest of her clothes and put them in a small, neat pile next to the door
before walking over to a circular hatch in the floor. She stood on it, then the
trainers triggered the release and the floor dropped out from under her.

Esna fell through the air pointing her toes down and
making her body as straight as possible while crossing her arms over her chest
and clamping one hand over her nose and mouth before she hit the water, driving
her body down deep before she reached her arms out and began forcing herself
lower in the pool to get at the first seal. Closing it reduced the water
flowing into the room a bit, and Esna stretched her oxygen enough to find and
close another before frantically swimming back up to the foggy, dark surface
and gasping for air.

She wasn’t going to be able to get two again, for her
fall had gained her distance underwater, but Esna needed to trim a little time
off each surface visit so she focused her mind into blankness and let her body
calm down faster than normal as it recharged with steady breathing.

Sucking in another breath, she dove back down feet
first and clawed for depth with her arms until she hit the bottom, then found a
seal and closed it before coming back up. Over and over she repeated the
process until the room filled up and only a few inches of air remained. Knowing
she couldn’t make another run she stayed up top, breathing regularly until the
air pocket disappeared and she was forced to hold her breath again.

Little lights appeared in a rectangle just above her,
with one disappearing each half second as the 45 second countdown ran. Esna
held onto her mouth and nose, making it easier to force her mind somewhere else
to distract herself into waiting it out. When she got to 15 seconds elapsed her
body started to object, with her lungs complaining so heavily at the end her
body scrunched up in a ball as she clenched every muscle she had trying to keep
control so to not involuntarily open her mouth. It was a tug of war between her
conscious control and her autonomic safeguards, and the more need of oxygen she
had the more powerful those safeguards became. They didn’t know there wasn’t
air to breath, they just knew there wasn’t enough air in her lungs and that if
she didn’t open her mouth she’d die from lack of oxygen.

Esna’s mind wanted to panic, but she clamped down on
it as best she could not even looking at the lights, then the feeling of the
force field washing over her and pulling the water down told her the challenge
was over. Failed again, but not because of a safety override. Esna let go of
her mouth and tried to take small breaths, but didn’t fully succeed. She
started choking and coughing as her body tried to get as much air in as
possible and she suffered through another adjustment fit before the heavy and
steady heaves returned and her mind came out of its panic.

A few more seconds there she lingered, suspended in
air by the force fields until they pulled her up through the hatch and
deposited her up top with the trainers again. She didn’t punch or Fornax them,
merely walking over and getting her clothes back on as her breathing gradually
slowed, then her handler took her to her next assignment. It wasn’t a
challenge, but rather sparring practice against robotic opponents so she could
practice certain moves over and over again with precise repetition.

Esna put the thought of the water behind her and
focused on living and persisting in the moment until the long list of daily
activities ended, then the handler led her to an equipment room where she
showered and got a fresh set of clothes and shoes. After that she went straight
to a cafeteria and ate quickly, for if she didn’t Esna had learned her fatigued
state would have her spending too much time here.

Forcing herself to eat as if it was another
assignment, Esna didn’t talk to anyone and didn’t take time to watch the news
feeds displayed on the ceiling. She filled up her stomach then walked off and
back to her quarters where she slipped off her shoes then fell into bed,
pulling the covers over her and blanking her mind again to ensure she got every
minute of available sleep. Wasting those was stupid, and before long the next
day’s alarm woke her all too soon.

Esna crawled out of bed and met her handler at the
door, then she was off on another gauntlet of training assignments and
challenges with the Human doing everything she could just to keep up until her
next rest day came…and she was never told when those would pop up, meaning she
just had to keep going indefinitely.

And that, Esna thought, was the point the Canderians
were trying to instill. If not for Rammak’s previous training she never would
have made it this far…and with each day that passed she didn’t know if she was
going to be able to make it another hour, let alone a day. She wasn’t going to
quit, but the possibility of there being a time when her body simply wouldn’t
respond and she’d be forced to quit by default bounced around in the back of
her mind those few times when she wasn’t successfully concentrating. That said,
her fatigue was an ally in keeping it silent, for most of the time she was too
tired to do anything other than the tasks assigned to her or fall into a deep,
badly needed sleep.

17

May 15, 4813

Tarric 3 System

Seda JOR

Esna jumped at the end of her survival run, getting
her fingertips on the upper edge of a stone wall and leveraging herself up on
the power of her arms alone…which were now considerably thicker than they’d
ever been before. Using her increased leverage, she got a foot up on the edge
and rolled herself over with a jerk, then dropped down on the far side where
she landed in a mud puddle, splashing her mostly clean uniform with dirty warm
water.

This was as far as Esna had gotten. Previously she’d
been shot down each time she tried to get over the wall, leaving her now in
unfamiliar territory. There was a path ahead through the trees that seemed to
be the only option so she stomped out of the water for a few strides then took
off running slowly, knowing that whatever traps were ahead she’d probably have
to spring by bumbling into them. Not many did she usually spot beforehand, and
her accumulated knowledge and mastery of the course thus far was nothing more
than the result of trying, failing, and learning a nauseating number of
times…so many now that she’d lost count.

But to her surprise there was nothing to stop her as
she ran a short distance on a curvy trail before the trees disappeared and
there was a grassy clearing on the other end of which was the finish pedestal.
Esna felt a surge of adrenaline along with a warning…there was no way it was
going to end this easy.

Looking and listening she couldn’t spot any trouble,
so she gritted her teeth and sprinted, hoping to get to the pedestal before
anything could hit her. She ran through some 20 meters with no interference,
hope surging in her all the way up to the pedestal…where she ran face first
into an invisible shield wall.

Esna hit hard, bouncing off it with a bloody nose and
some other minor injuries just a few meters short of the finish. Her head spun
with disorientation as she scrambled to get to her feet, falling down once
before she forced herself to take the time to recover, during which she placed
a hand on the shield wall. It didn’t appear to her eyes aside from some small
distortions around her fingertips, but…

Then she saw it. Off to the side behind a tree trunk
on the edge of the grassy clearing was a sign, almost in comical form, with an
arrow below it. The sign read ‘Off Switch’ and beneath the arrow was a big red
button the size of her hand on the ground.

Esna crawled towards it a few steps before she managed
to get to her feet, then a spray of stun blasts hit her along the spine and she
fell again, forcing herself to crawl. She knew if she went down for too long
the challenge would end, and she wasn’t going to let it go that easily. Esna
crawled all the way over to the button, but her legs went numb two meters
before it. She then crawled with her hands, dragging her body inch by inch as
the silent drones above her peppered her with hits.

She got within half a meter before her body left her
control and her broken nose fell into the grass where it continued to bleed
out.

Esna didn’t fully lose consciousness, but got so doped
from all the stun blasts she didn’t realize the trainers were over her until a
device latched onto the back of her neck and the pain suddenly went away. A few
pops and twists later her nose realigned and healed, along with the other small
injuries she’d suffered, then it disconnected and the numbing vanished…with her
realizing that she was no longer on the course, but in a hallway outside the
organic park.

“I hate you guys,” she whispered, sitting on the
ground for a moment as she felt her nose that was now clean of blood and
uninjured, but it still felt a little odd and her tongue seemed to taste
metallic coconut…whatever that was.

“Close youngling, but not close enough. Live and
learn,” the female trainer said, offering her a hand up. Esna ignored it and
stood on her own, then walked off and back to the now familiar equipment room
where she got out of her muddy clothes and into a new uniform before meeting
her handler and getting shuffled to her next assignment for the day.

That was a sprinting workout on the track, but not one
of the lazy oval tracks for beginners. At least she’d advanced far enough to
get on the halo track that had no turns. Using artificial gravity it actually
ran on the walls…or at least that’s how it looked until you stepped into the
transition zone, for you felt that ‘down’ was the wall and everyone else was
tipped sideways.

The halo track was 3 miles long and a giant loop that
curved upwards slightly under your feet, but so slightly you didn’t feel it and
the AG always kept you centered, so you were always running on ‘flat’ track.
It’s where all the advanced Canderians went for their workouts, and Esna was
glad that at least her sprinting workouts rated use of the track as a trainer
took her to an outside lane and ran her guts out as others passed by on the
inside lanes. Some of them were moving so fast Esna could hardly believe it,
for they even made Rammak look slow, and Esna sprinting still couldn’t match
their steady speed.

When Esna was heaving after her last one, the trainer
waited by patiently for her to catch her breath then jerked along with her as
an alarm sounded. One Esna had heard before on Tauntaun…and one that she would
never forget.

“The Viks?” she asked, still breathing heavily.

“Damn it, yes,” the trainer said with a snarl as the
other people on the track suddenly stopped their workouts and headed for the
nearest exit as a second alarm followed, one that Esna had learned about during
her lessons between workouts where she had to fight just as hard against her
fatigue to stay awake and absorb all the knowledge…and the knowledge told her
that alarm was a call to battle stations. “Relevance point, now.”

“Going,” Esna said as the trainer took off ahead of
her as soon as she’d confirmed the order. ‘Relevance point’ was where everyone
who didn’t have a critical function went in case of the seda coming under
attack. They’d then be organized and put to use as necessary, and even with
Esna’s limited training she could still fire a weapon if necessary so she ran
on her tired legs through corridors that were known to her and others that weren’t
until she got to the nearest Relevance Point and slid inside the open doorway
along with others.

They didn’t mill about in an unorganized fashion,
rather they all headed towards empty booths that were little more than squares
on the ground and only a couple of inches high. Esna knelt down and interfaced
with the data pad built into the floor. She identified herself and input her
status as ‘standby’ then sat down, as did the others, waiting as they watched
the main hologram that was repeated several times down the length of the room
as thousands of people arrived.

There was a system hologram detailing the star and
both the fleet and the stations, sedas included, surrounding it in multiple
locations. The jumpline to the Grid Point was also marked, with many ships
heading towards it to avoid the danger zone marked on the far side of the star
where V’kit’no’sat warships had begun to arrive in great number, pouring in
three or four at a time as they were staggered to avoid slamming into each
other during the massive deceleration that occurred at the terminus of an
interstellar jump.

The Canderous fleet, along with the rest of Star
Force, was already repositioning across the system, but most of what was here
was in low stellar orbit and relatively very close to one another. That kept
travel times to within an hour for the most part, and would allow the fleet to
get to the arrival jumppoint before all the Vik ships arrived…but they weren’t
all going. Some were repositioning to the jumpline to the Grid Point, which did
not make any sense.

Even though time passed slowly with naval ships
repositioning, it didn’t seem slow to her. Dread filled her, for the Viks
wouldn’t be here unless they had an advantage, but she also wanted to see
Canderous kick some ass as she’d been told they had the capacity to do.

Esna didn’t have to wait long, for both the Canderians
and the rest of Star Force hit the incoming jumppoint immediately before the
mass of Vik ships could arrive. The drone warships that every faction in Star
Force used were different from what the Canderians had, for they were small
compared to the Vik ships but numerous. The Canderians also had drone warships,
but theirs were much larger and did not require carriers to get them from
system to system. They weren’t as large as most of the Vik ships, but they
dwarfed the rest of the Star Force drones.

They were being controlled from command ships nearby,
but could also be controlled from the sedas if close enough. Esna had been
taught how to operate one of the gunnery slots, though she doubted she’d get
the chance unless almost everyone else on the station was killed. Still, it was
her job to report here and make ready to assist in whatever way was necessary.

But battles of this scale could take weeks to run
their course, so once everyone was on station in the Relevance Point and logged
in, they began getting dismissed in stages to return to other duties while
keeping a balance in reserve for fast implementation. Esna was released with
the third group two hours in, but her handler wasn’t so Esna had some time of
her own to work with. She needed to sleep but couldn’t with the Viks so close.

She instead sat down at the terminal in her quarters
and activated the holographic display, seeing the huge battle continuing at the
jumppoint while more Vik ships were continuing to pour in as the others
defended their position to keep Star Force from poaching them on arrival. The
Viks were taking huge losses to hold that point, but already the tide was
turning and the enemy line was pushing out wide of the jumppoint. That meant
they were making it impossible to stop the incoming ships, and if they were
doing that it meant they far outnumbered the Star Force fleet.

They couldn’t keep up the fight there, even Esna could
see it, but they stuck around and sniped at the edges of the Vik fleet without
heavy engagement for several more hours, then they abandoned that attack and
conceded the enemy’s arrival point as they reformed around the sedas…all of
which had moved to the jumpline for the Grid Point and stood as a huge impediment
protecting the ships coming in and out.

Ships coming out from the Grid Point were escorted to
other jumplines so they could leave the system, and those coming in were also
so escorted, but the traffic out of the Grid Point soon stopped. Incoming
traffic from outside the system didn’t end until a few days later, but the Viks
weren’t in a hurry. They held their jumppoint and pooled their ships, in the
hundreds of thousands, until they had all arrived. Then they sat there, waiting
and watching, before sending out several groups to shut down other incoming
jumplines in the hopes of catching a ship or two.

Then horrifyingly they did, with a ship group coming
in on an odd jumpline. The ships were Gfatt, a member
of the Nexus, and were horribly outmatched. They knew it instantly and ran, but
the Vik ships pursued and were going to catch them. Esna could see that
clearly, as could everyone else, which was why a huge group of Star Force ships
shot out to get there first…and that triggered the huge fight that everyone saw
coming.

It happened quickly, and Star Force did get to the Gfatt in time to save them. They took damage but survived
as the drones swarmed the V’kit’no’sat as their massive fleet followed up their
interceptors and chased the retreating Star Force ships back to the sedas. They
hesitated only slightly to allow the rest of their fleet to assemble, then in
one massive wall of weaponry they went after the assembled Star Force fleet
completely ignoring the sedas.

But the sedas didn’t ignore them. The battle alarm
sounded again and Esna was pulled out of her training along with everyone else
to get to the Relevance Point. She was dripping wet when she arrived, having
just come out of the lap pool, but the equipment didn’t care about the water
and neither did she.

Watching the holograms Esna’s breath caught in her
throat. The scale of the attack was beyond imagining…and the response from the
sedas was just as impressive. The miles and miles of acreage on the surface of
all the sedas spilled out so much weaponry that the black of space became so
brilliant the holograms had to diminish the illumination in order for the ships
to become visible as they weaved in and out around them, both Star Force and
Vik, as they fought one another.

At first Esna didn’t understand why they weren’t
attacking the sedas, then she realized that if they did that the drones would
be given free shots back at them. They had the superior maneuverability the
sedas didn’t and the lesser masses, meaning they could be destroyed quickly
while the massive space stations could not. Thus the Viks were trying to reduce
the amount of weaponry being fired at them as fast as possible, which meant
picking on the small ships first.

But that was at great cost, for the sedas had been
built specifically to fight the Viks and did the Canderians proud as they
released huge streams of energy that Esna knew were Dair’me. She wasn’t a tech,
but she knew they were a weapon taken from Vik designs that was a shield
drainer, and within all the confusion of moving ships and firing weapons she
could see those strikes on the enemy ships being followed up with coordinated
strikes by the drones. The sedas would strip or weaken the Vik shields on their
largest ships, then the fleet would pound them and run, reducing the time they
spent soaking up damage with their own shields, armor, or hulls.

There was so much going on she couldn’t follow it, and
the sedas had so many different types of weapons they could hurt and kill the
Vik ships in many different ways, but in the hours that followed one general
trend was arising…and that was that the Star Force fleet was dropping like
flies even as the sedas savaged the Vik fleet.

Esna didn’t know what was going on, but soon some of
the smaller sedas also began to get targeted and that’s when her seda and the
other Battlemoon-class
station began to reposition to the head of the formation with all the other
sedas falling in behind them along with the surviving ships as they
repositioned along the jumpline to the Grid Point.

When that happened, Seda JOR began taking shield hits,
as those Vik ships that were out of position to shoot anyone else began
unloading onto them. Meanwhile the Viks tried to flank the reforming Star Force
formation as they realized they were beginning to make a fighting retreat. The
Canderians also knew it, with them sending sedas out to the edges of the
jumpline so the ships could have a somewhat protected interior corridor, taking
hits and targeting Vik ships that jumped the gap, then the first ships in the
surviving fleet began making slow jumps out towards the Grid Point.

Bit by bit they pulled back, leaving the sedas as the
primary targets as they hammered back at the Viks. There was so much carnage
that Esna’s seda lost shields and began to take hull damage…at which point she
was assigned a task and the trainee took off through the interior of the
station to a prep area. There she assembled and geared up with others for
search and rescue operations, waiting without view of what was going on outside
for when and where they told her to go and look for survivors in the exterior
layers of the seda that were now getting hammered hard.

18

Esna waited on standby for a long time, then when the
word came she and dozens of others in envirosuits followed their team leader
into the lift system that took them up towards the surface, stopping at level
89. That was 89 levels below the armor level, and when they stepped out they
saw normal corridors that looked slightly odd. It took her a moment as they
began to run through them to realize that they were askew, warped slightly out
of their normal exaggerated octagonal shape. She didn’t see any cracks in the
material, but something had put so much pressure on the panels that they had
bent slightly.

They hit a nearby stairwell and ran up it, then
laterally for a few hundred meters before they saw the first major damage. Her
atmospheric readings were steady, but filled with trace gasses that her
envirosuit filtered out so she didn’t have to breathe them as her team ran down
to the first blockage, with the leading pair being ordered to stop and move the
debris aside while the rest of them slid past.

That continued until Esna was deployed along with two
others on a beam that had skewered the ceiling and poked all the way down
through the floor.

“We’re not moving this, but we need to patch the hole
in the floor,” another Canderian said, pointing a few steps behind them. “Take
off that wall panel.”

“Got it,” Esna said, heading to the intact bit of
corridor and finding the nearly invisible seams. Pulling a small tool out of
her envirosuit’s belt pouch she slid it in and
flicked the activation button. It cut along the seam in a straight line, with
her repeating the incision and cut four times until she was able to pry loose a
huge square panel that another of her three man team came over to help with as
they dragged it towards the giant beam.

“Trace and cut,” the other said, drawing a crude line
on the panel that the one next to Esna began burning through with a different
tool while she waited and watched. When they completed the cutout she helped
leverage the C-shaped piece up to the beam…but it wouldn’t fit.

“We gotta dig the other side
out further.”

“I got it,” Esna said, sitting down and kicking across
the hole and dislodging a bit of torqued panel. She popped out part of it, then
used a plasma torch to slowly tear away enough that they were able to slide the
panel in around the beam and cover most of the hole that led down to the
chamber below. There was still a few gaps, but nothing big enough for more than
a foot to slip through. Her three man team used sealer to glue the panel in
place, then they ran on ahead and back up to the team leader where he assigned
them another job as they slowly cleared or fixed enough of the corridor to make
it easily passible up to a section that was totally trashed.

They couldn’t get through there, so the team leader
had them cut into the ceiling and they had to step on each other’s bodies to
get up higher while they commed back to another group
to bring a portable ladder and marked the location on their shared battlemap.

On and on the recovery team progressed, weaving this
way and that as they gradually headed somewhere Esna was not made aware of, but
she was just glad she could help with something as she listened and felt for
more explosions, detecting only a few distant ones. How the battle was
progressing she didn’t know, so she focused on the tasks assigned to her as
they cut a path up and up until they were at the half mile thick armor layer
that surrounded the seda.

Esna’s breath caught in her throat as the team walked
across a pile of junk and into a large blast crater that allowed them to look
up and see stars. There was a half mile deep crater burned straight through the
armor layer that should have been sucking out the atmosphere and them with it,
but her HUD marked the location of an atmospheric shield up near the surface
that was containing the interior air supply, though a lot of it had to have
escaped previously when the damage had occurred.

There were already other teams down in the crater,
with portable bridges set up across the 2 mile wide chasm. They were tethered
on rope lines and suspended beneath, but the artificial gravity here wasn’t
working properly and only the mass of the seda itself was holding them to the
ground lightly so. It felt like they were walking on a tiny moon…which was
about the truth…and the bridges had additional hand wires that had many people
pulling themselves across on with their feet barely touching the narrow
walkways that were spreading out across the chasm like spider webs.

There were no ships in the black sky above them, only
distant stars. Esna hoped that meant the Viks had pulled back, otherwise they’d
all be target practice out here if the defense fields were breached again…and
an atmospheric shield wouldn’t do crap against weaponsfire.

Within a minute she and the rest of her team were
assigned to debris removal, which had them taking what tech teams had deemed
unsalvageable and carrying the bits of junk by hand over to makeshift landing
pads where dropships were actually flying out and across the surface and down
into the breach to remove the debris. Esna was given a contorted piece of
something she couldn’t identify that was bigger than she was, but in the
extreme low gravity she was able to lift and slowly walk it across the junk
heap and up onto one of the one-way bridges. It took her nearly 20 minutes to
get it to the nearest pad, then another team took it from her and loaded it
into a nearby dropship.

Esna then took a different path to return so there was
no cross traffic to slow the whole process down and ended up at another
collection point. From there she followed the waypoints assigned to her and got
to a different pad to deliver it, followed by a complex routing that had her
going almost everywhere over the surface of the crate in concert with everyone
else moving around like very efficient ants pulling damaged bits of junk away
from what was salvageable beneath.

She spent several hours doing that before her shift
was canceled and another team replaced her, then Esna returned back to the
deeper levels in the seda and told to take a rest period of 6 hours in her
quarters before returning to a Relevance Point. She did as ordered, cleaning up
and getting something to eat before sleeping the remainder of the time, then
got back into the mix and was assigned a different point on the surface that
was a smaller crater with the same type of junk removal assignment.

The difference here was she could see another seda in
the distance, barely more than a spec, but she could see the rounded edge of
it. As she walked Esna checked her HUD, knowing it would identify which one it
was, but it turned out it wasn’t a seda at all. It was the distant Grid Point,
now much closer than it had ever been before, and now just becoming visible. It
wasn’t a sphere, but it did have sections that were curves.

Esna looked ahead of her on the path she was walking,
predicting her footsteps, then looked up and activated the zoom on her helmet.
The image increased in size and she could just barely make out the short,
stubby cylinder between the two giant discs that were set partially sideways to
her current position. That made the whole thing look like the center of a big
circle with both sides darkened, but in truth the whole construct was far
larger than her seda and not constructed by Star Force. It had been built by
The Nexus, an ally from far rimward she’d been told,
and it had been moved here from one of their systems, given to Star Force to
link in their territory and allow The Nexus to set up their own nearby worlds
with private shipyards that their enemies couldn’t get to.

That meant it wasn’t Star Force tech, and this was the
first live image she’d gotten of it…along with a range counter with the
distance measure in millions of miles that were quickly counting down. That
meant they’d made a jump and were leaving the Tarric
3 System behind, but where were the other sedas?

As soon as she thought that the stupidity of her
question hit her. During a jump you couldn’t get too close to each other, so
even if they’d accelerated 30 seconds ahead that would be thousands of miles
distant…which still should have been close enough to see the biggest ones.

Esna keyed a search into her HUD, and soon tiny
tracking dots identified a few sedas and ships within view, but they were too
distant to be seen without magnification. So they were out there, traveling
alongside but not too close to JOR. But were the Viks following or not?

If they were she and her team needed to work as fast
as possible. If they weren’t…then they’d just won possession of the system that
everyone had to go through to get to the Grid Point.

Meaning they’d probably just succeeded in setting up a
blockade on Grid Point Stargate.

After junk removal was completed Esna and the other
nonessentials were released from Relevance duty to return to their normal
activities with her handler finding her soon thereafter and getting her back
into her training routine. After the first day she spent her downtime studying
the battle data and the current state of the conflict, but by the end of the
week she was so fatigued again all she could do was come back to her quarters
and crash…only to get up the next day and push on.

What she’d learned was that the Viks had not followed
them through the slow jump to the Grid Point, which was now so large in view
from the seda to be overwhelming. They were parked not too far from it and the shadow
from the upper disc completely eclipsed JOR. The disc itself was 12,000 miles
in diameter and pointed in the precise direction of the Grid Point construct on
the other end of the link far out into safe Star Force territory rimward of here.

Below the seda was the rest of this construct, with a huge
central cylinder and another 12,000 mile wide disc. Both could be used to
accept and send traffic, but one was assigned to each direction to avoid
collisions near the construct as ships were accelerated and decelerated at such
high speeds that no normal IDF could protect them. The massive speed of travel
offered by the Grid Point was as insane as its size…but beyond that, the number
and size of the space stations nearby was beyond reckoning.

The Grid Point wasn’t just the construct that allowed
the transit, it was the location in and of itself, which Esna could now see up
close had more population than most star systems. This was a travel hub, and
with no planets or anything else nearby people had built their own habitats…and
not just Star Force. There were a lot of alien structures in addition to the
construct itself, and population statistics had the entire Grid Point Stargate
housing over 6 trillion people…which was apparently low compared to other Grid
Points.

If the Viks got here there was so much for them to
destroy, but there was only one way in and out, and the way in ran directly into
the face of an insane amount of weaponry on the construct itself. If the Vik
fleet wanted to come, they’d have to face that hammer in addition to all the
sedas and the remaining defense fleet. Esna didn’t know how many ships the Viks
had, but she understood why they hadn’t immediately followed them here. They
probably couldn’t take the Grid Point, but the blockade they had set up meant
that anyone who traveled here had nowhere to go and the nearby systems from the
Star Force ally The Nexus could not be reached with or for reinforcements.

Esna wanted to learn and see more, but she didn’t have
the time. While everyone else dealt with the damage and the loss of transit and
everything else going on in this crazy war, the Canderians weren’t going to let
her training suffer for it. They kept hammering her with workouts and lessons,
making her focus her entire being on it just to keep going.

But keep going she did, losing all track of time, and
grinding out gradual progress as the rest of the galaxy disappeared from her
vision. All that existed was her current workout and the elusive next rest
period that she was working towards, and no matter how hard the workouts were
they were not impossible. It was simply a matter of her choosing to press on
each and every second. Stopping once was unacceptable, and she feared that if
she did she might not be able to start back up again. She was barely hanging
on, but persist she would as long as possible. She owed that to Tyrenk and
especially Rammak, but the further she got the more she realized her loyalty to
them had vanished, her debt paid…if it ever truly could be…with her now
pressing forward for her own sake.

No one else existed for her, even her trainers and
handlers were just facilitators. Keeping her going and improving was part of
their job. They weren’t friends…definitely not the trainers, and while she had
people around her constantly she was alone.

Alone for the first time in her life and not afraid of
it. She could be honest with herself about many things now that she didn’t have
to factor in what other people thought, and the effort required to keep moving
through the workouts and the wisdom required to absorb and process the lessons
she was being taught and having to apply in simulations burnt away the lies of
the past, instilling in her that only the truth mattered. Lies meant
inefficiency or failure. One had to calibrate themselves to the truth or there
wasn’t much point in doing anything.

Day after day she pressed on, doing it for herself and
being changed in ways she could never have imagined. Part of what Rammak and
Tyrenk had taught her started to make new sense, seeing things from a
perspective she hadn’t had before, but their words were distant, and while
helpful, were not important. She had to do this on her own, and something about
that felt right.

Completing the training no longer mattered to her…for
that was too far ahead to think about. Pass the challenge, complete the lesson,
finish the workout. That’s all she was about now, and
it was a more fulfilling life than she’d ever had before. What she was becoming
she didn’t know, but despite the hardness of the training she couldn’t have
stood to live anywhere else in any other life. She needed this. She wanted
this. And with each day that passed, she was becoming this.

What ‘this’ was still wasn’t clear, other than the
obvious fact that Canderians were fighters who would never quit. That was basic
necessity in an environment like this, and after a while she began to welcome
the intensity increases, wanting to get further and further away from a
‘normal’ life and more into whatever this new state of body and mind was.

Was it a Commando? Maybe. At this point the labels didn’t
matter, only the reality of it, so it was on to the next workout and the next
challenge with no end in sight…for they wouldn’t tell her how far from
completion she was, further forcing her to live in the moment by not giving her
any distant benchmarks to measure by.

And that was fine for Esna. As a matter of fact, she
liked it that way. There was only now. No future, no past. Just now. Just her.

A simple, focused life. But one with purpose.

And purpose was what she’d been lacking her entire
life until she’d met Rammak.

Esna hoped he’d be proud of her, for she was becoming
more than she had been before…and the thought about how far this journey might
take her was all the incentive she needed to keep pressing on and putting more
distance between herself and her past.

19

January 3, 4815

Grid Point
Stargate

Seda JOR

A year and a half had passed since the Vik attack, and
to date they hadn’t moved on the Grid Point. They just sat in the nearby star
system and blocked any traffic coming in and out while their other fleets moved
around the Devastation Zone attacking up and down the border worlds that could
no longer get rapid reinforcement through the Grid Point system. What all was
happening Esna barely kept up with, for her own training kept getting more and
more intense, keeping her in a constant state of fatigue that was being pressed
on a long challenge run today.

It was through another interior park, the biggest one
in fact, but one that didn’t have combat elements. Her challenge was to
complete the path given to her via a small headband-mounted headset with a
holographic battlemap displayed over her right eye with the waypoints that she
had to move through. The start had been low and flat, but as the course took
her back and forth across the miles-wide park she began to scale the interior
mountains and even crossed the snow line wearing nothing but knee-length
tights, a jog bra, and running shoes.

Esna knew that if she kept moving she’d retain a lot
of heat, but it wasn’t long before the chill started to get to her. There were
trees on the mountainside blanketed in snow with the path being little more
than a series of footprints through the white blanket that was still slowly
depositing everywhere. Clouds were visible overhead obscuring the ceiling beyond,
with little white flakes falling and gently kissing the windless environment as
she ran hard trying to maintain pace in order to pass this challenge.

She’d already gone through 14 miles and the final 6
were all above the snow line save for the final one. That last bit would be
almost a straight downhill and she’d gain time on it, but she knew from
experience that it was these slower uphill sections that would bleed the most
time if she didn’t stay aggressive on them and there was no one around to pace
off of, only her tracking unit and her willpower to keep her chugging along
through the several inches of snow as she kept weaving her way side to side as
the trail zigzagged up the artificial mountain.

Esna hadn’t run this one before, so she was going extra
hard expecting to mess it up…but if she was going to miss the time requirement
she didn’t want to do so by losing too much time early. If she kept on or ahead
of pace then at least she’d have a chance at the end, and right now her tracker
said she was 8 seconds ahead. Over the course of 20 miles that was nothing, but
she was still on the positive side of the terminus line. However as she climbed
that advantage reduced gradually, dropping to 6, then 4, then 2, then even
before she started to lose time.

Knowing that she’d have a downhill at the end she
didn’t try to get back to even, but to slow her loss. It was a gamble, not
knowing how her legs would hold up, but even tired she figured she could at
least hold pace downhill so long as she didn’t stumble and fall.

By the time she got to the summit Esna wasn’t even
sure of that, feeling so dead legged that she had to mentally shout at herself
to get moving on the downhill. Each step felt like a heavy thud for more than a
minute, then her body remembered what quick running was like as her deficit
began to diminish. Esna didn’t know if she’d make it all up, but she was going
to give it a try and a chance at knocking off this challenge on the first try.

Stretching out her legs while trying not to stomp,
Esna flew down the mostly straight trails until she was almost to the snow
line…which was when her foot slipped and she went down, crunching her left leg
under her butt and sliding on her outstretched right leg as her body plowed
through the snow.

“Shit!” she said, feeling so out of it she had trouble
getting back up, then limped through the next few steps. Losing a lot of time
and cringing with every second that went by, Esna regained some speed on the
snow but didn’t try to hit it hard until she got below the freeze line and got
dirt beneath her feet again. After that it was all in, running with wild
abandon and not even bothering to look at her tracker knowing that she was
behind.

Esna was so numb from all the pounding she barely had
control of her body, but she avoided careening off the side of the trail on the
few turns and kept on her feet as she pressed her body into painful downhill
running to eat up as much of the deficit as she could all the way down to the
flat, then she had a 230 meter sprint into the finish that she tried to carry
her momentum into, but there wasn’t much left in her legs.

A quick glance at her tracker surged some adrenaline
as she saw she was actually 2 seconds ahead and knew that as long as she stayed
in at least a light sprint she had it. The only thing that could stop her now
was a fall, so Esna focused on making firm, even steps as her now sweaty body
flew across the trail up to the two pylons with a semi-visible energy field
passing between them. When her body hit that field the clock stopped and she
heard the ‘challenge victory’ tone sound…which had become her favorite sound in
the galaxy.

“Ah damn,” she said, coasting to a stop and collapsing
to the ground as a spot in her right shin started to hurt and would probably
get worse as her adrenaline bled off. She sat on the trail just past the finish
rubbing her leg experimentally as a trainer walked up to her.

“Are you injured?”

“Sore spot. Nothing much.”

“On your feet then,” he said, offering her a hand that
she promptly refused, having made the habit of snubbing the annoying trainers
whenever she had the opportunity. With a limp she stood up and the trainer
pointed to a side trail. “Walk.”

Esna did as was told and they soon came to an exit
that led down below ground level and out of the organic environment to the
regular internal cityscape of the seda where the trainer took Esna into a lift
and to an unfamiliar equipment room.

“Shower and dress, then we have somewhere else to go
before you return to training,” he said, pointing to a black uniform unlike the
training garb. Esna didn’t pay much attention to it until after her
shower…which she barely managed to stand through…but then when she began to
pull the clothing on she saw it was a standard Canderous uniform with no
ornamentation. The subtle green lines bracketed her body shape perfectly along
with the matching boots that blended into the pants perfectly and were really
just an extended running shoe, not the hard, armor-like footwear she used to
wear on Forso.

Refreshed but so fatigued she could barely keep her
eyes open, she reported back to the trainer who took her to another lift that
zipped them across the interior of the seda to an area unfamiliar to her…but
Sen Legat Artu was here,
and she hadn’t seen him since the day she’d arrived.

“What’s going on?”

“Quiet,” the trainer said softly as he retreated in
the face of two uniformed Canderians that approached.

“Step forward.”

Esna did as told, walking between them up to a small
depression in the floor around which four pedestals were ringed. Artu took up position behind one of them with three other
people Esna was unfamiliar with standing behind the others, one of whom spoke
for the group.

“Esna Donovan?” the Legionmaster
asked.

“Yes,” Esna confirmed.

“You came to us as an outsider, but as of this moment
that is no longer the case. You have now completed your conversion training and
are officially part of Canderous. As appropriate, your name will now change.
You are now Esna-58321JOR-18. Your seda of origin follows your orisect number rather than preceding it, marking you as a
convert to Canderous rather than one born here, but that is merely the path you
took to becoming one of us. You now have equal status to all others who
completed their maturia basic training. You are no longer a trainee. You are a
full Canderous citizen, and I am proud to welcome you into our ranks.”

“When did I finish?” Esna asked, perplexed.

“The challenge run you completed was your last item.
You were not supposed to know it was, thus all the other training you were
doing around it was supplemental. When you crossed the finish line under time
you graduated. Now your future with Canderous is in question, and you have a
choice of options going forward.”

“You are one of us now,” Sen Legat
Artu said, “but you are still a rookie. Higher level
training will now follow or you may find a position within Canderous
immediately.”

“I’m not combat ready, am I?”

“No, you are not.”

“I will do whatever is needed to become combat ready.”

“You wish to become part of the Canderous security
forces?”

“Yes.”

“Then report to your new quarters and training unit,”
the Sen Legat said, gesturing to the woman on his
left. “You’re under Triarii Neela now.”

“Let’s go Canderian,” she said, stepping out from
behind the podium. “Time to teach you how to use that psionic of yours.”

Esna looked confused, but smiled at that last bit. Her
basic/conversion training hadn’t allowed her to use it at all, and she’d barely
practiced on her own given the hectic schedule she’d been on.

“You came here just to tell me that?” she asked the
Sen Legat.

“I’ve been watching your progress from afar and wanted
to be here to mark the moment of your transition…as well as to promise you the
combat you want if and when you can prove yourself. You’re Canderous now, but
that doesn’t mean you’re ready for field work, let alone combat.”

“Understood,” she said, finally turning and walking in
step with Neela as they left the room.

“Impressions?” Artu asked after
they were gone.

“She didn’t have a problem with the training,” the Legionmaster, who was in charge of the Canderous maturia,
attested, “and she didn’t use her psionic to gain an advantage. She can control
it, and aside from a few intentional protests against the trainers she’s never
had a documented slip.”

“Breyor?”

“She’s still raw.”

“Obviously.”

“But she’s not stiff. There’s an openness about her
that the other recruits don’t share.”

“She’s had a unique history. Hopefully one that can be
turned to our advantage.”

“I still have my doubts, but some of them have been
allayed by her scores,” Breyor said. “She’s competent
enough to be part of Canderous, but beyond that there’s little to say.”

“One step at a time,” Artu
cautioned. “That girl could become our greatest hand to hand asset, given
enough time and preparation.”

“Get her up to an acceptable level and I’ll do the
rest.”

20

Veela took Esna back to her
quarters and waited while she packed up a duffle with the few possessions she
had, which amounted to some foodstuff packets and casual clothing, then Esna
carried her belongings over her shoulder as the Triarii led her to who knew
where. She was a second rank Canderian, with Munifex being
their lowest rank in the security forces, and one that didn’t talk much. Other
than a few instructions as to ‘go that way’ or ‘wait here’ she didn’t say
anything and Esna reciprocated. She didn’t know what was going to happen so she
just went along with the flow and waited to find out. One thing she was fairly
sure about was that whatever was ahead of her, it was going to get harder now
that she was no longer a trainee.

During their walk through the seda Esna had plenty of
silent time to think, and the implications of her just becoming part of
Canderous began to sink in. She was no longer an outsider or guest. She was one
of them now, and she’d earned that
status. Where she would go from here she didn’t know, but wherever it was this
was now her home and part of her new name.

Esna-58321JOR-18

No longer a Donovan, which was her father’s last name.
Her family. Now she had a number and her seda, meaning that was her family now.
Both Canderous and seda JOR, and she’d carry that identifier with pride from
here on out. She’d earned it, and the fact that there were so many numbers and
letters in it reminded her of how many people were in Canderous. She was one of
a huge number of soldier/civilians, and part of that brotherhood.

Esna wasn’t sure what that meant, because she had been
on her own basically the entire time during her conversion training, but maybe
that would change today…or maybe she’d been thrown into more isolation
training.

Esna didn’t get an answer, for all Veela
did was take her to her new quarters in another part of the seda that were
identical to the ones she had before and tell her to rest up the next two days,
after which she’d be back to start Esna on her combat training. That was all
the Triarii said, not even a word of congratulations or warning about what was
to come, leaving Esna in a form of limbo as she sat on the edge of her bed next
to her still packed duffle trying to think this through. She had a rest day,
two in fact, and in a way that seemed like too much free time to know what to
do with.

Sitting still didn’t feel right, so she unpacked her
limited stuff then went for a walk after memorizing her quarters
location…TCJ-299.

With that number cemented into her memory she left the
door unlocked and headed left…then roamed without any idea where she was going.
Esna just walked and looked, listening to the people moving about and the
sounds of the city/station that was now officially her home. Even if she was
assigned to another seda her name would always retain this one. She’d known
that beforehand, for it had been drilled into her during lessons, but it came
with a very real sense of pride now.

Canderous moved about from system to system as needed,
meaning they were always mobile, and each person had to operate the same way…but
home would always be where you originated, and this was now hers. She wasn’t
born here, but this is where she had been forged. For all changes Rammak had
instilled in her, and Tyrenk thereafter, it had been the years spent here that
truly remade Esna. Canderous had taken the lessons taught to her by Rammak and
made them real, whereas his stories and lessons had mostly been fairy tales
listened to by an eager and ignorant outsider…but no longer. She was one of
them now, and part of Star Force.

She was what Rammak had been…in lesser amount,
obviously, for as strong and fast as she’d gotten she still wasn’t close to his
level. That would take years upon years of training, and she understood that
now in a way she never could have before. Esna could see the path forward, long
as it was, like a ladder she had to climb rung by rung. As long as she kept
moving forward she’d get there eventually, save for growing two more arms.
She’d never match Rammak there, or with his size, but she had seen Canderous
troops sparring with Calavari and taking them down. It was possible, but it
wasn’t easy.

The same went for every other faction within Star
Force. Skill and strength surpassed everything else eventually, though base attributes
always mattered…and she had a big one none of the rest of Canderous had.
Something that the Calavari didn’t have either. She had Fornax, and Neela had said she’d be training for it now along with
everything else, and in a way that made her different from the rest of
Canderous.

Esna really just wanted to be part of the group,
finally finding a place to fit in…but one thing her lessons had taught her was
the Star Force way of training, and you didn’t pass up advantages. If you did
you didn’t have a clue what Star Force was about. Everyone was striving to be
the best they could be, and if Esna just tucked her ability away to try and fit
in she’d be accomplishing the opposite.

So she couldn’t be a normal Canderian, but she could
choose when and where to use her ability. She hadn’t used it during her
conversion training, so she’d been ‘normal’ then, and that felt good. Very
good. Nobody carried her anymore. Esna was earning her own way and finally had
someplace she fit in...even if she hadn’t gotten to
know anyone yet.

It took a few hours of wandering before all those dead
back on Darlek worked into her mind, especially
Rammak. She was alive because of them, and them keeping her alive was a debt
she could never repay. They were dead now, and despite everything that had
happened here and the changes made in her, part of Esna was still back with
them, back with Rammak. Out there running across Forso
and Tauntaun. Out in the field fighting the V’kit’no’sat.

Esna wondered why she was feeling split. She was proud
to be part of Canderous now, but those ties to the past were still there. She’d
forgotten them with all the rush of training demanding her immediate attention,
but now that she had a chance to rest and decompress it was coming back to her
along with a few seeping tears.

Surprisingly it didn’t take her long to figure this
mystery out. Everything here in the seda, save for the attack, was just
practice. Out there, with Rammak, it had been real and failure meant death.
She’d learned from the battlefield first, then was brought into training.
Everyone else here was the reverse, training first then the battlefield,
including Rammak. That was why Esna couldn’t be comfortable here, because she’d
already seen the fight Star Force was in first hand and the losses they were
taking. The V’kit’no’sat had to be stopped, and fitting in here with Canderous,
if made a priority, was actually counter to that goal. Fitting in had to be a
beneficial side effect, not her aim.

Her aim was to kill V’kit’no’sat and avenge Rammak and
all the others who had died alongside her.

As soon as that thought ran through her mind
everything crystalized. She wasn’t here to be part of Canderous, she was here
to get the skills necessary to fight the V’kit’no’sat and this was the best
place to do it. That was why Tyrenk had brought her here, and she was glad for
his foresight. It was hard as hell training, but worth it if it would make her
strong enough to do what she needed to do.

And what she needed to do was become strong enough to
kill Zen’zat. Other Canderians couldn’t do that on their own, for they had no
psionics. Esna only had one, but it was a powerful one. She had to learn to use
it to take them down, and Canderous was going to help her with that, even if it
was something they couldn’t do themselves.

So she was separate from them, but at the same time
she was bringing her ability to their ranks to strengthen them…so it was an
exchange, not them carrying her.

“Damn it all,” she whispered as she walked along an
elevated platform above an indoor lake that was visible through the clear
floor. “I have so much to do and so far to go, but I will make it back to the
front. I will find a way to kill Zen’zat. I promise you, Rammak, I’ll find a
way. They have to be stopped.”

And with that, Esna’s future was made plain. She was
going to walk the path of a warrior, becoming a weapon to fight an enemy that
was so powerful and so numerous there seemed to be no way to beat them.
Fighting that impossible fight and getting at least a few good blows in was the
purpose of her life, not fitting in with Canderous. They were her team now, and
she’d honor that allegiance as Rammak honored his Calavari faction, but she was
a Star Force warrior and belonged on the front…not here. She belonged back on Forso fighting V’kit’no’sat, and the irony of that
realization struck her.

She’d been bored out of her mind on Forso, and with everything Rammak had told her she wanted
to be in Star Force…but she couldn’t be one of their civilians, or even one of
their guardians. Her fate, her entire life had been forged by the conflict with
the V’kit’no’sat before she even knew their name, and the remainder of her
life, however long or short it may be, was tied to that conflict.

Esna chose to embrace it, for it was a fight that was
righteous. Training for training’s sake was the Star Force way, but it wasn’t
enough for her. This was her purpose, and now that she had all her mental ducks
in a row she knew what she needed to do.

To that end Esna made an abrupt turnaround and headed
back to her quarters, stopping by a cafeteria on the way to fuel up, then she
slipped into bed and slept. Whatever training was coming her way was going to
be hard and she needed as much rest as necessary so she could dive into it swinging.
From here on out there was no ‘free’ time, only rest between the previous
workout and the next. Esna wasn’t a citizen, she was a weapon, and finding
meaning in that identity she nodded off to sleep easily as her mind settled on
a purpose and path that put all her past questions to rest.

She had to fight the V’kit’no’sat…and in the process
exact vengeance for Rammak and the others. Nothing else mattered to her.
Nothing else could matter while the V’kit’no’sat were still out there, and Esna
doubted that would change in her lifetime. If Star Force wasn’t very good and
very lucky they’d be the ones wiped out, not the V’kit’no’sat.

And becoming a weapon to fight an unwinnable war meant
her victories would come in individual battles, day by day, moment by moment,
with the overall war and strategy left to the Archons and their insane skills.

A weapon. She was a weapon. And in the coming days that would become her battle cry as
the level of workouts were ramped up near to her breaking point as Neela returned for her and started her combat training
along with several other recruits that Esna would soon surpass, for a weapon
would always be superior to a soldier.

A solider fought enemies as they arose, protecting and
preserving the civilization they belonged to, but a weapon was forged for a
specific purpose…to attack, to destroy, to confront, to damage. Esna’s life
didn’t matter to her, only doing damage to the V’kit’no’sat did, and that
freedom allowed her to press further than the others did. They worked hard, but
in between their workouts they were people with hobbies, relationships, and
other things that were distractions. Canderous was military to the core, but
most of them were part-time warriors.

Esna was not. Every single second of her life going
forward was that of a weapon…and soon Neela and the
other trainers began to see that as well, switching her ahead to more and more
experienced recruit training groups even as she spent at least an hour a day on
Fornax training that the others did not have on their workload.

Esna slept almost every minute of free time she had,
devoting her waking hours to training, training, and more training for the next
two and a half years, never wavering in her self-assigned purpose and becoming
the weapon she knew she had to become. A weak weapon, she’d admit, but one that
would gain strength in time in direct relation to the level of workouts she
completed, with her devoting every minute of every day to that quest.

The other recruits didn’t understand her, tried to get
to know her and, in some cases, in bed with her, but she wouldn’t have any of
it. She cooperated and worked well with them in team challenges, making her a
valued and much sought after comrade when in combat, but outside of it she was
but a shadow disappearing, where, the others did not know. Her behavior made
such an impact on them that they began to refer to her as ‘The Phantom’ with
the nickname sticking and spreading to everyone who encountered her.

And The Phantom was racking up training records as her
rate of advancement surpassed all previous Canderians from seda JOR as she
reached the final stages of her combat training program.

21

August 8, 4817

Grid Point
Stargate

Seda JOR

Esna jumped over a low wall, swinging her legs over it
on the right side while pivoting on her left arm. The fall on the other side
was about a meter lower, so she disappeared beneath the wall then sprinted back
into view as she raced down the combat course with multiple drones chasing her.

Esna ran straight, listening for the slight hum of the
drones that she couldn’t see or feel. The notes Canderous had gotten from the
Archons indicated that they often targeted their Fornax blasts using their
Pefbar and Ikrid…two psionics that she did not have. That meant she could only
fire in the direction of targets she could see, so the trainers had added an
audible hum to the normally silent drones to get her to train her senses beyond
eyesight as avenues for targeting.

Esna concentrated for a split second, loosing a spherical ball of invisible energy that flew from
the Fornax tissue in her head out behind her towards one of the hums as she
continued to run hard. With no change in the sound, indicating that she had
missed, Esna tried twice more before she got a crescendo of electronic bleeps
indicating that she’d made a hit and the drone had shut down, lowering to the
ground and becoming inactive while the others continued to snipe her with tiny
stun shots.

She’d been doing drills like this for the past 2 years
and had gotten fairly good at it, but hitting targets she couldn’t see was
still something Esna had difficulty with, not to mention that she couldn’t
avoid all the stun hits. Her running form was beginning to slacken because of
it and the mental energy she had to devote to not tripping and falling on the
concrete was distracting her counterattacks. Esna had to pull her attention
away from her steps momentarily each time she fired her Fornax, and from past
experience she knew that if she got too loopy that would be enough to take her
down…then the drones would move in and pummel her.

So Esna had to keep racing through the course while
knowing she couldn’t make it without taking down the drones. She’d tried that
before and didn’t make it half way, for there was very little cover amongst all
the obstacles. She also couldn’t make it through cleanly no matter how hard she
tried. Esna was going to take hits and be forced to work through the numbing
little stings, relying on her Fornax to diminish the number of them coming in
enough for her to will her body through the course to completion.

This wasn’t a one and done challenge, but rather one
she had to run daily. She’d already done it 402 times, with most of those being
failures. Recently she was on an 8 day streak of completions, but other Fornax
workouts had drained her of energy and she was borderline for making it today.
That said, she knew that even in her failures she would gain more strength, so
Esna would work this challenge run as hard as she could in order to get the
adaptation payout later even as it became clear she wasn’t going to make it all
the way.

Esna finally went down at about the 85% mark, tripping
on a wall barely 4 inches high. It was so low it normally wouldn’t have been a
problem, but her legs were so numb she misjudged how high she pulled them and
clipped the barrier with her right toe. Normally that wouldn’t make her fall,
but even that little imbalance was enough to send her tumbling out of control,
bouncing and scraping on the concrete with little pain as a result. She could
see herself bleeding as she tried to stand up, but couldn’t feel it. The
numbing did have some beneficial side effects, but Esna would have preferred to
have her full capacity and just endure the pain, for at least then she could
have continued on.

But not today. She got up to one knee before her other
leg lost all control as the drones moved in and peppered her with shots. After
that she couldn’t do anything but ball up and wait out the debilitating strikes
until the trainers called it off and a medtech appeared above her and injected
her with the denumbing serum.

Her limbs suddenly returned to mind’s eye and she was
able to slowly stand up as the serum neutralized and washed away the lingering
stun energy in her body, leaving the telltale pins and needles effect that the
trainers wanted. Had the medtech injected her with more serum they would have
been washed away too, but they didn’t want her failure leaving her mind, so
they injected just enough to get her mobile again while leaving the last bit of
recovery to her body…which would also teach it to respond faster in the field
if and when she was shot without serum to use on herself.

That meant her immediate suffering came with a purpose
rather than the trainers just being cruel, though they seemed to take to those
types of scenarios eagerly and Neela was no
exception. She wasn’t a trainer by profession, but a security officer tasked
with overseeing the recruits’ training, and Esna had originally thought that
meant she’d take a different attitude than the trainers. That thought had
quickly vanished when Neela was even harder on them,
though less hands on. Hers was more verbal motivation and guidance, though she
did occasionally spar with them and beat them nearly unconscious to prove the
point of how weak they were.

Technically she never crossed the line into abuse, but
she made it clear the enemy would not give them any breaks so she had to be
hard on them. Esna understood that, but she still saw her as an enemy just like
the trainers. Not the kind you killed, but the kind you defied with every
available opportunity, and she was there when Esna woke up from the massive
stunning effect, looking down on her with contempt.

“You’ve made this run before. What’s the problem,
Phantom?” she asked, using Esna’s nickname as if it were an insult.

“Fornax depletion,” Esna said evenly. “I didn’t have
enough charge left after this morning.”

“Well then, you’ve got to develop larger reserves or
learn to make do with less.”

“This challenge doesn’t allow that.”

“No, it doesn’t. So your path is clear, isn’t it?” she
said rhetorically. “Get yourself over to aquatics. You can swim off your
fatigue without having to worry about Fornax.”

Esna walked towards the exit along with the medtech,
not disagreeing but not saying anything in response. She’d learned it was
pointless to argue with them, for they were doing their job and she wasn’t
meant to be friendly. This was business, and there was nothing to gain from
pointless conversation.

So Esna walked through the seda to the nearest lift
and headed for the aquatics center, then did surface swimming through a course
that had water jets to produce current that aided and hindered her at various
points. After completing that, it was on to another workout and another, then
when Esna got several hours of free time along with the rest of the recruits
she spent those practicing sword work before heading to bed…and getting up the
next morning directly into an easy long run of 12 miles.

She held to that schedule for another 5 months, at
which point she was informed that she had hit the required benchmarks to
qualify for the Canderian security forces, which was what they called their
military, and was broken up into 5 divisions like the rest of Star Force.
Commandos, Mechs, Aerial, Naval, and Aquatics, but unlike other factions
Cancerous was mostly naval and had very little in the way of aquatics. The
other three divisions were adequately filled out, and when Esna next saw Neela it was in a private chamber with both of them clad in
the black with green trim Canderous uniforms rather than workout clothing.

“Sit,” she said, doing likewise on a stool with a back
on the other side of a low table. Esna sat in a lower and wider chair that had
padding, folding her hands across her lap while her legs were stretched out
partway underneath the table.

“You’ve done very well, Esna,” she said
uncharacteristically gracious. “Your training is now complete and I’m happy to
bestow on you the rank of Munifex. You are now part
of the security forces, and while I know what your answer will be I must ask
the question as to which branch you wish to be placed.”

“Commando,” Esna said simply, knowing that the mechs
would be her best chance to get into combat with the Viks, but her Fornax
wouldn’t be of much use in the battle machines and of all the V’kit’no’sat she
wanted to fight, it was the Zen’zat that she felt destined to go up against,
and that meant going Commando.

“Confirmed. As for your assignment and future
training, normally you would have your choice of available positions, and you
can still have that if you wish, but Sen Legat Artu has opened a slot for you in a special unit if you
choose to pursue it.”

“What unit?”

“A special operations unit that I do not know the name
of. My rank isn’t high enough to know and such knowledge doesn’t affect my
duties here. I’m told it is a very elite unit, but I know nothing more than
that.”

“If that’s where Artu wants
me, so be it.”

Neela nodded. “You walk away
from here with several seda records. I’ve been hard on you because you needed
me to be, but I want you to know you do Canderous proud and I wish you fortune
in the days ahead. We need as many badasses as we can
get.”

Neela stood up and offered
Esna her hand, with the newly minted Munifex almost
snubbing her out of habit, but after a brief hesitation Esna stood and a accepted
the gesture, with both Canderians squeezing tightly to test each other’s
strength before letting go.

“Normally I’d be going through assignment options for
the next hour, but since your path from here is beyond my knowledge I have
nothing else for you aside from that door,” Neela
said, pushing a button on the table and opening a hidden door in the wall
behind her. “Are there any personal possessions in your quarters that can’t be
replaced?”

“Nothing.”

“Good. Then I won’t have to send someone to get them.
When you leave this room you leave it as a Munifex
and a member of the security forces. The door you came in is for recruits, this
one is for warriors. Get moving, Phantom.”

Esna offered Neela a small
nod of respect, then looked away from her and didn’t look back as she stepped
through the doorway and it closed behind her, leaving her in a dimly lit
hallway with only small blue tracking lights along the base of the floor for
illumination. It was just enough to navigate by, but Esna walked slowly suspecting
another test of some sort as she moved through what was a labyrinth of twists
and turns, but never with any offshoots. There was only one way to go, and that
was ahead, until a beam of light hit her as a wall panel suddenly opened up
beside her as the hallway continued on.

“This way,” a voice said, with Esna squinting away the
light as she left the dark hallway and stepped into a brightly lit one, seeing
an unfamiliar face in a standard uniform. “Follow me.”

Esna did as asked without any comment, moving through
a long, straight hallway until they stepped into a lift at the end, with Esna
standing shoulder to shoulder as the door closed and they were whisked off
through the seda. Both of them were silent for a few minutes before the man
finally spoke.

“You don’t say much, do you? No questions about where
we’re going?”

“I figured I’d be told when I needed to know.”

“Trusting of you.”

“Should I not be?”

“Depends. For your information you’re leaving the
seda. I’m taking you to your unit in the field.”

Esna raised an eyebrow. “Field work already?”

“You’re not ready for it, but your psionic makes you
valuable. You’re being integrated for that purpose and will have to work hard
to catch up and keep up, but I don’t think that will be a problem for you.”

“And you are?”

“Just a handler taking you to your unit. My name is
Darren. Do you prefer Esna or Phantom?”

“One is my name, the other is a description. You
choose.”

“We’ll be spending several weeks together, so I’ll
stick with Esna. You seem not to like the nickname.”

“It’s tolerable. Where are we going?”

“Far into Star Force territory,” he said, seeing her
frown. “Not to fight the Viks. You’re nowhere near ready for that. Your unit is
taking on lesser enemies that your Fornax will be very effective against.”

“Who specifically?”

“Your unit is called Pantheon 7, and the Pantheon
units are our most elite Commandos deployed to vital, but small scale tasks on
the rimward frontier and anywhere else needed. We’re
not much good against V’kit’no’sat, at least not without taking heavy losses,
but we can free up Archons and others by doing necessary work that they’d
otherwise be tasked to handle.”

“We?”

“I speak of Canderous. I’m not part of the Pantheons,
just an admirer. You are vastly inferior to their members save for your one
skill, so make good use of it and try not to slow them down too much. They want
you there, but do not expect peerdom. You’ll be in
over your head with teammates all at least a millennia old.”

Esna gulped, not liking being an inferior again, but
at least this time they wanted her there rather than being stuck with her out
of necessity. She swore to herself then and there that she wouldn’t be a
burden, and would make up for whatever inefficiency she caused them with her
psionic that was unique in all of Canderous. If they wanted her as a weapon to
deploy in tactical circumstances she was fine with that, and would continue to
advance her skills in the field rather than in pure training.

She belonged in the field and knew that in her heart,
but now she was going to have to prove it.

22

Darren led Esna to a hangar bay where they immediately
boarded a waiting dropship and left the moon-sized seda behind. Seeing the
surface from above was a view that Esna hadn’t had in years, and as the seda
shrunk behind them it became one of many with other smaller versions nearby in
addition to the massive number of non-Canderian stations situated around the
‘construct’ as it was called.

Esna knew it was based on magnetism, which was far
more powerful than gravity. Stars had both, but their magnetic fields were
constantly in flux and therefore unreliable to make jumps off of. Making use of
them required entirely different engines, so making mag jumps was little more
than fiction for most races, but The Nexus was so large and so powerful they
had found a way to make use of the technology by creating specialized transit
ships to surf their Grid Point system carrying other ships and cargo with them.

Esna and Darren were headed for one of those ships
now, with it being so large that it dwarfed all Star Force ships at 47 miles in
length. The one in question was owned by Star Force, but many of the others
waiting in a reserved section of space so they could onload
and offload cargo were not. They were owned by The Nexus and many of the
stations located here were built by Nexus races so they could profit from the
commerce flowing through the Grid Point, making this location more than just a
Star Force stronghold…it was an access point to a vast transportation system that
stretched far out into the Rim and connected thousands upon thousands of races
within The Nexus and the territory they held dominance over, if not full control.

Esna had seen many vid screens and holograms of the
Grid Point infrastructure, but actually flying through it now was something different
altogether. She felt very small, and not just because her dropship was barely a
shred of metal compared to all the magnificent feats of construction around
them. The gaps between stations were huge, giving everyone plenty of room to
move around, which only enhanced the scope of this Grid Point, but there was no
competing with the primary sight that dwarfed everything else.

The construct was the launch pad and landing point for
the magnetic drive ships coming and going, with two massive discs 12,000 miles
in diameter that created a stable
magnetic field that the ships’ engines would grip much like gravity drives
gripped the so named fields that stars and planets emitted…or in this case,
coming from the Tarric 3 System, the gravity field
haphazardly produced by the sheer mass of the construct. But with magnetic
force being so superior to gravity, this construct alone allowed ships to
accelerate far faster than the nearby star could. So fast, in fact, that they were
even able to travel faster than most black hole routes, whose gravity wells
were stronger than even those of stars.

It was a crazy prospect, because you had to launch
from and hit a target only 12,000 miles wide from so far away. Stars were much,
much wider and they were hard to hit over shorter ranges, limiting the distance
of stellar jumps for fear of missing your destination star and becoming lost in
space as you raced through it at great speed without coming close enough to a
star to slow down on.

The Grid Point system jumps were so much farther it
boggled the mind, and they had to arrive at another construct just like this
one and hit the magnetic field exactly or they’d shoot by and become hopelessly
lost in space. It freaked Esna out a bit, but Star Force and especially The
Nexus had been operating this transit grid for a very long time and it had
become incredibly reliable. The last ship lost had been over 600 years ago in
The Nexus when a ship’s engine malfunctioned and launched them off a construct
at a slight angle. The ship was never heard from again, but it hadn’t been a
problem with the construct. It produced steady and reliable magnetic fields,
and so long as Esna’s ship didn’t malfunction she’d be alright.

Her dropship flew all the way over to the massive mag
ship and into one of its docking bays, with Esna immediately recognizing the
Star Force architecture inside as they walked off and the dropship promptly
left them there.

“Did The Nexus build this ship or us?”

“Us,” Darren said simply. “We used their ships
initially, but eventually we built some of our own. These we don’t have to pay
shipping fees for.”

“I thought all outgoing jumps required a fee paid to
the Grid Point?” Esna said as she followed Darren across the huge hangar
towards one of the side exits.

“They do, but if we wanted to travel on one of The
Nexus’s ships we’d have to pay a fee to ride the ship, then that ship would pay
a fee to the Grid Point. Since we own this ship we don’t charge ourselves, so
you and I can hop a ride without paying anything.”

“How long before this one launches?”

“It’s scheduled to go in 4 days. We’ll stay here until
then, do some maintenance workouts, but otherwise rest up. I trust you know how
to do maintenance workouts without someone feeding them to you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then you’re free to roam around as much as you
like so long as you don’t leave the ship, but first we’re going to get checked
into quarters.”

“Are there training facilities onboard?”

Darren eyed her skeptically. “This is a Star Force
ship, you know.”

“So that’s a yes,” Esna agreed.

“A ship this big, if not constructed with extensive
training facilities, would be thrown into a star by the Archons. You won’t have
the combat courses we have on the seda, but there will be everything you need
for whatever workouts you like. Rest though, because when we get to where we’re
going you’re going to need your strength.”

“How long until we get there?”

“A couple months. Depends how much layover time we
have.”

Esna didn’t say anything, but there was no way she was
going to take it easy. After the two of them found an attendant that gave them
quarters next to each other, Esna disappeared into the ship and spent a few
hours looking around and resting before ending up in the training areas that
serviced tens of thousands of people. If Darren was here he probably wouldn’t
see her in the masses, so she didn’t give it another thought as she started to
hammer herself on workout variants of what Rammak had taught her long ago…only
now modified with everything she’d learned since.

The Calavari had taught her that when in transit and
unable to establish a rhythm, one needed to do workouts that would overlap
enough to create consistency even if they weren’t exactly identical. The body
responded to consistency in order to adapt, telling it what to do with
repetitiveness, and if Esna was going to have to keep up with Commandos that
were far superior to her then she was probably going to be a lot slower than
them. Her Fornax would give her an advantage in combat but it wouldn’t make her
legs go any faster, so she devoted her transitional training to pressing that
weakness.

Esna avoided any really long runs and worked on her
speed, hammering herself just enough to leave her fatigued but not so much that
she couldn’t do another workout 6 hours later. She did three a day with
flexibility and agility drills in between along with longer than usual sleep
periods. It was easy stuff compared to what she had been doing, but after a few
days she was able to narrow down her effort levels enough to press her limits,
leaving her drained after very few hours spent actually training.

That meant she had to find low energy things to do,
like stretching, when she wasn’t sleeping. One part of the training area was a
meditation deck where it looked like it was on the surface of the ship with
holographic walls and ceiling so realistic that Esna could have swore she was walking up a staircase onto the hull, with
the stars, stations, and the huge construct nearby.

There were other people here, all sitting still or
doing slow movement drills. Several were in mediation handstands, including a
couple of Archons according to their uniforms. Most people were in workout
clothing, so Esna fit in seamlessly as she walked several hundred meters to an
open section of the soft deck ‘plates’ and sat down, contorting herself into a
pose that had her right leg up and behind her neck as she stretched sore
muscles. Esna worked through many poses and relaxed her mind with the
gratuitously easy workout for several hours, during which the mag ship began to
move out of its parking slot and away from the other gigantic ships.

It crept closer to the construct, heading towards the
‘bottom’ disc that facilitated the outgoing traffic, though it could also deal
with incoming traffic in an emergency if the top disc malfunctioned. It would
require a slight navigation shift of the incoming ships and some tricky
navigating, but the purpose of having two, beyond having a backup, was to avoid
collisions during the acceleration and deceleration phases. Once in coast phase
the ships would be sending out constant signals ahead of them so other ships
would have a short window of opportunity to nudge themselves sideways to avoid
hitting one another, but for the most part the ships held to their side of the
road, so to speak, and didn’t require constant weaving back and forth during
transit.

Esna’s view was magnificent, and even as she continued
to work on stretching out her body in an upside down arch, she watched the
construct get larger and larger until the lower disc eclipsed the rear of the
ship entirely. It was so insanely huge it looked like a never ending wall
stretching in all directions, but just as stark was the view ahead that was
totally devoid of any ships or stations. They were clustered around the flanks
of the ship and out of the travel routes, which made Esna feel like they were
now in the hot zone.

The mag ship drifted into the center position on the
disc, then waited what seemed an extremely long amount of time before Esna
heard the chimes that signaled they were about to jump. Those chimes would play
out across the entire ship, but seemed very loud here on the quiet training
deck, and a few seconds later the massive disc behind them shrank so fast it
looked like it disappeared in the blink of an eye, then everything behind them
disappeared into blackness as the light no longer traveled fast enough to catch
up to them.

The view in front of them was quite different as the
ship slammed into the oncoming light from the distant stars so fast it became
extremely hazardous radiation and no longer within visible wavelengths. The
ship’s sensors compensated for that, with the stars shifting in color slightly
but becoming so much brighter…at least until you started to look sideways. They
got dimmer and dimmer, shifting to dark red just before the halfway point,
which was where the blackness suddenly asserted itself.

Esna knew what that looked like, having traveled on
ships with gravity drives between stars, but what took her breath away was the
slight movement of the stars. At first she thought she was imagining it, then
she realized they were moving so damn fast you could actually see the stars
moving past the ship at a snail’s pace.

“Wow,” Esna whispered to herself as she flipped
sideways out of her arch and planted her pelvis on the ground with her legs
going sideways into an almost full splits. Her body wasn’t that flexible, yet,
but she was getting close and leaned forward onto her forearms and held that
pose, watching the stars ahead of her and completely forgetting that she was
inside the mass of the ship, feeling like she was flying through space on the
hull and realizing just how big the galaxy truly was.

Esna wasn’t even a speck in it, but something far
smaller, and with that realization came a sense of freedom. The fate of the
galaxy wasn’t on her shoulders, and all that really mattered was her life, her
path, and what she made of it. She was alone amongst a sea of people that were
but fringe fuzz on the surface of planets in orbit of stars…and those stars
were the specks in the universe.

A universe full of so much wrong, such horrors, and
yet if you looked in the right place you could find wonders and true good. Star
Force was the latter and she was immensely grateful that Rammak had brought her
into it, but then she wondered how many other girls like her were out there
that didn’t have someone to come for them. And how many of them were being
hunted or killed by the V’kit’no’sat.

No, she couldn’t save the galaxy. It was too big. But
if she could kill a Zen’zat or two and keep them from killing another girl like
her out there, that would be enough. Not because she owned Rammak a debt, but
because people deserved better than what they got, and if she could help a few
she’d do so for their sake. Esna didn’t know what Pantheon was or what she’d be
doing, but if it was in the field then what they were doing mattered, Zen’zat
or no, and with a long, deep breath Esna let go her time on the seda and
everything previous to it. She was a weapon now, and going where she could be
put to use. This was her path and she welcomed it.

Time to start
doing things that matter and take a little nick out of the darkness plaguing
the galaxy.

23

September 21, 4817

Grid Point
Dagran

When Esna’s ship left Grid Point Stargate it traveled
across a vast region of dead territory that the V’kit’no’sat had already purged
of Star Force presence, then passed the front where the closest Star Force
colonies still existed, now heavily defended against V’kit’no’sat attack. Esna
didn’t see any of that, for the mag ship was flying through interstellar space
where no one could touch it all the way to Grid Point Annsa located within the H’kar Region of Star Force territory. When she arrived
there the mag ship had to be abandoned as it was going back the way they’d
come, so Darren and Esna spent their time waiting on another Canderian seda
stationed there.

It was far smaller than JOR, but every Canderous seda
looked the same inside and she felt at home getting in a few more workouts
before their outgoing mag ship entered the Grid Point and they transferred over
to it, waiting a few more days before it left and took them further rimward to Grid Point Mankla…and while she thought the
station infrastructure around Annsa was much larger than what was at Stargate,
what she saw at Mankla blew her away.

First off, there wasn’t one construct. Nor two, like
at Annsa. Here there were four, for there were four different directions one
could travel from Mansa on the Grid Point system and each was linked between
two constructs. They couldn’t turn to reorient on another without breaking the
link, so if you had four navigational options you had to have 4 different
constructs, each placed far apart from each other. That meant at Mankla there
were four little islands set outside the Tarric 2
System and stretching between them were strings of stations of so many
varieties that Esna couldn’t pick them all out. When she asked the computer to
give her a count it reported that there were 492,773 different stations here,
not counting the constructs.

The ship count was over 4 billion, and that didn’t
include dropships. Esna couldn’t help but spend some of her down time pouring
through the visuals available to her as they waited for the next leg of their
journey. There were so many races here, many part of Star Force, but others as
well that had business relationships with the empire. More than that though,
this region was free of the V’kit’no’sat and she guessed this was what it looked
like when people could live outside of their influence and fear, for there were
so many star systems between here and the front for the enemy to blast through
before they could get here.

That also meant that this was what the Devastation
Zone must have looked like before the Viks trashed it, and that made her even
more furious. What she was seeing here was beyond her ability to reconcile with
the conditions she’d grown up in on Forso. The Viks
hadn’t destroyed Star Force and put something else in its place, they’d just
destroyed it and let the lingering scraps degenerate in apathy.

Yet one more reason why they had to be taken down,
some way, some how.

By the time she eventually got to Grid Point Dagran,
which also had 4 constructs, she felt like she’d been transported into another
reality. The level of infrastructure and amount of population at these Grid
Points…which was measured in the trillions…was beyond words and it baffled her
how anyone could navigate the mess of stations and ships, let alone find a
single person in all of that, but Star Force was organization incarnate and her
contact found and met up with Darren and Esna on a Star Force starport that was
16 miles wide and shaped like a seda, but the interior design was quite
different and housed travelers for the most part, acting as a way station
within the Grid Point.

“Tior,” Darren said with a
nod as a familiar Canderian uniform approached them in a small atrium with a
few benches bracketed by small trees in rectangular boxes that broke up the artificial
sterility of the Star Force plaza.

“I’m glad you made it. Heard we took some bad damage
in the attack.”

“Surface layers got messed up pretty good, but they
didn’t have time to pound much further. This is Esna.”

“Hello, Esna,” Tior said
graciously. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I’ve heard nothing about you.”

“My job here is done,” Darren said, bowing out. “Good
luck.”

Esna looked at him as he turned and left, then locked
eyes with the other Canderian. “And you are what exactly?”

“I’m your ride and Pantheon 7 teammate.”

Esna’s eyes narrowed. “How old?”

“1738.”

Esna sighed. “Sure you want me with you?”

“That depends. Show me your
Fornax.”

Esna didn’t hesitate, sending a single focused burst
directly into his face. He didn’t see the energy discharge, for it was
invisible, but it disrupted his control of his body so fast he dropped to the
floor in a pile as if he were a robot whose power switch had just flipped off.

Esna didn’t keep him down and Tior
got back to his feet quick enough, shaking his limbs a bit as he looked at her
with a grin.

“Yeah, we can definitely use you. We’ll just have to
make do with your lack of other skills. What’s your best mile up to?”

“4:21 and my 10K is 34:18.”

“Slow as hell then, but your Fornax will be worth it
when we figure out how to work you in. No duffle?”

“Traveling light,” she said, referencing the fact that
she’d just been getting clothing and other accessories locally as needed after
making the decision to let go old habits. In Star Force territory everything
you needed to survive was made available for free, so she didn’t actually need
to carry anything with her aside from her uniform, which she was wearing.

“Alright then, let’s go,” Tior
said, pointing a direction and then walking that way with Esna having to catch
up a step.

“Where are we going? I wasn’t told.”

“That’s because no one knows. Well, I do, but the unit
moves around so much few know where we actually are at any given time.”

“Are you all here?”

“No, I was sent to come pick you up. Little bit of
vacation for me, but the others are still in the field.”

“Doing what exactly?”

“Hunting pirates at the moment. Not here,” he amended.
“This region is stable, but the further rimward you
go it gets a lot less pretty. We’re still picking up the pieces from the Nexus
collapse and a lot of people are trying to take advantage of it. We’re doing
some quiet work that otherwise would have to go to the Archons, so it gets
challenging at times, but we know when and where to stick our heads in and when
not. You’re going to give us some badly needed new options.”

“And slow you down in the process.”

“We’re good enough to manage it. You won’t be involved
in every mission, just like I’m not involved in what they’re doing now, but
given time your skills will increase and we’re willing to suffer through that
deficiency in exchange for your psionic. Do you know how you got yours?”

“I know where, but not how. The medtechs called it
spontaneous development.”

“Our gain,” Tior said,
squeezing between two aliens that Esna couldn’t identify, but they smelled like
burnt wood. “You’re going to have to work your ass off to get up to speed as
fast as you can, but we’ll make this work if you’re game.”

“Wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t,” she said, passing
between the pair and coming back up on Tior’s
shoulder, which was a couple inches higher than hers. “How many are in the
unit?”

“22, counting you.”

“Do we all deploy on the same missions?”

“Depends. Sometimes 22 isn’t enough for the tasks
we’re assigned. It’s really chaos out there in places, and not enough Star
Force troops to get to everyone. We go out beyond the lines and hit the biggest
threats we can to diminish the damage, but there’s always some other planet we
can’t get to, so we stay deployed pretty much constantly.”

“Where are we headed?”

“Hangar bay. Then we have two more Grid Point jumps
before we get off. There will be a warship waiting there to take us out to the
wilderness.”

“Have you read my history?”

“Yes.”

“Is it as bad as Mace?” she asked, using the official
name for Forso.

“Yes and no. Biggest difference is there are more
people out here, a lot more. Mace was pretty much deserted. There’s plenty of
bad guys to take down. Don’t expect that we will ever run out. We have to pace
ourselves and make sure we never overextend, but we’re taking down as many as
we can. With you, we’re going to have to relearn what we can and can’t do.”

“Is there anything we can do enroute to shave some
time off the learning curve?”

Tior smiled. “Yep. I’m going
to feel you out as much as possible in training, so be mentally prepared to be
pushed past your breaking points. I need to find out where they are. Nothing
personal, Red.”

“Red?”

“Your hair.”

“People always called me ‘Phantom,’ but never Red.”

“Why Phantom?”

“I didn’t socialize or sleep around.”

“What did you do?”

“Extra workouts.”

Tior smirked. “I think
you’re going to fit in fine. Just don’t get cocky and killed on the first
mission. We’ll have your back, but you gotta learn to
err on the side of caution in between bouts of recklessness.”

“Isn’t that a contradiction?”

“Theoretically yes, in practice, no. It’s something
you learn in the field, and we’ll keep you alive long enough to get that
experience, but you have to promise not to ignore orders and try to do more to
prove yourself. You’re here because we want you here, so there’s nothing to
prove.”

“Alright,” Esna said, not accepting that but also not
willing to argue it. She had a lot to prove, but she understood the need to not
get cocky. Rammak had drilled that into her long ago, forcing her to focus on
doing what she could and living in reality rather than the delusions of ego.
“I’ll follow your lead.”

“Good. Now let’s get out of here. Keep up,” he said,
accelerating to a jog as he wove in and out of pedestrian traffic.

Esna followed him, not sure why he was running and
seeing a lot of odd looks from the people they were wooshing
past, but she kind of liked it. Civilians walked, and she was now part of an
elite unit operating outside of civilization…so why not run and break the mold?

She kept pace with him all the way through the
congested walkways until they came to a sealed entrance that Tior keyed open, then he led her inside a maintence walkway that stretched out in both directions as
far as she could see.

“Ok, newb. Take the lead and make decent speed. I’ll
tell you when to veer off,” he said, pointing to their left.

Esna smiled and took off running at full speed, not a
polite jog, down the narrow and empty walkway that was a mix of catwalks and
solid panels that occasionally had views out into the heart of machinery that
kept the starport functioning. Tior’s footsteps were
a constant presence behind her and she knew she couldn’t outrun him, so she
didn’t try. Esna just picked a medium pace and ground it out as she got the
feeling that the promised intensity of the Pantheons was not understated. If Tior was impatient enough to walk to the hangar bay when
off mission like this, then what he and the others were like on mission was
probably going to be insane.

And as long as Esna found a way to keep up, she
wouldn’t have wished it any other way.

The training Tior had her do
on the way out was limited but intense, lasting only an hour or two each day
and leaving her drained. He never had her repeat a drill or challenge twice,
testing the level where her skills and abilities were so he and the others
would know how much to expect of her. The rest of the time was spent swapping
stories and Esna doing a few easy workouts while Tior
did his own. She watched a few of them, slack jawed
the entire time. Esna could have sworn he was faster than Tyrenk, and that
reminded her of something Rammak had told her.

He’d said that a Commando could be more powerful than
an Archon if they had the time and training to gradually build up their
strength to insane levels. Tior didn’t have psionics,
which would have meant Tyrenk could have owned him, but as far as physical
skills went Esna was pretty sure that this Canderian exceeded the Archon…and by
a wide margin, which meant Esna was back to being the pathetic carry along. But
a carry along that was wanted this time.

Esna knew she wasn’t going to catch up to their skill
level, so her personal mission became not holding them back so much that it
annoyed them. She didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but she was going to
have to fit in with these superior warriors somehow, and she really didn’t want
to be a static weapon that they literally had to carry around like a rocket
launcher. Esna wanted to be one of them, and that meant she had to at least be
able to move herself around.

Which meant she was back to running again. Some things
never changed.

When they eventually got off the Grid Point system and
onto the warship…which happened to be a Star Force Tolsoi
warship…Tior’s testing of her was complete, leaving
her to do her normal workouts alongside the monkey-like race in their onboard
training facilities. They were Star Force members, but ones that she hadn’t
seen back on Tauntaun. Apparently that was because most of their troops were
not up to fighting the Viks, but they were doing a lot of heavy work out here
where the Star Force empire was thriving and constantly sending resources back
to the front to replace the ships and everything else the Viks destroyed, thus
delaying their advance as many races that did not fight directly fought with
supply production.

The Tolsoi were in between,
having a large military and ample supply production, in addition to worlds near
the front. If the Viks kept advancing they’d get to them and then the Tolsoi would be in direct conflict, but so far they were
providing a support role by handling the lesser wars Star Force was involved in
while the most elite troops were on the front defending against the Viks.

Or rather most of the elite troops. Her Pantheon unit
was one of the exceptions and Tior told here that
there were also Archons sporadically deployed out on the far rim territories.
Enough to lead the ‘lesser’ troops and do some solo work, but not enough to
even dent the sheer amount of territory that had to be protected, conquered, or
patrolled. The outer border of Star Force wasn’t a smooth one, and it was
constantly expanding as they took down or absorbed more and more threats while
also incorporating new races that petitioned for joining. Growth out here was
the norm, even as the Viks were consuming and destroying what Star Force had
built up long ago on the coreward front.

That was a huge change for Esna, but it wouldn’t sink
in until much later when she got a chance to actually see and feel some of it.
The trip out on the warship was full of learning, talking, and training, but
the experiencing would come later.

When they eventually reached their destination Esna
discovered it was a small seda. LEP was the identification, meaning it had been
built after JOR, and it was the only one in the system that held two planets
with Star Force colonies on them. They weren’t fully developed, with one only
possessing a single city and the other having a dozen or so. This was primitive
compared to the Grid Points and some of the other systems the warship had
passed through, but still night and day different from Forso.

Esna and Tior were dropped
off on the seda, then he took her to a special reserved area that the Pantheon
units had to themselves. Esna got a huge set of quarters in addition to a lot
of other equipment, including her armor, which Tior
had fitted and constructed to her body dimensions rather than giving her a
generic adjustable suit. The armor was almost identical to what she had worn on
Tauntaun, but with a few distinct variances.

Most notable was the T-shaped visor on the helmet.
When she asked about it Tior said it was symbolic
rather than functional, but if the holograms inside failed you could see out of
it as a backup. The design was reminiscent of something from Human history, but
he didn’t know what. It had become the symbol of Canderous, distinguishing
their armor from everyone else’s, but most of the technology was the same,
including the internal controls that had a different color scheme and some
altered tones, but Esna adjusted to it quickly given her previous experience
alongside Rammak.

After that and a few days orientation, Tior took Esna out of the system on a smaller Canderian
ship headed towards the location where her Pantheon unit was currently engaged,
intending on meeting up with them there and diving head first into her new
Fornax support role...all the while expecting this transition to be
uncomfortable for her and especially her new unit, for she was going to
mightily slow them down. The only question was how much.

24

November 11, 4817

Sarbran System

Tahbrana

The ship Esna and Tior
arrived on barely had any training facilities, for it was a smaller ship with
decent weaponry and not meant for much more than courier work, but they managed
to maintain their fitness until they arrived in planetary orbit of Tahbrana. It wasn’t a Star Force world, and Esna could see
the various smoke plumes from orbit that marked the heavy war zones below as
the native population fought outsiders who were plundering their planet for
whatever they thought was of value…including slave labor.

The three Canderous ships in orbit had put an end to
the naval presence of the invaders, who were from a mix or races and empires, and
stopped them from taking anyone or anything off the surface in bulk, but a few
ships were sneaking past due to sheer numbers. That had shut down most of the
organized looting, but left the armies on the surface enacting extermination
orders. For whatever reason they wanted the native Yados
dead, and the millions of invading troops, when spread out, were not easy to
stop.

“What’s that?” Esna asked, seeing another ship in
orbit.

“Paladin. They only recently arrived, so the bulk of
the fighting is up to us until they can get going.”

“Meaning what?”

“The Paladin? I mean reproducing. They’re the long
term solution to securing this world, but there has to be something left to
save. Keeping as many of the Yados alive is our job,
and while the Canderian units on the ground are playing defense, we’re going
behind enemy lines on the offensive.”

“Am I jumping right in?” Esna asked, a bit concerned.

“Yes,” Tior said flatly.
“That wasn’t the plan, but I’ve got a good feel for your skill level and I
think I can compensate for your weaknesses. We’ll operate as a pair, though I
may need to carry you piggyback some of the time when we need to move faster
than you can run. It’ll take some time for us to get good at it, but I don’t
want to wait to put you into action more than a few days. They need both of us
down there, and especially you so we can access some areas that we currently
can’t get in to without taking casualties.”

“Alright. Just tell me what to do.”

“We’re transferring over to that warship, then I’ll
get you up to speed and we’ll practice a few binary operations. When I’m
satisfied, we’re going mission ready.”

“If you think so, I’m game.”

“Your job here is to use your Fornax and that’s it
until you grow up, youngling. Focus on your task and we’ll make this work.”

“I’m comfortable with the role of weapon, and I’ve
ridden on the back of a Scionate before.”

“Oh?”

“He was a Maverick.”

“Well he has a flat back, mine is vertical, so it’ll
take some practice,” he said as their view of the holographic display in the
main hall showed one of the Canderous warships shoot off from their formation
and head down closer to the planet.

“Do you know what’s happening?”

“Looking like a bombardment run. Probably got a call
from the troops on the surface for fire support. I don’t see any enemy ships in
play.”

“Aerial craft?”

“They have plenty down there, but they keep away from
ours. Our kill rate is sky high and their shields are crap. The entire tech
level of the enemy is inferior, but they’ve got numbers and a head start on
us.”

“How long have we been here?”

“8 months.”

“And how long do you think this mission will take?”

“It’s a fairly well populated planet, so Canderous
will be here for a few years most likely.”

“Years?”

“Welcome to the big leagues, Red. But defeating the
enemy isn’t our team’s objective. We’re here to stall and delay the enemy as
much as possible in order to save as many natives as we can. Others can handle
the straight up combat, but until the Paladin numbers start to swell this fight
is a losing one. We’re here to tip the scales. If and when the fight becomes a
conventional one we’ll leave and move on to another assignment while others
finish the hard work. We’re here to do the impossible.”

“We can’t save them all, can we?” Esna said sadly.

“No we can’t,” Tior all but
whispered, “but the more damage Pantheon can do, the more pressure we take off
them. Which is why we’re not holding back, and with you we can hit some bigger
targets, but there will still be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people
dying every day. We can’t stop all of that.”

Esna sighed. “Then this is where we need to be.”

“Dropship,” Tior said, with
Esna taking that to mean it was time to leave and she headed out of the chamber
first with her new teammate following. They went straight to the hangar and
boarded the dropship that already had her armor and their other supplies packed
into it, then they transferred over to the Canderian warship that, unlike most
Star Force varieties, did not carry drones. It was one big, fat, angular ship
full of weaponry rather than docking ports, and the base of operations for
Pantheon 7 in this system.

Like on the seda, they had a special section of the
ship where only they could go and once onboard Tior
brought her to it with a special code input onto a keypad after a genetic scan.
The door whooshed into the wall, allowing the pair to walk through before it
sealed again. What Esna saw inside wasn’t anything special, just more hallways
and rooms like on the rest of the warship, all in Canderian design and colors,
but it felt like hallowed ground all the way into an equipment room where there
were two other Humans sitting and doing some maintenance work on weapons.

“Hey, buddy,” one of them said, setting aside a large
rifle and standing up. “New girlfriend?”

“That number 22?” the other asked, also standing up
and walking over to where she gave Esna a good looking over.

“Yep,” Tior confirmed, then
looked at Esna. “Say hi.”

As Tior had instructed her
to do before, Esna sent a focused Fornax blast into each of them with about a
half second delay between the two. Both the man and the woman dropped to the
ground twitching and stayed there long enough for Esna to walk over and look
down at them, then she stopped hitting them with repetitive blasts and put a
sarcastically friendly look on her face.

“Hi there, fellas.”

She heard Tior laughing
behind her as her two new teammates got to their feet with scowls on their
faces that quickly shifted to respect as they suspected who had put her up to
that.

“That’s one hell of a takedown,” the man said, looking
her over. “Name’s Harten. I’m guessing your physical
skills don’t match up.”

“No, I’m a weak ass, one trick pony right now,” Esna
admitted freely.

“Useful trick,” the woman said, glaring once at Tior. “Nice introduction.”

“I thought you’d like that,” he said, walking up and
putting a hand on Esna’s shoulder. “She’s going to be useful, but until she can
grow up I’m going to partner with her. We need a couple days to practice, then
we’re going live.”

“That fast?” Harten asked.

“She’s weak, but her heart is that of a warrior. She’d
learn the most from combat, and I’ll make sure she stays alive long enough to
learn.”

“I’m Aeryn,” the slightly
shorter woman said, but who easily outmassed Esna
with her sculpted muscles. She wasn’t what Esna would call ‘thick,’ but she had
a build that suggested she was a wrestler/grappler.

“She also goes by Phantom and Red,” Tior added. “Seems she didn’t take to the scum she was
training with so she kept to herself a lot.”

“We’ll that’s not going to happen here,” Aeryn said firmly. “We work and train as a unit. So much so
we get to the point where we almost breathe for one another. You’ve got to
embrace that or we’ll send you back.”

“The more I’m with you guys the more I’ll learn, so
not a problem,” Esna said confidently. “I don’t like hanging around people that
will drag me down, and I apologize if I do that for you. I’ll try to keep up as
best I can.”

“You’ve got something we don’t, so it’ll even out,” Harten promised, “but you won’t be able to keep up.”

“Just tell me what I need to do.”

“Tior can do that, and when
we’re needed to help you train we’ll be there, but I’m heading back down within
the hour. District 19 is a shitstorm and I’m going to
clean up what I can.”

“I’m taking a day,” Aeryn
said. “Hurt my leg pretty bad and had to come back up. Need a rest day before I
get back into it.”

“How?” Tior asked.

“Stupid trip mine. Torqued my armor so much my bone
snapped. I read you got into it with the Viks?”

Esna nodded. “Yeah.”

“And that’s when your Fornax popped?”

“Third time, on a high gravity world. Only three of us
made it out alive.”

“Those Zen’zat are nasty buggers with Archon powers. I
don’t know why we’re not allowed to earn psionics. Leaves us sitting ducks
whenever we go up against them.”

“They let us have her,” Harten
countered. “So maybe she’s a test to see if we can handle them. The Protovic
didn’t start off with them either.”

“They have their own set, but I agree,” Aeryn said, looking at Esna anew. “Maybe she is a test.”

“I don’t think so,” the new Pantheon said. “Tyrenk…the
Archon that brought me to Canderous…said I didn’t have what it took to become
an Archon. I don’t think they’ll be giving their powers to anyone they don’t
think is worthy, and if they are worthy they’ll just make them an Archon.”

“She has a point,” Tior
noted.

“Then lets show them a reason to give us at least some
psionics,” Aeryn countered.

“That’s not why she’s here. Focus on the mission,
please. The Archons will do what the Archons want to do, and they haven’t
steered us wrong so far. They have their tasks, we have ours, and she’s here to
help with ours. We finally have a psionic on the team and you’re whining about
not getting more. Suck it up, cupcake. The Archons just gave us a gift, not a
test.”

“You underestimate them, but point taken. We need both
of you down there. The Paladin got hit and lost all but a tenth of their reproduction
pods.”

“Shit,” Tior said with a
shake of his head. “How’d that happen?”

“They got swarmed by the Bajka.
Apparently the buggers knew what was coming and tried to stop it from
happening. They didn’t fully succeed and bled themselves dry in the process,
but that setback is going to cost a lot of people their lives.”

“I thought we had mechs covering them?”

“We did. They ran right by them taking the hits.”

Tior closed his eyes,
imagining the gore that must have resulted in. Mechs vs infantry was always a
win for mechs, and the Bajka had to have sacrificed
an awful number of themselves to force some of them past…and even then the
Paladin on the ground would have killed a lot of them with perimeter defenses
and their own troops.

“How did they get that close?”

“Hot drop on all cardinal points, then reinforced by
rushed formations overland when the mechs were spread.”

“No aerial support?”

“They had theirs keeping ours busy.”

“We still shouldn’t have lost.”

“Tior, they sent half their
army on this one attack and lost all of them. It was a desperation move.”

“Apparently a successful one,” he said, putting his
hands on his armored hips as his and Esna’s heads and hands were uncovered, but
otherwise wearing their full armor rather than carrying it as cargo. “Damn it,
how far behind does that put us?”

“We lost most of the Arbiters, but it wasn’t a death
blow. There’s enough to rebuild from, but it’ll take 9 months to get back to
startup levels.”

“What…the…hell…” Tior said
in dismay.

“Our thoughts exactly,” Harten
agreed.

Tior put a hand over his
face, squeezing the bridge of his nose for several long seconds before letting
go and looking at Esna.

“That time span I quote you just got thrown out the
window. We’re in scramble mode now, and most of the people on this planet are
going to die unless we get reinforcements.”

“You know there aren’t any available,” Aeryn reminded him. “We’re all they’re got.”

“Then they just got fucked,” he said, kicking an empty
box halfway across the room in frustration. “Someone dropped the ball. Who was
it?”

“Tior, have a look at the
battlemap before you start going down that road,” Harten
said, pointing him towards a console on the other side of the room.

The Pantheon walked over to it without another word
and Esna followed him, seeing battle records brought up as he worked through
what had happened since he’d left to go pick her up. He took his time, ignoring
that Esna was even there, so she decided to wait patiently rather than make a
nuisance of herself. The other two Pantheons didn’t say anything to her, rather
going back to their maintenance work while they waited the few minutes it took
for Tior to catch up…and realize that the enemy
hadn’t been aided by a failure on the part of the Paladin or Canderous. They’d
simply committed suicide in order to hit the Paladin before the Paladin could
reproduce to levels that the Bajka and the others
attacking this world could not stand against.

“So much for an ignorant enemy,” Tior
said, walking over and sitting down next to Aeryn.

“We’re getting kind of famous out here, you know.”

“Comms suck out here, you know.”

“They chose to die fighting rather than surrender,” Harten added. “Sometimes stupidity is just unpredictable.”

“We’ve seen enough of it that we ought to be able to
predict such bull shit before it goes down,” he said angrily, then seemed to
remember that Esna was there. “Sit down, Red. I’ve got to figure this out.”

“What’s to figure out?” Aeryn
asked as Esna found another bench and perched on it in her black/green armor.

“How we were sent here with so few. If we can’t
protect the Paladin then, how can we protect them now?”

“They’ve been moved,” Harten
informed him.

“Doesn’t matter if someone finds them and copies the Bajka. Someone miscalculated or we messed up. This
shouldn’t have happened.”

“It did. We can’t predict everything.”

“Aeryn, we don’t land troops
we can’t protect. Something went wrong somewhere.”

“We gambled, sending too few troops to help this
planet. If there was an Archon here maybe they would have seen it coming, but
we’re just Canderous and I didn’t see anything missteps from the Regulars.”

“We still got our asses kicked by a bunch of
primitives.”

“A bunch is right,” Harten
pressed. “A whole, big bunch. Numbers matter, and they spent a lot of them for
that hit with no casualties for us. We lost the Paladin, but Canderous came
through untouched aside from equipment. That made our job going forward
easier.”

“But it delays the final solution. More natives will
die because of this because we can’t be everywhere at the same time. The
Paladin can, which is why they’re the key that we just lost.”

“They will regrow,” Aeryn
assured him.

Tior looked at the floor.
“This is why we need an Archon.”

“We have to make do without,” Harten
said, finishing his project and pulling over a small pistol with weapons damage
to it that he began disassembling.

“Yeah,” Tior agreed,
standing up again and pointing to Esna. “Let’s go. The sooner we work this out
the sooner we can get down there. We’ll start on the track. Leave your other
gear here.”

Esna disconnected the pack on her back and stood up,
following him out further into the ship and leaving the Pantheon section
behind. They got to the halo track with a few other people already there and
running, but it wasn’t crowded.

“First lesson,” Tior said,
and Esna could tell he was angry, but not with her, “is mounting quickly. We
need to do this on the run, but let’s walk it through slowly. You need to hop
and grab my shoulders, use them as leverage to get your torso onto where my
pack would be. When it’s there it’ll be easier to grab, so we gotta learn to do this the slippery way,” he said, turning
his back to her. “Try it.”

Esna ran a step towards him and hopped, getting up on
his shoulders then wrapping her armored arms around his neck.

“Not…my throat. Cross your wrists over my chest. Make
a triangle.”

Esna did as instructed, then offered a suggestion.
“Grip points?”

“Yes. Bottom hand. Leave the top free and grip your
other wrist. That way you can pull it away to get to a weapon quickly. Do you
need line of sight?”

“I emit from tissue in my head. If it hits your body
it’ll affect you.”

“Do you have to look though?”

“To aim. I can throw it any direction I want, even
backwards.”

“Ok. If I have my countermeasures on you don’t have to
worry about hitting me. We’ll need to do that when you emit a field…you can do
that, can’t you? I’ve seen Archons do it.”

“Yes, but probably not as large as them. I actually
learned to do that first.”

“Alright, legs. I need decent arm swing. Can you lock
your knees on my lower back?”

“Let me see,” Esna said, leveraging herself higher on
his back while he supported her full weight easily. She touched her knees
there, arching her body very far away from his, and used the grip points in
them to connect to his armor. “How’s that?”

Tior swung his arms
experimentally. “Tolerable. We’ll have to reset our shields to allow for this.”

“We can do that?”

“There’s some deep customization possible when you dig
into the program. Not something we can do on the fly, though. Hold on, let’s
see how this works,” he said, taking off running with Esna’s head totally above
his as if she was a giant backpack getting jostled slightly from his steps and
torso twist.

“Can you loosen up?”

“Meaning what?” she asked.

“My shoulders need to twist away from my waist. You’ve
got to let yours twist or you lock me in place.”

“Sorry,” she said, making the adjustment that allowed
his running motion to smooth out a bit.

“Better,” he said, coming to a stop. “Move your knees
up two inches.”

Esna disconnected and made the adjustment, putting her
even higher above his shoulders. “I’m gonna hit tree
branches up here.”

“That’s why you have a helmet,” he said sarcastically
as he began to run again in spurts for the next two hours as they worked out
the best way for him to carry her, testing his speed and confirming that he
could run far faster even with her on his back than she could run on her own.

Then they started some target shooting, both regular
and psionic from on his back, ridiculous as it looked, but as they’d both
acknowledged previously she was a weapon, and getting her into the proper
position to fire was the key…and until she could run as fast on her own as he
could with her on his back, she was going to have to suffer the shame of being
cargo.

But if it allowed her to give the team the capability
to do things they couldn’t do before, she’d gladly bear that shame. She was
Canderian, whose first priority was winning.

And winning ugly was still winning.

25

November 14, 4817

Sarbran System

Tahbrana

Esna was woken by the alarm in her wrist communicator,
with the repetitive chimes pulling her out of a deep sleep and triggering her
habitual rush to get out of bed and report to her training handler…except there
was none anymore and after a few seconds her mind settled and she sat back down
on the edge of her bed, looking at her hands.

They hadn’t changed much over the years, for the
muscles that operated them were located in her forearms and connected via
tendons that did not grow in size. Her skin was smooth with light callouses at
the appropriate spots, but on the back of her left hand was something new. It
was a genetic tattoo that all the Pantheons had, a little bit of team unity
that had no functional aspect, but to Esna it meant a great deal.

It meant she was legit. She didn’t feel that way until
she’d gotten the tattoo in the medical station that had altered her skin color
rather than inking it. This tattoo wouldn’t fade or distort, and if her skin
was cut it would heal and refill in the color because the design was now part
of her genetic code. A part of her. She was a Pantheon now, and today was when
she headed down to the planet and got into combat for the first time since Darlek. There she had been little more than baggage, but
now she had the advantage. There were no Viks on the surface, but there were a
lot of bad guys doing bad things and she was here to help stop them.

Esna stared at her tattoo for nearly 3 minutes as she
woke up, seeing the T-visor helmet similar to what Canderous used on a man that
wore little other clothing, but had a shield, a spear, and a long cape. The
helmet had a pluff of ornamentation on top and the
man’s eyes couldn’t be seen save for two glowing orbs, making it look like the
helmet shaded everything within to blackness. Pantheons didn’t need names, for
when they went into battle they fought as one, interchangeable and
unrecognizable in their armor that also covered their faces, as well as their
entire bodies.

The tattoo wouldn’t show when in armor, and their
armor didn’t carry the symbol, so it was just a little source of unity for all
the Pantheon teams, not just Pantheon 7, and Esna felt it connected her to them
all. Rammak had said it would take her 200 years to become skilled enough to enter
combat, but it had only taken her 5 years to get here, and with Canderous no
less.

Rammak hadn’t been wrong though, because she was only
here because of her Fornax. Without that she wouldn’t be allowed near a combat
zone until her physical skills increased exponentially, but looking at her
tattoo she realized that truly didn’t matter. Pantheons fought as a unit, and
the strength of the others would overlap with hers. She could do something they
could not, and her being here was going to make them stronger. She wasn’t their
equal in any other way, but on the battlefield her Fornax made her an equal in
an unequal way.

But that tattoo…they had told her about it and
suggested she get it, with their blessing, and that told her they had faith in
her. All of them. She’d met 5 of them by now, with the other 16 still being
down on the planet. They rotated up here often to get new supplies and some
decent sleep, but they were pulling multiple day stints, sometimes without rest
at all, in order to get the job done and she was going to be expected to do the
same sooner or later. Right now they had to feel her out, but in the traditional
way as they were going to do it on the battlefield and let results determine
how hard they pressed her.

Not as a rookie that had to earn her place. The tattoo
said it in far greater effect than any words ever could…she was one of them, now, not later, and in full. They all
had different skill levels, different strengths and weaknesses. Hers were
greater, but in negative and positive, and it didn’t matter. They had sent one
of their own back to pick her up, leaving them without his help for all that
time because they knew she’d be valuable, and not just as a weapon to be hauled
around. They knew she’d be valuable as a full member of the team, and Esna’s
pride that was embodied in her tattoo was so great she couldn’t cram it into
words.

But she didn’t need to. The Pantheons were about
actions, not words, and in combat they rarely talked save for when needed.
Everything was about the mission, and Esna had already slid into that mentality
easily enough. These were the type of people she wanted to team with, wanted to
learn from, and wanted to fight alongside. In short, this is exactly where she
wanted to be with her one exception being that they weren’t fighting the
V’kit’no’sat.

Esna knew she wasn’t ready for that, so she was 100%
satisfied with where we she was now. This was where she belonged, and Pantheon
7 was her new family. Now it was time to start being a Pantheon and live up to her tattoo.

Esna let her hand fall as she stood and went straight
to the door wearing nothing but her underwear. She headed out to the nearest of
three cafeterias on the ship and ate a quick breakfast, drawing a few odd looks
but nothing the Canderous crew hadn’t seen from the other Pantheons before.
There was no point in putting on a uniform only to take it off minutes later
when she got to the equipment room and slid into the thin black survival suit
that clad to her like a second skin.

She wore that and a pair of matching shoes as she
pulled her armor on, using the automatic encapsulation feature after getting
her feet and hands in position. The black armor wrapped her up completely and
she began breathing through the combat filter that put a slight crispness to
the air, but otherwise she didn’t notice any difference. Her body fit snuggly
into the soft inside padding of the armor, but it didn’t crush too much as she
moved…just enough to make sure the blows she would land later wouldn’t transfer
in full force to her body.

Heat transfer kept her body slightly cool and would
maintain that temperature no matter how much or little heat her body put out,
allowing her to move and fight at full efficiency as her body didn’t need to
sweat much to maintain temperature. That allowed her to live for long periods
of time inside the armor without it becoming too gross, but it was the hard
plates that constituted her armor that were more her concern. Sweat and smell
were irrelevant where she was going, and all that would matter was how much
damage she could take without dying.

Knowing that she was going to be slow on her feet and
probably have to be carried in some situations, Esna attached her pack to her
armor’s back inside of which contained foodstuffs, extra ammo, a few other odds
and ends, and one key piece of technology that Pantheon units usually didn’t
carry, that being a regenerator.

It wasn’t a V’kit’no’sat version, but a Star Force
one. It was heavier than she liked, but if she was going to be slow a little
more wouldn’t make much difference and the team having it in the field would be
a nice backup. Esna wasn’t a medic, but the device didn’t require one to be.
Just touch it to the skin of the person injured and it would auto-activate…then
work its magic and put the person back together, or bring them back to life if
they weren’t too far gone.

Hopefully they wouldn’t need it, but better to be
prepared than not. Esna grabbed a Dre’mo’don rifle and two pistols, attaching
all three weapons to the rack over her pack then reported to the hangar bay
ahead of time. She got there 20 minutes prior to when she had to be out of
prudence, then waited at the foot of the dropship for the others to arrive.

There were three of them, including Tior, all wearing identical armor and packs, save for her
partner’s that had a slight modification to the rack that gave her a better
handhold. It was something the techs had whipped up yesterday for when she
needed a lift, and it allowed him to run about half a mile per hour faster with
her weight being better balanced.

But right now there was no need to carry her, so she
walked onboard with the others as their teamcomm
activated but no words were spoken. Whatever she said the others would hear,
but no one else would. The four of them sat in the passenger section, two
facing two across the walkway, as the ship took off and out of the warship’s
hangar before diving down hard towards the atmosphere as her teammates started
to throw up battlemap data for all to see on a small side screen inside her
helmet, both for the location they were headed and other places on the planet
that were seeing recent activity.

There was a war being fought on so many fronts the
Canderians couldn’t get to them all, leaving the Yados
to fight on their own in most cases as the various armies, pirates, and raiders
slaughtered them. The Yados were large, quadruped,
and deadly in close range, but weren’t very good at ranged combat. They had two
short arms in addition to the four legs, and were ugly as hell, but they were
able to put up some resistance. Today though it didn’t look like much as two
more cities had fallen and another three were seeing fresh combat.

But Esna wasn’t likely to see any Yados
in person today, for Pantheon 7 wasn’t going to reinforce them. They were
dropping in deep enemy territory and going after key infrastructure and units,
hopefully drawing some of their troops away from the Yados
and towards them as they destroyed as much as they could before evading and
heading to another target. The dropship they were using was sensor stealthed,
so if they maintained their distance the enemy couldn’t pick it up, but it
wasn’t a cloaking device. They’d have to move over ground on their own to get
to their targets, and that’s where Esna was going to be a liability.

But once they got to areas where the enemy was bunkered
up good, her Fornax would be able to pass right through walls and armor, and Tior had run her through multiple theoretical scenarios
based on what the team had faced previously and how she was going to unlock a
lot of new targets for them.

So they were going to manage her lack of speed in
exchange for her psionic, but she was carrying weapons for a reason. She wasn’t
just a Fornax weapon to be carried around, and while not as good as the others
in combat she was going to be more than a match for what they faced. The trick
was the enemy’s numbers and avoiding running into too many of them, but Esna
was looking forward to opponents she could actually kill after spending so much
time running from the Viks.

Esna monitored their approach via battlemap all the
way down to the ground, with the four Pantheons standing up just prior to
touchdown and walking to the back of the dropship so they were there just
before the ramp began to lower. Esna and Tior stood
side by side behind the other two and came out a step behind them.

As Esna ran down the ramp and felt the transition to
the native gravity, which was a touch higher than Star Force norms, she said a
silent thanks to Rammak for all his lessons and for pulling her out of that Forso hell hole. He’d given her a new life, a better one,
and one that mattered. She now had a purpose and that purpose started this
moment as she stepped into another hell hole, only this time she was in
Rammak’s place and the native Yados were in hers.
Esna was the badass rescuer on a Star Force team, coming in with all the
knowledge and training they provided, and Esna took a split second to
acknowledge that she’d come full circle.

She was now a Commando, like Rammak before her, and
she was more than ready to make it official as Tior
signaled her with a special ping and she swung up on top of his back as her
three teammates took off running across the swampy landscape as their dropship
promptly left them to their behind the lines mission, with the only way out
being to fight their way out as they worked into areas with enemy air cover
being too thick for extraction.

Alright, Rammak,
this is it. Wish me luck. I owe you more than I can repay, and I promise I’ll
do everything I can to insure Star Force survives...

Or go down
fighting, like you.

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