Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (33-36)
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 2016-02-13T05:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Archon Lore

Eviction

1

March 4, 2428

Alpha Centauri System

Tyr

“Olá,” the Brazilian receptionist said as she stood up from her chair and took a pair of steps up to the table/desk as she saw a man in a Star Force uniform approaching the Civilian Communications Depot, or CCD for short. It was the Brazilian government’s interstellar digital package delivery service, offering transit of data files and messages between planets via insystem relays or by carrying them via jumpship with a reasonable delay in delivery. For those with family or business relations off planet, or off moon in this case, the CCD was the primary means of communication and saw a steady stream of customers on a daily basis.

“What can I do for you?” the receptionist said with a smile, switching to English at seeing the man’s uniform.

The man didn’t return her smile, but in a very fluid and casual manner produced a pistol from behind his back and leveled it at her chest. Before she could react a bright blue plasma streak shot out and burned through her clothing and into her rib cage.

The Brazilian dropped to the ground, barely getting out a yip, then with his firing line cleared the man adjusted his aim and fired a pair of blasts at the man seated a few meters behind the desk as he jumped up and out of his chair in a panic.

He twisted as he was hit in the shoulder, then fell back down onto his chair face first as the second shot hit him in the back, leaving a small smoke trail rising up into the air as he lay kneeling into the chair with his head wedged into the gap between seat and backrest.

The shooter remained still and quiet, listening for a moment to see if anyone else was nearby, then he jumped up over the table/desk and into the back area of the kiosk, stepping over the woman’s twitching body and moving to the rear door that led into the equipment area. He pulled it open and stepped through, plasma pistol held ready, but no one else was in the area.

He lowered the muzzle and headed to a particular console, knowing well what he was looking for. He pulled up the control menu and input a flurry of commands, shutting off and locking down the communications equipment and creating a comms blackout in the colony…on the civilian side, at least.

He pulled out a small, pencil-sized personal comm and flicked the ON button.

“Point 2 is dark,” he reported.

“Copy that. Keep it that way.”

The man slipped the device back into his pocket and walked out into the reception area, finding the woman’s terrified eyes on him. He was surprised she was still alive.

Rather than using his pistol again he walked up and gently put his foot on her throat and constricted her airway. He held it there as he looked out the front entrance of the kiosk at the sparse passing traffic. The double doors leading in had done a good job of keeping the sound of his weaponsfire from drifting out onto the promenade, though there were few people out and about this early in the morning to have noticed anyway.

Once he was certain the woman was dead he dragged both bodies into the back area, then put the ‘Closed’ sign up on the reception desk and retreated into the equipment room where he took up a guard position, insuring that the CCD transmitters would remain dark.

Davis was studying a prototype schematic of a new civilian jumpship in holographic form over his desk when a chime sounded. He glanced to his clock inside the smooth, clear surface of his desk and saw a time flag, indicating that he had an appointment with the Brazilian ambassador. The Director sighed, collapsing the schematic and standing up. If he didn’t watch himself he’d be studying prototypes all day long.

He stepped around the side of his desk, hitting a button on top that retracted a portion of the carpet to the right of his chair, well out into the ‘empty’ confines of his spacious circular office. He stepped on the exposed metallic circle and faced inward, putting the panoramic window behind him and the central staircase in front, with a hologram of a pair of men manifesting itself before him in full size, looking as if the individuals were literally standing before him.

One of the men was the Brazilian ambassador, the other a Star Force staffer that quickly walked out of picture, disappearing from the hologram to allow the two of them to speak in private. No longer did Davis accept diplomatic inquiries in person, nor any other type of business matter with non-Star Force personnel, given that Atlantis was now off limits to the public. The Brazilian ambassador, an amicable associate of Davis, was currently in the Star Force embassy wing, located in another of Davis’s ocean cities along with the rest of the permanent diplomats, all of which had to contact him through subordinates, or through holographic relay if the matter was urgent enough to occupy his time.

“Rodrigo,” Davis greeted him by name.

“Director,” the ambassador replied with an uncomfortable expression on his face. “I have a favor to ask, as well as a story to tell, assuming you are unaware of it.”

Davis frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “Concerning what?”

“Tyr.”

Davis ran the name through his mental list, finding a few references, one of which was the name of a trailblazer, but the name of a moon that he’d given the Brazilians complete control over in the Alpha Centauri System seemed a much more likely candidate.

“Nothing currently on my radar concerning the moon. What’s going on?”

“I am embarrassed to say that…we have lost control of the colony.”

Davis’s frown deepened. “To whom?”

“At first we believed it was you…but subsequent intelligence reports quickly dispelled that ridiculous notion,” the ambassador said, toggling a control board off holo, followed by a series of video files popping up beside Davis. “A group of armed men in Star Force uniforms seized control of the colony while maintaining a communications blackout. These surveillance feeds we were able to obtain later from security agents within the colony.”

Davis saw several incidences of Star Force-uniformed men attacking security stations and other vital checkpoints with plasma pistols, efficient movements, and practiced coordination. No screaming or flailing about, just quick, clean, methodical kills eliciting no more emotional response than if they’d been ordering dinner.

“How old are these?”

The ambassador looked even more ashamed. “A little over 2 years.”

Davis’s eyes went wide with disbelief. Factor in transportation delays, and he’d expected no longer than 6 months. “Why have I not heard anything about this sooner?”

“We heard nothing of it ourselves for nearly a year. Whoever these men are, they took control of the moon without the general populace even becoming aware of it. Not a single transport, passenger or commercial, was so much as delayed. Business and commerce have been proceeding like clockwork, with regular reports flowing back to Mars. We’ve even seen an uptick in productivity from the moon since the takeover. Our people have complete freedom of movement, so we didn’t suspect a thing until certain personnel transfers failed to occur. The dead men from those surveillance videos couldn’t produce themselves, thus questions were asked and investigations begun.”

Davis found that remarkable. Even though the moon had no official Star Force presence on it, it was linked into their transportation grid, meaning his people had continued doing business with the colony all this time and his own security division hadn’t gotten wind of it.

“Detectives were sent to find the missing personnel, at which point the new rulers made themselves known to us through back channels. They wanted to keep the public from panicking, as did we, and they have declared themselves to be a liberated colony in fact, if not in name. They actually had the gall to suggest that business continue as normal and Tyr remain part of Brazilian territory, but without us having any control over it.”

“Hostages?” Davis asked.

“None,” the ambassador said with disgust. “They are beyond arrogant…or so we thought. Our investigators brought back all the information we needed, including these surveillance recordings of the initial takeover, then we sent a military strikeforce to reclaim possession of the colony. They didn’t even bother to resist the troops coming into the city…then we got no word back from them, nor did any come out. Our agents continue to come and go as they please, passing off as civilians, and they say nothing is wrong with the colony in the least. Everything is as it should be, as if no takeover had happened. They also can’t determine what happened to the strikeforce.”

“When was your last report?”

“Dated a month and a half ago. We’ve tried to keep matters quiet on our end while we figured out what was going on, so none of this has hit the newsfeeds, though I don’t know how. Tyr has a population of 13 million. You’d think word would spread through that many people simply by word of mouth. It’s as if these people are ghosts and the takeover never happened.”

“Do you have any idea how many of them there are?”

The ambassador shook his head, disgust on his face. “They’ve blended in with the rest of the population. All we can give you are the casualty lists, and there are 38 people missing, presumed dead based off those surveillance recordings.”

“How have they covered for the 38?”

“There are now replacements in those positions, logged as transfers. Whoever these ‘liberators’ are they’ve got good hackers working for them. The 38 have disappeared from all local databases. We had to pull backups from Mars to get the headcount,” he said, referring to the Brazilian capitol on the multinational planet.

Davis looked at one of the still playing security recordings off his right shoulder, seeing for a fact that the gunmen were wearing various Star Force uniforms…some personnel division, others engineering and mining. While Tyr was a Brazilian world it wasn’t uncommon for Star Force personnel from the planet Glasir, around which Tyr and two other moons orbited, to visit the colony. That would make the Star Force imposters blend in without them being recognized as foreign, not to mention that they might be given extra courtesy given the good relations between Star Force and Brazil.

Then again, he couldn’t completely discount that they were Star Force personnel…but no, if they’d been gone missing for 2 weeks a flag would have been raised, let alone 2 years. They had to be imposters.

“We obviously didn’t have a hand in this, but I’m curious as to how you came to that conclusion?” Davis asked. “These are our uniforms…or a very good knockoff.”

“Aside from our long history of cooperation, the assault made no sense,” the ambassador explained. “If you wanted to take the moon from us you have many more efficient options of doing so…like buying it. Sneaking around and murdering people doesn’t fit with your methods. Also, the weapons they are carrying are not of Star Force make.”

“No they’re not,” Davis confirmed, already having sized up the approximate model despite not being able to zoom in on the footage from the holographic transmitter he was standing on. He’d have to go over to his desk to do that, which he’d get to later. “Do they have anything larger than pistols?”

“Not based on our intel, sketchy as it is.”

“What was the favor you mentioned?”

The ambassador swallowed hard. “We have no choice but to send a larger force to retake the moon, and that could lead to unforeseen complications, given we don’t know what happened to our first strikeforce. It is rumored that you have clandestine Archon units sneaking around taking out the trash, so to speak. We would ask, as either a favor or for a price, to root out these insurrectionists and reclaim the colony for us.”

Davis stared at him evenly. “How large was your first strikeforce?”

“All ground troops, ferried in on transports to the spaceports, some 500 men in total.”

The skin around Davis’s eyes constricted slightly. Making 500 soldiers in combat gear disappear was no easy thing, meaning this takeover was even more complicated than the Director had already suspected.

“Have any civilians gone missing?”

“We’ve been checking into that, but so far our record searches have come up clean…though those residing on Tyr permanently are impossible to check on, given that we have to work through the local databases.”

“Anything else changed since the takeover, even the slightest anomaly?”

“Other than the fact they’re managing the moon better than those they overthrew…nothing stands out, and our people have been data sifting extensively. We have no answers as to what is going on, nor is there anyone else on the moon to ask for assistance. One of the drawbacks of owning your own world, we’re coming to realize.”

“Have they made any demands?”

“Not a one,” the ambassador said, his mannerisms evident that the Brazilians were at their wits’ end. “Not even a tirade as to why we brought this on ourselves or why liberation was necessary. No manifesto, no demands, not even an ill word. They want to continue on as is, but have made no threats concerning the eventuality that we don’t agree, and we haven’t received a word from them since the strike force was sent…not that we really expected any. There’s been almost no communication whatsoever.”

“You haven’t restricted travel to the moon?” Davis asked rhetorically, for if they had he would have already known about it.

“So long as we have access and the citizens of Tyr aren’t in any apparent danger, we felt it would be reckless to try and alter the situation, given that they might then become hostages.”

“I understand,” Davis said, his tone turning formal. “In light of this information, I have a favor to ask of Brazil, Ambassador.”

“Name it.”

“It seems there has been either a theft or counterfeiting of Star Force uniforms on the moon of Tyr. I thereby ask for your permission to investigate the matter and deal with it in a manner of our choosing.”

For a split second the ambassador was lost, then he caught on to the Director’s meaning and bowed his head gratefully. Star Force wasn’t going to charge Brazil with any sort of debt, merely deal with the situation pro bono. “Permission granted.”

“You’ll forestall your next assault?”

“If you’re stepping up, of course, though our troops will be available if you need them.”

“That won’t be necessary, but thank you. As you mentioned, we have other means of dealing with these incognito situations. Please forward any additional data you receive from your operatives.”

“I will, and thank you, Director.”

“Just part of being good neighbors,” Davis said as the ambassador signed off. His image disappeared but the surveillance feeds remained, shifting to center view now that they had room.

Davis stepped off the pad and retreated to his desk, transferring the images there as the carpet resealed seamlessly. He sat down and brought one up in an analysis program he’d gotten well used to using, having sifted through thousands of hours of data trying to hunt down leads on The Word. He brought up one of the security camera feeds and paused it when the man wearing a Star Force aqua-colored medical uniform pulled out a pistol from a hidden pocket…which the standard uniforms did not possess…and pointed it at a guard.

No doubt the Brazilian had been taken off guard by the uniform, but even as the weapon was being aimed at the woman wearing a light combat vest she responded by stepping laterally and drawing her own weapon. Davis had seen this one play out several times already as he’d been talking to Rodrigo, so he wasn’t interested in seeing the outcome, but rather the weapon the man was wielding.

Davis advanced it forward and back several times, zooming in and out and taking snapshots at various angles. He could tell from the look of it what it was, but he sent them into a 3D recognition program anyway, and using the parallax of the images it was able to construct a wireframe design and match it up against known weapon types.

A single option appeared, tagged as the custom plasma pistol design produced by The Word.

Davis had known as much as soon as the ambassador had started describing the takeover. They’d been getting progressively bolder as the years went by, even as Star Force had managed to root out a few of their operations centers. Industrial sabotage was usually their game, with the occasional assassination of individuals associated with the anti-Star Force crowd. Their aim seemed to be discrediting Star Force’s reputation…or rather, minimizing it. Death by a thousand cuts would be an overstatement, but their efforts had none the less been repetitive and selective, and Davis had often wondered what they were building up to.

This he had not expected, nor could he see their endgame, but the fact that they’d had effective control over an entire moon for 2 years meant they’d had plenty of time to misbehave. Even if Star Force went in and shut them down today, he wondered how much of their future plans they’d been able to accomplish in the interim with no one looking over their shoulder.

And the fact that they’d managed to keep it quiet all this time impressed Davis to no end, as well as being typical Word methodology. Granted, planets and moons were geographically isolated from one another, and if you hit the communications grid you could effectively black out or censor the primary comm channels, but with free flowing commerce being maintained there was no way to monitor and conceal what was going on on the moon, which meant their efforts to keep the takeover from reaching Tyr’s population’s knowledge…

Well, they were damned good at what they did. Davis had always known that, but this really took the cake. Granted, he’d have to confirm this intel, but he didn’t doubt the Brazilian reports. While Star Force didn’t spy on associated nations, they did monitor them, especially their commerce patterns, and had a takeover of even minimal blunt force been applied there would have been ripples of economic consequence that would have alerted his people to the incident.

No, The Word was behind this and they managed to keep it so quiet that neither Star Force nor the Brazilians had discovered it for a full year, and then they’d managed to keep the Brazilians dancing to their tune for another one. How they quietly dealt with an assault force of 500 men was another matter entirely, reinforcing in Davis’s mind that The Word’s agenda was not completely civilian. Why they had been producing firearms had always been a bit of a mystery, given that their previous efforts didn’t seem to require such weapons, nor in such large quantities.

Now he had a partial answer, though he knew this was merely the tip of the iceberg rising up a few meters. He had no doubt The Word was merely running through the first few pages of their playbook, building to something more ambitious down the line, though the quiet takeover of an entire planetoid was certainly a feather in their cap…but it didn’t do anything to seriously undermine Star Force, which was their stated agenda.

Davis knew he’d be spending numerous hours over the next months digging into this, so he put his curiosity on hold for a moment, knowing he needed to get the Archons moving as soon as possible, along with security’s intelligence subdivision, and sent a quick message out to David-441 and Drake-756, calling in both Green and Red teams from wherever in the Solar System they currently were.

2

May 9, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Glasir

David’s dropship departed one of the massive hangar bays onboard the jumpship Tardis, flying off across planetary orbit towards one of the planet’s 8 starports. Many more dropships were leaving along with it as the old jumpship, now recommissioned twice with more advanced gravity drives, began offloading passengers and cargo onto Glasir, one of seven Star Force planets within the system, all of whose natural environments were uninhabitable.

Glasir was a heavy grav world, registering at 154% of Earth’s gravity and containing an atmosphere of pure nitrogen. Temperatures were cold and the planet rocky, with no plant life whatsoever. It sat 4th in line around the twin stars at the center of the system, reminding David of the scenes of Tatooine from Star Wars. Glasir had such a view, though the pair of glowing orbs in the sky were much smaller, given the planet’s greater distance from them, which also accounted for the cold temperatures.

Despite the frigid conditions the nitrogen atmosphere kept enough ‘warmth’ in the surface to keep temperatures in the -20 to -40 Celsius range, which allowed the Star Force engineers some leeway in their construction and mining efforts. They’d built 3 large cities on the planet to date, with another in the early excavation stages, that housed upwards of 120 million colonists, all of which lived in regular gravity inside the enclosed structures.

Two other planets in the system held larger populations, Ragnarok and Odin, with 270 million and 1.3 billion respectively. All together, the Alpha Centauri System held just over 2.1 billion Star Force colonists, along with another 38 million that were under national jurisdictions.

Glasir had 3 moons, Tyr, Aesir, and Vanir, all of which bore no Star Force presence. Tyr was the sole property of Brazil, Aesir belonged to Russia, and Vanir was split between Australia and Andulia…the latter of which was a nation founded on Luna shortly after World War III that had expanded out to numerous holdings within the Solar System, and one that Davis had trusted to extend interstellar territorial holdings to.

All the moons were small, requiring gravity enhancement for the cities that dotted them. The Russians had colonized Aesir with a scattering of settlements, as had the Andulians, while the Aussies and the Brazilians had opted for building one megacity each on their planetoids that they continually expanded out like a bacterial growth on the rocky surfaces of the airless moons.

What infrastructural approach they took was their prerogative, but all four of the nations relied heavily on Star Force contracts for the construction, and as such the national settlements used almost all Star Force materials, making them look like an extension of the infrastructure on Glasir, though that was not the case.

Of the three moons Tyr was in the middle and not currently visible from David’s passenger dropship, though Aesir was. It made for a large, imposing silhouette in the sky, being half again closer to Glasir than Luna was to Earth. Around it orbited a number of stations, one of which was a Star Force starport, linking the Russian world to the rest of Humanity via the transportation grid. There, however, Star Force’s territory ended, with all transit down to the moon being handled by Russian ships, most of which had been purchased from Star Force.

Vanir and Tyr were the same, and once David’s dropship docked with the starport in Glasir orbit, he and the other passengers went their separate ways. Some remained onboard while most split up to take other flights, more than half of which were down to Glasir’s surface, with the others a mix of orbital stations and the ferries out to the three moons.

David took the ferry out to Tyr, flying onboard a dedicated starship that hauled both passengers and cargo between the two starports. Then came a longer wait for the Brazilian Orbital Transit Service, or BOTS, to dock their scheduled dropship flight with the Star Force station and exchanged passengers. David boarded a converted Dragon-class dropship reconfigured as a passenger liner along with more than 500 civilians transiting down to the large city on the moon’s surface.

David took one of the seats, feeling a bit odd in the surrounding accoutrements, which had been altered to Brazilian design aesthetics. He tried to think back to the last time he’d ridden onboard a non-Star Force ship, then got hung up in the mental conundrum of whether raiding one counted or not, for Green Team had pulled that duty on occasion.

As he mentally chewed on that thought he observed the crowd, which filled about 3/4ths of the seats. Though he couldn’t read their minds, he could read their body language…and none of the typical agitation of crossing into a dangerous situation was evident. The people were simply going about their regular routines, apparently unaware that anything untoward was occurring down on the moon.

Sitting back in his narrow, but adequately plush seat, David half watched the vid screens that showed their descent down to the surface, though neither he nor any of the other passengers or crew felt the acceleration and deceleration swings, given the inertial dampeners and artificial gravity.

He could, however, hear the rhythmic chomping of gum three seats to his right in the row ahead of him. The young girl was chewing loudly with perfect timing. David counted 23 chomps, each time followed by a break when she’d ball the gum up and roll it out onto her lips, twiddle it about, then suck it back in and start chewing another 23 times before repeating the process.

Before long some of the other passengers began to visibly bristle around her, though none had said anything as of yet. It was starting to get on David’s nerves too, not so much from the noise but by the precision of it. His mind kept getting stuck on the pattern of it, and whenever he started to think about something else the chomping would start again and he’d begin mentally counting the beats.

Annoyed that he was letting it bother him, he forced himself to endure it through the remainder of the short flight down to a spaceport within the Brazilian city. There the dropship landed on an exterior pad before rolling through an atmospheric containment shield and into a pressurized bay large enough to hold a dozen more of the huge dropships. The entire terminal, which was built on a 90 degree ‘V’, was connected to three other bays on the other side of the large walls that were covered in windows where more passengers were waiting to board and watching the flights come in and out.

David’s dropship parked in one of the berths and a gangway stretched out to dock with it, creating a level connection to the terminal that the passengers could walk through without having to drop down to the deck where the cargo transfer was occurring. David grabbed his carry-on satchel, the only luggage he’d brought with him on this mission, and joined the rest of the passengers as they slowly filed out into the gangway…though he did keep an eye on the gum chewing girl, and when she and her traveling companions stepped out into the walkway ahead of David he waited for her to roll the gum back out on her lips, at which point he telekinetically snagged it and shot it up towards the ceiling.

He suppressed a smile as the girl mildly freaked out, wondering what had just happened and where her gum had gone, as he used his Pefbar to navigate a course for the tiny annoying wad through the cabin and over to a trash receptacle.

With his contribution to society for the day done, he stepped into the passenger flow and departed the dropship, making his way into the terminal and onto the observation promenade where he camped out for a few hours, grabbing a bite to eat and just milling about getting a feel for the situation.

Again, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, though this was his first visit to the moon, so he couldn’t completely be sure what ‘ordinary’ was for the Brazilian city, but compared to the rest of the Human interstellar society everything was buzzing along like normal commerce should. People were moving about in a hurry, others were idling the hours away at the entertainment venues and shops. There was no apprehension here.

As David was sitting at a bar, sipping a soda and watching the numerous vid screens along with a number of other waiting passengers an attractive woman slipped onto the stool beside him and favored him with a smile.

“Hey, you’re cute…wanna fuck?”

David jerked, reflexively spitting soda back down his straw and out around the edges, causing it to fizz up. He looked over at her with a comical expression on his face.

“What kind of a greeting is that?” he laughed, feeling some of the soda tickling the inside of his nose where it’d gone up.

“A blunt one,” the Brazilian said with a discernible accent as she slipped her left hand around David’s right and pulled it away from his cup. As she did she tapped the inside of his palm three times.

The tapping caught his attention, with him realizing this was more than a social hookup attempt. Using the skin to skin contact between their hands he used his Ikrid to hack into her nervous system and use it as a conduit into her mind. A split second later he confirmed that this was not a sexual overture. She was wary of something, and wanting his help.

“Well now,” he said, swiveling around on his stool so he could look at her face to face while still holding onto her hand, gleaning more insights as to her current state of emotions and a few surface thoughts. He and Green Team had been practicing this sort of mindreading relentlessly, only to find out that there was so much more that they couldn’t do yet, insanely complex as the structure of the mind was.

“Well what?” she echoed playfully, but repeated the three beat tap into his palm with her middle finger. “Sizing me up?”

David smiled. “Something like that,” he said as he continued to search her mind, finding a growing sense of urgency.

“How about a sample then,” she said, sliding off her stool and stepping up into him, then laying a very gentle and sensuous kiss on his lips before she slowly pulled back. “Anything else you want to check out? I’m willing to submit to a strip search.”

“Are you now?” David said, slipping his hand out of hers and placing it on her waist, only to snake his fingers down the small of her back and dip them in underneath her shorts…and there, out of view, he mimicked the three beat tap as he looked her square in the eyes.

He saw a flicker of recognition, as well as sensing a swell of relief in her emotions.

“In private, if it’s not too much to ask? I’m a shy girl.”

“Well,” David said, glancing around the area as he tried to catch a glimpse of anything suspicious, “I’m supposed to be waiting for my wife, but,” he said, checking his watch, “she’s not due in for a few more hours. I’ll be honest, you’re not really my type, but I’ve got nothing to do but sit here bored so the least I can do is give you a thorough examination.”

“And if I pass?” she said, smiling even more.

“Big ‘if’ there,” he said, throwing a little cold water on the moment. “Is there somewhere around here you’re comfortable taking your clothes off?”

She slipped her hand back inside his. “Follow me.”

David grabbed his satchel with his free hand and let her lead him away from the bar, leaving the nearby occupants, all ‘older’ men, with wide eyes and open jaws.

The woman walked quickly, almost giddy, dragging David along though he had no trouble keeping pace. They got halfway down the promenade before a voice thrust its way inside the Archon’s head.

What the hell are you doing? Assad asked comically.

I don’t know, he answered back telepathically. She’s putting on a show and gave me a recognition signal. Whoever she is she’s not interested in playtime.

You’re not being followed as far as I can tell. Want a shadow?

No, I’ll handle this. Worst case scenario I called it wrong and I have to disappoint her.

Don’t think that’ll be the issue here, Assad said, his mental voice altering slightly. Mental communication carried with it far more information than vocals did, and right now Assad was pinging ‘warning’ along with his words. You’ve got a lazy tail. Thin, scrawny guy. Doesn’t seem to be in a hurry.

“This way,” the woman said as they got to the exit archway and she pulled him to the left, accelerating up into a near run.

Later, David said as he and Assad were reaching the maximum range of their effective telepathy.

“Where are we headed?” he asked, still being led by the hand.

“Not far,” she promised with another smile, though David could see some cracks in it. Her adrenaline was also spiking a bit, and he was fairly sure it wasn’t because of him.

They moved through the crowds in the hallway, then broke out into the terminal’s interior, which functioned as a miniature resort city with shopping, food, lodging, and entertainment that travelers could access without moving into the rest of the city, allowing the tourists their own area while keeping most of them out of the normal flow of pedestrian traffic, for both parties’ concerns.

David’s new girlfriend dragged him off into one of the resorts, producing a keycard that let them access the customer only areas, whereupon she led him up a couple of flights of stairs, across a long hallway, then back down a flight on the far side before pulling him inside a hotel room and locking the door behind them.

When she did she sagged backwards against the door for a moment, breathing heavily as she let go the façade.

“Thank you,” she said gratefully.

“For what, exactly?”

“Letting me pull you away from the bar. You were about to disrupt a carefully choreographed handoff.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Milla.”

David raised an eyebrow. “What are you, and what do you think I am?”

“You’re Star Force, obviously,” she scoffed. “Even without the uniform, your trim physique is a dead giveaway. People who wear those kind of civilian clothes don’t work out…at all. You really need to find better cover.”

“I thought the baggy look was cover,” David argued.

She shook her head slowly. “Those chiseled cheeks aren’t hidden. At first I thought you might even be an Archon, then when I kissed you I dismissed the idea, because you obviously liked it, so I’m guessing Star Force Security?”

David rolled his eyes. “And you are?”

“Your Brazilian counterpart.”

“I assume we’re safe to talk in here?”

“As far as I know, unless they have every room tapped, which I doubt.”

David frowned. “Sloppy,” he criticized.

“I’m improvising,” she deflected. “We didn’t expect you to show up anytime soon, let alone today. You stumbled across our drop and I had to get you out of there.”

“What kind of drop?”

“Data,” she said simply, not offering any more detail.

Something about that bothered David, not the fact that it was a data drop…but because she wasn’t being more forthcoming, almost as if…

Suddenly he sensed a mind approaching and stopping outside their door, and he knew that their tail had finally caught up with them.

David stepped over to the door and pulled Milla away from it with a yank on her arm just as the lock clicked open and a thin man stepped inside and pointed something in the Archon’s direction…only to drop it and fall to the ground as if the floor had suddenly become quicksand and he could no longer keep his balance.

David stepped forward and grabbed the man’s wrist, pulling him inside while using his Ikrid to render him unconscious, then he closed the door again as Milla got to her feet, having fallen over the side of the bed when David emitted his Fornax disruption field and her equilibrium was lost.

She scrambled to her feet, only to fall down again as David hit her with a select blast. He caught her by the waist halfway down and tipped her up onto the bed and placed a hand on her neck, rendering her unconscious as well, then he went back over to the man and rolled him over, finding a small holdout pistol beneath him.

David picked it up and gave it a quick glance, recognizing it as a tranquilizer gun, then he set it on a nearby table and began going through the man’s pockets, finding amongst other things a personal comm device and several keycards, none of which had any room or door markings, making David suspect they were master access duplicates, which would explain why he was able to unlock the hotel room door.

“Hello,” David said, pulling off the man’s watch and exposing the tiny trapdoor in the side that held a familiar ‘kill pill,’ one that Green Team had come across many times over the past decade, though usually they didn’t get to them before the operatives ingested it. The fact that it was the same make, as well as being located inside a custom, but identical watch to those they’d recovered from other operatives marked this man as a member of The Word, confirming that the Director’s suspicions had been spot on.

The Archon planted his fingers on the side of the man’s head, linking to his mind and ensuring that he’d be unconscious for a good long while, but unable to access any information. Maybe someday in the future his Ikrid skills would be good enough for that, but at present he and the other Archons needed the individual to be conscious in order to access their surface thoughts. Even dreams were too ‘low powered’ for him to monitor, meaning he wasn’t going to get any intel out of this one right now.

David stood up, leaving the man sprawled on the floor, and stretched out his mind to the surrounding area. No one was lingering outside their door, and the nearby rooms were empty, save for one.

Looking around for something to tie the man up with, he eventually settled on disrobing the operative entirely and taking his clothes and the woman with him across the hall to an empty room that he accessed using the master keycard. That way, even if he did wake up, he couldn’t leave the room without roaming the hallways naked.

David tossed the bundle of clothes and his own satchel to the floor, then set Milla on the bed in the new room before backtracking and locking the door, then he emptied his own pockets of the operative’s belongings onto the table and did another quick mental check of the hallway, finding it still clear.

“Now, for you,” he said, looking down at the woman.

3

Milla woke up in bed, rubbing her head as she blinked away the sleep, wondering where she was. She leaned up on her elbow, seeing that she was in a hotel room. It took her a moment to remember the last thing that’d happened before she blacked out, but when she did she cautiously glanced around, looking and listening to see if anyone was about, then she pulled off the covers and slipped out of bed…only to discover that she was naked.

“O que o inferno?” she said, pulling herself back under the covers as she tried to think through the situation. She took a minute to wonder, then braved the cold room air and got out of bed, cautiously looking around the room for her clothes. Finding none she went into the bathroom and gladly found a towel that she wrapped around her, then as she saw her reflection in the mirror her hand darted up to her ear, confirmed what her eyes saw, that her jewelry was also gone.

When she walked back out into the room and across into the small kitchen/breakfast nook she did a double take, seeing a man sitting on the bed she’d just left.

“Sleep well?” David asked sarcastically.

“What happened?” she asked, slinking up against the wall and holding the towel tight against her chest. “And where are my clothes?”

“You did volunteer for a strip search,” David pointed out.

“Did you like what you found?” she said, starting to slip back into character.

“Not really,” the Archon said, holding up a small device that caused Milla to blanch. “You can drop the act, I already disabled the homing beacon. It’s just you and me now. Your friend is elsewhere and won’t be joining us.”

Milla’s mind flashed back to the last moments before she was knocked out, and there was a suppressed look of fear on her face as she remembered. “You drugged me?”

“No, that was your boyfriend’s plan. By the way, I can understand why you cheated on him. Not a very attractive fellow.”

“So what happens now?” she asked neutrally, though at the same time she loosened her hold on her towel so it dipped an inch or so.

David tapped his hand on the bed beside him. “Have a seat.”

She eyed him for a moment, then gingerly walked over and sat down next to him, loosely clutching her towel. “I don’t suppose you’re going to give me my clothes back?” she said with a smile.

“Depends on the answers I get.”

Milla sighed. “In that case, I might as well tell you the truth,” she said, pulling off her towel and tossing it on the floor. She scooted back on the bed and leaned back on her outstretched hands. “I’m not shy.”

David smiled back. “And you’re not Brazilian security either.”

“I’m not?” she asked coyly.

“Look,” David said, his tone getting a bit gruff. “We can either do this the easy way, or the fun way. Your choice.”

Milla frowned a bit, but kept the smile on her face. “Not the normal cliché there. What’s the fun way? That sounds interesting.”

David pointed a finger at her and spun it around in a circle. “Roll over, face down.”

“Why didn’t you say so earlier,” she said, sprawling out on the bed chest down and spreading her legs. David pushed them back together and sat down on top of them, straddling her and reaching up to her shoulders as he pinned her to the bed, then began hacking into her nervous system again as he gave her a massage.

“Hmmm, I like the fun way,” she mumbled, her face half buried in the bed covers.

“How’d you mark me?” he asked, running his hands up and down her back.

“You Star Force types stand out,” she said, pretending to enjoy it, though her mind was in panic mode, trying to find a way to maneuver herself out of this jam.

“There were others, in uniform, but you spotted me. How? Did you know I was coming?”

“I was helping with a drop and you happened along. I needed to get you out of there,” she repeated, using the same cover story from before.

David pressed a bit harder, and felt her starting to enjoy the massage. He locked onto that feeling and boosted it as much as his Ikrid skill would allow, slowly bleeding away the panic in her mind, though it was a stair step process. He didn’t have the mental power for a direct override.

“Why was I a problem?”

“Our contact was an independent contract. If anything suspicious was around the drop would be scrapped and he wouldn’t return for another 2 weeks. I had to get you out of there, the information is too important to wait that long.”

“And your boyfriend?”

“Didn’t get a good look at him before I blacked out…how’d you do that, by the way. And I don’t have a boyfriend,” she added sensuously. “Feel up for the job?”

“Today I’m simply your masseuse and interrogator,” he said, leaning down so he could whisper just above her neck. “How’s my technique?”

“You can interrogate me any time,” she said, half meaning it as David continued to loosen her up with small Ikrid adjustments to her current emotions…like diverting a river the direction he wanted by planting stones in the water, and drying up her worry and suspiciousness.

David adjusted his massage again, constantly giving her mind new sensations to work through. He didn’t want her to numb up to him…rather the opposite.

“Where’d you learn that three tap code?”

“It’s old school…something I was taught by an old timer. I’m glad you took the meaning, not all persons would, especially when they’re drunk.”

“I don’t drink alcohol,” David added casually, continuing to delicately adjust her mood.

“I noticed that when we met and your soda fizzed up,” she said with a giggle. “Also typical Star Force.”

“Do I really stand out that much?” David asked, actually wanting an answer. He knew he could only hide his fitness level so much, but he thought he and the others had gotten good at blending in with the crowd.

“Yeah, afraid so,” she said, sighing with a particularly forceful shoulder rub. David could sense the lie, however, and the part of her mind that constructed the falsehood, easy as it was, briefly accessed her memory of the real way she’d identified him and he was quick enough to catch the gist of it.

She’d been told he was coming, and had been given a photo ID in order to find him.

That made him feel better and worse at the same time. He knew his face was probably known to The Word by now, given how many missions he and Green Team had run against them, and he would have been disappointed if they hadn’t been on the lookout for him, but how and when they picked up their arrival was critical in determining if they had a mole, electronic or living, within Star Force, or if they’d been monitoring the BOTS passenger feeds and spotted him when he’d booked passage onboard the starport in orbit.

If that was the case then this was a quick assignment.

“When did you first spot me?”

Again, her mind started constructing the lie almost instantly, but in doing so referenced the truth in order to make sure she avoided it.

“As soon as you got to the bar…you’ve got good hands,” she added, flexing under David’s firm massage. “I waited for a while, hoping you’d move on, but when you didn’t I had to get you out of there in a hurry. When you didn’t take my initial offer I decided to confide in you, though now I wish you did. You certainly know all the right spots to hit.”

David listened to her story, but was focused on piecing together the brief glimpses he got into her memories, for as soon as the lie was constructed they vanished, replaced by the fiction she was espousing…to the point where he could even get imaginary images as her mind constructed them, meaning she was the type of liar that lived the lie inside her head, making any cover story hold up to biological cues.

What had really happened had been a rush job, with her arriving in the lounge area moments before she approached him. That meant The Word hadn’t known he was coming ahead of time, which David found reassuring…as well as impressive, considering the quickness by which they responded.

“By the way, I saved your earrings. Where did you get them? And I’m not married, by the way.”

“I didn’t think…you were,” she said, starting to moan a bit as David continued to amplify her positive emotions. “They were a gift…from a friend,” she said, having trouble concentrating enough to construct a complicated lie. Even as she tried her body kept tugging her mental focus back to the massage, making it hard for her to be devious.

The ‘friend’ she mentioned was the operative that had followed them, and it had in fact been a gift given to her at the same time as she’d been given the assignment, allowing him to track her and David to wherever she took him in the city, hence the ‘lazy’ tail that didn’t require him to stay within visual contact.

David leaned in close to her neck again, after feeling her let go of most of her resistance. “The Word.”

“What…word?” she asked, not really caring to hear the answer.

That surprised David…or rather the lack of recognition within her mind. As far as he could tell she’d never heard the term before.

David leaned back up and kept one of his hands working on her spine, but slipped the other around the side of her body and began tracing a gentle line around the outside of her breast, feeling her libido spike, which he then mentally boosted. He kept it up for a few seconds, then paused his finger, mentally implanting the suggestion that he’d continue when she answered him.

“Who do you work for?”

“Oh god…don’t stop,” she said, half playing, half serious. He made one more trace then held off, waiting for an answer.

“I work freelance,” she said, feeling him just barely start to move his touch again. “Contract work…out of Aerotrop.”

David recognized the name and continued on with his massage, feeling her mind slip so far that she forgot what she’d just said, basking in the sensation.

Aerotrop was a private intelligence network that hired out to various parties. Part of their services were corporate, with another section that hooked up freelance agents with employers, while taking a percentage of their contracts.

“Who did you work for before you went freelance?” he asked, not stopping, but rather slowing his massage this time.

“Brazil…that’s how I knew the tap code,” she said, getting to the point where she was starting to volunteer information. Right now David was her favorite person in the galaxy, and all other considerations had been pushed to the back of her mind, though he knew if he let the massage subside for long, or if he let it get predictable her mind could start to restructure and she could find her nerve again.

But he didn’t think that was going to happen, for the simple reason that she was enjoying this too much. For her sake he almost hated to stop.

“What were the terms of your contract?”

“Snatch…and grab. One time deal.”

“Who was your employer?”

“Brazil,” she said, and he sensed no deception. He probed the open memory while it was there for a heartbeat, and found that she really thought she’d been hired by her former employers for a quick job.

“Now isn’t the fun way better than the easy way?” he said playfully as he slipped his hand off her ribcage and ran it down underneath her body to a more sensitive area.

Milla gagged from the sudden stress, then David latched onto the sensation and amplified it, causing her to orgasm once before he rendered her unconscious again, having got the information he needed out of her.

David stood up on his knees and pulled himself off her and the bed, then he walked into another room and retrieved her clothes from where he’d hid them. He redressed her unconscious form and set her down gently into one of the room’s chairs, slumping her at an angle so her head could rest more or less straight, not wanting to give her a crick in the neck when she eventually woke up.

David left her there, locking the room door on the way out. He stepped across the hall to the room they’d originally tried to take him in and slid in the keycard. The door popped open and he went inside, finding the agent still unconscious and naked where he’d left him over an hour ago.

The Archon took a knee beside him and placed a hand on his head. He was already working his way back to consciousness, so he plunged him back into the depths of the dream world, not intending to try and extract any information from him here. Star Force didn’t interrogate using pain…well, aside from an occasional punch when the person got mouthy. The more ‘traditional’ interrogation methods, being drugs and torture, were something Star Force and the Archons particularly didn’t like, and they came down hard on anyone that did use them.

That said, there were other ways to interrogate, as David had learned over the years. Most of them involved tricks and mind games, though with psionics now in play for the higher ranking Archons that gave them far more options than Star Force security had, including the pleasure option, which was something David had developed on his own, though he knew a few others that used it as well.

Overloading someone with pain was unacceptable, but pleasure…now that was fair game.

He wouldn’t be using that tactic with this guy, obviously, nor he doubted would any of the female Archons, which was a moot point, given that Green Team was all male. Regardless, with this guy being part of The Word, he needed to get him into Star Force custody as soon as possible, else one of his buddies might try to take him out. Very few Word operatives had ever been captured alive, and David wanted to add this one to their collection.

Others would handle his interrogation, and if he got sloppy he might slip up and give them something. If not, they’d at least have taken one more of The Word’s playing pieces off the game board, which was all that David wanted to do at the moment.

He pulled a specialized comm device out of his pocket and flicked it on, selecting the frequency he wanted. “Red Team, copy?”

“Red here,” a voice said that wasn’t Drake’s, and David couldn’t quite make out which of the 10 members it was.

“I’ve bagged a Word operative. We need him quietly evaced into Star Force custody. Green Team will get him to you, just tell us where and when.”

“Give us half an hour to arrange something. Can you hold onto him that long?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll be in touch.”

David switched frequencies and contacted the other members of Green Team, of which only 4 had yet arrived, given that they’d taken different flights to get to the city. Like him they didn’t have earpiece comms, so he waited several seconds before one of them responded.

“What’s up?” Devin-841 replied.

“The Word knows we’re here. One of them tried to pick me up and I got the drop on him. We’re handing him over to Red Team for evac, hopefully in an hour or so. I’m going to need some help moving him.”

“Where are you?” Assad asked, joining the conversation.

“Hotel room just off the promenade. Meritol Suites, I think, or something close to that.”

“You said ‘him?’”

“The girl was a contract job, last minute. They didn’t have much heads up I’d arrived so they improvised. I let her go, or will, once she wakes up. The operative has been deprived of his kill pill and we need to make sure none of the others get to him before we get him out of the city, so start planning. I’m stuck babysitting for the moment.”

“I saw something earlier I think we can use,” Devin commented. “I’ll get back to you in a few.”

“I’ll be nearby, within Ikrid range, if you need to call for backup,” Assad promised. “Which room are you in?”

“Hold on,” he said, walking over to the door and pulling it open so he could look at the outside tag. He closed it before speaking again, even though no one was in the hall, save for one individual at the far end waiting on an elevator. “332.”

“Copy,” Assad said before cutting out. The other two members of Green Team hadn’t responded yet, but even after David shut off the comm the others would have a message light on their devices indicating who’d tried to make contact so they could check in when the situation allowed them to. For security sake no messages were recorded, in case the device was lost or fell into the wrong hands.

“You know, I really don’t feel like staring at your hairy butt,” David said, glancing down at the nude operative and remembering he’d left his clothes on the other side in the same stash he’d placed Milla’s and his satchel…if that even was her name.

“Stay put,” he told the unconscious man, then headed across the hall to retrieve his hidden bundle.

4

May 11, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Tyr

Nathan?

No go, the Archon answered back telepathically from his position in the hallway just outside the doors. They’ve got a camera here too.

Lio?

It’d be noisy, but we’ve got a window in three minutes.

We need silent, David reminded them. Anyone else?

Sorry boss, Jet-612 said, communicating through their telepathic chain, with each of them simultaneously functioning as a relay using their Ensek abilities, which also allowed them to monitor what they were passing along, making for an open comm channel between the 6 men that The Word couldn’t pick up on. Already in. Had to go dark for a moment.

David frowned, holding position in a maintenance crawlspace alongside the dead zone they were attempting to penetrate. How’d you manage that?

Went in with the crates. Somebody stacked them crooked and left a gap, so I went for it. Didn’t have time to ask permission.

Any ruckus?

No, I think I’m in clean. The cameras were out of view too. Nearly got mashed by a lifter though.

Where are you now? David asked, rethinking their strategy.

Intake warehouse by the looks of it. There are mountains of crates here, and a very busy army of ants working them over…one of whom just lost his keycard. I’m heading to position 6. If you want in, get your asses over there.

Move, David said, sending out the telepathic message and having it ‘bounce’ from one member to another, though in actuality it was being retransmitted in a mental ‘reflection,’ with the distance of transmission limited to the individual’s Ikrid range. All of Green Team had trained hard to extend that range, as well as other skills useful to their line of work, so David had a fairly wide telepathic net to work with, even with 4 of Green Team off on other assignments.

That said, the ‘dead zone’ was extensive, far wider than they had the ability to communicate, so they were focusing their infiltration efforts on what they thought was the most vulnerable side of the ghost complex.

One of the first things Green Team had done once they’d arrived in the city was start digging into computer records using equipment that Red Team had smuggled in from the moon’s exterior. Their team had arrived the same way, while David’s had come the civilian route. The Word had obviously detected David’s arrival, but hopefully Red Team, and maybe some other members of Green Team, had gone unnoticed.

Once they all got in, they literally vanished into the city, with no further attempted grabs by The Word, though whether they were trying or not was another matter. David had slept only 4 hours since he’d gotten to Tyr, having been busy nonstop with low level activities that did little to drain his energy compared to his normal training, allowing him to keep awake and active far longer than normal, though given they didn’t know how long they’d be on site, he chose to grab a few hours of rest to keep himself from dropping into even light fatigue.

Green Team kept on the move, bouncing from location to location where they couldn’t be put under surveillance. Thanks to the Star Force contract teams that had built most of the city, they had access to detailed blueprints, allowing them to navigate through areas unknown to the public, as well as being able to access locked doors that were likewise built by Star Force, using dedicated lock picks specifically designed for the familiar technology.

Doing so had kept them more or less off the grid, though when they passed through public areas there was always the chance of them being picked up by some form of surveillance, but thus far either their opposition had been unable to keep track of them, or they were laying low and playing another angle. Assad was currently monitoring the city’s data flows, having found a nice little niche to hack in from, and would keep David abreast of any changes in activity via comm if necessary, though thus far there’d only been a flicker since their arrival.

That flicker had been in regards to exports, which ticked up by an average of 6-10% across a wide variety of categories. That told David that The Word knew they were here and that they needed to start moving their operations out, hidden in the commerce flow. Problem was, there was such a large volume of cargo coming in and out of the city that it’d be almost impossible to spot unless they put a total lockdown on orbital traffic and started sorting through crate after crate by hand.

The lockdown was an option, given the Star Force fleet in the system, but they didn’t have the manpower to sort through even a tenth of the cargo, not to mention the delay getting through it all would give The Word the opportunity to relocate it before it could be found.

So Green Team was keeping quiet, as was Red Team, who was off bagging key personnel in the Brazilian hierarchy on Tyr and sorting out which ones were operatives and which ones were legit. Their mission was to reclaim the colony. Green Team’s was to ferret out any Word activity.

Which brought them to the dead zone. Another benefit of having the city’s schematics was they were able to compare them to the public ones and see where the maps didn’t match up. As expected, there were regions that were mislabeled or just plain left off the public map, that David had no doubts contained Word facilities. The complex Jet had just worked his way into was the largest by far, with several smaller ones spaced around the city, which the other three members of Green Team were investigating simultaneously in case one of them alerted The Word to their presence.

Hopefully they still thought their secret areas were unknown to them, but David had long since abandoned any ideas about The Word being stupid.

He crawled back through the maintenance area until he got to a junction that led him off through a level that ran underneath the dead zone, meeting up with Seraph-822 outside what looked like a small blast door that had a keycard lock that wasn’t of Star Force make. Devin, Lio, and Nathan arrived a few minutes later, having had to traverse a longer distance to get down to point 6 out of some 18 potential entry points Green Team had scouted previously.

30 seconds after the last of them arrived Jet made telepathic contact from the other side, then the door eased open, showing itself to be some 8-10 inches thick.

All clear, he said telepathically, knowing it was pointless to talk aloud when they had the means for silent communication, despite being only feet apart.

Jet backtracked and led the 6 man squad inside. David came in last and closed the door behind them, waiting the few seconds it took then jogging off after the others, who split up and went in separate directions once they got to the main floor that Jet had entered from.

David stayed in the ring of service areas and tried to work his way around the perimeter through a network of maintenance hallways, but quickly ran into a dead end. He back tracked and worked his way out to the main floor, getting quick telepathic reports from the others when they spotted a guard or camera, both of which appeared only to be located near the main entrances.

That held with the overall feel of the place, which told David that security was designed to keep people out, not monitor those inside.

The crate stacks offered considerable cover, so David crossed to the nearest one and jumped up onto the lowest tier, working his way around and keeping off the floor as he spotted the nearest people in mind’s eye and worked his way up towards the top, eventually finding an eagle’s nest to visually search from.

The area was busy, very busy, but most of the traffic involved moving crates off the floor, with a lesser amount coming in at regular intervals. David followed the flows and saw they were leading to a series of exits on the far side, but rather than being mounted on movers they were individually being loaded onto conveyor belts and disappearing, one by one, through the walls.

David knew that was where they needed to go, and already the others were working their way there. He knew they’d find a way in if there was one, so he stayed behind and dropped down a couple of tiers on his crate stack and picked one of the more concealed containers to inspect. They all had basic locks on them, the kind that responded to chip tactile identification to release the latch that held the top of the crates closed.

David didn’t have the key to open it, so he did the next best thing and wrapped his hand around the tiny device, pulling it up above the level of the crate as it pivoted on the loop ring that held the latch down, and closed his eyes.

Using his Rensiek ability he began increasing his body’s production of heat and channeling it down into his hand. He released it into the lock, using his palm and wrapped fingers to concentrate and contain most of the heat, not allowing it to bleed off into the air as he poured more and more into the device. The metal he wasn’t going to melt, for his skill wasn’t that advanced…yet, but the adhesives bonding together the casing of the lock were another story, and within a couple of minutes he felt the entire assembly shift in his palm as they melted apart.

Focusing so not to burn himself, he kept his thermal barriers up on his fingers and picked the halves apart, exposing the inner workings of the lock, which he then realigned to release the fishhook loop from the casing. He ran through the eyelet on the crate and tossed it aside, using his Lachka to cushion its fall so it didn’t make much of a sound, then he stepped aside and pulled up the top of the crate to see what was inside.

More crates, small ones numbering 8x8 and probably just as many deep. He pulled out one of the synthetic boxes, as opposed to the large metallic ones he was standing on, and opened it up…finding white powder inside.

He tasted it, wrinkling his nose as he swallowed a smidge of the flour.

At least some of the crates contain ingredients for foodstuff production, he told the others, who were now well ahead of him.

Question is, what are they baking? Nathan commented.

Or building, Jet added. Mine have industrial parts. Nothing I can identify. It’s all small stuff.

Anyone see a way through yet? David asked.

Look up, Devin prompted.

David frowned and angled his head upwards, then he saw the catwalks running the length of the ceiling, but they were too high for him to jump to from his stack, even if he went all the way to the top.

There’s a ladder on the north side, Devin continued, but we’ll have to take out a few eyes to get there.

Any other options?

Hide in a crate, Nathan said, and David wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.

Southeast side, Lio suggested, there’s a ladder almost close enough to jump to. We can bypass by the floor.

Define almost, Nathan asked.

I’m not close enough to measure, he said, and David could feel his mind moving in that direction. He could feel all of the minds in the area, almost all of them in the chamber, but his teams’ stood out, not only because of his familiarity with them, but because they were operating on a higher level and therefore had a stronger signature that ‘felt’ different. He couldn’t access any of them given the Ikrid blocks the V’kit’no’sat had placed, but they still reflected his Ikrid energy, giving him some information that didn’t require hacking into them.

Try it, David prompted. Everyone else, keep looking.

And they did, for nearly 10 minutes as Green Team skulked their way from one crate stack to another, avoiding the 400+ workers along the branch-like routes they were traveling up and down as they pulled crates out of stacks and transferred them over to the exit conveyors, as well as stacking up the lesser amount of new ones in the correct locations as determined by their contents.

Eventually David sensed Lio’s mind rise in altitude, then he got a quick confirmation blip that wasn’t a word, but rather one of their set of telepathic ‘hand’ signals.

Looks like that’s our way in, David told everyone as he started heading towards the ladder.

Meanwhile Lio scouted ahead over to the far side, cutting through the wall that had open access points for the catwalk to pass through. They were connected in a large grid that covered multiple rooms, allowing access to what had previously been crane tracks on the ceiling, though their mechanisms had all been removed. In fact, the walls separating the chambers looked to have been of different construction than the structural elements, making him wonder why they left the catwalks up at all.

He got his answer a minute later when a lone contact showed up on his mental radar, slowly walking through the adjacent chamber. Lio made his way around the square that he was looking down on and over to the most likely entry point the person was coming through, noticing the workshop below that had 2 dozen grease monkeys disassembling the parts coming in from the warehouse side and reassembling them into new formations.

Splitting his attention between the work and the approaching mind, he noticed that they were pulling specific components out of the parts, though he couldn’t see for sure what they were…and to be honest, even if he was down on the floor he might not be able to identify them. Mechanics wasn’t his area of expertise, and the stuff the workers were manhandling didn’t match any of the standard parts he was familiar with.

Lio turned the corner of the square and slowed his walk to keep his steps as quiet as possible, which was difficult on the metallic grating. Fortunately it was fairly firm and didn’t give with his steps, but there was still an audible ‘thunk’ every time he stepped down no matter how soft his steps were.

The Archon got up to the hole in the wall that held a spur of the catwalk just as the person came through. Lio timed it well, plastering himself up against the side wall and getting the drop on the man from the side with a hand going straight to his throat.

Lio held him aloft for several seconds as he squirmed in place, then he dropped unconscious, but not from lack of air. The weapon he was carrying slipped from his grasp and fell towards the catwalk, and Lio reached out for it with his mind, using his Lachka to lift it up…but it was too large for him, which he knew before he even tried, so he slowed it as much as he could with it hitting butt first with an audible clang.

He managed to hold the barrel upright long enough to get his hand on it as his eyes went straight to the work floor below…but the people down there were making far more noise and thankfully didn’t notice the stray sound.

Lio watched them for several seconds, wanting to make sure he hadn’t been seen. The catwalk didn’t offer any concealment, save for the shadows that the suspended drop lights didn’t reach up to.

The Archon laid the unconscious man out on his back, looking him over. He was dressed in a Brazilian security uniform…not their intelligence division, but the regular guard detail that was visible all around the city. Lio had no way of knowing if this guy thought he was doing his job or whether he was part of The Word’s hoard of operatives and accomplices, but the fact that they had someone patrolling the catwalks, and armed, meant this area was more vital than a traditional industrial wing should have been.

As Lio sorted through the man’s pockets he gave the other members of Green Team a quick recap of what he’d seen so far, then he took the man’s rifle and examined it, seeing quickly that it wasn’t the standard Brazilian plasma rifle. Rather, it was one of the knockoffs that The Word made.

That made Lio cringe. Why bother dressing up as security if you’re not going to use the right weapons? It was a dead giveaway to anyone who had the proper experience that this guy wasn’t on the up and up…or was he just put here after The Word realized they’d breached the city?

Devin sent a small recognition ‘hand’ signal as he approached on the catwalk behind Lio, then stooped down next to him.

Remember this? Lio asked, passing him the rifle as he continued to sort through the guard’s pockets, pulling out several personal items along with a radio-like comm unit.

The Archon cringed again, seeing the man already possessed an earpiece. Why have two sets of comms, especially one as beefy as the hand-sized unit Lio now held?

Devin set the rifle down and walked past Lio, taking up point as Jet came up behind them with the others not far behind. Lio stayed put, finishing his search of the man’s clothing and trying to puzzle out what was going on. He glanced over the side, seeing the workers keeping up their busy pace, wondering just what all this was about and who in here was friend or foe.

Before he could make any guesses he got a telepathic warning from Devin and shot up to his feet, pulling out his own weapon while leaving the guard’s on the catwalk as he stepped over him, heading around the corner and into the next room.

5

David came up the ladder last, getting to the catwalk just as Devin’s warning was sent out. No visuals or other information came with it, so the Archons were moving forward towards his position not knowing what to expect. They were all armed with two weapons…one a stun gun, which David now had in hand, and a stinger with a couple clips of extra ammo in a belt strapped underneath the loose civilian shirt he wore.

None of the Archons were wearing armor, given that this was a sneaking mission and they needed to be able to blend in with the populace to get to and from the area in question, which made every warning a bit more tense. They couldn’t take a random hit and shrug it off, so they had to be extra careful with their movements.

In the past that would have been a greater problem, but with their ability to spot minds around blind corners the threat was lessened…unless there were automated defenses or other non-living opponents to deal with.

When David caught up with the other five he stepped over the downed guard, but could tell that wasn’t the threat they were worried about, for he got a ‘hold’ signal as soon as he started to step over the man and turn the corner into the walkway through the wall.

David crouched down and held still, then got a brief telepathic glimpse from Nathan of the room below…followed by a questionable tactic suggestion. Sensing their window of opportunity closing he sent a return gesture, indicating he agreed and that the others should stand by in their shooter positions as he tucked his stun gun into its holster and backed up against the railing as he rolled the downed guard to the side with his foot.

Here goes, he told the others just before he pushed off the railing and accelerated up into a run as he passed through the short catwalk connection. He couldn’t build up too much speed over the handful of meters, but he gained enough momentum to carry him up and over the railing in the next room as he jumped out into the air and fell down into the very deep room.

Halfway down he turned himself into a Fornax transmitter, producing as large a disruption field as he could, knowing it wouldn’t extend up to the rest of his team. Between holding that effort and bracing himself for a hard fall his focus was consumed, with him barely noticing the guards below that were packaging sedated Humans into canisters, ostensibly to be transported off the moon.

David had jumped from this height before in training, but there had always been at least a thin mat at the base. This time there was a hard, concrete floor and he put as much resistance into his legs as he could without locking them…but his momentum was too great and he had to spill part of it to the side, collapsing on his right leg and rolling out of the jackhammer deceleration on his body.

He rolled into one of the guards, who was leaning against a table to remain standing against the Fornax David was still transmitting. As he opened his eyes, struggling to get to his feet on jarred legs while maintaining the Fornax, he heard small puffs all around him, with the resulting paint splatters knocking the guards down as they were unable to return fire.

David pushed the guard next to him away, then pulled out his stun gun and was about to shoot him when a green paintball splashed against his skull and delivered the necessary stun energy to drop him to the floor unconscious.

With the Fornax effort buzzing in his head, David heard Lio’s ‘all clear’ signal and released the effort, catching his psionic breath and panning the area with his stun gun held ready. The others had used their stingers because the height of the room would have made the stun guns inaccurate and diffuse, but in the close confines David found himself in it would work just fine if there was still a live one wandering around the stacks of canisters and medical beds that offered a lot of cover.

From his point of view David saw a connecting hallway on ground level and made his way over to it at a quick run, dodging the various pieces of equipment and forcing himself to ignore the people held inside some of them as he started to feel minds ahead. He held close to the left side of the hall and crept to a halt just before the exit, seeing a conveyor system carrying more of the canisters up and into the wall off to who knows where.

David sent off the ‘get over here’ telepathic signal and ran out into the open, targeting the nearest guard with his stun gun and blowing past him on the run to get to the workers loading another canister onto the conveyor. He shot three of them, then sent a Fornax blast towards another guard that appeared at range. The Archon swapped weapons and shot him as he twitched on the floor, all the while running towards the conveyor and jumping onboard.

He ran up and over the first canister, hurrying towards another on the belt that was almost to the hole in the wall. David tucked his stinger into his belt and jumped forward, landing on top of the canister and grabbing hold, then swinging his legs around to the front and planting his feet against the wall as they came to it.

Using his Archon trained muscles he pushed the canister back and to the side, tipping it over the edge and dropping it three meters to the ground. The conveyor dug into David’s right shoulder as he held himself in place with his feet, then he clawed his way up into a crawl and ran forward a few steps to get to the other canister early and dump it over the side as well.

With me, David told Nathan as he came into view, then mentally directed the others to the pair of canisters on the ground as he ducked into the tunnel the conveyor was pulling through.

Nathan jumped up onto the belt and ran forward, catching up a lot before ducking down and entering the narrow tunnel, letting the conveyor carry him forward. He got a warning from David just before he saw the other Archon leap off the belt on the far side, followed by the faint sounds of stinger whiffs.

Nathan rolled off the conveyor on the opposite side from David, going after a pair of guards on that side that were moving away after his fellow Archon. He tagged both with his stinger, then started peppering the workers in the loading bay as they scattered. Both he and David ran around the large room, ducking in and out of crates and hunting down everyone inside, then they circled back around to the open crates, seeing that there were more Human cargo canisters being stacked inside.

“What the hell are they doing?” Nathan asked aloud as he jumped over a lateral canister and continued on a jerky patrol around the room, knowing that there were connected chambers that had more personnel in them, possibly guards.

“We’ll ask them later,” David said, pulling out his comm. “Red Team, copy?”

“Red Team here.”

“We’ve got a mess we need your help with. The Word is smuggling people out of the city as unconscious cargo. We’ve stopped their packing operation, but we’re pinned down guarding them. We need more hands to secure the area, and they do have armed guards deployed. Come in armor,” he said, tagging the locator beacon set inside the comm device.

“On our way.”

“Stay here,” David told Nathan before he ran off towards one of the cargo exits large enough to accommodate heavy equipment to move the crates. When he got to the large doorway a flurry of minds started popping up on his mental radar and he slowed his approach, tucking in along the wall as a wild plasma blast shot by over his head.

David backed up and tucked in behind the edge of the wall and held position, feeling some of the minds coming closer while the others scurried around elsewhere. He poked his head out briefly, getting a split second view of what was ahead, then ducked back behind cover as several more plasma squeals were heard, with the blue lances shooting through the gap, one of which hit a crate midway into the loading dock.

What David had seen through the doorway was the primary loading dock, which apparently serviced the entire illicit complex. On the deck was a pair of dropships, both Falcon-class purchases from Star Force and painted in Brazilian green and gold. He’d also seen the rooftop hatch that would give them access to the surface, but he knew from the city schematics that the shaft led up through several other industrial levels that were on the local map, disguising the traffic flow by mixing it in with legitimate commerce.

That also meant this was the end of the line, and once loaded onboard the cargo was as good as gone, transferred to other locations on Tyr or off the moon entirely. Star Force could track the dropships, and any ships they loaded onto, but David knew The Word’s typical procedure was to move, then remove their contraband, making the transfers where no one could see.

David growled, and not just at the guards coming his way. He was really missing his armor right now.

Nathan, make like a sniper.

On it, the Archon said, leaping across the gap between crates and crawling up on top of a pair, laying flat on his belly with his stinger pistol held out in front of him. He didn’t like that position, but he wanted to expose as little of his profile as possible, knowing that David was about to become the primary target.

With that in mind, he shunted his vision over to David specifically, not extending telepathic links to the other Green Team members, and allowing his team leader to ‘see’ through his eyes as he held his fire, although he had open shots on several of them, but at a range that he couldn’t be sure to hit with a pistol.

Nathan waited until the approaching guards, some four up front, neared the door, then he released his telepathic link to David and squeezed off a pair of shots, only one of which hit. As that guard stumbled, his leg now numb and unresponsive, David popped into their view and took the other three down with a Fornax field as he peppered them with stingers…only to duck back into cover as a series of plasma streaks shot through the huge archway from positions that Nathan couldn’t see.

After that no more guards advanced, but Nathan could see several repositioning in the distance to establish a perimeter where they could fire on the entrance.

Stay put, Nathan warned. They’re setting up for a turkey shoot.

“Damn it,” David swore, tucked up against the inside wall. He knew Red Team couldn’t get here in time, and if The Word had any sense they’d load up the dropships and get what they could out of here.

Status report, David demanded telepathically, linking 5 mental searchlights on each of his team members’ minds then sending out copies of the message to each simultaneously. If he transmitted in the open, every mind within range, including the enemy, would ‘hear’ him.

Picked up another guard, Jet replied, you in a firefight?

Sort of, David replied, sneaking another peak around the corner and drawing more than half a dozen plasma shots coming his way. There’s a hangar that they’re keeping us out of, and short of growing a set of armor we’re not getting in.

Want us to find a back door? Lio asked.

Somebody stay with the bodies. I don’t want them spirited off when we’re not looking. Other than that, cause what trouble you can, but conserve ammo.

Seraph, Lio said, running off to a side exit from the Human packing room they’d stayed behind in. It was the only personnel exit, and led into a nearby chamber on the opposite side that Seraph was keeping his eye on, and it was also the direction the roaming guard had come from.

Seraph popped up onto his feet a moment before Lio got to him and they ran through the short connecting hallway together, making a left turn and coming out into another noisy chamber with a hoard of workers loading baking ingredients into automated foodstuff production units. Seraph pointed left while he went right and the two Archons split up, taking advantage of the work floor din.

Lio worked his way around several crates the workers were getting the ingredients from and came up behind one carrying a box of flour, saving a stinger round via Vulcan neck pinch. The woman dropped the box, drawing the attention of two others that he disabled with a pair of Fornax blasts, upon which he added his sleep touch.

By that time Seraph had already been discovered and a wave of recognition ran throughout the workers, prompting Lio to pull out his stun gun and fire it at a cluster of them. The single shot spread out as the pink energy was notorious for and hit five of them, dropping them all to the ground, though a couple didn’t completely fall unconscious, merely with numb limbs. Lio didn’t worry about them, but worked his way around his half of yet another large room, taking out the personnel and looking for more guards, only one of which materialized…and Seraph got to him first with a pair of green splats to the side of his face and arm.

Lio worked his way around the various pieces of equipment, watching where the workers fled and following them out into another chamber. This one led to a personnel service area and another of the entrances into the secure area that they’d considered breaching, then passed on for it being too obvious. Seraph trailed behind him, grabbing and knocking several other workers unconscious.

Lio pushed through the crowd, not bothering to waste ammo or time on them as they bunched up fleeing out the security door that had taken them too long to open. The Archon made his way through them to the door on the other side that led into a different chamber, hoping to find a way round through that complex and into the loading bay.

With Devin holding guard over the unconscious Human cargo, Jet found a slow way to climb back up to the catwalks and scrambled his way over to the mechanics bay and cut across two more chambers, not bothering to stop and gawk at what was inside. He ran, unworried about making noise, and came to a dead end close to where the loading hangar was.

From there he jumped over the side, clinging to the railing for a moment to lower himself down a bit, then dropped and slid off a piece of machinery down to the floor of a toy factory. From there he found his way into another loading bay and hopped up a conveyor, shooting a guard in the back with a stinger as he passed through to the other side.

He came out into a loading dock similar to the one David and Nathan were pinned down in, but most of the security guards had moved off to deal with them, leaving only a pair for Jet to get the drop on. One he hit with a straight line stinger shot, the other he had to incapacitate with a Fornax blast before jumping out of cover and running over to the man after he’d dropped his weapon, delivering a sleep touch and taking the man’s plasma rifle as he ran over to the large doorway leading into the hangar.

He was too far away to telepathically link with the others, so he flipped on his comm as he took cover, with the workers he hadn’t taken down scurrying off towards the corners to stay out of his way.

“In flanking position,” he reported.

“Stay put,” David ordered. “They’ve got too many guns on the deck. We count at least 30.”

“What’s the play?”

“Ah…don’t get shot.”

“Brilliant strategy,” Jet said sarcastically.

“Are you within Fornax range?”

Jet stretched out his mind, sensing the position of the nearest guards to him on the other side of the doorway.

“Negative.”

“Then we wait for them to come to us. Pick out a nice ambush spot and go camper.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then Red Team will kick their ass when they get here.”

“How are they getting here, we shut the door didn’t we?”

“I didn’t specify and they didn’t ask,” David said, realizing that could be a problem, except for the fact that they wouldn’t be coming in quiet like and could blow any doors they couldn’t get through, though that would take time. “They’re following my beacon.”

“While we’re waiting,” Jet said, repositioning away from the door and moving over to a corner where he felt two people were hiding. “Any idea what The Word is doing making toys?” he asked before gripping the comm in his teeth.

Jet disabled the pair with a Fornax field before he even came into view, then he stepped in and grabbed each of the worker’s necks, rendering them unconscious as David answered.

“What kind of toys?”

Jet pulled it out of his mouth, camping in the quiet corner while focusing his mental radar to pick up any minds around him, several of which were popping up on the other side of the wall, but they couldn’t get to him, nor him to them. “Action figures and other small stuff. Didn’t get a good look.”

“We’ll find out later,” David said as the whine of mechanics drifted in from the loading hangar.

“Somebody leaving?” Jet asked.

“Two Falcons on deck and the roof is opening…and we can’t do anything to stop it. Stay put and grab what we can.”

“Copy that,” Jet said, wandering out from his lair a bit, about to get a jump on another hiding worker, with many more to follow as he cleaned up the area, keeping keen attention on the hangar for when the guards decided to move back his way.

6

“Who are they?” Derrick-633 asked, standing over David’s shoulder in his silver armor as he pried the casing off another of the transfer tubes that contained a small carbon dioxide/oxygen recycler unit, just powerful enough to keep a sedated individual alive during transit, but not nearly powerful enough to sustain a waking Human.

“Some of them are the Brazilian assault force,” David said, pulling the casing aside to reveal a man dressed in plain civilian clothes hooked up to what was now a standard IV unit. He and the other members of Green Team had already opened dozens of the canisters, as well as attending to the unconscious ‘packages’ that had yet to be closed up. “But some don’t match the IDs we were given.”

David placed the end of a small cylinder against the man’s arm, a piece of equipment that Red Team had brought in with their second wave after the first four Archons they’d sent had made short work of the guards and incapacitated what workers hadn’t fled off into the rest of the city. Two more Red Team members showed up later, bringing with them equipment and ammo from their makeshift armory that they’d set up elsewhere in the city.

Nathan had gone back to don his own armor and grab David’s for him while the rest of the 6 Green Team Archons stayed on site as they sorted through The Word’s leftovers, with their primary emphasis on the unconscious Human cargo they’d recovered. The other members of Green Team, finishing up their own reconnaissance of other dark zones in the architecture, were heading back to get armored up and were bringing the others theirs, now that there was little point in trying to hide their presence in the city, given the hundreds of fleeing workers running off to tell all of the Archon incursion.

The cylinder in David’s hand analyzed the man’s genetic code, flashing up a negative match symbol, meaning this individual wasn’t on the list of missing soldiers the Brazilians had given them. Matching it up against Star Force’s own database would have to wait, for the small device couldn’t hold that much data.

David pulled the needle out of the man’s arm and detached the primitive sedative injection package that was tied onto his flesh with tape. He put his hand on the man’s head, trying to wake him up as he had the others, but with the same results. The man wasn’t just asleep, but his consciousness was being chemically suppressed, meaning his body would have to flush out the drugs before he’d wake up.

“Deep coma?” Derrick asked.

“Very,” David said, examining the man for any other oddities before reaching down and looping his arm around the body and pulling it out of the tube. Derrick stepped in and grabbed an arm, leveraging the heavy guy out and over to a section of floor where three others were laid out perfectly still. More were in the packaging room on the other side of the now deactivated conveyor belt shunts coming through the wall.

“Looks like we need to commandeer the Brazilian medical corps next?”

“If you could snag a few, it’d help, but we have to make sure these people don’t disappear again.”

“We’re not outfitted for this,” Derrick reminded him. “And the longer we’re babysitting the more opportunity the enemy has to be mischievous.”

David lightly gnawed on a fingernail as he thought ahead. “Call Glasir. Get them to send dropships straight down here. We’ll offload these people and…trinkets. Green Team will hold this position, Red Team can press on without having to worry about babysitting.”

“We’ll need to disable Tyr security to get the dropships in,” Derrick reminded him.

“Is that a problem?” David said, raising an eyebrow.

“Might be, but we’ll get it done,” the Archon promised, walking off as he contacted his team leader on his suit comm and began making arrangements.

4 hours later…

David jumped behind a crate, skidding to a halt on his knee as three plasma blasts impacted the metal on the other side, melting little divots in the casing with loud ‘pings.’ He held there for a moment, then reached out with his mind to sense the location of the Brazilian security guards as some six of them carefully walked forward, alternating hops from cover to cover, as they closed in on him in an offshoot of the warehouse that he’d fled into while trying to distract a group of the troops away from the hangar loading bay on the other side of the illicit complex.

Security had come down on them half an hour ago, with the Archons holding off the first batch easily, but then the Brazilians had flooded reinforcements in battle armor in, equipped with half shields that made tagging them with stingers extra difficult. Their armor also bled off some of the stun energy, but they were still able to take them down with a couple of shots, as they weren’t yet sure if these were Word operatives or actual loyal Brazilians coopted into fighting a battle they knew nothing about.

Miss me? Nathan’s voice entered David’s head.

David frowned, frustrated but otherwise relieved. What took so long?

Big city, the Archon complained, and carrying your stash through the main hallways isn’t a good idea.

Hurry up, I’m pinned down.

I see them, hold on.

David didn’t have that option, for one of the guards was about to work his way into view on the left. The Archon flicked on his Pefbar, or third eye, and was suddenly able to see around the corner, as well as through the crate and floor. He saw the armored guard pressing forward, holding a stubby plasma rifle of Brazilian make up against the shield he held across his torso, resting the barrel against the rim to help him aim.

David knew he was going to pivot around the edge of the crate and light him up, and the Archon didn’t have a good place to fall back to, so he did the next best thing and smashed his back up against the crate and pointed his stinger, now with only three shots remaining, at the gap the Brazilian was about to come out of.

As he aimed he got a feel for the plasma rifle in his mind and started to form a ring of constriction around the end of the barrel, so when the guard came around the corner, pointing shield and weapon in his direction even before he saw David, the Archon used his Lachka and pulled the plasma rifle’s barrel askew, forcing the guard’s first plasma lance three meters wide of his position.

David held onto the barrel telekinetically, but knew the guard had enough muscle to overpower his grip. Lachka, unlike most scifi movies attested, was very low powered, used more for delicate manipulations than brute force, but in this case it was enough to get the first and second shots to go wide, long enough for two stingers to ping the guard’s helmet and render him unconscious.

He dropped both weapon and shield as he fell to the floor, and David grasped the shield with as much force as he could and telekinetically yanked…

The shield jerked and moved his way a few inches.

David repeated the process again and again, until the leading edge of the shield passed behind the cover of the crate. The Archon reached down to grab it with his left hand just as he felt another guard coming up, about to step on it.

David yanked it up just in time, curling into a ball and emitting a reflexive Fornax field, toppling the second and third guard who couldn’t remain standing against the neural disruption. As the closest guard half fell onto him, David pushed up with the shield and knocked him over, making sure he didn’t step out of cover as he did so.

Coming up for a mental breath, he had to release the Fornax, then spun around and used his last stinger on the guard’s chest.

Duck, Nathan’s telepathic voice ordered.

David trusted him and dropped down onto his heels, hiding behind as much of the shield as he could squeeze his body in line with as the third guard staggered back to his feet and raised his weapon…only to get splattered with green paint from above as a fully armored Nathan jumped down next to David from a higher crate, dropping an armor bundle next to him.

Seeing Nathan’s silver legs walking forward as he began peppering the nearby guards and drawing their attention away from his fellow Archon, David dropped his empty stinger and shield, mentally keeping an eye on the others’ locations as he began tearing into the armor pack and undoing the built in latches.

He pulled the helmet out first and donned it, then unraveled the rest of the 1-piece suit and stepped into the broken boots with the rest of the splayed apparatus connected to them by a back piece. Reaching down he began retracting the components around his feet and legs, locking them in place as he worked his way up his body, pulling all the loose pieces in and forming the armor around him manually, finishing by popping his helmet up a few inches and securing his collar, then bringing it back down and clicking the airtight seals in place.

He stuck his tongue out and tagged an interior helmet switch, turning on the power unit and bringing up his HUD, battlemap, and shields.

“Finally,” he said to himself, feeling the reassuring drag on his body as he reached down and grabbed the Brazilian shield and one of their plasma rifles.

Catch, Nathan said, pulling an extra rifle off his back rack and tossing it high over the crates back his way.

David reached out with his Lachka and directed it towards him so that it fell directly into his hands as he stepped around the crate, leaving the plasma rifle behind. Ducking behind his shield he charged forward, heading towards more of the reinforcements that continued to flood into the warehouse even as Nathan was mowing them down on his left.

Going right, David began firing his own stinger rifle, full of ammo, and rammed into a knot of three of them, not caring that he took a couple of plasma hits to his armor, one of which splashed on his chest shield. He emitted a Fornax field and knocked the surrounding 8 down, peppering their blue armor with green splats and kicking aside their weapons.

“1st dropship is away,” David heard over the comm, tagged as coming from Drake, Red Team’s leader.

“Good,” David said to the emptiness of his helmet as he gratifyingly worked his way through the otherwise competent Brazilian security forces…but they were no match for either the Archons or their stun energy, which bled straight through the Brazilians’ armor, leaving their half shields as their only real defense.

Between the two of them, David and Nathan worked their way through more than 50 Brazilian guards before they ran out of targets in the warehouse, then they ducked into the conveyor belt chutes and walked through into the ‘toy’ factory, coming across another pair before working their way out into the hangar bay.

They saw another dropship, Eagle-class, lifting up off the deck and maneuvering into the vertical shaft that would lead to the airless moon’s surface as soon as they entered, then they picked their way across a landscape of bodies where the other Archons had fought an even larger group of guards. David had pulled reinforcements away from this bunch…or was it that bunch? He wasn’t sure, seeing another group to the side. No, make that three…there were unconscious Brazilians everywhere.

“Status report,” David asked over Green Team’s comm.

“Lio got winged,” Assad answered. “The rest of us are fine.”

“Define ‘winged?’”

“Three shots on the right elbow pit,” Lio answered, and David could detect a bit of pain in his voice. He glanced down at his own armor, seeing the hexagonal flex armor over that portion of his own arm. Each of the tiny plates were solid armor, like the rest of the suit, but they had stretchable material in between them on all the joints, allowing the flexibility the Archons demanded. The gaps in the cover were likewise unacceptable, which was why the armor was layered, with one section of gaps hovering over lower plates, making every inch of their bodies fully protected against plasma and projectiles.

That said, the hexagonal patches were less protected than the thicker portions where they could put down extra mass without it affecting their flexibility. Additionally, the patchwork of weak energy shields over the armor was on the hard points only, meaning the flexible portions weren’t covered. That said, taking a shot to the joints was rare, but it happened. Taking three to the same spot was virtually unheard of.

“Penetration?” David asked, not sure that 3 plasma blasts would be enough to get through.

“No, I just got burnt. There’s still an intact layer left.”

David looked around the huge hangar as he talked, seeing another pair of dropships being loaded up with both bodies and cargo they’d taken from the facility. He wished they’d be able to go over it all with an investigation team, but as soon as the dropships were away they’d be returning to ghost status, given that they were on enemy turf. So long as the Brazilian guards were fighting them, they had to play a different type of game, given that rescuing them was also one of their mission priorities.

“We’ll be finished here soon,” David promised, knowing that Lio was going to be underpowered simply from the pain distracting him. “Anyone have any active contacts?”

“We’re clear here,” Jet answered, “for the moment.”

“Red Team has some activity,” Brad-1044 said, and David could see that his locator icon wasn’t in the hangar.

He switched frequencies. “Red Team, status?”

“Cleaning up a few stragglers,” Drake answered. “I don’t think they’ve got much left in this section of the city to throw at us. Linger much longer and that could change. They’re sending mostly scouts in now, trying to determine how they got their asses kicked so bad, I’d guess. What’s the status on the dropships?”

“Two to go.”

“We’ll keep you clear. Do what you need to do then get out.”

“Will do,” David agreed, switching back to his teamcomm. “Anyone packing Word weaponry?”

“These look like Tyr security standards,” Devin answered. “They’re not the same as the ones we found on site.”

“Anyone disagree with that?”

David didn’t get an answer, so he assumed that was a negative.

“Jet, Seraph…start working on our exit,” he said, kneeling down next to one of the bodies.

“Copy.”

David pulled the clear visor/helmet off, revealing a buzz cut on what looked to be an older man, though from the Archon’s point of view that was almost a joke. Nathan stepped in and picked up the weapons nearby, moving them out of reach as David pressed the forearm of his own armor against the man’s neck, using it to absorb the lingering stun energy in his body and slowly bring him back to consciousness.

“Stay put,” David ordered when the man finally came around, planting a hand against his armored chest to emphasize the point, while in the background another dropship lifted off, with a group of Star Force personnel loading up the last. “What’s your name?”

The man’s eyes flicked around, seeing Nathan beside him. Both Archons were armed and armored head to toe, with several others visible across the deck…along with the bodies of his fellow Brazilians.

“Hey!” David repeated, having his free hand in front of the man’s face. “If you don’t want to talk I can knock you out and wake one of them up.”

“What did you shoot me with?”

“Stun,” David said simply. “Them too. None of you are dead. That’s us being nice.”

“Nice?” the guard asked, not believing he’d heard him right.

“Yeah, nice. We came here to rescue you guys, after all. And here you are shooting plasma at us.”

The Brazilian’s face screwed up. “What are you talking about?”

“First things first,” David slowed him down. “A Brazilian assault force was sent here about a year ago to remove a group of insurgents. What happened to them?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The only insurgents we’ve seen are you. What is Star Force doing here?”

“How long have you been on Tyr?” David asked, ignoring him.

“13 years.”

“And you know nothing about 500 troops coming into the city about a year ago?”

“No,” he growled.

David pointed a finger over to the dropship as the last of the equipment was being loaded. “We have some of them onboard. They were drugged and being loaded into cargo canisters…far less than 500. I’ve got positive genetic IDs on 32 of them, given to us by your government. This moon has gone rogue. Brazil sent the troops here to reclaim it and they didn’t report back, so they asked us for help. So tell me, who’s giving the orders around here.”

“Nothing has changed here,” the guard said, his face frowning up with wrinkles. “And all I see you taking is our property.”

“This entire complex doesn’t exist on the city map,” David argued with him, not wanting to have to try his luck with another, because they really did need to get moving. “This stuff belongs to an enemy of ours that appears to have quietly taken over control of the moon. We’re here to take it back, at Brazil’s request. Now, you can oppose us and hope we continue to be…nice…or you and your buddies can think things through once they wake up and stay out of our way.”

Behind David the dropship crew ran aboard and the boarding ramp sealed up, with the Archon glancing over his shoulder and watching as it rose up on its anti-grav and slowly made its way over to the vertical shaft, all the while holding the guard down with a firm hand to the chest.

He turned his helmet back, knowing it was time to leave. “You’re fighting on the wrong side. Get wise to it before you get hurt.”

David stood up and ran off, with Nathan hesitating a moment to make sure the guard didn’t move, then he followed him off as the rest of Green Team quickly disappeared out side exits from the hangar.

The guard sat on the deck until the Archons had left, then he stood up and retrieved his helmet, put it on and activated the comm.

“They’re gone,” he reported, speaking the native Portuguese. “Our men are down, but only stunned. One of them talked to me. They’re trying to turn us and reclaim Tyr for Brazil.”

He remained silent, listening to the comm as he looked around, seeing none of the others waking up and wondering how long it would take. Typically Star Force stingers kept one out for several hours, but if they were only winged they could be back up, wobbily, within minutes.

“They took cargo out on the dropships, including some Human captives,” he said, unconcerned as to who the people were. “They know the captured troops are among them. They had a genetic test match done.”

Another pause of silence.

“Copy that,” The Word operative finished, walking over and retrieving one of the plasma rifles the Archons had left piled up on the deck.

7

May 12, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Glasir

“Easy now…lie still until your head clears,” a voice said as the man blinked bleary eyes on the way back to consciousness. “You’re safe here, so take your time.”

The man stirred, rolling over on his side as the Star Force medic placed a hand on his shoulder to keep him from rolling off the cushioned medical table.

“Easy,” she insisted. “Can you see me?”

A pair of fingers waved across his face, drawing his attention and stopping most of his movement.

“There…that’s better,” she said calmly. “Do you remember your name?”

The man didn’t say anything, still blinking as if his eyes were windows that he couldn’t get the rain off of.

“Your name,” the medic repeated, still gently holding him down with her hand.

“Maa…” he said, finding his voice too hoarse to finish.

“You’ve been sedated for a very long time,” she explained. “It may take a bit for your voice to come back.”

Beside her another medic walked up, one of higher rank and some 70 years older, who slipped a hand underneath his shoulder blades and began to lift.

“Try and sit up,” he instructed, with the female medic retracting her hand. He glanced up at her and whispered, “Vertical requires balance, and will force more mental activity.”

She nodded, moving her hand over to the man’s arm and helping to secure him in an upright position.

“Can you flex your hand?” she asked, lifting his wrist up in front of his chest where he could see it.

His eyes tracked down, and while his head bobbled a bit his fingers slowly contracted, then extended three times. “Whe..a..mi?”

“The planet Glasir,” the female said as the more experienced medic walked off to attend to other patients, his task done. “You’re in a Star Force medical bay. Clan Alterra to be precise. Can you raise your head and look at the ceiling for me?”

The man blinked some more, then slowly lifted his chin up and stared at the slate gray paneling with a scattering of tiny light orbs that hurt his eyes, despite the fact that they were diffuse.

“That’s good, now look at me if you can.”

His head came back down and twisted to the right, staring into the cute blonde’s blue eyes. “Ma…nfred. Man..fred Nor..el.”

The medic smiled. “Very good. We’ve flushed the sedative from your system, but trace amounts will remain until your body processes them out. The more active you can be the faster it will happen, so keep moving your head and hands,” she said while keeping a hand on his back for support.

It took more than an hour of gentle coaxing before the medic had Manfred taking his first steps and his vocal chords working, though his voice was reduced to a whisper due to the length of inactivity they’d seen. Once he was fully awake his mind began backtracking where he’d been, without much success. As the medic pried him with patient questions a camera in the ceiling recorded the conversation for later review, with Star Force wanting to know what had happened to the man that their records indicated as being ‘deceased.’

“Where is Glaysor?” he asked, twitching his left hand that had suddenly turned into pins and needles. “What system?”

“Glasir is in Alpha Centauri,” the medic answered. “Records indicate that you lived in Sol, is that correct?”

“Mars,” he answered, looking around at the med bay, which held several other patients, some from Star Force and others from the rescue effort that had just taken place on Tyr. Manfred had never been in a facility like this before. The equipment and design were familiar, but the gray/red color scheme seemed alien.

“What nation are you a citizen of?”

“Ananke Republic,” he said, referencing the first Star Force colony granted its independence, created partially from refugees resulting from World War III.

“What did you do there?” she asked, already having read his file after matching his genetic code within their database.

“I’m a…chemical engineer for Colaffa Industries. How long have I been missing?”

“You were listed as killed in an accident 8 months ago,” she said sympathetically.

Manfred’s eyes opened a bit wider. “What accident?”

“Some type of explosion in the loading bay. Over a hundred people were killed. Do you remember how you survived?”

“I wasn’t there,” he said simply. “I don’t work in the loading bay. What exploded?”

“I don’t know,” the medic said, then her eyes darted to the side as a man in white walked up on the other side of the medical table/bed.

“A shipment of Francium detonated,” the Archon explained. “The loading bay was wrecked, not to mention having undergone explosive decompression when the walls were breached and most of the air and resulting rubble got sucked out. Made for quite the funeral pyre, and got splashed around the news grids for months. Still up and running on a few. Fortunately the interior bulkheads survived and the rest of the factory wasn’t breached, though there’s some question as to how that’s possible.”

“Because the building exterior should be more robust than the interior bulkheads,” Manfred finished, flexing his jaw painfully as he strung too many words together at once.

“Speak slower,” the medic urged, “or your muscles may cramp.”

The chemical engineer nodded as he waited a small one out, reminding himself not to do that again.

“What’s the last place you remember being?” the adept asked.

“I got jumped going into my office…I think. I remember waking up in…an unfamiliar room…locked. Two people came in later, wearing masks, and asked me a lot of questions. They drugged me and…now I wake up,” he said, visibly disturbed.

“What kind of questions?”

“Technical ones, inventory, personnel…pretty much everything…having to do with my job.”

The other medical walked back over, coming up shoulder to shoulder with the slightly shorter Archon. “How did they drug you?”

“What…oh, they made me swallow…a pill. I fell asleep right after.”

The medic nodded, throwing a glance at the Archon.

He took it in stride and looked back at Manfred. “Was there anything special about the work you’re doing at Colaffa?”

“It’s all special…to me…to us, anyway. Experimental stuff. I don’t know what…you mean by special?”

“Profitable, illegal, immoral, really cool,” the Archon said, throwing out examples.

“Nothing untoward,” he said with a pained expression. “And I’m told by my wife…that my work is boring. It’s of interest to the corporation…otherwise we wouldn’t get paid.”

“Were you working with the Francium yourself?”

“On a few projects…yes…but in small amounts. Nothing outside of the lab. Nothing Colaffa was producing yet. You don’t think I was at fault…do you?”

The Archon shrugged. “You’re supposed to be dead. We’re trying to put the pieces together.”

“Whatever happened to the Francium happened…after I was knocked out. I don’t remember there being any explosions.”

“Is there anything you can tell us that might help with this investigation?”

Manfred shook his head innocently. “I honestly don’t know what has happened. I’d tell you if I did…know something. Apparently I’ve been unconscious most of the time.”

The Archon glanced at the female medic and nodded, then walked off.

“If you remember anything let us know, but for now we need to get some nutrients into you. Drink this,” she said, reaching over to a nearby shelf and pulling a bottle out. She unscrewed the cap and had him start sipping while the Archon and the senior medic retreated into a nearby room.

“And?” the Archon asked once they were out of earshot.

“I’ve seen my share of traumatized individuals, and this guy is acting all wrong. He’s a bit rough from the chemically induced coma, but he’s not harboring any panic from the kidnapping, interrogation, or any elation at now being freed.”

“I caught that. Anything medically stand out?”

“The drugs they gave him put him in a very low metabolic state, designed, I believe, to keep him out for prolonged periods of time. If you found him in a cargo box, I’d guess they were planning a long trip and couldn’t have him up and about.”

“How long would it take to put him in that sort of coma?”

“Several hours, minimum. His body has also atrophied from the process, meaning he’s due for some lengthy rehab before we release him. Same for the others.”

“Take your time, we’re holding onto all of them for the moment. Can you measure how long they’ve been out?”

The medic cringed. “It’d be ballpark at best, but I can be fairly certain that none of them was awake within the past few days.”

“That’s something,” the Archon said, making a point of adding that to his report that would be shot over to Green Team, who was still in the field. Clan Alterra had been entrusted with the rescued prisoners, as well as tasked with pulling as fast a debrief as they could, followed by a more in depth interrogation, which would require an acolyte, of which Alpha Centauri had few on station. One was coming in from Odin, but until then it was up to Jani-54332 to handle the debriefings and compile the report.

“Who’s up next?”

“I’ve got three near consciousness, two women and a boy.”

“The boy then.”

The medic nodded. “Follow me,” he said, leading him out and into another wing of the medical bay.

Simultaneously on Tyr…

Harold Weston tore through the door of his opulent personal quarters, but held in his adrenaline-fueled rant until it slid closed behind him…then he was off walking across the carpet and talking to his wife before he found her two rooms away.

“It’s happened again!” he half yelled, plodding down the two stairs that separated the outer foyer from the main living room that looked out on a balcony that overhung one of the many forested parks within the city. “It’s happened again!” he repeated.

“What has happened?” a calmer voice asked, with his wife rising up off a long couch and walking a few steps towards him as he stormed in, stopping a few feet short of her.

“Iverson is gone…gone! I talked to him this morning, now he’s vanished…right out of the office complex! That’s the 8th one, Mylan, the 8th one!”

His overly attractive wife frowned, yet still appeared beautiful enough to question how a hefty accountant like Weston had ever attracted that caliber of woman. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, damn it!” he bellowed, but she knew it wasn’t directed at her. Over the past 3 days he’d become increasingly agitated as members of the government and high level executives on the moon had begun vanishing…of which he knew personally. And now he was thoroughly convinced that he was going to be next.

“What has TSD to say about it?”

“Nothing!” Weston said, throwing his hands in the air. “They claim to be investigating the disappearances, but that they haven’t been gone long enough to raise any serious alarm. As if the brightest minds and highest leaders on this moon have a habit of going off on impromptu vacations without so much as waving goodbye to their secretaries!”

“Perhaps we should go on one...” Mylan offered gently.

Weston put a hand on his face, burying his eyes in his palm. “I don’t know, nooble. I just don’t know. If someone can get to us here, will we be any safer elsewhere?”

“I can’t answer that,” she said, walking over and rubbing his shoulders affectionately.

“I can,” a voice said evenly from the bedroom annex, jolting Weston’s bulk almost off his skeleton, “and the answer is no,” Drake said, walking into view obscured beneath his silver acolyte armor.

Weston backpedaled, tripping over an end table and falling on his ass while his wife stepped to the side gently, but otherwise held position as she stared the Archon down, more angry that he’d invaded their home than afraid.

“What…do you want?” Weston sputtered.

“Information,” Drake said, pulling off his helmet and revealing his loose, 3 inch long bright red hair that he’d altered and enhanced in brightness to the point that it almost glowed. From another room Yavari-824 walked up behind them, also without his helmet, and curiously, his gloves.

Weston puffed once, regaining some of his fire. “And then I disappear too?”

“Depends on your answers,” Drake said as Yavari picked Weston up and held him in place, standing.

Drake pointed to his wife, then the nearby chair. “You…sit.”

Mylan chewed her lip for a moment, then relented silently and glided over to the chair, sinking her petite frame down into the opulent cushions almost to the point of swallowing her legs.

“Now,” Drake began, walking over and sitting on the edge of the central fountain in the room, dipping his armored fingertips inside and shooing away a few colored fish from a lump of rock on the bottom that didn’t match the rest. He pulled it out and played with it distractedly as he spoke. “First things first…what do you know of The Word?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Second question…two years ago a number of administrators were changed out. What do you know of the reason?”

“Personnel shuffle…happens occasionally, why?”

“Third question…do you know who I am?”

“No,” he said blatantly.

“Fourth question…do you love your wife?”

Weston’s face screwed up. “Don’t you dare lay a finger on her.”

“Alright, I won’t,” Drake promised as Yavari shoved Weston across the floor. He stood up and grabbed hold of the man with an arm around his neck, pressing in gently with his armor plates as the other Archon walked over and yanked the woman out of the chair, grabbing her neck as he stood her up in front of him.

“Stop…please,” Weston said, suddenly changing his tone.

“I’ll ask again. What do you know of The Word?”

“Nothing…I swear to god!”

“Question two…the administrators. What was different about the changeover that happened approximately two years ago?”

“There were more transfers,” Weston said, trying to give the man some type of answer. “A lot of retirements. It was rumored that they’d received some deal, a payoff that got them out of the hierarchy. Someone said it was related to a scandal, but no one ever knew for sure. It’s just hearsay, I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

“Third…you really don’t know who we are?”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life?”

“What about our armor?”

“What about it?”

“Let’s ask your wife then…do you know who we are?”

She scowled at him, with her chin held slightly high by Yavari’s clenched hand around her throat. “They’re Star Force Archons.”

“Correct,” David said, pleased. “How then do you know us and not you,” he said, glancing down at Weston’s balding head.

“He doesn’t pay attention to the news, he’s always working,” she defended him. “I’ve seen your armor before.”

“Most people have,” Drake agreed, knowing that they’d become the equivalent of Jedi within the public’s perspective, with several fictitious recreations in the entertainment industry educating those who didn’t catch snippets of them in action on the news.

“Fourth question…do you love your wife?”

“Yes,” he said regretfully, as if anticipating she was about to be hurt.

“Why then,” Drake said a bit softer, “doesn’t she love you?”

When Weston didn’t answer Drake continued on. “Let me ask you another question…when did you meet your wife?”

“Three years ago this July.”

“And when were you married?”

“Three months and four days later,” he recalled, having the statistics memorized, fond of her as he was.

“Good memory,” he offered. “What’s today’s date?”

“The twelfth of May,” Weston humored him.

“Then remember this as the day of your divorce.”

“Don’t hurt her…I beg you! I’ll answer anything you want.”

“Chh, chh, chh,” Drake said, making a disapproving sound. “You weren’t listening. I said today was the day of your divorce, not her death.”

“I don’t understand,” he mumbled, his face turning a bit red from Drake’s grip.

“It’s simple,” the Archon said, pulling his arm off and stepping between him and Mylan as Yavari continued to hold her in check. “She’s no longer your wife…or to put it more accurately, today is the day you realize she is not your wife.”

Weston rubbed his neck where the Archon’s armor had pinched him. “What do you mean?” he demanded, flicking his gaze back and forth between Mylan and Drake.

“She doesn’t love you,” the acolyte repeated. “And the timing of your meeting has to do with my second question regarding the personnel shuffle. Some key people had to be removed, others were coopted. In your case, you were manipulated. This woman is a sleeper agent of a criminal organization.”

“Ridiculous,” Weston sputtered, not even looking at his wife’s reaction. “You’ve made a mistake.”

“No,” Drake said confidently, relying on her reactions to his questions that Yavari was monitoring and his subsequent telepathic reports. “And even though Archons don’t date, I do sympathize with what you’re about to emotionally endure, for she is rather lovely…on the outside at least.”

“No,” Weston insisted, finally looking at her, still held tightly by the neck. “What are you accusing her of, specifically?”

“She’s a member of The Word,” Drake said, staring at her. “The criminal organization that has quietly taken over this moon. Brazil is no longer in control, and those administrative retirements marked the time of the takeover. You’ve been working for the enemy and never knew it.”

“What has she done?” Weston said, fixated on his wife and only partially processing the other facts Drake was throwing out.

“You tell me…what have you let her have access to?”

“We share all possessions. My bank account is hers.”

“What about your passwords?”

“No…that’d be a breach of ethics. Only I know my passwords.”

Drake smiled, getting another telepathic update from Yavari. “You work from home occasionally?”

“It’s rare, but sometimes when I have a special project I need a few extra hours…after supper before we go to bed.”

“Ever have her looking over your shoulder?”

“I don’t hide my work from her, but I’ve never let her see my password.”

“You may not have intended to, but she did…and has quietly used your access to do things with your books.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“We’re Star Force. We have lots of ways of ferreting out the truth. Some of your friends that have gone missing were also operatives, others, like yourself, were merely dupes.”

Suddenly Mylan passed out and Yavari let her fall to the floor…with Weston running towards her, though Drake stopped him halfway with a firm hand on his chest.

“She’s not dead, only unconscious. And now that she’s been exposed there’s a possibility that you could be in danger. The Word has no problem lethally cleaning up loose ends. Those administrators that ‘retired’ went straight from work to the grave. Eventually Brazil missed them and began investigating, whereupon they were contacted by the people who have taken control of this city and were told to maintain normal operations leaving them in charge. Your country didn’t agree and sent in an assault force…that magically disappeared. That’s why we’re here. Brazil asked Star Force for help.”

“May I have access to my computer?” he said stoically, though a mixture of pain and trepidation was flooding his emotions.

“Why?”

“If she truly has been accessing my account, I can find out.”

“The Word is very good at covering their tracks,” Drake cautioned.

Weston’s chin raised ever so slightly. “I’m very good at my job, sir. And I’m no novice with computers. Will you let me try?”

“I’m no novice either, so don’t try to contact anyone or you’ll find yourself with a sudden headache.”

“I don’t completely believe you,” the man said, “but either way I want to know the truth.”

Drake glanced at Yavari, then waved a go-ahead hand in front of Weston, who walked off into another room with the Archon following.

The accountant logged in and immediately went to the user history, finding it clean…then to David’s surprise he accessed a backdoor and ran through the interface logs for his console, discovering several specific program accesses at times the history didn’t record.

He sat frozen at the keyboard for more than a minute before Drake eventually put his armored hand on his shoulder, seeing the man crying in the reflection of the screen.

“I need to get you out of here before The Word can get to you.”

Weston sniffled. “I actually let myself believe she loved me…that she wanted me. What are you going to do with her?”

“Star Force doesn’t kill or torture its prisoners. She’ll be taken away and questioned, then imprisoned for a very long time.”

“Rehab?”

“Of a sort…though The Word might label her a liability and try to take her out. For that reason we have to get you and her off the moon as soon as possible. Let’s go,” Drake urged, pulling Weston up out of his chair.

“They’ve really taken control of the entire city?”

“Through one means or another, yes.”

“What are you going to do?” Weston asked as Yavari came into view carrying Mylan over his shoulder.

Drake walked him over to the balcony, grabbing his helmet on the way then pulling a rappelling line from his back rack as they stepped outside into the view of several other nearby balconies, a few of which had people on them. He stopped for a moment, not caring if anyone saw them, for as soon as they got to ground level they’d be on the move to a nearby extraction point. The Archon looked at the balding, overweight man through his helmet, with his voice being synthetically altered by the external mic.

“We’re going to take it back.”

8

May 13, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Tyr

The Brazilian technician slumped to the ground unconscious thanks to the sleep touch Quenton-1123 had just laid on him, with the Archon pulling him away from the chair, allowing Nathan to slide in and quickly access the control board.

“Make it quick,” Quenton reminded him, “misguided underlings are already on the way.”

“Give me a heads up when they get here,” Nathan replied, shunting power from one section of region 8 to another. The power station they were in was responsible for both the generation and the distribution of power to one of 24 regions of the city, with region 8 containing several dark zones that didn’t match up with Star Force’s original schematics. Those dark zones had previously been scouted out, finding a lot of locked doors and security cameras blocking their way, but Green Team had been ingenious enough to find their way around some of them without tipping off The Word that they knew of their location.

At least that was the theory. How much the enemy knew of their movements was guesswork…as was their assessment of how much of the city was under their control. Their clandestine war had yet to reach the local news networks, meaning the populace of Tyr had no idea anything abnormal was occurring and continued to go about their daily lives. If The Word wanted it that way they’d oblige, save for already having issued recall orders for all the Star Force personnel on the moon, who as of now had mostly left, with the last few stragglers quietly making their way to the spaceports, not knowing themselves that there was any danger, just that they had some place to be that wasn’t on Tyr.

Their leaving probably hadn’t gone unnoticed, so Green Team figured it was just a matter of time before a more obvious confrontation broke out, though when that’d be was also guesswork.

David had assumed that with two years of time to play with, The Word had probably built their own little nest in the city much as they had in other locations, in addition to the factories, warehouses, research labs, and other illicit facilities that Green Team had already located within the city. His suspicions had been confirmed 7 hours ago when an offshoot of one of the dark areas lead to a subterranean structure not previously logged on schematics and outside the city’s subterranean boundaries.

Some surveillance of their own had confirmed the flow of personnel in and out of the complex that was of unknown size, but the power usage was being logged and counter-logged within the city’s books to hide the consumption. Bookkeeping could be falsified, but power lines couldn’t be so easily obscured, though The Word engineers had done a good job of hiding them. Knowing what to look for, Green Team had followed the conduits and discovered a maintenance crawlspace that wasn’t designed for transit, but one that they could squeeze through in their armor, but just barely.

Trick of it was, it was below the city and the complex, in the very supports that held the massive structure in place against the low gravity…and was below the artificial gravity zones that added the extra tug to keep the population at the standard 1g. Thing of it was, so was The Word’s complex, so if they could cut the power there was a good chance that the hidden base would revert back to the moon’s normal gravity that ran at .52g.

Taking out the power would also hit the lights, security cameras, and any line-powered defense systems, assuming they didn’t have a backup power supply in place, which was possible, but David doubted that would be powerful enough to cover everything, so if they managed to cut the main power something The Word was used to having on would go off and make for a hopefully chaotic environment inside.

Green Team wanted that chaos, for as of now they were going in totally blind.

Quenton stepped over to the open door and looked down on the catwalks below. “They’re here. I’ll buy you some time.”

“60 seconds should do,” Nathan said, typing away at the keyboard furiously, both the built in one and the plug-in variety he’d brought with him to help hack through the security codes, which were rather light for such an important piece of infrastructure.

Quenton nodded his helmet and jumped over the railing on the narrow balcony outside, falling down two stories to catch himself on the catwalk below, then he hopped over again down to the floor and ran over behind a wide support pillar as Brazilian security guards began popping up from behind pieces of machinery with weapons drawn as they closed in on the only way up to the control room.

The Archon didn’t waste time waiting for them and decided to distract by hitting first, which he accomplished by circling around the pillar and climbing up on top of one of the many support machines that fed the city’s buildings their power, water, air, and all other vital systems from below, situated far down in the bedrock. From atop the boxy machine Quenton jumped forward spread eagle, landing on top of one of the guards and pancaking him to the floor with an audible crunch of armor on armor.

The Archon rolled off him and pumped a stinger round into the man’s back, with the energy bleeding through the blue armor and rendering him at least numb, if not unconscious. Quenton didn’t wait around to find out which, sidestepping once he got to his feet and elbowing another guard in the ribs as he brought his plasma rifle around…which went flying off and ricocheted against another bulky machine.

Before the other guards could close on him, Quenton took off the opposite way from the control room, leading several off before cutting across the main flow of guards still coming down from whatever elevator shaft or stairwell they’d been using. He stunned several, taking a few hits against his shields that left only the barest of scuff marks on his armor when they breached…then he was lost in the machinery again as he circled back around and ambushed the guards pushing towards the catwalk from behind, catching several on their way up that, once stunned, rolled back down the steps until they flopped onto one of the flat transition sections.

“When do we get to start bagging these guys instead of just stun and release?” he asked over the comm.

“All in good time,” Nathan said, just finishing up. “There…power flow interrupted. Target should be dark.”

More than a mile away, with too much metal and concrete in between to allow their low powered comms to connect, David and the other 7 members of Green Team lay scrunched in next to a series of pipes in single file as the power gage they had attached to one of them suddenly registered a negative, meaning that the floor above them should be as dark as the tiny space they were in now.

“This is it,” David said at the head of the line, but several meters down from the explosives they’d drilled into the top of the crawlspace. “Detonating in 3…2…1…” he said, pressing the button on a remote trigger while he was face down against the metal base, with an arm stretched out in front of his helmet holding a loose section of plate he’d brought in with him to help catch the blast.

That plate popped back into him with the detonation and he could see his forearm shield breach on his HUD’s diagnostics, but otherwise he was ok…which meant he had to move, and fast.

He pushed the plate off him, seeing several indentations where debris had hit it thanks to his Pefbar, that not only allowed him to see in the dark, but to see through more than a meter of structure up into the hallway above them at the breach point. David crawled forward, pushing aside bits of debris that made it even harder to squeeze through when one of them would get stuck along his side, but eventually he got up to the blast point and began crawling up, pushing aside pointy ends of this and that and making a larger exit point for the rest of his team as he expanded upon their impromptu foxhole in the middle of the hallway.

As the power gage had indicated, it was completely dark. David didn’t turn on his armor’s exterior lights, of which he had a few choices, but rather kept his Pefbar on continuously, seeing the area both ahead and behind him in the grainy black/white spherical vision that his telekinesis relied upon, though now it was serving an entirely different purpose.

David jumped up, feeling that the gravity had indeed lightened, and landed more than a meter out from the edge of the hole, dragging his weapon bundle with him. He walked forward and knelt down, detaching the tether on his leg and pulling out the varied weapons, placing them on his back rack while hefting the stinger rifle in his active grip. He advanced down the hallway, with his battlemap using a low level scanner in his armor to plot out the dimensions of the corridor and share it with the others coming up behind him.

It took a while, but all of them made it up and out before they saw any personnel…in fact, it wasn’t until they were several hallways over in the grid-shaped layout that they encountered any individuals, and the one they found was bound and gagged inside a room. David had seen him through the walls before they ever got to the door, then he paused just before his hand reached for the latch, seeing something disturbing inside.

“Jet?” he asked the Archon directly behind him as Assad moved forward and took up a forward scouting position at the end of the hall.

“What?”

“What do you see inside?”

“A prisoner…one prisoner tied to a chair and no guards.”

“Take a good look at the chair.”

“Damn,” Lio said, a step behind them.

“Is the door rigged?” Jet asked, though he couldn’t see anything on the handle, latches or in the walls to indicate it was.

“I don’t think so. Everyone move on, I’m going in alone.”

“We can come back for this guy later,” Jet reminded him.

“I get the feeling this is a ghost town,” David said as the others jogged by him. “See if you can find anyone else, but stay alert.”

“Copy that,” Jet said, the last to leave him.

David let them move on then slowly pulled the latch on the door, rotating the locking device and popping it open. He swung it out into the room and stepped through, ‘seeing’ little different than when the door had been closed, save for a bit more complexity of detail. He took a few careful steps forward, looking around multiple times for some type of trigger, like maybe a laser trip line, but he couldn’t see any mechanisms imbedded into the walls, floor, or ceiling.

He stepped up within 2 meters of the man, whose head was sagging down. David still felt a mind there, meaning he wasn’t dead, but he was either asleep or unconscious. That wasn’t his worry at the moment, but rather the stack of explosives concealed underneath the chair. Had the lights been on he probably would have missed them entirely, but the dense bricks showed up plainly in his Pefbar sight, and now that he was closer he could see the tiny wires connecting them to the man’s butt.

David adjusted his sight, viewing different layers right through the man’s body, including his internal organs, which the Archon always found to be a bit gross, but it was necessary to examine the device without touching it or him. After a few minutes of exertion David released his Pefbar for a moment, rested his mind for a handful of seconds, then reactivated it with a much narrower focus that required more of his power as he…

“Contact,” Assad said over the comm, startling David enough that he sucked in an involuntary breath, then flashed his Pefbar out behind him, realizing he hadn’t been paying attention to his back. Sloppy...but necessary if he was going to avoid blowing up.

“What have you got?”

“Looks like another prisoner tied to a chair.”

“Set a waypoint but do not approach. See how many more are out there.”

“Looks like we’ve got the level to ourselves.”

“Find the stairs yet?”

“Not yet.”

“When you do hold up. They may have left us some other surprises.”

“You think they’ve already bugged out?” Devin asked.

“That’s my gut feeling, but we don’t know how big this place is either. Leave me off the comm for a few minutes. I’ve got some delicate work to do.”

“Copy that.”

David stood in front of the chair with the slumped man inside it, holding his stinger rifle with a reflexive grip born of many missions and long training sessions, for at the  moment his mind was wholly consumed with the wires connecting the explosives to the trigger, which appeared to be attached to the man so that when he came up off the chair it would pull apart and send the detonation signal…meaning that the explosion will kill both him and his rescuer, and given the size of the bricks he didn’t want to know how much damage it would do to him once it got past his armor.

This was definitely one of The Word’s attempts to kill the Archons, given that they didn’t have a good track record doing it the old fashioned way with men and guns. To date they’d never killed one, though there had been a few injuries in past altercations. Now it seemed they were starting to think outside the box, perhaps as a result of Green Team having rescued the prisoners they’d come across 2 days ago. They knew they wanted them alive, so they thought they’d use them as bait for a booby trap.

That meant The Word suspected they were coming here, but he doubted they knew how they’d enter the base, so they may still have the element of surprise, along with the blackout, if anyone was still around. The others would discover that…right now he needed to get this man unhooked before he woke up and started wiggling around on the detonator.

David could see the wires where they connected to the detonator box, which was split into two pieces. That he had to avoid separating, so he felt his way down to the other end of the wires and began pulling on them with his Lachka, trying to separate the lines from the explosives. There were 8 wires, one each connecting to the bricks stacked 4 wide and two deep and secured underneath the chair with some type of adhesive, he guessed, for he couldn’t see any other types of fasteners.

He got the first wire out without anything going boom, and from then on he breathed a bit easier, having to take small breaks to recharge his mind and gather his strength, for the wires were stuck into the explosives quite well and it required a pinch-pull to yank them out, which didn’t allow as good of grip for his already limited telekinetic manipulation.

The acolyte was more than strong enough though, he just didn’t want to make any mistakes, as well as knowing he’d have to repeat this process again on at least one other prisoner, so he wanted to take this first disarmament slow and methodical, establishing a procedure he could execute more quickly down the line.

When he got the last wire out he pulled them all away from the bricks and stepped forward, reaching a hand down underneath the chair and grabbing the bundle, then giving it a sharp jerk that disconnected it from the man’s clothes where the opposite end of the detonator stayed attached.

The electric charge the detonator sent down the wires sparked against David’s forearm shield, notable only by a tiny indicator on his HUD. Otherwise there was no visible sign of activity.

He activated his comm. “Prisoner disarmed. He’s still unconscious and I’m leaving him that way for now,” he said, using his HUD and menu buttons underneath a flap on his left gauntlet to drop a waypoint on the battlemap so they’d know where to come back to when they wanted to pick this guy up.

“Five other chair-bound prisoners found,” Devin reported. “We’ve almost got this level checked.”

“Are we the basement?”

“Negative,” Assad reported. “I’m at the stairs, with flights going up and down.

David glanced at his growing battlemap and zoomed out, beginning to see how big this place was. Either The Word had started the construction prior to their takeover or they’d been really busy over the past 2 years…though without anyone looking over their shoulder they could have devoted an army of construction crews to dig this place out of the bedrock within weeks, so he guessed he shouldn’t have been so surprised.

“Finish this level, then I want teams of four. One goes up, one goes down. We tag prisoners and other items of interest with waypoints but we keep moving. Heads up for more booby traps and see if we can’t find someone who’s supposed to be down here. We can take inventory later.”

David followed his own order, tossing the detonator across the room where it was well away from the explosive bricks on his way out the door, then he followed his battlemap over to the stairwell where Assad and Jet were waiting.

9

Green Team searched through the complex in two parts, finding level after level deserted and partially cleaned out. Furniture and nonessential items were still there, but all computer hard drives had been removed, many storage rooms were completely emptied, and skid marks and wall latches attested to where other equipment had previously been. It seemed that The Word had known they’d be coming and had cleaned house in anticipation.

Twelve bomb-laden prisoners had been discovered, spread out across the lower levels. They were still sitting there in the dark, unconscious, while the Archons completed their search…finding the most significant discovery last of all on the uppermost level where the facility connected into one of the city’s dark zones via a hidden doorway the size of a cargo tram. Green Team had avoided going in that way because the door was thick and probably guarded on the inside with who knew what kind of defenses.

“Huh,” Devin said, looking at what Assad had come across and all of Green Team was now staring at. “That’s one hell of a door prize.”

“Do we disarm it or leave the way we came in?” Jet asked.

“I’m not sure the door will even work without power,” Nathan offered.

In the dark, visible only through their Pefbar, David pointed to the left. “There’s a manual release in the wall panel. Let’s see if we can’t get this neutralized. I don’t want some Brazilian team opening the door a month from now and going boom.”

“We could warn them,” Jet pointed out.

“I also don’t want to drag the prisoners out the way we came in.”

“Point,” Nathan agreed. “Where do we start?”

“It’s not complicated,” Lio offered. “It’s set up to go off when the door opens. They didn’t expect anyone to get at it from this side,” he said, referring to the lack of security measures. The bomb attached to the inside of the door was literally a stack of explosive bricks identical to those strapped underneath the prisoners…only there had to be thousands here, enough to pop the door off its hinges and bust out the walls, floor, and ceiling, creating a crater around the entry point into the base.

Then the prisoner bombs were just a bonus for anyone who didn’t die at the doorway.

“Same way we handled the others,” David said. “Pull the wires out of the bricks.”

“I can do better than that,” Assad said, walking up towards the bookcase-like stack covering nearly the entire inner side of the door. “There’s one cable coming from the contact points to the detonator, then a bazillion going out to the explosives. If we remove the power source from the detonator it won’t be able to go bang.”

“What kind of power source are they using?” David asked, walking up to Assad and standing beside both him and the brick wall that was less than a meter ahead. The detonator was in the middle of the stack with the wires coming out the front and arching around to connect with the narrow ends of each of the bricks.

“One that wasn’t designed for the detonator,” Assad said, seeing into and through the various components. “The original has been removed and a portable power cell has been tied in. It’s sitting behind it and connected by a handful of thicker wires.”

“I see them now. We have to make sure it’s the only power source.”

“Lio was right, this isn’t designed to be tamper proof. Pull the connecting wires and the juice will be gone.”

“Take the left one, I’ve got the other,” David said.

“Wait,” Nathan said, walking up on his other shoulder. “Ok, do it now.”

“What was that?” Assad asked.

“I turned off the power on the cell. There’s a button on the side.”

David looked at it again, trying to see what he meant. After a few long seconds Nathan telepathically sent him an image, then David was able to make it out. “Good catch.”

“Thank you…but I’d still recommend disconnecting the hard lines.”

“Oh yeah,” David agreed. “Assad?”

“Pulling,” the Archon said, telekinetically yanking on one of the cables. The end attached to the detonator wouldn’t budge, but when he tried the plug-in to the cell it disconnected cleanly. He looped it back on itself and coiled it up inside the detonator cavity that had held the original power source.

“Done.”

David finished up 10 seconds later, making sure the wires weren’t going to come loose and work their way back out and accidentally make contact with the cell. The odds of that happening were nil, but with this much explosives they couldn’t afford to take chances. Armor or no, if this thing blew they’d be dead.

“Alright, we’re clear. Open it up.”

Assad walked over and opened the wall panel, which revealed both a latch and a wheel. He pulled the large switch, disconnecting the lock on the lock, then began wheeling the locking stubs out of the side of the door and into their wall niches, all of which the Archons could see, thanks to their wall-piercing sight.

“Ok, start pushing,” Assad said, referencing the lack of power. David and four of the other Archons found handholds on the spots on the door that did not have explosive bricks and used their enhanced muscle strength to pry the half meter thick door out of its fitting, pivoting on the right side.

As soon as the edge passed out a bright band of light broke through the Archon’s helmets as the lit interior of the ‘dark’ zone shown in. In keeping with their hiding protocols, the power lines for the door and base didn’t mix with the ones that were part of the normal infrastructure, meaning the blackout was only present in the levels that didn’t officially exist.

“Nathan, stay here with me,” David said, taking a couple steps out and feeling normal gravity return. “The rest of you go grab a prisoner.”

One, two, three, four, jump…one, two, three, four, jump…

Drake held that pattern for six of the stubby transport trucks trolling down one of the internal highways within the city. They had no driver or cab and were rolling along on six wheels, each in a convoy taking cargo from one distribution center to another, keeping their computer-controlled spacing and speed almost perfectly aligned on the straight, 5-laned road.  The even spacing allowed the Archon to make the jumps between them easy enough, but he was more impressed that the fugitive he was chasing was doing the same.

Red Team had just smashed a security station and grabbed a number of officers they’d concluded were either Word operatives or in league with them, capturing and eventually releasing the other security officers, but during the raid one of them had broken loose, jumping out a window and going across several building tops until he hopped down off a walkway bridge into the traffic flow.

Drake had been on his heels when he did, and he was surprised the man hadn’t been run over…but the man had successfully landed on a long-bed transport, then had been hopping from one to another up to this convoy that had more than 20 short cargo trams in a row.

The acolyte paced him, waiting for him to slip up and drop to the road…which he didn’t want him to do. They were only moving at 40-50 miles an hour, with all of the cargo transports moving at the same speed, but they were still plenty heavy enough to squash him if he got ran over. The other vehicles, however, were moving at a range of speeds, allowing both the fugitive and the Archon to hop from one cargo transport to another as they made their way down the road.

Drake hoped the man would get caught at the front of the convoy, with no more trucks to jump to, but when he got to the first in line he hesitated only slightly before jumping to his right and down, landing on a squat personnel transport. It had no driver, but seats for 4 people inside, two of which were currently occupied. The man road on top of it past the convoy, gaining meters of distance as Drake jumped up to the front truck top…where the gap had become too large for even him to jump across.

“Damn it,” he said, looking around. There wasn’t anything else in that lane for about 50 meters back, but there was a larger personnel transport two lanes away, and it was moving faster than the trucks too, giving him a window of opportunity until it completed the pass.

“Kung fu grip,” he reminded himself, backing up to the edge of the truck then sprinting a couple of steps into the jump. He flew across the empty lane and landed against the side of the bus with his knees hitting the edge. His torso slammed down on top with his legs missing and beginning to drag him down over the side, but he splayed his hands out on top and he clung to it like a tree climbing frog long enough to get his toe tips against the side. From there he climbed his way up, seeing the front truck in the convoy he’d just been on drifting off behind him.

He looked ahead, seeing the man riding the cab and looking back at him, realizing that it was moving slightly faster than the bus.

“Oh no you don’t,” he said, climbing to his feet and running to the back of the bus…where he turned around and sprinted down the length into a long jump ahead to a medium length truck, tucking into a somersault before coming to a halt on his knees on top of its roof. Behind him the bus pulled out into the next lane so it could pass the slower moving vehicle, but Drake was running and jumping ahead again before it could catch up, moving up to another truck before making a cross jump to a long-bed across the empty middle lane that the bus was now coming up.

The long-bed was carrying crates, but only on the front half. Drake landed on the back, then climbed up on top and headed to the first in line, with no cab to jump off of, just a sheer drop off like at the back of the flatbed. The gap up to the next truck was a bit longer, but he made it across to the back of an enclosed tram, hanging off the back for a moment as he was only able to catch the back edge with his hands.

When he came up top he saw the man on the cab was still ahead of him, but not as far as he had been…and Drake had a long line of trucks in this convoy to catch up on.

One, two, three, four, jump…and he was up to the next one, then the next, and the next until he pulled even with the man, but before he could hop out to the cab the man jumped the opposite direction, grabbing hold of the edge of another truck by his fingertips, then pulling himself up top just as Drake hopped out and landed on the cab.

He didn’t know who this guy was, but he was starting to get impressed.

Drake set himself and followed the man across to the truck, then pursued him over to the next lane as the man jumped onto a short convoy that was heading off the road and into an offshoot. Then amazingly the man leapt up as the trucks moved under a pedestrian walkway and clung to the railing as the convoy passed underneath him.

Drake shook his head and moved to the head of the truck he was on, then reached up and grabbed the man’s left leg, latching on and yanking him loose as he ducked down to miss the overhang that was about a meter and a half above the top of the trucks.

The man got peeled off none too gently and smacked down onto the top of the truck, bloody from the abrasion against the edge of the walkway. Drake stood up after they passed under it and pinned the man down with an armored knee on his chest.

“Nice try,” he offered as the wind whipped past them both, even as the trucks were gradually slowing down as they headed into a terminal. “Who are you?”

The man’s nose was bleeding heavily from a nasty gash, but more shocking than that was the way his eyes went wide at his question.

“You don’t know?”

“No clue,” Drake said easily, still pinning him down.

“Why are you after me?” the man asked, blood dribbling down into his mouth. He turned to the side and spit some of it out, but more kept bubbling out making it hard for him to breathe/speak.

“You ran.”

“What?” he coughed.

Drake backed up and pulled the man into a sitting position, letting the blood run down onto his blue security uniform.

“Who are you?” the Archon repeated.

“If you don’t know I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

“We’ll get you ID’d soon enough.”

“You didn’t come for me?”

“We came for your bosses. Why’d you rabbit instead of fighting?”

“I thought you were after me.”

“Why would we be?”

The man didn’t say anything, instead he pinched his nose trying to get the blood to stop…then he jerked as he realized most of the tip of his nose had been torn off by the edge of the walkway.

“What do you know about The Word?” Drake asked as the trucks slowed to a near stop as they rolled into individual lateral berths where they could be unloaded. From the corner of his eye he saw more security guards approaching, having noticed the pair of people on top of the truck.

“What word?”

“The criminal organization that’s taken over this moon,” Drake said bluntly. “It was their operatives we were after in the security station. If you’re not one of them I don’t care, but tell me now or I’m taking you in for questioning…in how many pieces is up to you, but your buddies over there aren’t going to be able to stop me,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder at the armed guards approaching.

“I’m on Star Force’s detain list,” he admitted. “When I saw you break in I thought you were after me.”

Drake swiped his hand across the blood dripping from the man’s face, then held it up for him to see. “I’ll find out for sure in about an hour, so tell me the truth or I may hunt you down just because. What do we want you for?”

“I’m a hacker. I gave myself a new identity here where I didn’t think you’d be able to find me. Figured a security officer would be the best place to hide.”

Drake’s helmet nodded. “Sorry about the face,” he said, running past him and jumping off the truck down to the curb.

The security guards yelled at him to stop, but he weaved his way through the workers and machines coming out to unload the trucks, working his way out into the pedestrian walkways accessing the terminal. Despite the fact that he was running through the people wearing bloody silver armor and drawing all kinds of stares, they didn’t get in his way and he easily outdistanced Brazilian security.

“Report,” he asked over the comm as he continued to run through the wide walkways that were entirely separate from the roads.

“Tagged and bagged,” Derrick answered. “How about you?”

“Red herring. He’s a Star Force fugitive who thought we were coming after him. Made a pretty good run of it before I caught up to him.”

“What’d you do with him?”

“Let him go. I’ve got a blood sample so we can make a positive ID, then let security handle it. We’ve got bigger targets to deal with.”

“How good of a chase?”

“I got to play frogger on top of the cars. Any problem with the extraction?”

“None yet.”

“Oh crap,” Drake said, skidding to a halt with the people nearby reflexively jerking away from him as he stared at a newscreen flashing a bulletin…one with a warning to the population on Tyr that a Star Force strike team was in the city and responsible for the deaths of over 40 people. They were labeling them a rogue faction, now unaffiliated with the mega corporation, and were requesting any intel on their locations.

“What?” Derrick asked.

“We just made the news. So much for our underground war with The Word.”

“We’re already off the grid, where are you?”

“Nowhere important,” Drake lied as he started to run again, with people’s stares changing into pointing and yelling. “Don’t wait up on me. I’ll make my way back by another route.

10

May 14, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Tyr

David shot one of the spaceport workers in the chest with a stinger, not because the man was a threat, but because he no longer had the luxury of being choosey. Every person he came across he was taking down as he and half of Green Team had already fought their way past the security guards and were in a hurry to catch a cargo shipment that was just about to launch.

During their initial recon of the dark zones in the city blueprints, Green Team had placed tracking beacons on some of the sites that they couldn’t assault immediately. Those crates and pieces of equipment had then been spirited away soon after, giving the team a few leads to follow now that it was clear that The Word knew it was compromised and was pulling out…or relocating within the city. It wasn’t clear yet what their progressing agenda was, but this beacon had gone to the spaceport and David knew they had to get at it before it flew off and had a chance to disappear in the transit network.

The other four members of Green Team were scrambling into the spaceport at different spots, all of which were trying to get to the beacon before it left. David was coming through a staff area, having blown through a locked rear door using the plasma rifle that was now snuggly tucked onto the back of his armor as he shot another passerby with his stinger version…or rather as he passed by, for he was running through the interior halls following the beacon on his battlemap.

The blueprints the battlemap was drawing from put it squarely in the hangar, meaning it was probably already onboard a dropship. He could call for Star Force to intercept the ship once it took off, but he didn’t have a long range transmitter on him, and even if he went back to their armory stash and got one, or commandeered a local one, there would be a delay in getting a ship here. The dropship would most definitely dock with a starport or ship in orbit before that happened, allowing the cargo to disappear.

Even if the beacon kept broadcasting there was a chance that the cargo would be split and they’d lose some of it, which was why it was important to get to it now…not to mention if there was more than cargo onboard. He didn’t know if it’d contain Word personnel or not, but he intended to find out.

David rounded a corner and ducked his shoulder as he rammed into another worker, knocking him aside and into the wall as he blew by. He didn’t turn around to shoot him unconscious, instead sprinting on as fast as the narrow hallways allowed. He had several more turns to make before finally popping out into the hangar and spotting a few guards firing at Jet and Nathan who had already come in through other entrances.

David shot one of the guards in the back, then the others dove for another part of the crate pile when they discovered they’d been flanked. Most of the hangar was flat and filled with ships, but at three points there were mountains of cargo either arriving or going out, stacked up in random segments to keep various shipments separate for easier handling later. That provided ample opportunities to shoot out of cover and a couple of plasma blasts came David’s way as he ignored the guards and hurried towards the Dragon-class dropship whose boarding ramp was still down, but no one was visible moving around it.

Another plasma lance caught David in the leg, splashing off his shields before overloading and penetrating…leaving a tiny scar in the armor alongside another he’d gotten yesterday. While the patchwork of shields overtop the armor was certainly a defensive boost, it was more in longevity than sheer power, given that this was the same set of armor he’d been wearing since arrival and he only had a dozen or so scorch marks showing what otherwise would have been melty gashes.

He risked getting a few of those now as he sprinted towards the massive dropship, only to see the boarding ramp begin to rise as he was halfway across the deck, angling underneath the wing of a falcon and shooting a pair of workers who didn’t get out of his way. David hurdled their bodies as they fell and sprinted on, knowing he wasn’t going to get there in time.

As the wide ramp tilted up and began to decrease the opening into a sliver, the anti-grav powered up and the belly of the wing-shaped ship started to drift up off the deck even before the hatch was closed. David slowed to a stop still far from the ship as the landing gear began to retract, his mind racing as he tried desperately to think of something else to do…maybe get to a control panel and close the bay doors.

But there was no time. The spaceport hangar deck was huge, and by the time he found the control room the dropship would be out of the containment shields holding in the atmosphere from escaping out to the airless moon’s surface. As the dropship slowly spun about, lining up for its run over to the center of the deck to align with the exit column, David resigned himself to finishing off the guards that were still shooting plasma at the Archons, along with however many others might be on their way in. The Word had beat them this time, but there was still a chance that they’d be able to intercept the shipment on the other end of wherever it was going if the beacon remained active.

Just then half a dozen plasma lances flashed together in one direction, and David saw that Jet was drawing the fire as he sprinted across the deck, stepping up on top of a crate sitting on a lifter whose driver had fled once the shooting started, and using the large box as a stepping stone to jump up onto the wing of a parked falcon, though the impossibly long leap came up short and he had to pull a one handed smack/grab to stay on top. As he climbed up and got his feet under him David shot one of the guards that was coming out of cover to target him.

“Jet, what are you doing?”

“Shut up, I’m busy,” the Archon said as he got himself fully up onto the wingtip…then he stood up from his crouched position and sprinted down the length of the long wing.

David ran up towards the crates, tracking down another pair of guards, but he kept throwing glances over towards Jet, unsure of what he was doing…then he saw him run and long jump off the other end of the dropship, crossing a gap of several meters to where he once again smack/grabbed the wing of the dragon as it passed by.

He was going to ask him what he had in mind, but as Jet had pointed out he was busy, so David kept quiet and paid as much attention as he could while dealing with the guards.

Jet climbed up over the wing’s edge, glad the Archon armor had grippy finger pads, and ran across the wide wing as the dropship eased its way into the ascension column, giving him a view of stars above his head through the slightly blue-tinted energy fields. As the ship settled into proper alignment, for the width of the dragon almost matched the width of the opening in the ceiling, Jet ran towards the bent forward portion of the flying wing and dropped to his knees over where he knew the cockpit was, though like all Star Force space ships there were no windows for him to look through.

Fortunately for Archon acolytes that wasn’t a problem.

As the dropship began its ascent, pushing Jet closer and closer to the energy field, his black/white Pefbar vision flicked on and he was suddenly able to see down through the hull plates and into the cockpit where the two pilots were seated. Seeing they were slightly behind him he slid across the dragon’s white exterior, knowing he needed to be as close as possible to make this work.

As Jet’s head passed through the first of two containment fields it bumped him slightly, given that it had to maintain some pressure to keep the gasses inside, then he was into the airlock chamber that was little more than a short vertical tube that led to a second shield, on the outside of which was the city surface.

Ignoring his ever changing location, Jet targeted both pilots’ minds and pumped a Fornax blast into each, with both men slumping in their chairs, one of which fell face forward into the control panel. Jet cringed but didn’t notice any change until he passed through the second shield and saw the city’s spires start to rotate slightly as the dropship began to twist as its port thruster was continuously firing.

“Whoops,” he said, releasing the Fornax flow into that man while continuing to disrupt the other with repetitive hits that saw his slump tilt to the side and cause him to fall out of his seat. The other man got his motor control back for a moment, sitting up and switching off the thruster control that he’d hit before slumping and twitching again, this time with a gentle telekinetic bump to the side of his head that toppled him out of his seat and onto the floor.

Jet released his barrage for a moment, using his Pefbar to study the control boards. He was about to activate the thruster control when the men started to get up, then he hit them with another blast, following by a quick tug of the controls.

The gentle spin the slowly ascending dropship was in nulled out, then Jet got the anti-grav set into neutral, which stopped their rise. He risked a glance to the side and saw the city spires now beneath him, with only the more or less flat expanse of the city visible over the wing and the rocky landscape of the moon beyond that, otherwise there was just a mass of stars over his head and all around him…and he realized that if he fell from this height, low grav world or not, he was probably going to die.

So when the pilots started to get up again he slammed another, more forceful Fornax blast into them, knowing that if they hit the main drive the momentum would slide him off the wing and down he would fall.

Telekinetically using the pilots’ controls in between repeated Fornax blasts to keep them subdued, Jet got the ship descending very slowly, hoping that they were still more or less aligned with the entrance to the spaceport. With his Pefbar he couldn’t see any of the display screens within the cockpit, only the flat material of the screens that appeared like a blank wall section. So it wasn’t all that surprising when the right wing suddenly began to tip up and his grip on the dragon’s hull began to get dicey.

He reacted quickly, killing the descent and stopping the dragon at a 35 degree angle…still enough to hold on to if he was careful. He twisted his head around as much as he dared, while still pounding the pilots with Fornax. He saw the inside lip of the spaceport ring to his left, along with the gap between it and the dipped wing, so he used the controls and slid the dragon over in that direction, eventually feeling the right wing drag loose.

The anti-grav controls auto-righted the level of the dropship, which Jet was grateful for, so he only had to trigger another descent down into the spaceport. When the first containment field passed up over his head he felt a sense of relief, and when the second followed his armor switched over from self-contained reserve oxygen to environment draw, meaning he was no longer on the clock there.

The dragon bottomed out before Jet could find the landing gear deployment button, crunching the hull slightly but otherwise leaving the ship intact. When Jet turned off the anti-grav entirely the wings began to tip to the left as the ship started to roll over, so he quickly reactivated it at a low setting, just enough to balance the tilt out.

“Jet, you are one badass nutcase,” David said with a laugh.

“Will you shut up and get inside before it takes off again,” Jet said, searching for the boarding ramp cockpit release button while once again having to disrupt and subdue the pilots with a Fornax blast…along with a third individual that came up into the cockpit to see what the hell was going on.

“Keep it down long enough for me to get the emergency panel off,” David said as he sprinted across the deck towards where it had come down, looking for a toolkit he could grab along the way. If he didn’t find one he’d just have to use his plasma rifle and armored knuckles to improvise, for the exterior release switch was buried under hull armor, meant only to be used as a last resort if some idiot triggered the ramp to seal up then jumped outside before it could fully close, leaving no one inside to open it again.

“No need,” Jet said, smiling underneath his helmet at both the headache he was developing and the button he’d found. He used his Lachka and telekinetically pressed it, then focused his remaining mental strength on keeping the pilots away from the controls.

“You’re getting a pay raise for this,” David joked as he continued to sprint forward, now seeing the boarding ramp start to lower, though it was all the way over on his left. He angled that way, goosing a little more speed out of his armored legs, not knowing how long it’d be down or who would be waiting inside.

Assad got to it first, with David following him in 6 seconds later. Jet kept up his Fornax until he saw Assad’s mind come up to the cockpit and shoot the pilots unconscious, then Jet let his helmet hit the hull for a moment of rest. Eventually he got up and slid off the front of the dragon, dropping hard to the distant ground and rolling out of his fall as he’d done in training thousands of times before.

He picked himself up then circled around to the ramp, running up it into the face of mountains of cargo. He picked his way through it, focusing on the minds he felt ahead, of which there were many. When he got out of the hold and up into the passenger section he found it packed with now unconscious people…all of which were wearing different, yet similarly styled clothing.

Jet turned one over, looking at the man and shuffling around his paint-splattered shirt for an ID. He pulled it out and examined the small, flat rectangle, finding nothing out of place about it, but he still got the feeling these weren’t varied people catching a ride up to orbit.

“Dropship secure,” David said over the teamcomm. “How’s the hangar look?”

“Rounding up the strays now,” Nathan answered, shooting a random worker that was only now fleeing across the deck. He was probably harmless, but better not to take chances. Besides, Nathan was getting tired of playing nice when everyone in the city seemed to be coming after them…and if this guy ran into an incoming security detachment and told them exactly where they were, it could cost them a surprise attack or a few seconds head start, so the guy got a green splatter on the back and a face plant into the deck as he fell.

Nathan ran along the row between parked dropships back towards the end where the dragon had originally been. Lio was doing the same only a few rows over, with both of them looking with their Ikrid senses for any minds still lurking around. Almost all of the dropships were empty, awaiting crew and cargo, but every now and then there’d be a worker who hadn’t left their post, figuring to ride out the ruckus and then get back to work…or maybe just being naïve enough not to realize the significance of plasma fire.

The next guy Nathan came across had an excuse, for he was welding a patch inside a partially disassembled transport, this one not of Star Force make. He let him get finished with what he was working on, then tapped him on the shoulder. The man extinguished the torch and turned around, only to get a stinger to the chest. Nathan caught him before he could land on his equipment, then laid him out on the floor for a not so uncomfortable nap.

From there on down to where the dragon had been was clear…save for one mind up in a crate stack where it shouldn’t have been. When Nathan got closer he realized it wasn’t actually in the crates, but behind them up high in the wall.

Frowning, Nathan turned on his Pefbar and got the traditional spherical vision, then he narrowed it to a cone and shot it up towards the mind like a spotlight, seeing through the crates as he walked up to the closest ones. Back behind them there was an air duct, pumping in fresh and processed atmosphere into the bay…and just inside it was someone hiding. The grate was in place, but the person was definitely inside.

Whoever it was, he wasn’t staying there, and Nathan began hopping up the crate stack and working his way around a few peaks to get over to near where the vent was, which the workers who’d stacked the crates up against the wall had wisely left an opening around.

As Nathan got closer his Pefbar increased in detail, and he could make out the arms and legs of the person crunched down inside the shaft before he got into view, then when he came around from the side and stepped up to within a couple meters of the grate the person pulled something out of his sleeve, a tiny pebble from the Archon’s view, and moved it towards his mouth.

On instinct Nathan telekinetically yanked it out of his hand and levitated it outside through the grating. The tiny object pulled a sharp right turn in the air outside and flew straight into Nathan’s hand as he walked up, keeping a close Pefbar eye on the person. One glance was all he needed, and the Archon knew he’d guessed right.

He stepped up to the grate, slid his fingers in through the gaps and pulled, popping it off and tossing the metal net aside…then he knelt down so he could see straight into the face of the man hunkering down with a startled and also resigned look on his face.

“Come out or I’ll drag you out,” Nathan said, knowing the man could decide to flee down the duct for as far as he could get, but apparently he wasn’t going to try that…or maybe already had. Nathan stretched out his Pefbar to see where it led just in case he did dart off, and found that about 10 meters back it dropped straight down well below floor level, meaning the man had cornered himself within his little hideout.

“Now,” Nathan repeated when he didn’t move.

The man sighed and crawled forward, sliding out and down half a meter to the crate floor where he rolled over his shoulders before standing up and brushing himself off. “That’s a neat trick…mind telling me how you did it?”

The man was dressed casually, same as the others in the dropship, though Nathan didn’t know that, for it was his calm, almost disinterested demeanor that sent a warning flag up in the back of the Archon’s mind.

“Would it matter if I did? You don’t have any cameras around here for your buddies to listen in on, do you?”

The man smiled. “No, this is just a standard spaceport. Not one of our facilities, which I believe you breached the other day.”

“Booby trapping prisoners is low,” Nathan growled.

“They served a purpose, assuming we got at least one of you. I know you somehow managed to disable the door bomb, but there was no way we…”

Two stingers at pointblank range to the chest cut off his sentence and dropped the man to the ground unconscious. Nathan shot him in the head a third time, just for good measure, then crunched the kill pill that was still in his hand and tossed aside the resulting dust as he knelt down and began searching the man’s pockets.

“David, I got one.”

“One what?” Green Team’s leader asked back over the comm.

Nathan found a larger object in a chest pocket of the man’s loose shirt and pulled out a pair of what looked like ordinary sunglasses, though he knew they were anything but.

“An Agent.”

Deceit

1

May 18, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Glasir

Shannon-103445 rode in the back of the Falcon-G dropship along with two other Archon adepts and a team of Knights from Clan Tron as the silver-plated ship rose up through the planet’s atmosphere leading a swarm of conventional dropships in its wake, all of which contained Clan combat personnel scrounged from Glasir. Their small colony on the planet held only 55,000, but Red Team had requested all local combat assistance they could offer, so Shannon and the other Archons on station had been dispatched to lead the Knights and Regulars out to the nearby moon of Tyr.

For Shannon, a level 34 adept, this was her first combat mission. She’d only recently been assigned to Alpha Centauri, having spent the past 83 years in Sol along with the other lower level Archons undergoing a slew of training missions and trials. She hadn’t progressed as fast as most of her original class, but she’d finally warranted a posting to another star system…one that was considered inconsequential and boring where she could be of limited use while she continued to train and upgrade her skills.

Neither she nor anyone else had expected Alpha Centauri, let alone Glasir, to be a hotbed of activity, but that was the universe for you. Once you think you’ve got things figured out it goes and upends your carefully constructed fiction, reminding you to look, listen, and learn…not guess and predict.

Shannon was ready, more than ready, and relished the chance to put her combat skills to use, despite not having much intel on the situation. She and the others were to report to the higher level Archons already on site and assist them with their current mission…and that was all she’d been told, though from the recent news stories making their way across planetary orbit and down to Glasir she knew there was at least some level of fighting already underway, with an Archon team being labeled as renegades to the general public.

Star Force had quickly shot that notion down with the rest of the public in the system, but Tyr’s open exchange of news had just as quickly clamped down thereafter, leaving what was currently going on as a mystery. Information wise the moon had gone dark, and if Red Team was requesting backup Shannon guessed something major was going down.

There were other Archons and troops in the system, far more on Odin than Glasir, but they’d made the call to bring them up from the nearby planet rather than send an assault force. Shannon wasn’t sure what that implied, so she just waited patiently as the dropship formation made a mini-jump towards the nearby moon with the gunship in the lead.

The Falcon-G was a modified dropship popular amongst the Clans. It had a broad range of weaponry, including bulky missile racks on the wings that cut down on its aerodynamics, but it was primarily designed for convoy defense and assaults on airless worlds, such as they were going to now. She knew Tyr had some anti-air defenses, and if it did her gunship would be the one to go in first and knock a hole in them to allow the unarmed dropships through to deliver their troops.

Shannon was also glad that they’d received their new shielded armor, which she’d gotten a custom set of only a year ago. That added an extra layer of protection that she hoped she wouldn’t need, but it was reassuring to know that she could take a few small hits and shrug them off without damage. The upgrade was a touch heavier than her old armor, but she agreed that the tradeoff was worth it…though until now she’d never had a chance to test it, or her skills, in real combat.

The other two Archons onboard the gunship variant both outranked her. In fact she was the lowest level adept assigned to this mission. All of Clan Tron’s Archons on Glasir were being deployed, along with groups from Clan Alterra and Clan Star Ranger, the other two Clans that had colonies on Glasir, both of which were larger than Clan Tron’s, given that they’d been the last to start building a little more than 30 years ago. The others had been on the planet for more than a century, and as such had much larger populations and Archon deployments.

When Shannon’s flotilla of dropships finally decelerated against Tyr’s gravity well they proceeded to drop into a slingshot orbit to get to the backside where the city was currently located, then dropped down to the surface and approached over land, skimming the airless, rocky landscape at an altitude of less than a kilometer and coming in at an angle following the instructions of those already in the city to bypass the intact anti-air defenses.

Red Team had already knocked out several, creating the opening, but many more still remained. A Star Force cutter was holding position over the northwest corner of the city, sitting in one of the defensive dead zones ready to assist should it become necessary, but given that the mission objective was to recover the city, Red Team had decided to disable the exterior defenses from the inside rather than slag them in a naval assault…but the cutter was standing by just in case that changed or any ships attempted to flee.

It was the smallest drone warship Star Force fielded, also shaped like a flying brick and far outmassing the dropships that flew in underneath its protective aura and down into one of the spaceports that Red Team had initially captured to facilitate the troop arrivals, though Shannon knew the city had many, for she’d been reviewing its schematics in helmet for the past hour as the teams were assembled.

When they passed through the containment shields the dropships set down in an orderly fashion, making rows in the area of the deck that had been cleared away. A variety of other ships were now parked around the perimeter, some of Star Force make, some not, and all Brazilian, while the Star Force reinforcements from Clan Alterra that had already arrived had sent their dropships back to Glasir so they wouldn’t be clogging the deck and blocking access for those yet to come in.

As soon as Shannon and her team disembarked from the Falcon-G it took off again, flying low to the ground and around into a waiting position for the surface entrance to clear, then it and those waiting in line behind it cycled back out as the grounded troops made their way to the spaceport exits.

A rally point popped up on Shannon’s battlemap, indicating that was where she was supposed to head to next, so she jogged off with the other two Archons with the Knights and Regulars following behind them in a phalanx and passed through a side entrance, seeing some of the other teams headed their way and some not.

When Shannon got through the archway and into the city interior she followed the battlemap to a nearby foyer where two other Archons were waiting for them, both adepts of Clan Alterra. When she stopped nearby she immediately got a comm reconfiguration prompt inside her helmet, which she followed, setting up familiar channels that she could toggle through during the mission.

“Here’s the situation,” Stan-47554 said over the comm while other teams were catching up from behind. Already the foyer had filled up, so Shannon guessed he wasn’t going to waste time waiting for the others to stack up behind them.

“Tyr has been seized by a criminal organization known as The Word. They’ve integrated themselves with the local population, making them believe that Brazil still controls the moon, so a lot of the people shooting at you probably think they’re just doing their job defending their colony and that you’re the bad guys. This is why you’re packing stingers rather than plasma. Stun anyone that even looks at you the wrong way and we’ll sort out who’s who later.”

“Both Red Team and Green Team are on site and leading this mission. They’ve given us a number of locations to take and hold while they stay on the move, updating us with additional mission parameters as needed. The Word is pulling out, and they’re trying to snag as many of them as they can. We’ve got a cutter parked overhead to run down any ships that attempt to flee, but with 13 million people in this city The Word doesn’t have to go far to hide. They can blend into the population and hide out, then leave a year from now once things cool down.”

“They’re good at that, I’m told, which is why the big boys are running every which way hunting them down. We get to play king of the hill and hold what they take, collect and guard the prisoners they’re racking up, and do the ground work of actually reclaiming this city for Brazil.”

“Those of you with me are being tagged as Group 19. Head to the following waypoint. The rest of you stay here with Ian.”

Shannon’s battlemap didn’t update, so she assumed she hadn’t been assigned to that group. The other two adepts she’d rode in with had, so they began to move off along with a lot of the Knights, leaving mostly Regulars and a few others behind.

“We’re Group 20,” Ian-65939 said after the others left down the hallway to the east. “Unlike the other groups we have one and only one mission, and it takes us to the other side of the city. We’ll be using subsurface maintenance lines to get there, and a lot of running. Right now we don’t have an accessible spaceport in those areas, so this is as close as we can start from. The transit options within the city are also a no go. Brazilian security has virtually shut them all down, turning this city into a much larger playground.”

“Other teams are working on getting those back up and opening up another spaceport, but we can’t wait on that. Our target is here,” the adept said, updating all of their battlemaps with a mission objective waypoint. “This is the main environmental control unit, and ties into all the subsidiaries within the city. If this unit goes down the others can compensate, but it’s responsible for nearly a third of the air the population is breathing. We’re to take it and hold it against any sabotage efforts. Normally this would be a low priority, but Red Team has tagged it as a primary objective, so we need to get there as fast as possible while everyone else is distracted, which is why we’re taking the low road.”

“Archons on point followed by the Knights,” Ian said, referencing the four they’d been left with. “Regulars keep it close and tight. You,” Ian said, pointing at Shannon, “rear guard. Let’s move.”

With that last word Ian started running, albeit slowly, over to the northern door in the foyer with the rest of the Clan Tron troops arraying themselves as instructed. Shannon waited for them all to pass, then dropped in behind them, leaving a short gap between the last Regulars in their Tron Black armor and herself. That way she could rove about more freely, as well as provide a distance buffer should anyone come up and try to ambush the group from behind. It was sort of like being tagged as Venator, except that she had a moving target to center on.

Shannon kept an eye on the others via her battlemap, seeing the column of ID signatures start to make progress down through the city’s layers as she held back, keeping her eyes moving about from side to side all the while taking a few peeks at the position of the other groups. Some she could see on the overall city map, others not, given that the transmission range of their battlemap feeds were limited, but where there were individuals close enough to transmit the data down a relay line, they could keep tabs on where everyone was at, plus she noted the placements of several dedicated transmitters for just that task, further extending both their battlemap and comm range.

Also, the cutter overhead was acting as another relay, and with its broadcast power it could reach just about everywhere within the city, no matter how far down you went. Trick was, those units couldn’t communicate back up, so their positions were unmarked and would remain so until others came close to them.

Shannon knew they could carry more powerful transmitters on their racks, but those larger units were easy to track, meaning their enemies could use them to follow their movements. The battlemap network, as well as their communications, were low powered and configured in a way to be almost untraceable, keeping the Archons and those they were linked to as ghosts. And that was critical for the battlemap, which updated constantly.

They ran for the better part of an hour before making enemy contact, which amounted to a scattering of guards at one of the subsurface bottlenecks. The point men blew through it with ease, leaving only the unconscious bodies as testament for Shannon to see as the back of the formation ran past. From there they were back to traversing through the unpopulated underbelly of the city which, for its sparsity, was not convenient to travel through, for there were no straight line trajectories.

Shannon spent her time hanging off the back as the line on her battlemap snaked back and forth as Ian tagged waypoints ahead of them to travel to using the city schematics they had available, plotting their course a few minutes ahead of their current movements. So far they hadn’t hit any dead ends, but Shannon could tell from the architecture that that was just good planning on Ian’s part, for it was a maze of connections down here designed to be accessed from above, not laterally.

When the line stopped at a random waypoint Shannon guessed they were about to go up, seeing that the mission waypoint was not that far off, but there was no comm chatter so she just carried out her assignment as rear guard and kept watch. After several minutes of pausing the line began to move again and, like she guessed, they were going up a flight of stairs, which she hit a few seconds behind the last Regular in line.

At the top of some 18 flights they got off, though the stairs continued to go up, and ran through a populated building out to a street. Shannon saw several stunned bodies along the way, though none with weapons. She figured they’d gotten in the way or done something to hinder the Archons’ advancement, but the paint splatters on their civilian clothing weren’t telling and she didn’t have time to stick around and find out.

When she finally crossed the street, which was pedestrian rather than vehicular and capped by a high, false glass ceiling with several walkways crisscrossing it at higher elevations, she saw people running for cover, yelling and screaming at the presence of the Star Force troops, which she thought was odd. She could understand them being startled, but not hysterical.

That didn’t feel right, so she double checked both directions, looking for enemies about but finding none before ducking into another building on the other side, just as her comm activated.

“Contacts,” one of the point men reported, along with a flashing icon on her battlemap that disappeared after three seconds. Not a waypoint, but a heads up as to the location. She could see that it wasn’t where the line of troops were, but rather farther to the south inside a building on the edge of a large promenade.

Just then one of the dots swung out of line and held position, with the rest of the troops running on past. When she was nearly up to it her comm opened again, this time on a personal channel from Ian.

“With me,” he said, waving her his way on the promenade as she came into view. “We’ve got a security checkpoint to neutralize.”

“Happy to,” she responded, accelerating her sore legs up into a more familiar cadence. The Regulars and Knights simply ran too damn slow, and it’d been bothering her nearly the entire way out here, so despite the soreness it felt good to really be on the move again.

“I’m playing rabbit, you hit them on a delay.”

“Copy that,” she said, letting him get a few steps ahead of her.

Ian ran through the crowds, darting from one gap to another and came up on the checkpoint…which was essentially a toll booth monitoring the passage of pedestrians from one section of the city to another. On the other side was a more restricted area, reserved for governmental purposes and off limits to the wandering public. Tucked up next to it was a guard house, which was their target.

Outside there were four guards lounging around in a very unalerted state. The rest of the fighting in the city was far from here, so maybe they didn’t think it worth the worry…either that or they hadn’t been alerted to it, which Shannon found hard to believe. Only one of them noticed Ian coming and stood up, grabbing for his plasma rifle which he’d left sitting a meter to his side propped up against the wall.

Ian shot him first, then peppered the other three with stingers before opening and ducking his way inside the guard house. Shannon kept her spacing behind him, as instructed, and came in a few seconds later…right into the view of the flanks of half a dozen guards scrambling for their weapons while several others were already firing at Ian who was halfway across the lobby headed for the rec room.

Shannon took it to their blind side and sprayed them with stingers as fast as she could pump the trigger, downing four before the others even noticed her arrival. After that there was a furious few seconds of cat and mouse as she ducked behind a desk and played sniper while Ian completed a half circle and came at the wad of off duty security from the other side, taking a few plasma hits in the process.

Shannon didn’t stay put for long, jumping up out of cover and forming the opposite side of a pincher maneuver, firing her way through the guards until she met up face to face with Ian…then they found themselves standing in the middle of a pile of some two dozen bodies, some of which were still squirming, only having gotten partially stunned.

“Clean up,” Ian ordered as he dashed into a side room.

Without a word Shannon started hopping over legs and arms and shooting single stingers into the downed bodies, some of which she wasn’t sure whether they were moving or not, so she just shot them again for good measure. As she did she collected some of their plasma rifles and pistols and made a stash atop one of the desks that hadn’t been toppled or shot up by the guards’ misses.

Ian came back out a few minutes later, pointing for the door.

“We’re done here. Let’s catch up with the rest.”

Slightly surprised they were leaving so soon, Shannon dropped the plasma rifle she’d picked up and followed him back out of the guard house, then they ducked inside the restricted area rather than backtracking, taking a different route to the waypoint as the adept suppressed a smile at finally having gotten her first bit of real action, simple as it was.

2

“I think I see one,” a Brazilian guard said nervously from his position on a pedestrian crossroad in Region 13 of the city.

“Where?” another of the six guards asked, looking down through a sea of people. Some were going about their daily activities given the fighting hadn’t reached this section of city, while others were scrambling about trying to get to wherever they thought would be safe, with still others buying up anything and everything they could in the way of supplies, intent on holding out in their quarters until the danger had passed.

“Just beyond the courtyard,” the Brazilian said, hefting his plasma rifle. They’d been dispatched to this location on the report of Archon movements in the area, but so far this was the first sighting in more than 2 hours.

“Take cover and watch your aim,” the squad leader ordered, kneeling down behind a short barricade fort they’d set up. “Wait for the people to run clear. We don’t want to hit any of our own. Then concentrate all shots on the first Archon. They’ve got tough armor, so it’ll take a lot to take one down. Scatter fire and they’ll own us.”

“Here they come,” another said, hearing the screams of the civilians just before the road in front of them cleared with people ducking into side stores and walkways as fast as they could.

“Steady,” the squad leader said, but as the first of the pair came into view the distant Archon didn’t charge them, nor fire. Instead he took a large object off his back and laid it on the ground some 100 meters away from the checkpoint, then the second one came up and put an identical piece on top, connected the two, then pushed a button and took off running the way they’d come, ducking down a side street while the other Archon went a different way.

“What the hell?”

“Hold position and watch our flanks. On my order everyone turn and focus on the same target. I get the feeling they’re going to hit us simultaneously from both sides and divide our firepower.”

“What’s that thing they dropped?”

“I don’t know, but it’s…” the squad leader said before a huge plume of blue smoke began billowing out of the canister the Archons had just laid down. It expanded so fast that the street around it was filled within two seconds, with the cloud rushing down towards the guards and filling into the side crosswalks and stores, including the ones that had their ornamental doors closed, for the gas seeped in through the cracks.

The blue smoke wall rushed over the guards before the squad leader knew what to do, and he expected to have the Archons on top of them at any moment, taking them down hand to hand or with pointblank rifle fire…but that didn’t happen, nor did anything else. The six guards, unable to see each other, were left alone, though the screams of the people in the surrounding buildings and those that had been stuck outside behind them made the otherwise silent environment horrifically creepy.

“Check in,” the squad leader finally said after forcing himself to take a breath of the blue smoke. He coughed on it, but was still able to get some oxygen in.

“Here,” one of them said, followed by a chorus from the others.

“Orders, sir?”

“Hold position,” he said, waving a hand in front of him but still unable to move the smoke away from his eyes. Everything looked blue, with lighter hues above where the walkway lights were pushing through it.

“Face out so we don’t shoot each other. In fact, move back to back,” he said as the tactic jumped to mind as the screams began to die down, replaced by more further away and thus not as loud, returning some semblance of order to the place.

The squad leader retreated a couple of steps, holding out an arm until he made contact with the man on his left while holding his rifle in his right. From there they all got ahold of one another and made a small circle back to back.

“Take a knee,” he said, still unable to see anything. “Let them come to us.”

Then they waited…and waited. Nothing happened, save for the smoke began to thin out ever so slightly.

A few more minutes passed, and the squad leader found himself starting to get light headed from all the smoke, then he heard a slump/crunch as one of his men keeled over behind him.

“Manuel’s…down,” one of the others said, coughing.

“Is he hit?”

“I don’t…” the man said, before he too collapsed.

“Damn…smoke,” another said, with the squad leader starting to get tipsy himself. He stayed upright for another minute, the last to fall, then tipped forward and landed on the ground with his hands forward as he dropped his weapon. He kept himself on all fours but awake for a bit longer, then heard a few drops of water underneath him.

After that he blacked out and fell to the floor on top of the blood drops coming out of his nose.

18 minutes later in Region 4 a larger checkpoint leading into a shopping complex spotted another pair of Archons coming their way. This time the walkway leading in was three times as large and already clear of people, all of whom were taking refuge inside. There were two dozen guards entrenched behind barricades with plasma rifles drawn when, in the distance, a silver-suited Archon stepped out of a side street with a red one following a few steps back. The silver knelt down, pulling a canister off his back while the red one stood by, raising his rifle and taking a pot shot at the guards.

The blue plasma lance hit high, already having diffused slightly, but none the less it melted out a bit of the glass above the guards’ heads, leaving a hole into the complex. Two more plasma shots came down their way, one of which hit the ground shy of the barricades, but the Brazilians held their fire, waiting for the Archons to come closer.

The red and silver ones switched places, though the silver didn’t fire. He merely waited behind the red as it unslung its canister and set it atop the other…then the silver one jerked in sudden warning and twisted to his left, raising his plasma rifle halfway up when another silver blur came out of a side street and laid a running Archon punch into his chest.

The real Archon’s armored elbow punched through the fake chest plate of The Word operative, driving the fragments into his ribs and knocking the impostor entirely out of sight down the opposite walkway. Lio spun around and grabbed the red one by the neck and pulled it back from the double canister, smacking him onto the ground before punching him in the helmet three times, cracking the ceramic material and knocking him unconscious in the process.

“Got it,” he reported over the comm. “Just in the nick of time too.”

“And the operatives?” David asked.

“Oh yeah,” Lio said, glancing at the pair of bodies wearing the knockoff Archon armor. The red one was unmoving, but the silver was stirring a bit. He’d deal with that in a second.

“Deal with the canister, then get moving,” David said, enroute to his own intercept.

“Copy,” Lio said, walking out of sight of the guards and pulling out a stinger pistol, whereupon he shot the operative in the chest, splattering the hole in the fake armor and stunning the man’s wound. He fell still and the real Archon walked back out, eyeing the distant guards, and walked up to the canister. A quick inspection found him the release latches and he pulled the two pieces apart.

Knowing that he couldn’t babysit the thing he took a chance and started jogging down towards the barricades, stowing his pistol on his back rack and raising his hands in the air while amping up his external mic.

“Hold your fire,” he said, knowing that if they did start shooting that he’d have to duck into a side room pretty quick. That many plasma rifles on him would eat through his shields in a heartbeat and chew into his armor like a chainsaw through wood.

Lio kept his run smooth and sluggish, with his hands held high and got halfway down to the guards without them returning fire. He’d guessed they’d seen him take out the others, and was relying on their confusion to keep their trigger fingers at bay.

“I need your help,” he yelled through the mic, and he could see several heads, some helmeted, some not, twitch to the side as they glanced at each other.

“There are Star Force imposters roaming the city,” he said slowly as he approached their lines, transitioning from a jog to a quick walk when he got within 50 meters. “I just took out two of them before they could detonate a chemical weapon. They’ve already set off several others within the city, and we’re trying to get to the rest before they can set them off. I need to go after the next closest one, but I need you to take possession of that one,” he said, thumbing his left hand backwards, “so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

“Stop there,” one of the guards said, and Lio obliged, coming up within 20 meters of the shooting gallery.

“Star Force is responding to a request by the Brazilian government,” Lio explained. “There’s a rogue faction on Tyr that we’re rooting out, and they’re attacking you dressed as us to cause chaos. Our personnel are equipped with stun weapons. If you see one that has a plasma rifle, like those two jokers, shoot them down. They’re wearing fake armor too.”

“Stand down,” the Brazilian commander ordered, and the guards half lowered their weapons as he stepped up to the front barricade. “What’s going on?” he asked Lio.

“It’s a long story,” he said, lowering his arms, “so I’ll give you the short version. Tyr has been infiltrated by a criminal organization, at all levels, and has been quietly cut off from the Brazilian government, though very few people were aware of it. Finally Brazil got word and sent a strike force to reclaim the city. That strike force went missing and they asked Star Force to investigate before sending a larger force in. We’ve been here a few days picking apart the rogues, but since they control the moon they tagged us as enemies and ordered you guys to stop us…then they started dressing up like us and killing people. All caught up?”

“No, but I’ll take your word for it,” the Brazilian said, running his fingers through his black hair. “That answers a lot of questions. What sort of chemical weapons?”

“Deadly smoke, from that thing down there. Can you keep it safe?”

The Brazilian nodded. “What about the imposters?”

“Hang onto them too, and be careful, they’re a devious lot. We’ll collect both later, but right now I have to go before they set any more off.”

“Go,” the Brazilian said, with the Archon not wasting any time. He turned around and ran back the way he’d come, sprinting faster than the commander had ever seen a person move.

“Six man retrieval team,” he ordered, pointing ahead. “Grab that device and those men and get them back here.”

He pulled a large comm unit off his belt and held the phone-like device up to his ear as he watched his men move out. “We have a situation. There appears to be two sets of Star Force in the city, one genuine and another group of imposters. I just saw one attack the other, then the Archon came to us and explained that the imposters are setting off chemical weapons within the city. Can you confirm any of this?”

There was a long pause.

“I believe him. We’re recovering the device now, along with the two fake Archons he took down. It appears to come in two pieces which they have to assemble on site. They were doing so at range, and took a few shots at us…with plasma weapons. The Archon said all of Star Force’s troops are equipped with stun weapons, so the imposters will be the ones with plasma.”

There was another pause, during which the Brazilian commander watched his men haul the canisters back down towards him, with the others dragging the two suits of fake armor lagging behind.

“I know…but can you confirm any chemical weapons usage in the city?”

The commander waved the first canister piece over to him, then pointed to the ground where he wanted to set them down.

“Dear god…how many?” he asked, watching the fake Archons dragged up towards him…as well as the breach point in the silver one where the real Archon had punched through. The commander knelt down and pulled at a fragment of the armor over his chest, with it breaking off after he tugged twice. Cheap imitation it was, more like a costume than armor.

“I’m looking at the imposters now. Their armor is fake. A single plasma shot should get through. The Archon said they’re trying to sow confusion. He also said they’re here on the request of Mars…yes, I said Mars. Claims they sent a team in previously to investigate a hostile takeover and then promptly vanished. Star Force said they were asked to investigate. If that’s true then we’re working contrary to our own good.”

“No I don’t care. When’s the last time you heard of them using chemical weapons? They’ve got enough firepower to lay waste to the moon if they wanted, which makes this whole assault implausible. What the Archon said makes sense, so at least try and make contact with them. I saw one intercept and disable a weapons canister, so let them keep doing it. If we slow them down more could be released.”

The Brazilian commander sneered and pulled the comm away from his head, shutting it off and clipping it back onto his belt.

“Orders?” one of the guards asked.

“Contact the other checkpoints in the mall. I want them reporting to me and only me. Command has its head up its ass right now, so we’re going rogue. Don’t shoot at any Star Force personnel unless they’re firing plasma at us…that’ll be the imposters.”

“What do you want done with these?”

The commander looked down at the two canisters. “What can you make of it?”

Another guard stepped over and knelt down, pulling off the outer shell with practiced ease. “Some sort of liquid, binary mixture. If this transforms into a gas it’ll pump out enough to cover a wide area, more than enough to get to us from their detonation point.”

“Is it safe?”

The man nodded. “I think so…so long as the two compounds aren’t combined. I’d prefer not to test that theory.”

“Find a closet and post a permanent guard…and keep it disassembled. And get these two out of that armor and restrained.”

“Who are they?”

“You can ask them when they wake up, just keep them away from the device and make sure they don’t escape. I don’t know what’s going on here, but if Star Force really is here to help then they’ll sort it out in good order.”

“And if they’re not?”

“Then you might as well kiss your ass goodbye,” the commander said with a scoff. “I used to work for them, and they can drop the hammer whenever they like, more so than any of you know…but don’t worry, they’re as good as good guys get, and you saw for yourself how that Archon disabled them and the canister. So sit tight, watch your approaches, and keep an eye out for more imposters. We have to protect the people inside, regardless of what command has to say about it. If you see real Star Force personnel, Archon or otherwise, inform me immediately. We’re going to help them protect our people however we can, so check those itchy trigger fingers.”

Before he could utter another word the commander was shot in the back, not once, but four times in succession by one of his own guards…who even before the man fell, ran towards the barricade and hurdled it, then took off at a run down the walkway, sprinting for his life.

At first the other guards didn’t know what was going on, but a couple of them snapped into action and fired plasma streaks down at the traitor. One hit him in the shoulder, but the armored vest he wore caught most of it. The man veered to the left, with several more shots missing, then ducked into a side door and disappeared.

The other guards got to and flipped the commander over so that he was face up, but there were no signs of life in the man. The pointblank plasma fire had blown right through his vest and exploded his heart.

“What just happened?” one of them asked, aghast.

“The Archon said Tyr had been infiltrated,” another said, his plasma rifle shaking slightly in his hands. “I guess Pao was one of them.”

“No. That’s…”

“He just killed him! What is unclear here?”

“Who’s in command now?” another guard asked.

“I am,” one of the fully armored ones said, stepping up from behind. “Carry out his orders…and put his body somewhere out of the way. And I want 3 men on the canister. Who knows how many more traitors there are.”

When nobody moved he dropped the butt of his plasma rifle to the ground and smacked it against the tile floor three times. “Move before we’re all dead!”

Half of the guards seemed to snap out of their haze, with the others following suit after the men started to deploy to their tasks.

3

“Do you think we’ll be safe in here?”

Ben Morrison looked his wife in the eye, then glanced around the shelter that was already near capacity. “Better than out on the streets.”

“What do we do if they come in?” she whispered, barely audible over the din of hundreds of different conversations. The shelter had several thousand people packed into tiered platforms with staircases running up and down the levels at multiple spots, but otherwise it was a large empty complex they could use to pack people into in times of need.

“They’ll have to get by the soldiers to do that,” he reminded her. “And there are none back in our apartment complex.”

“Right,” she said unconvinced as she looped an arm around their 5 year old daughter, who’d been silent for the long walk out to the shelter, but whose eyes were wide with terror and worry.

Someone behind Morrison bumped into him, and he turned to look.

“Sorry,” the old woman said as she tried to find a place to sit down. Most of the floor space had already been taken, with only narrow cracks in between families and clusters of people available.

“You’re fine,” he offered, ignoring the elbow as she walked on, trying not to stumble over the tangle of arms and legs sticking out everywhere.

“How long do you think this will last?” his wife asked him after the woman walked by, though there were several other people wandering around trying to find a spot to sit down.

“I honestly don’t know. The fighting may never reach us. I don’t think it’s even hit this section of the city.”

“Yet,” she reminded him.

“Daddy?” his daughter asked, finally breaking her silence.

“Yes sweetheart?”

“I’m thirsty.”

His wife looked up at him. “I forgot to bring anything.”

“Neither did I.”

His wife looked down and rubbed her shoulder. “I’m sorry, but it’ll be a bit longer before any of us get something to drink. We have to stay here so the bad men won’t find us. We’ll get some water after they leave, ok?”

Their daughter didn’t respond, just leaned back into her mom’s chest and returned to her shell of silence.

A beep from Morrison’s watch caused him to glance at the time, then he looked around at the hordes of people and sighed. He turned and locked eyes with his wife.

“I’ll look around, see if they don’t have some type of emergency supplies.”

She reached out and grabbed his arm. “No…”

He smiled and placed his hand on hers. “It’ll be alright. Just save my spot.”

She faked a smile and released his arm, then stretched out her legs so her right foot extended into the spot he’d been sitting.

“I’ll be back,” Morrison said before hopping his way in between people over to a walkway that had been roped off so people wouldn’t sit down inside. He ducked underneath and headed over to a staircase, whereupon he walked down against a sparse flow of people coming up from the main entrance. His wife and daughter were on the 4th level out of 6, with the only entrance on 2, which was where he headed.

Once he got down to that level, which was even more packed than those above and below, he bypassed by the facility staff and headed for the entrance, one of the few people actually leaving the shelter, passing through several lines of guards who gave him odd glances, but he wasn’t the only one that had left today so they paid him no more thought, intent on keeping an eye on the large promenade that Morrison took off down, hanging tight to the wall as he headed to the left.

Two doors down he walked into an abandoned store, using a master key to get through the locked door. From there he headed into the back and unlocked another door into a maintenance area. There he climbed up a ladder to the highest level and stepped off onto a catwalk, then headed over to a section of the machine-laden corridor that ran behind the rows of stores and unlocked a specific panel.

He crawled into the empty box and pulled the cover shut, so as to leave no trace of anything askew. On the back side he kicked out a false wall and crawled through the hole in the real wall that had been precut days ago, following a string of tiny lights that allowed him to navigate through the otherwise total blackness. Once through that he was free to climb up a series of handholds that had been welded into the side of the containment wall and up to the ‘roof.’

Morrison had to duck down when he came up, given that the city shell was only a meter and a half above the building roof. It was a thick layer of metal and armor designed to protect the inner buildings from weaponsfire and meteorite impacts. The airspace Morrison was crawling through was auxiliary, for the wall that his entry point had been cut through was otherwise airtight, meaning that even if the city shell cracked the interior structures wouldn’t depressurize, adding an extra layer of protection to the Star Force-designed structure.

The gap he was crawling through was dotting with support braces, but he eventually worked his way over to the top of the shelter, finding the stacks of explosives that had been placed there earlier. They were outlined in a square with a small hole in what looked like a brick wall, there were so many of them. He crawled in through the hole and to the detonation mechanism inside the mini fort.

Wires were everywhere, but the path to the detonator had been kept clear, allowing him to crawl up and sit down cross-legged in front of the trigger mechanism. He pulled a small chip out of his pocket and inserted it into the housing, arming the manual trigger.

“We are The Word,” he whispered, closing his eyes as he prepared himself. “The sword and shield, guardian and gardener. We are entrusted with the soul of our race, and will counter the darkness corrupting it, bringing Humanity back into the light. We are loyal, committed, penitent, and honored to acquit this duty, for ours is not to determine the bounds of righteousness, but to accept those inherent in the universe and to bring back into line those that have strayed. We do this through creation and destruction, both in ourselves and our enemies, for all are the children, no matter how far they have strayed…and all can become enemies, for none are immune to corruption. We are The Word, and we will hold to the righteous cause, no matter the effort or sacrifice required of us.”

“We are The Word,” he repeated, placing his thumb on the trigger. He paused for a moment, checking his own conviction and finding it not lacking. Then he depressed his thumb and detonated the wall of explosives.

His wife and daughter were caught in the blast, having the level above them crashing down in a wave of debris that killed many instantly while cracking the floor beneath them. Both of them survived the impact, with the lay of debris cradling them, though both were knocked around as they fell…only to have a whirlwind of pressure push them back up and pin them to a slanted piece of debris, shoving them down into the nook where it had lodged into another piece.

The mother held onto her daughter as both were screaming, but the air was suddenly taken from their lungs as they and the debris were launched up through the breach in the city shell and launched with hundreds of other people and building pieces out into the low gravity of the airless moon.

The mother and daughter’s veins popped as their bodies swelled from the sudden lack of pressure, turning them both into an instantaneous, gory mess…but they didn’t die instantly, as the blood loss and trauma of explosive decompression competed with a lack of oxygen in their lungs. Both suffered a short, but gruesome death as they were flung out over the city and slowly fell down to land on the rocky landscape or on other parts of the city shell, which did well to catch and stop the debris from penetrating to the living areas inside.

A continuous plume of air continued to jet out the huge hole, though it reduced in volume almost immediately as the shelter was emptied, forcing it to suck more through the corridors and promenades nearby, adding more damage to the city’s population than the explosion alone could have, though the spray of Human bodies across the cityscape was gruesome enough.

Andre-80319 was ducking behind a potted tree well down the promenade, all the way into the neighboring section of the city when the explosion occurred. He was so far away that he couldn’t even hear it over the plasma fire coming from the Brazilians who were bunkered up in some well-arranged barricades and blocking the Star Ranger’s advance. The adept didn’t have any doubts that they were going to be able to subdue them, but it was going to take some time, else they risk losing some men, for the guards were doing well to overlap fields of fire and Andre had already had his shields go down twice crossing from cover to cover.

He was the point man in their current alignment, with the Knights and Regulars further back. His job was to get up close and lob one of two stun grenades he had on him over the barricades and inside the small fort. Andre could have winged one from where he was, but he wanted to diminish the chances of his missing by getting in closer, and the potted tree was the furthest he’d been able to get, realizing that he was going to have to make a hook shot in order to lob the grenade without getting lit up with plasma…which he could survive, but he didn’t want to take the armor damage.

Suddenly he was tugged forward, hitting his head on the rim of the pot as the air in the promenade turned into a hurricane. He saw the pressure meter on his HUD drop sharply, with his suit’s automated systems cutting off the external air feed and going over to backups immediately.

The Archon planted a hand on the rim to steady himself and half stood up, looking in the direction the air was going and was surprised to see the containment doors not lowering into place. All plasma fire coming from the Brazilians immediately stopped as they began to run out of air, meanwhile people on the other side of the archway, far back behind the Brazilians, started running out into the streets in a panic from where they’d been hiding.

Andre didn’t wait and flung himself up over the pot, using the air flow to pull him across and into a run. He flew right past the barricade fort which had been built up against the wall on the left side of the promenade and jumped over a series of benches, landing awkwardly but staying on his feet…then he fought his way to the right and caught himself on the archway, setting his feet and moving to the side.

There he pulled open the emergency panel and pulled the containment trigger arm…only to have it not respond. He glanced at an indicator light, which due to the Star Force design of the system he knew to be an indication of computer override, meaning someone in a control room was ordering the doors to stay open against their basic programing.

He wasted no time, seeing the pressure dropping even further, and punched the locked panel over the emergency trigger, cracking the case enough for him to pry it off. Underneath was a clear case covering a button, which he pried off and pressed, overriding the computer override and triggering four pieces of a massive clear wall to iris out of the archway and lock into place.

Before that could happen Andre jumped out and through to the other side, somersaulting through his landing and running forward to grab the nearest person he could. He caught a man as he was stumbling forward and literally dragged him back to the now closed wall, at the bottom of which were four rotational booths. He pushed him inside one and spun the basic air lock around, getting him on the more pressurized side then ran back and forth three times to grab additional people, though the last two didn’t survive.

Andre carried the bloody fourth person through himself, seeing that the rest of the Star Rangers had taken the opportunity to subdue the Brazilians, though at the moment no one seemed interested in fighting. The air pressure on the good side of the wall was rising again, as it sucked air from other sections, but not nearly as fast as it should have been, meaning that there were probably other leaks that would eventually render this section airless minutes later if they weren’t sealed.

The Archon pulled up a wider map of the city, seeing where the next closest archways were, then opened a comm to the other two Archons in his group that were nearby but not on the same promenade.

“Manually close all containment doors,” he ordered. “Regardless of whether or not you have a breach. The computer controls have been overridden and a lot of people are dying. We need to contain this before it gets any worse.”

“Where’s the breach?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere west of here.”

Outside the city the nearby cutter got a good view of the explosion and maneuvered over to that location, or as close as it could get without exposing itself to still operational defensive batteries…then a decision was made and it moved in closer, drawing fire from a small plasma battery that it took out with several precision lachar blasts while it absorbed the plasma hits as it moved over top of the breach point. It fought against the outflowing air a bit, but given its mass it didn’t have trouble descending over top of the massive hole and pushing its shields out further from the hull.

With some tricky reworking of the matrix the drone warship’s pilots used its protective bubble to temporarily seal off the breach, holding position on anti-gravs about 30 meters above the hole and sitting down in between several ‘mountains’ where taller sections of city sprung up. Thanks to the warship’s small size it was able to slide in between them without issue, though a destroyer or larger wouldn’t have been able to fit, for the surface of the city wasn’t a smooth curve, but a mottled mess of concealed structures contained beneath the protective blanket of armor, with more internal buildings added on the edges of the city with every decade that passed.

“Carver here,” the engineer answered his comm, swinging across his office on a rolling chair to get to the terminal. There was no image attached to the signal, just a voice…and an ID signature of a very high ranking Archon.

“We have a hull breach on Tyr,” Drake said evenly, but Carver could sense the urgency in his voice. “A big one. We’ve got a cutter temporarily plugging the hole but we need a patch job done as soon as possible, so prep a team and get over here.”

The engineer started pulling up available units on his console, looking through what they had available on Glasir.

“We’ve got a pair of MFSs,” he said, referring to the Mobile Field Slips that were basically a shipyard condensed down into a transport and allowed Star Force to initiate construction on fresh sites, as well as being used for repair work, given that they brought all the necessary workspace and tools with them. “I can deploy one within the hour.”

“Do better,” Drake pressed. “We’ve got a battle going on inside, and we don’t know what caused this breach. The city has already lost a chunk of atmosphere that we’re having trouble replacing. If we get a second hole hundreds of thousands of people will die.”

Carver frowned, though Drake couldn’t see it. “What’s wrong with the containment systems?”

“They’ve been overridden.”

“God dammit,” he swore as he jumped out of his chair, realizing in an instant the disastrous implications that could ensue. “You need to start manually sealing them. There’s an override panel on each of them, unless the Brazilians changed the architecture.”

“We’re working on it. Just get here and get it sealed as fast as you can.”

“Going,” Carver said, cutting the comm and rushing out of his office.

Already sitting in a parking orbit around Glasir, MFS-0832 was powered down and tethered to a monitoring station without a crew aboard. Those had to come up from the planet and from nearby orbital stations, pulled off of current jobs and shoved into dropships and ferries. Carver was one of the last up, having hopped directly onto a dropship and flown up with a scattering of personnel. He took the skeleton crew he’d assembled and made a pair of jumps, the first of which was out to Aesir, then from there to Tyr to get around the curve of the planet rather than wait through orbital transition.

They got to Tyr and down to the city 53 minutes after Drake’s call had come through, with the MFS gliding in over the city top and setting ‘down’ beside the cutter, though it was still hovering on anti-grav. Had it actually landed it could have cracked and damaged the armored shell even further.

Carver and most of the others he’d grabbed donned armored work suits and shot out the airlocks, dropping the short distance down to the city top and running across it in low g to positions around the blast crater as the cutter held position above them. The MFS then fed down a thick cord that, between the men and several mechanical arms, they managed to stretch around the perimeter of the hole. From there they began sealing it to the surface of the shell, going around and triggering the premade segments to chemically bond, then testing all the connections before they finally gave the go ahead.

The MFS fed power to the cord and its shield generator powered up, creating a ‘band aid’ over the breach up to the edge of the cutter’s shields. A quick reprogramming of both allowed the band aid to generate its shield through the other, with both holding back physical matter but not each other.

A quick signal to the cutter and it slowly rose up, undoing the overlap and allowing the engineers’ shield to take over. The warship hesitated, waiting for confirmation that it was no longer needed, then moved off and overtop the MFS, guarding it against any interference from city defenses.

The MFS moved forward and overtop of the shield ring, then reprogrammed the shield to only hold back air. Once that was accomplished the shield geometry altered, changing from a circle and arching up into a dome that intersected the bottom of the ship. The engineers outside walked over the ring, passing through the shield to the walking space around the jagged crater, whereupon a slew of extendable equipment from the underside of the MFS came down and the engineers began cutting apart the rough debris and prepping the rim to accept replacement parts to put a hard seal in place.

4

May 20, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Tyr

Governor Gabriel Aranha woke with a pounding headache and a sore back, rolling over only to discover he had no pillow under his head…nor a bed underneath him. As he blinked his bleary eyes open he saw several people around him seated on the floor that he now laid upon, which was when his brain caught up to the present and he remembered the Star Force raid on his office complex.

He sat up with a hand to his forehead, finding it difficult to move without sending triggering waves of pain. When he did he saw green paint plastered all over the chest of his very expensive suit where he’d been shot. He poked at his chest delicately, trying to find a wound unsuccessfully. He’d heard Star Force liked to use stun weapons, but he’d never actually seen one, and the way they’d blown through his security detachment and into the safe room he’d been holed up in he’d been sure they were out for blood.

The Governor turned his head slowly, looking around at where he was at. It was a big, empty warehouse with people everywhere, half of which appeared to still be unconscious. Those closest to him weren’t his staff, but they all had some government affiliation based on their uniforms. Some were guards, now disposed of their weaponry…others were dock workers, secretaries, accountants, and corporate liaisons.

Then he spotted one of the towering white suits of the Star Force guards standing next to a door with a wide clear space around him. That would be one of their Knights, not an Archon, but even more terrifying given their size. He’d watched the security camera footage from his hideout as a pair of the monsters had charged in behind shields the size of a small wall and literally ran over his personal guard. This one didn’t have a shield with him, but he did have a sword attached to what passed as a belt on his armor, and Aranha didn’t blame those nearest to him for keeping their distance.

“You there,” he said to one of the guards next to him. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve been taken prisoner,” he mumbled, none too happy with the situation.

“What are they going to do with us?”

“They haven’t said.”

“This is intolerable,” Aranha said, standing up.

“I’d stay put if I were you,” someone else advised.

He straightened his suit, ignoring the dry paint on it. “I’m the Governor,” he reminded them, drawing a few startled reactions. “They’ll speak to me.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” he heard as he began walking towards the door, stepping over the unconscious and around the seated as everyone else in the room kept relatively quiet. The Knight didn’t so much as twitch as he walked up to him.

“I demand to know what is going on,” he asked in English, not expecting anyone from Star Force to speak Portuguese outside of their diplomatic personnel.

“You lost. Now sit down,” the Knight said through his helmet’s speakers, which gave his voice a slightly artificial tone.

Aranha was undeterred. “I’m the god damned Governor of this moon, and I demand to speak to your commanding officer!”

The Knight laughed. “We’re Star Force. We don’t have commanding officers.”

“Your Archon then,” he pressed.

“They’ll come for you when they want, not when you want. Now sit down,” the Knight said, still holding his stoic pose.

“I will not. I demand to speak to your leaders. I’m the Governor, and I will not be treated like a common citizen. I want to speak to someone I can negotiate with.”

“You’re a prisoner, same as the rest,” the Knight said, unclipping his sword and flicking it on with an audible crackle/pop.

The Governor took an involuntary step backwards, then found his nerve again…or more accurately, his ego. “I’m not moving until I speak to someone in authority.”

The Knight didn’t even bother to speak again, he just raised the tip of his stun sword and lightly tapped Aranha in the chest, knocking him to the floor unconscious. He held his sword at his side for a moment, looking out over the rest of the prisoners who were all staring at him.

“Anyone else want to negotiate?” he asked loudly, hiding a smile behind his faceplate. He loved being able to quote Bruce Willis movies and have no one catch on, young as they were.

No one responded, so he flipped off his stun sword and reattached it to his armor as he returned to his stoic pose.

“What happened next?” David asked.

“We were told that Mars had issued a new staff to replace those that had been indicted,” the woman said, held down into her chair by Assad’s strong grip on her shoulder and neck. “They were being taken back to face trial, and we were told it would be unlikely that they would be returning.”

“What do you know of any other corruption on Tyr?”

“There’s always the occasional rumor, but nothing concrete that I’m aware of,” she continued with intense eyes, holding back her panic and trying to work through the situation.

“And what do you know of The Word?”

She frowned. “I’m not familiar with that phrase…or is it a name?”

Assad sent him the all clear signal, and David finally removed his helmet and set it on the table in the Governor’s former office that they were using as a command post for the interim government they were setting up to keep city functions running. With 13 million citizens having to be fed, they couldn’t afford to waste time and allow the city to fall into even further chaos without security in place to keep order.

Assad released his grip on her and walked out of the room to go and fetch another prisoner, leaving David alone with her.

“I apologize for the way we arrived, but be aware that the Brazilian government asked us to come here and reclaim the moon for them. Whether you realize it or not, you’ve been working for a rogue faction, a criminal organization that took control of this moon some two years ago. They did so very quietly, and have been inserting their personnel into the command structure at a number of levels, which was why we had to capture everyone, yourself included.”

The woman’s eyes went wide. “This was sanctioned?”

David nodded. “Your people are on their way to take possession back, but until then we need to keep as much order as possible, which means reestablishing as much of the current administration as we can. We’re fairly certain that you’re not part of the insurrection, so we need you to go back to work immediately, taking on as many additional duties as you can until Brazil can set up a transitional government, after which I assume they’ll be doing a very thorough background check on all personnel.”

“Of course,” she offered.

“We’re using this building to coordinate from. Down the hall to the right, room 1944. You’ll receive further instructions there, including a secure earpiece. Don’t lose it,” David said, walking up to her and grabbing her wrist, upon which he placed the end of a small device.

“Ouch!” she said as it pinched her skin quickly. When he removed it she saw that it’d left a tattoo behind on the back of her hand.

“It’s temporary, but won’t wash off with water. It marks you as having been cleared to return to service. Others will ask to see your mark, and you will do the same to those you work with. Check often, for the infiltrators are both subtle and very effective at blending in. You all have the same mark…exactly the same mark, down to the details. If there’s any alteration it’s counterfeit. I have no doubt they can duplicate the mark with time, but it’s not something they can just draw on free hand.

The woman rubbed her thumb over the gold/white Star Force symbol that had a lot of extra icons spaced around the exterior and within the gaps of the very familiar vertical double infinity symbol, finding that it truly didn’t smudge or alter in any way, as if it was a real tattoo.

“They’re called The Word?” she asked, remembering what he asked her.

“That’s not a public name as of yet, but yes.”

“Room 1944?”

David nodded.

“Thank you for trusting me,” she said as she stood up, then hesitated as she wanted to ask more but thought better of it and simply walked out the door.

David put his helmet back on and waited for Assad to return, this time with a man that had also worked in the Tyr administrative ranks. The rest of Green Team was doing the same thing, handling five interrogations with two Archons each…one to question, the other to monitor via Ikrid. It was the only way they could be sure they weren’t putting Word operatives back into positions of power, tedious as it was.

As for the lower ranking support staff, there were far too many to go through this process with, so a team of Star Force hackers were going through Tyr’s records and doing quick personnel searches…if they came up clean they were released from custody to return to their jobs. If there was even so much as a letter out of place in their files they were flagged and kept imprisoned for the time being.

He had no illusions that they’d be able to round up all The Word operatives, given the size of the city, but they had to make sure that the leaders were clean, otherwise they could gain a foothold again and lay low, covering for others, until Star Force was gone and order restored. Then they could either start again or leave quietly.

The Word was extremely skilled at hiding in the cracks, and Green Team knew they had to seal as many as they could, as quickly as they could, or give their enemy new opportunities to exploit in the chaos.

Mason Watkins sprinted down one of the city’s many shopping promenades, jumping over and through a slice of vegetation in the otherwise fabricated environment, whereupon he popped over a hedge and punched a looter to the ground before roundhouse kicking another off an old man he was in the process of mugging. The third of the punks, a few inches taller than the Regular, delivered a gut punch into his black Clan Tron armor, immediately regretting it as his middle knuckle broke on impact with the hard plates.

Mason didn’t give him a chance to make the same mistake twice and swatted him in the head with the butt of his stun rifle, toppling him to the ground before shooting the other two as they got to their feet. He added a third stinger to the big guy, then turned his attention to the old man whose eyes were so wide with fear that they looked like they were going to pop out of his head.

“Are you injured?” he asked through his black faceplate.

“My…my ankle,” he stuttered, then reached for his wallet on the ground nearby where one of the muggers had dropped it.

Mason retrieved it for him, then got on his helmet comm and called for a medic, as well as placing a waypoint so they could find his position…or rather, their Star Force escorts could find his position, for with so much chaos running through the city none of the medical response calls into the unsecured zones were going in alone. Several had already been jumped, with the medications they carried stolen and some of the medics beaten, despite the fact they were local Brazilians.

After those initial reports Star Force had begun extending escorts to those response teams going out into the ‘wild zones’ while most of the troops were locking down various sectors of the city and restoring order. Mason was part of several patrols heading through the wild zones to try and discourage the looting going on, assuming that just by showing themselves in some areas that the locals would be less encouraged to misbehave as opposed to them seeing no uniformed presence at all for the better part of 2 days.

The Regular was patrolling on his own, which was a bit irregular, but there were other Clan Tron commandos in the area that he could call on for help if necessary. They’d decided to split up to cover more ground, with these roaming bandits offering little resistance.

“A medic’s on the way,” he told the man. “Can I help you over to that bench?”

“Sure,” he said, reaching up and grabbing the arm of the black armor. The man stood up on his good foot and hopped over to the shrubbery that the bench was set into.

“Thank you, sir,” he said gratefully after he’d sat down.

“Us old guys have to stick together,” Mason quipped.

“Ha…with the way you handled those kids, I doubt you’re half my 84 years.”

“I take it back,” he said sarcastically. “You’re a youngling. I’ll be 124 next month.”

The man’s face scrunched up. “Really?”

“Really,” Mason echoed. “Now, I’ve got to go bust up some more punks. Wait here, a medical team is on the way. Tell them those three are responsible.”

“What if they wake up first?”

“They won’t,” Mason promised, leaving the bench and jogging off. He added a stinger to each of the downed muggers as he passed, then continued on his running patrol, spotting another broken store window down the promenade past an upturned vendor cart…with a body laying nearby.

“Don’t you just love the civilian life?” he said to the air as he picked up his pace, heading towards the body.

A few hundred thousand miles away on Vanir a man in the Australian colony was sitting in his apartment watching the news vids when he got an incoming message tone from his desk console. He walked over and logged in, setting aside the half-eaten bowl of popcorn he’d been working on and seeing that the message was an atypical one, in that it hadn’t gone through the regular comm network.

Instead, it was a direct transfer, accomplished via a burst transmitter on Tyr to a private receiver on Vanir, then added to the Vanir system as a local message, disguising its origin. There was a brief message indicating that the attached data file was a movie his brother had sent to him…though that was only half the truth.

The man downloaded the data file then deleted the message, not particularly caring if it was later traced or not. He pulled out the data chip he’d saved it on and pocketed it, then grabbed one last handful of popcorn before walking out of his apartment, never again to return.

He booked the soonest available flight out of the system and spent the layover at a series of spaceports and starports until eventually boarding a jumpship carrying some 7,000 other passengers on their way over to the nearby Proxima System. After a two day layover there, the jumpship took most of those passengers, plus a few hundred more, back to Sol where the man offloaded onto a starport in high Earth orbit.

Another layover there transitioned to a ferry that sent him to a resort facility in low orbit, where upon he handed over the data chip. Immediately thereafter he boarded another flight, this one ferrying him over to a low orbit starport that gave him access to the dropship traffic going down to Earth’s surface. He bought a ticket for a quick drop down to Australia and exited Star Force’s transportation network through their Sydney spaceport.

After that he milled about in a hotel for two days before a packet arrived. Following the instructions inside, he bounced around the city to several locations picking up a variety of purchases before hopping on a train that took him over to Port Augusta. There he had a ride waiting for him…a cute blonde in a compact car that took him up the A87 highway heading for the northern coast.

When the car arrived in Darwin two days later on some prearranged visit, only the blonde was in the car. The man had been dropped off in the Tanami desert along the side of the road at a specific point, following a coordinate trail in the navigational device he’d received back in Sydney. He hiked for three days, utilizing the backpack full of supplies he’d purchased, until he came to his destination…a small boulder set out in the open, otherwise just a random object, but one that The Word used for visual reference.

Half an hour after he’d arrived an all-terrain four wheeler showed up and carried him off further into the desert, eventually ducking into a subsurface tunnel that took the man, his former identity now forgotten, into an underground facility where he’d be put to use with another task, one that would have him not see the public scene again for a decade or more, now that his original identity might be compromised.

The sleeper agent had completed his singular task of delivering the data chip to Earth, and whether or not he’d be given another field assignment under a false identity was a matter of necessity. The Word much preferred using real identities, so that no possible data mining could detect anomalies. Star Force was good at such discoveries, and they needed to keep their secret operatives secret, which meant burning their original identities as needed, then recruiting more operatives as they were available.

The ‘burnt’ individuals would then be recycled into other duties, with this man transitioning into a data analyst working out of their hidden base…having literally disappeared from the public records once he got off the train in Port Augusta.

Normally sleeper operatives were rarely used for anything less than vital missions, let alone data transfers, but this was a special case, and well deserving of the sacrifice.

5

June 6, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Tyr

Drake got back to their command center in the former Governor’s complex from a 2 hour running patrol through the city, with little to report aside from overall progress. The streets had been cleaned up from the looting, though repair efforts to the stores were still lagging behind, given that they’d only resumed minimal orbital commerce at one of the spaceports, thinking it better to route through the most essential supplies while keeping a close watch on the transfers. Green Team was still convinced that there were Word operatives in play, and they didn’t want them moving cargo out, so Drake had agreed to take things slow, though as the days passed Tyr was gradually getting back to normal.

The damage to the city’s exterior had been physically patched over, though the inside was still a mess. He imagined Brazil would contract Star Force crews to rebuild the internal structure, but that was their call given that it was their city. Star Force wasn’t going to repair it for free, above what was necessary to maintain atmospheric integrity. The source of the blast was still unknown, but fortunately no others followed it.

The casualty lists had run high though, far more than Drake had initially estimated, topping out at 593,228. A review of the city’s computer systems confirmed that someone had directly overridden security protocols and locked open the containment walls, allowing the atmosphere to purge from a huge area of the city before a few nearby Archons were quick enough to stem the tide with physical overrides, else it was possible that more than half the city could have been compromised.

The bodies that had been flung outside the city had been recovered, as well as those inside. The hordes of stunned guards and other personnel had been rounded up and contained, with many of them still in holding areas. Red Team had taken over several hotels and turned them into comfortable prisons in order to keep them detained while shuffling through them looking for both traitors and trustworthy individuals that they could assimilate into their makeshift government to get the city functioning again.

The running patrol had been unnecessary, but after three weeks of no training Drake and the rest of Red Team were getting irritated. Retaking the city was their mission and responsibility, but the work they were doing now was administrative, with almost no combat remaining aside from the occasional takedown when Green Team found another operative and they made a run for it. Those didn’t last long, and most didn’t even cause him to break a sweat, so both he and the other members of his team needed to do something physical, hence the running patrols, which helped to keep the citizens in check simply by seeing the Archons in person…not to mention how fast they were moving in full armor.

Drake finished his patrol at the base of the Governor’s complex, which appeared as a tall ‘building’ inside the city structure. There was a wide promenade/street that rose up several dozen stories with enclosed crosswalks jutting out across the gap at numerous points, but above that was a solid ceiling that was the underside of multiple residential levels. The architecture reminded one of a conventional airborne city, though it was only illusion, for the actual structure was really one gigantic complex.

Fortunately the Governor’s section only allowed a few entrances in and out of it, though it shared support structures with those nearby. Drake entered through the lowest one, which was the largest, walking through wide ornamental glass doors that were not air tight. Star Force hadn’t designed those, but rather they were Brazilian either in build or refit as they customized the internal ‘buildings’ to their liking.

Those fanciful doors in other sections of the city had allowed the atmosphere to slowly purge, killing many more inside than just those that had been on the streets, and Drake was grateful that Star Force always designed multiple levels of safeguards into its designs, for some of the less wealthy areas of the city had stuck with the standard construction, and as a result those interior ‘buildings’ had become lifeboats for many survivors. The main populations centers, however, had all been rebuilt, and where the vacuum had reached them they’d turned into bloody killing fields without so much as one plasma blast being fired.

Drake suspected sabotage, but there wasn’t much left to study, though they did have a team combing the debris, both inside and out, trying to find some fragments to identify the source, but so far they hadn’t come up with anything.

The acolyte walked in through the lobby, passing a fully armored Knight and several Regulars from Clan Alterra in their gray/red armor that were guarding the entrance to the building. Drake gave the Knight a nod then hit the stairs, bypassing the elevators and taking the steps three at a time to stretch out his legs as he made his way up to the pair of levels they’d claimed for their own use.

He walked into their improvised command room, full of modular equipment they’d brought in via dropship so they wouldn’t have to risk using compromised Brazilian systems, and saw that David was already there, pouring over some data on a tabletop display.

“Nice jog?” Green Team’s leader asked as Drake came over to him and pulled his helmet off, setting it down on the corner of the table where it wouldn’t block any of the display.

“Tolerable. How close to finished are you?”

David sighed. “We’ve cleaned out all the equipment we can find, though I know there’s more here hidden somewhere that we’re probably never going to get to.”

“The Brazilian transports made orbit this morning. How long do you want me to hold them off?”

“Four more hours. Green Team will be ready to go then.”

“Last minute op?”

“Following one last thread, though I doubt it’ll amount to anything. How are you set for the transition?”

“Primary services have been stabilized. So long as we hold them through the handover we’re good to go. Pulling the rest of the city back together is Brazil’s problem. How many prisoners are you taking out?”

“We’ve got most of what we want already on Glasir. There’s a few dozen probables I still need to sort through, so we might have a handful more to add.”

“How’s the investigation going?”

“We’ve got a mountain of questions to answer, and a lot of data to work through, but we are getting some good intel out of the prisoners. The fact that they don’t know we can read their minds is really helping out, because they’re only guarding their words, not their conscious thoughts. In fact, that last little op we’re running is following up on intel we got from one of the contract operatives we caught, though I doubt the stash he pulled from previously is still in place. The Word cleaned out their facilities quite thoroughly, so I doubt they left much of value behind except where we got the jump on them.”

“Better to check and come up empty than to miss a find,” Drake agreed. “How’s the prime guest getting along?”

“Incredibly resistant while being excessively chatty. I’m told his mind is very tight, though I haven’t interrogated him yet. I expect that to be one very long conversation.”

“I for one would like to know about their chemical weapons program…and how many more of those canisters are floating around other worlds.”

“You and me both, but I don’t expect him to give up that kind of information voluntarily…unless it allows him to brag on The Word in some way.”

“You keeping him on Glasir?”

“We’re keeping them all on Glasir for the length of the investigation. Then we’ll decide what to do with them.”

“Do you have a list to give the Brazilians?”

“Already made up.”

“Four hours then?”

David nodded.

“I’ll let them know,” Drake said, picking up his helmet and walking over to another station, letting David get back to his work.

“Ah…finally,” Governor Aranha said, getting up out of his chair only to have Yavari push him back down into it again with a firm grasp on his shoulder. “What?! Let me go!”

“Sit still,” the Archon insisted as the Brazilian delegation walked into the Governor’s office and presented themselves to Drake, the leader of which offered his hand.

“Antonio Costa.”

“Drake-756,” he said, gently shaking the man’s hand, given that he was still wearing his armor minus the helmet.

“Brazil owes you a great debt, Mr. Drake.”

“Just Drake.”

“As you wish. Though I’m saddened to see the decompression death toll, I’m told the actual combat was more or less bloodless? That’s not something my people could have accomplished, and I thank you for it, on behalf of myself, my troops, and my country.”

“You’re welcome,” Drake said, wanting to skip the formalities. “We’ve reestablished a skeleton government using your own people that we were able to clear. There’s a still a backlog of prisoners that we haven’t had time to determine their allegiance, most of whom are security. If they shot at us their loyalty is in doubt, though many of them believed we were the enemy, given how quietly the moon switched hands,” he said, throwing a glance at the former Governor.

Costa followed his gaze. “Is he one of them?”

“No,” Drake said, surprising the Brazilian. “What he is, is an incompetent dupe. He let his subordinates carry out all of his duties while parading around like a rock star. The Word kept him distracted by all the perks of his job while he carried out none of the responsibilities. I highly suggest you fire his fat ass.”

“What?!” Aranha demanded, trying to stand up again only to have Yavari push him back down.

“Done,” Costa said, giving the man a harsh glare.

“What? No…I had no part in this. They attack my city and I am to be blamed for it?”

Costa looked at Drake. “He still doesn’t know?”

“He doesn’t believe he could be that inept,” the Archon said, rolling his eyes.

Costa took a step towards Aranha, but didn’t come up close to the overweight man. “You are hereby relieved of your post, effective immediately. You will remain in your personal quarters until such a time as transport is arranged for your deportation back to Mars. You can plead your case to them, so do not waste my time. Guards, escort him there and make sure he doesn’t wander off.”

Two men standing in the doorway behind Costa and his transitional team walked forward and pulled Aranha out of his chair, relieving Yavari of his charge.

“This is an injustice,” he murmured, but once they got him moving he didn’t resist. “A proper inquiry will bring the truth out.”

Costa let him go, then turned back to Drake. “I have security teams coming down, some 5,000 men to replace the leadership in the local forces. How would you like to handle the transfer?”

“It’s your city, and there hasn’t been any looting or riots for over a week. Things are fairly calm, it’s the logistical situation that you need to get a hold of. We’ve maintained the essentials, with a limited commerce flow through one of the spaceports, but before you open up normal operations you need to lock down the infrastructure, or you could have chaos with people grabbing at whatever they can get.”

“Rationing?”

“In place on foodstuffs. The water supply is secure, and I didn’t care about luxuries, a lot of which were looted anyway. Some stores have reopened, but most are awaiting new inventory and a full security detail before they open up their doors. That’s put everyone on edge, but so far they’re behaving themselves…though you will have a backlog of looters to prosecute that we bagged. We didn’t have time to investigate any reported thefts or assaults, so the ones we’ve got in custody were caught in the act. I’d take that fact into consideration when they whine about due process.”

“I’ve been given a wide latitude in legal matters to rectify this situation,” Costa said with a smirk. “We’ll take your word for it.”

Drake nodded his contentment. “I’ll start inserting your men into the current field assignments and rotating ours out. As soon as you can get enough down here we’ll be out of your way.”

“There’s no rush, though we don’t want to be a burden on your time anymore than Tyr already has been. Thank you for fixing the hull breach.”

“It’s a firm patch, but it’s not armored. It’ll have to be replaced at some point.”

“I’ll get on that right away. I understand you were able to discover what happened to our previous assault team, some of which were recovered?”

“The Word took most of them captive and were holding them in a section of the city where one of the chemical weapons was detonated. We found their bodies there, no survivors, but some of them that The Word was smuggling out we were able to rescue. They’re not in good physical condition, and we evacuated them all to Glasir for treatment and debriefing, but they said that there were plants in the strike force itself that turned on them…so I’d be careful with the people you brought out with you, for there might be more Word operatives among them.”

Costa frowned deeply. “They knew who we were sending?”

“More than likely.”

“I don’t like the sound of that at all,” the Brazilian said, turning and beginning to pace a short line over to the Governor’s empty desk and back again. “That means they’ve not only infiltrated Tyr but other facets of our government.”

“And for all I know you could be one of them,” Drake said evenly, not trying to be insulting. “Which is why Star Force is going to make occasional visits to the moon, have a look around, and make sure The Word isn’t getting another foothold in the aftermath of all this.”

Costa nodded. “Please do, and forward me any findings. In my experience ferreting out spies is a nasty business. I’m clean, and I’m fairly sure of my senior staff…but if the very troops we sent here to root out this criminal organization were part of it, any part of our government is suspect. Having an external set of eyes would be most helpful.”

“There’s also some new infrastructure beneath the city that you need to check out. The Word built an extensive complex, as well as mislabeled the city schematics to section off areas that they rebuilt according to their needs. We obviously haven’t had time to search the entire city, but we compared our construction records to the public ones and found the discrepancies. I’d suggest that you do a full survey of every room, corridor, and shaft on Tyr and draw yourself a new map, just in case there are any other alterations…some that their operatives might still be using.”

Costa sighed. “That will take a while to organize and execute, but I agree. What was in their base?”

“They cleaned it out before we got to them…then left a heap of explosives as a door prize. We disarmed them, but who knows how many more are sitting around out there.”

“Thanks for the warning. How many operatives have you been able to discover?”

“Over 200, but we know there are far more out there. Some of the factories we raided had hundreds of workers that we weren’t in a position to collect at the time. They got loose and we’re not sure who or where they are now.”

“Do you have a list?”

“Yes, but I’ve decided that we’re not sharing it just yet. We’d prefer if The Word didn’t know who was taken, and if we give you a list they’ll probably get a copy of it before too long.”

“I wish I could disagree with you, but given recent information I don’t see how I can. That will make taking a head count rather difficult.”

“If you can take my word for it, we’ve already done a head count. Everyone on the books is accounted for, including the corpses…though those books may very well have been cooked to make some individuals disappear prior to our arrival, but as far as having missing citizens in distress, that’s already been taken care of.”

“Which doesn’t discount the possibilities of lurkers,” Costa said, referring to individuals who lived on various worlds without proper identification, “but that’s one more item I can check off my list. Thank you.”

“We like to be thorough,” Drake said, glancing at the four people waiting behind Costa. “I guess this is your office now. Our makeshift operations center is in this building. I suggest you utilize that through the transfer, though we’ll be taking our equipment with us when we finally leave.”

“Best to use what’s currently in operation,” Costa agreed. “Anything else big that I should know?”

“Wanna get to work?”

Costa smiled. “That’s why they sent me.”

“The Word had an arsenal of custom made plasma weapons. We’ve collected all we could find, but there still may be some floating around.”

The Brazilian’s smile faded. “Tyr isn’t known for a large criminal element, I’m told, but even one unregistered weapon could do a wealth of damage. Dozens in the wrong hands…could mean the casualties from this mess aren’t yet over. What of the weapons from the assault team?”

“That I can’t answer. I assume they were of the same make as the local security armament?”

“Not entirely,” Costa said, disgruntled. “More loose ends to tie up.”

“The ship they came in is also missing,” Drake added. “We’re guessing it was disassembled.”

Costa blew out a breath, seeing his massive job already developing wrinkles. “Command center?”

“Follow me,” Drake said, grabbing his helmet on the way to the door.

6

June 9, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Glasir

David was staring at a datapad in one of the Archon lounges in the primary Star Force city on Glasir when his attention was broken by someone else entering. With most of the Archons on planet being part of the three resident Clans, very few had been assigned to the regular Star Force colony, and as such the Archon-only lounges there were usually left unused. David had set up shop in one of them for that very lack of activity, giving him a quiet, large area to work out of as he tried to piece together the data they were collecting and delve deeper into the mystery that was The Word.

“What?” he asked as Nathan walked over with an odd look on his face.

“Just got the chemical analysis on the toys back from Odin,” he said, hefting another datapad. “They confirmed Glasir’s analysis. There’s nothing abnormal about them…even the Archon action figures. Maybe they’re just selling them to make some credits for the organization and couldn’t do it aboveboard without our franchise license?”

“That’d be insulting enough…but I don’t buy it. There’s got to be something hidden in them.”

Nathan shrugged. “Maybe it’s some sort of code.”

“I’ve been down that road already. The toys, aside from the various models, are all identical. Unless they’re packaged in mismatched sets to deliver some sort of encrypted message I don’t see how they’re relaying information…aside from the cargo hatch in some of the Star Force knockoffs, but they could just as easily purchase the real ones and use them for that purpose, which brings into question why would they need to make their own and why in a secret factory?” David said, referencing the Star Force merchandizing mandate that all frivolous toys and trinkets have some practical secondary function.

Some of the items the mega corporation produced were light sources, others had cargo compartments where you could store a data chip or micro-ration food cube. Others transformed into screwdrivers, hammers, picks, and other tools. Some more expensive models were even small hologram projectors. Even with their toy line, Star Force products always served some purpose, including the Archon action figures.

“Perhaps you should ask our resident Agent.”

David frowned, leaning back in his chair and setting down the datapad he’d been holding. “Anything new on that front?”

Nathan shook his head. “I don’t think he knows how, but he’s caught onto the fact that we’re monitoring him somehow and has locked down his biological cues. I don’t have the Ikrid skills to penetrate the armor over his thought processes, so we’re working him through some mind games trying to loosen him up. Aside from what Jenson got the first couple days we haven’t seen any progress with him, and he’s stopped talking too. Not even any friendly chit chat.”

“At least we’ve got him on the defensive. If it hadn’t been for your quick grab he’d be dead and out of our reach. Our psionics have given us a greater victory here than I think The Word anticipated, and I don’t expect they’ll make the same mistake twice, so we need to squeeze whatever intel we can out of what we’ve got.”

“Well, the lower operatives aren’t so savvy and have been giving up chunks of information, we just can’t pull very much of it from their minds…and what we have got is illuminating, but overall not very useful in exposing threads to follow. They’re very strict with their cellular layout, which means Mr. Agent is holding most of the cards we need…though we are piecing together some things from the collection of cells.”

“Anything new?”

“Not conclusively, but Assad thinks that they were using Tyr as a sort of training ground. We’ve been able to trace a lot of fake IDs back there, now that we know what to look for.”

“Don’t suppose we’ve picked up Drake’s hacker yet?”

“Nope,” Nathan said with some disgust.

David shared the sentiment. After running a genetic test on the blood Drake had brought back on his armor they’d determined that the man was in fact on Star Force’s detain list, with a priority 2 ranking…the highest possible for non-violent individuals. He was known as the ‘Specter’ and had a very elusive nature when it involved computer records, having switched between hundreds of identities during his career. Green Team badly wanted him for interrogation, thinking his presence on Tyr probably wasn’t a coincidence and he may have been helping The Word with the forged identities that many of the captured operatives were using.

“On the up side, of all these shipping manifests I’ve been able to piece together,” David said, tapping the datapad on the lounge table, “it looks like they’re primarily using non-Star Force channels. Most of their exports were going out on Brazilian transports or private hires. They’re not risking sending them through us anymore.”

“Did you get that packet out to Davis yet?”

“It went out on a jumpship this morning.”

“How long have you been in here?” Nathan asked, though he was fairly sure he already knew the answer.

David sighed. “Too long.”

“Take a break. Deviousness isn’t going to be discovered on a fried mind.”

David checked his watch. “I guess it’s time for my afternoon workout anyway,” he said, getting up out of his seat and snagging his datapad. “I guess if this was going to be easy I’d be disappointed.”

Nathan walked into one of the rooms they were using for interrogations and saw Assad sitting opposite a long table with the man known only as ‘Agent’ at the other end. They’d run his genetics and come up with no matches, meaning he was either someone born outside the Star Force network and its affiliates, or he’d had his identity erased.

Both men were silent and staring at each other with a plate full of donuts sitting in the middle of the table.

Nathan looked down at the donuts, then at his fellow Archon. “I think this is more torture on you,” he told Assad.

“I’m managing,” he said, not breaking his staredown.

“You don’t want any?” Nathan asked Agent, but the man didn’t return his gaze. He was staring blankly at Assad with a bored/tired look and didn’t even seem to notice the newcomer.

“Hmmn,” he said, reaching down and snagging one of the glazed ones from the side of the heap without toppling the rest…not a small feat. He bit a huge bite out of it and chewed while adding his stare at the man. “You know…you’re doing this all wrong. If you eat the whole plate it means you’re innocent.”

“Innocent of what?” Agent said, slowly twisting his head to look at Nathan who stood partway down the table next to the donut plate.

Nathan pointed a finger at him. “Good point, there. I could come up with a lot of sarcastic replies, but I can see you’re not in the mood. You’re a member of The Word, an organization that has been doing quite a lot of bad things…more than we were recently aware of. Now, what you personally were a part of we don’t know, but being an Agent means you’ve got operational control.”

“I’ve already admitted I was an Agent,” he pointed out grumpily. “If that is my crime then I have already been determined to be guilty. What then am I to protest my innocence of?”

Nathan took another bite of the donut, chewing thoroughly before answering. “Being a bad guy. Your predecessor regaled us with the wisdom of The Word, explaining how Star Force was misguided and that you were doing us and Humanity a favor by attempting to put us back on the right track.”

“Then again,” he continued, “that was just a stalling tactic while he died. Or maybe he just wanted someone to talk to in his last few minutes.”

“I know who you are, Nathan-937, member of Green Team who has been tasked with locating, infiltrating, and taking down our organization. But unlike the other Agent you encountered, I have no wish to talk to you.”

“Donut then?” Nathan offered, not taking the bait about the ‘infiltrating’ part, for Star Force was doing no such thing…but The Word didn’t know that, so he figured the disinterested Agent was still fishing.

“For someone who protests to live an unlimited lifespan, you certainly have an appetite for unhealthy food.”

“To…tallwee in…correct,” Nathan said before he’d finished his third bite. “Define healthy.”

“That much sugar is bad for you.”

“That’s not a definition.”

“Healthy are those things that are good for the body.”

“And sugar isn’t?”

“Excess isn’t.”

“This isn’t excess,” the Archon said, shoving the last bite into his mouth, then licking the glaze off his fingers before grabbing a sprinkled one off the top of the plate.

“I suppose you’re going to claim a higher rate of metabolism as your defense?”

“Now see…right there is your problem. You have a guilty outlook on life, like you’re defaultly tainted in some way.”

“Star Force has a naïve positivity. I’m not inclined to believe that you actually live as long as you claim, given your ignorance.”

“Enlighten me,” he asked, taking a huge bite out of the second donut.

“Human nature is inherently flawed, none can escape this without accepting the fact and working to correct it. Your positivity will be your undoing.”

“Na…you’re just a sucker for the illusions in life. Take your body, for example. It may crave sugar. You eat a lot of it, get fat, then curse your body for craving it in the first place. Your body isn’t at fault, you are, for not understanding how you’re supposed to operate it. Now that isn’t your fault, per se, given that you were never given an instruction manual, so it’s understandable how people get things messed up. Actually, a lot of the problems in society can be attributed to the fact that we’re all born ignorant, only acting on instincts that we don’t understand.”

“You admit to the flawed nature.”

“No, no,” Nathan said, taking a moment for another, smaller bite, dropping a few sprinkles off his lips and fighting the urge to telekinetically grab them before they hit the floor. “Stay with me. Everyone is inserted into the universe cold, and by cold I mean without foreknowledge or intel. I assume you know what a cold insertion is, from a spy’s point of view?”

Agent nodded.

“Well, we’re all inserted cold and have to figure out how things work as we go, learning on our own or from others. Turns out those sugar cravings aren’t a bad thing, just your subconscious mind telling your ‘pilot,’” Nathan said, making quote marks with his fingers and donut, “that the sugar is a good thing and that you should grab it up when you have the chance. Now, if you do that and hoard it, you could be in for some problems…but only because you’re ignoring the other signals your subconscious mind is feeding you. We call those biofeedback.”

“No…w,” he said, chewing another quick bite. “Your biofeedback monitors how much food you have in your body, kind of like a fuel gage, except that your stomach can stretch out, so ‘full’ doesn’t mean full. That’s where a lot of people go wrong, feeling that they have to be stuffed full of food in order to get a full fuel load. In truth you need to fill up your stomach only part way, multiple times per day…but since that isn’t always an option you can overload and stretch out your stomach to overfill before having a long drought and not taking in any extra.”

Nathan finished the sprinkled donut and pulled a long one with chocolate icing out from the bottom, playing Jenga with the stack.

“Your body tells you that you’re overloading through your biofeedback, but if you’re ignoring that signal and just going on the ‘sugar is great’ target analysis, then you’re going to be overloading when you don’t want to…simply because you’re ignorant of what you’re doing, even though your body is giving you all the telemetry you need, you just don’t understand it.”

He bit off the end of the donut, discovering that it was also crème filled. “Now, sugar is like rocket fuel…very useful for rockets, but overkill for less powerful situations. Someone such as you doesn’t require much, which your biofeedback will tell you. Me, on the other hand, well I burn so many calories a day I need the condensed nature of the fuel just to keep up. Food is fuel, neither good nor bad. What I need and what you need differ based on our fitness levels and our energy expenditure.”

“An ignorant person would say sugar is bad, from someone in your position…but for me, it’s an essential part of life,” he said, taking another bite that encompassed a fourth of the long bar of deliciousness. “There’s nothing to feel guilty about. It’s just fuel, and far more efficient than eating a lot of bland foods until my body pulls enough trace sugars out of them to get the fuel load I need. This way, I don’t have all the filler to process, just the refined sugars that take up less stomach space, which leaves me more mobile.”

“So sugar isn’t bad…instead it’s something very, very valuable. But in the wrong hands, in ignorant hands, you can get fat off of it. So the solution isn’t in avoiding sugar, but learning to read your biofeedback to determine how much sugar and other fuels you need. That takes time, experience, and most importantly an introspective mind. For the dumb masses it’s easier to just say something is evil and not think about it, hence the guilty consciences when people do follow their biofeedback and it conflicts with societal boundaries. They haven’t done anything wrong, but their subconscious and conscious minds are in conflict, which creates your ‘flawed and tainted’ mindset.”

Nathan shoved the rest of the donut in and chewed slowly, given that it filled most of his mouth.

“I’d heard,” Agent said into the silence, “of Archons’ off the wall lectures, but that was truly a masterpiece of disconcordant thought.”

Nathan picked up a fourth donut and held it halfway out towards Agent. “So you don’t want one?”

“No,” he said simply.

Nathan glanced back at Assad, who hadn’t moved the entire time and was still staring at Agent, though The Word operative was now ignoring him. “Oh that’s right, you probably prefer your own ingredients. We picked up some of them from Tyr, would you like us to make you your own batch? It’s not a problem, we’ve got a legion of cooks for that sort of thing.”

Agent eyed him, his disinterest having disappeared. “Even we have to eat.”

“Why not buy it…or steal it from the local market. You controlled the moon, so I doubt it would have been much trouble. You guys don’t strike me as cooks.”

“What makes you think we didn’t?”

“I meant the finished products,” Nathan said, biting into his fourth donut. “No..the..ing..ents.”

“You prefer your sugar. We have other nutritional requirements.”

“Not all that are available on the market?”

“Indeed.”

“And what, you just add the allergens for taste?” Nathan said, revealing the results of their chemical analysis on a number of the ingredients.

Agent just stared at him.

“Didn’t think we’d catch onto that?”

“I didn’t think you’d acquired samples.”

“We grabbed a few when we hit your factory the first time. Nice cleanup job afterwards. You people work fast.”

“A necessity in our line of work. You never know when uninvited guests will show up.”

“Uninvited? You practically invited us to Tyr.”

“How so?”

“Ha,” he said, biting off another bit of donut. “You have the gall to suggest to the Brazilians that they allow you to retain possession of the moon, and you don’t think that overture would attract our attention?”

Nathan didn’t need to be Ikrid linked to Agent to catch his mental slip. A slight twitch in his facial features gave away his surprise over the Archon’s revelation.

Catch that? Assad asked telepathically.

Yes I did, Nathan said, eating more donut.

“Eavesdropping on allies’ conversations now, are you?”

“Like you don’t?”

“We work alone.”

“That I figured,” Nathan said, tossing the last bit of donut up in the air and catching it in his mouth, chewing, and swallowing. “Well, four’s enough for me. Only ran five miles this morning. If you feel like working out let one of us know, we’ll arrange something. You won’t even have to give us anything in exchange.”

“Generous of you.”

“Not really. The sight of unfit people annoys us, so we don’t want you stagnating any further.”

“I’m healthy enough, thank you.”

“Better than being dead, I’ll grant you that, but the streaks of gray in your hair say otherwise.”

“Merely a sign of aging.”

“Ugh,” Nathan sighed, turning to look at Assad. “I’ll let you explain self-sufficiency to him. There’s only so much ignorance I can take per day.”

Agent smiled coyly. “So, I can expect you back tomorrow then?”

“Don’t know, we like to improvise,” Nathan said, walking out and clapping Assad on the shoulder as he left. When he got outside the room he headed over to another one further down the hall with a Regular guard stationed outside. He nodded and the man pulled open the door, let him walk through, then closed it behind him without locking it.

Inside was a woman with short black hair sitting in the corner in a single plush chair with the footrest up…but there was nothing else in the room.

“About time someone got here,” she said, sitting up a bit. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, but I really have to pee first. That blasted guard hasn’t let me out of here in hours.”

Nathan smiled, appreciating her bluntness. Not all of The Word’s operatives shared the Agents’ passive persona, meaning that different interrogation techniques were required for each. Yet one more challenge presenting itself to Green Team in the most important investigation they’d ever been tasked with, and one that was solely theirs now that Red Team had returned to Sol, their mission on Tyr completed.

7

June 11, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Glasir

“We have a problem,” the medic told Jet as he walked him through the med bay to a diagnostics holographic display detailing one of the patients’ internal organs.

“We have lots of problems,” the Archon replied. “What kind is this one?”

“Remember when you said you didn’t know why The Word had kept the Brazilian soldiers alive?”

“What did you find?” Jet asked, feeling something sinister about to surface.

“Nothing in the corpses, but some of the live ones you recovered from the stasis canisters are being used as carriers…and I think it’s linked to the food supply. It’s just a hunch, we haven’t been able to confirm anything yet.”

“What exactly are they carrying?”

“That we haven’t confirmed either, but it’s some type of designer molecule…not anything Star Force has on record.”

“Explosive?”

The medic shook his head, pointing to a side display on the hologram that showed a cellular analysis. “This isn’t explosive, or rather not of itself. I think it’s a molecular key. One of these people is smuggled into a population…maybe even just released back into the public, meaning they don’t have to be complicit, and the molecule combines with something else in the environment triggering an action. What that action is, is the underlying question.”

“Wait…how is it combined? And is it replicating or a finite amount?”

“It’s not viral, just a molecular substance that has been saturated into their bodies. The saturation means it’ll linger for quite a while until it’s processed out, making for a long lasting trigger…which also means whatever it is the key to requires only a small amount of the molecules to activate.”

Jet crossed his arms over his chest. “Combined inside the body?”

The medic wavered. “Possibly, but trace amounts will also be found in bodily fluids, such as sweat. Meaning that mere touch could transmit the molecules.”

“How would that be connected to the foodstuffs? If it’s external?”

“I honestly don’t know, and I hate to speculate, but I can think of a lot of nasty things they could be up to. With a trigger molecule, which I’m convinced this is, it could be linked to a lot of things. They could activate a latent virus in other people that begins to spread when the trigger is present. It could be, as you implied, the trigger to explosives within certain individuals’ bodies that a handshake could set off…or a kiss. I really don’t want to speculate until we have more data to work with.”

“You think the foodstuffs are delivering one part of a binary mechanism to a broad population and these individuals are the activation triggers?”

“That’s my current line of thought, yes.”

Jet stared at the hologram, which was showing locations of the molecules within nearly all portions of the patient’s body, save for the brain. “Can you flush them out?”

The medic nodded. “They’ll eventually work their way out, for the most part, and we can accelerate the process. Thankfully we can scan for them, with the right settings, but there’s no quick remedy…at least, not that we’ve created yet. This is another job for Earth or Corneria, but we’ll do as much as we can here.”

“Are the molecules harming the carriers?”

“Not at all. I believe that doing so would cause questions to be raised and that’s exactly what The Word wants to avoid. I’d bet they designed them to be totally innocuous.”

“What about the allergens?”

The medic altered the hologram, pulling up a different patient file while minimizing the current one off to the left. “They were doing a lot of different things with the foodstuff samples you retrieved. The allergens need no trigger. This is a medical scan from three years ago on Titan. The individual developed symptoms, along with three others, on the same day and was attributed to a bad batch of foodstuffs, but no other contaminated products were discovered. It was supposed that the only bad ones were consumed, but I’ve been able to match up the symptoms with the theoretical ones that our Word allergens created in computer models…and it’s a precise match.”

Jet rubbed his chin. “What kind of damage does it do?”

“Nothing irreversible, unless you get a very weak individual, in which case there’s a small chance of death. It’s basically tailored food poisoning. Very nasty reaction that passes with time.”

“And you’re convinced the trigger molecule is completely unrelated?”

“95% sure, though there are some overlapping possibilities that we need to explore, such as trinary compounds and more complicated interactions.”

“Do you mind?” Jet asked, pointing at the hologram.

“Please,” the medic offered, taking a step back.

Jet accessed the nearby keyboard and went outside Glasir’s medical database and into the master files that got shuffled around from system to system, keeping all Star Force outposts up to date on things they couldn’t get from other locations without considerable delay…such as foodstuff production statistics.

Jet sifted through several databases until his search came in, then he ran it against several other sets of data, compiling a list and bringing it up in holo in the form of a timeline, pointing at the start of a three year spike.

“There’s your contaminated foodstuffs, two months from the first entry. Our facilities are too well run to come up with bad batches other than on freakishly rare occasions. There’s a consistent trend of incidents starting three years ago that’s gradually been escalating, but it’s been occurring in multiple systems at multiple locations. It looks like the largest was 21 people on Orion.”

“That’s minuscule. Probably wouldn’t have drawn regional awareness, let alone interstellar.”

“There were four other cases in the Sirius System, each with no more than 10 people affected. If you look at any one instance it appears isolated and nothing more than a fluke…but on a whole there’s a pattern of minor incidents, like a shotgun approach. They’re either testing or going for a gradual escalation. They’re certainly patient enough for the latter.”

“But to what end?”

“Discrediting Star Force,” Jet said without hesitation. “They’ve been sabotaging industrial, commercial, transit, and other facilities for years. Nothing major as far as casualties, but enough to start making us appear incompetent. One of their major goals appears to be discredit us and pull away some of our public support, so staging food contamination makes perfect sense.”

The medic frowned, then gestured to the timeline. “Even something this isolated?”

“Word gets around, and with as much as they were producing here I’d bet they’ve got more disruptions planned. Keep working on that trigger. If we can find the lock it fits into we may be able to preempt them.”

“One other thing. In one of the samples, a protein bar, we found a biological marker…and by that I mean a substance that is scannable. Eat the bar and it’ll show up on a specially calibrated EM reflection.”

“What kind of range?”

“Unlimited, depending on the strength of the transmitter and the sensitivity of the receiver.”

“Best guess?”

“You’d have to ask an engineer about that, but I’d say considerably more than a few meters. The reflectivity is far higher than the scanning equipment we use.”

“Thank you,” Jet said, turning to leave.

“The more they eat, the more visible they’ll be.”

“Way ahead of you,” Jet said, flashing him a smile as he headed out of the med bay.

A day and a half later Jet was back on Tyr along with Lio and Assad. The three Archons had spaced themselves around the city dressed in full armor with Brazilian security teams backing them, courtesy of Costa, as a Star Force transport ship flew in to one of the spaceports and made a slight detour, drifting out over the center of the city and holding position just above the armored exterior. There it sat, beginning to broadcast the specific frequency necessary to generate the sensor reflectivity of the tagged foodstuffs.

Each of the Archons had a receiver of their own, plus a patch into the transport’s sensors, which had been augmented at the same time as the transmitter by an engineering team on Glasir. As soon as the invisible energy began flowing out Jet got an immediate contact on his sensor pad…along with 14 others spaced around the city, including two very large signals which he guessed were probably depots holding the laced foodstuffs.

“Let’s go,” he told the security team, picking the closest target to his location, one that was coming in faint. The semi-armored guards followed him in a phalanx as he led them through the city, insuring that no one stopped him and he had access to all restricted areas. As they tracked the target he recognized the fact that it was moving a bit, which suggested that it was a person rather than an inert bar, and he was proved correct when they ended up in a residential area and the personal quarters of a financier.

Security got him in through the locked door, whereupon they quickly rounded up some four people in the quarters…two parents and two children who were none too pleased to have their evening interrupted.

“There’s no one else here,” one of the guards told Jet after coming back from a search of the other rooms to the main living area where the foursome had been watching a large vid screen.

“What’s the meaning of…”

Jet walked up to the wife and jabbed a finger into her chest just below the neck as he watched his scanner. “This one.”

Two of the guards walked around behind the woman and gently grabbed her shoulders, escorting her over to the doorway while her husband tried to intervene, but Jet stopped him with a firm hand on his chest.

“Not you.”

“What’s going on?” the boy asked.

“You three stay here,” Jet ordered, pointing to the kids and gently pushing the man down into a chair. “We’re going to have a little chat later, but for now these men are going to stay with you and ask you some questions. I’ll be back in a bit. Answer them truthfully and it will save me some time.”

With that Jet turned and left the room, leaving two guards behind and trailing another half dozen in his wake.

Their next stop was also a residential area, but in a different section of the city. This time they found an abandoned set of quarters that the logs indicated hadn’t been inhabited for the past 7 months. Upon closer inspection Jet found a concealed wall panel, inside of which he found a series of empty protein bar wrappers, each with smears of chocolate and crumbs, the sum total of which had enough reflectivity to stand out faintly on his equipment given the huge amount of signal the overhead transport was generating.

A quick records search indicated that the previous occupant no longer resided in the city, and Jet made a note to add him to Star Force’s detain list once he got back to Glasir.

His third target was one of the two big ones, inside of which he and the guards got into a brief firefight with the occupants of a small warehouse. Four men were captured, though two of the guards received plasma burns and had to be transferred to one of Tyr’s medical facilities…but more were cycling over to Jet’s entourage to make up for those lost, as well as to give the warehouse a thorough teardown.

Jet went straight for one crate, inside of which he found boxes of protein bars, all of which were giving a very strong reflection of the signal, making this one of The Word’s distribution centers…though he didn’t know if they were piggybacking onto the normal operations of a legitimate warehouse or running the whole facility.

The men captured were transferred to the spaceport and held there until the three Archons returned, which would be several hours later. Jet, for his part, rounded up one more individual, this one a retired geologist, then returned to the family he’d initially broken up while the guards escorted the prisoners and warehouse holdings to Star Force dropships on their way up to the moon.

Jet pulled off his helmet as he motioned to the guards to remain outside the living room and guard the entrance, giving him a personal audience with the husband and two frightened children whose mother he’d taken away.

“Ira Demora?” Jet asked, reading the debriefing the guards had already completed on a Brazilian datapad. “Channa…and Demarco?”

“Yes,” Ira, the father, answered from his large chair while the two children sat on the couch so close together they looked like they were stuck at the hips.

“Time to talk,” Jet said, adding a dark tone to his voice. Even without his helmet his silver armor was incredibly intimidating, but the look in his eyes was even more so.

“What do you want to know? I answered all of their questions. Why have you taken my wife?”

Jet walked forward a step and stared down at the man, who shrunk back into the deep cushions. “The protein bars.”

Recognition and horror flashed through Ira’s eyes, then he quickly tried to hide it. “I don’t know…what, hey!”

Jet lifted the man out of his seat by the collar of his shirt and stared into his eyes from about a foot away. “Don’t play games. Tell me what happened.”

The man didn’t answer for what seemed like an eternity, then he finally whispered, so low only Jet could hear. “She’s dead if I do.”

Jet dropped him into his chair and walked back into the center of the room, halfway between the man and the couch that held his children. “We can do this here or in an interrogation room. Your choice.”

“Will you promise me…us immunity?” he stammered.

“What did you do?” Jet countered.

“New identities too…please.”

“We can protect you if you cooperate,” Jet said, guessing where this was going enough that he didn’t feel the need to remove a glove and dig for answers. “But I need it all now. The longer you delay the more time they’ll have to get to you.”

Ira’s eyebrows raised. “You know about them?”

“Who do you think we just kicked off this moon? Now tell me what’s going on with your wife?”

“She’s innocent, I swear. They threatened to kill her if I didn’t cooperate. They said she had to eat a specific foodstuff that they’d provide, and that they’d be able to monitor her whereabouts 24/7 through it. If she ever didn’t eat it they’d kill her, and if I didn’t do as they said they’d kill her…so you see, I had to do what they said. I had no choice!”

Jet glanced at the children. “Is this all of your family?”

“On Tyr. I have relatives on Mars and Earth.”

“Have they ever been threatened?”

“No, just my wife.”

“How were the bars’ delivered?”

“A package would come, with some random item in it along with one bar. They only sent one at a time, about every 2 weeks. She had to eat the whole thing.”

“What did you do for them?”

“Illegal things,” he said, lowering his head. “My wife had no part in it, nor my children. Only I did.”

“Does your wife know?”

“Not the specifics. I wanted to shield her from it all.”

“What specifically did you do?”

“Mostly forgeries. Economic transactions, currency transfers. All local stuff…nothing touching Star Force’s systems. I didn’t have any access codes to those. Every now and then they’d come to me with something they wanted done, always at a random time. So long as I complied they let me and my family live in peace.”

“Why didn’t you report it to security?”

Ira swallowed hard. “They killed one of my coworkers to make a point. They told me who, then the next day she died in an accident. I knew I couldn’t risk telling anyone.”

“In return for full disclosure and assisting us with backtracking your forgeries I’ll agree to relocate you and your family, complete with new identities, to a Star Force colony far from here.”

“If you can guarantee our safety?”

“I’ll take you somewhere they can’t go,” Jet promised.

Ira seemed to hesitate, then started bobbing his head.

“Yes…ok, yes. I agree. How soon can we go? My wife too, I assume?”

“Your wife will have to be purged of the tracer first, but she’ll go as well. You’ve got 15 minutes to get the four of you packed,” Jet said pointing a finger at the bedrooms. “Leave anything non-essential behind.”

“Thank you,” Ira said, bolting out of his seat and heading over to his children, though he made sure to keep clear of Jet by a few feet as he passed him by. He grabbed both of their small hands and walked them over to their rooms, whispering to them as they asked him questions, telling them they were about to take a trip.

Jet put his helmet back on, then walked out to where the guards were waiting. “I need the quickest secure route to the spaceport. The Word may try to take him out in transit if they’re keeping a close watch, so I want clear hallways ahead and behind us. Pull in as many men as you need…so long as you can trust them.”

“You think there are traitors among us?”

“Possibly. I’ll accompany the package. You secure the route…and get it done within the next 15 minutes. After that we’re heading out, even if I have to take them off the grid to do it.”

“I’ll have it done for you in 10, sir.”

“Good…and don’t call me sir.”

8

June 22, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Glasir

A commercial transport, twice the size of a Dragon-class dropship, descended from orbit fighting Glasir’s deep gravity well enroute to the primary spaceport in the Star Force colony simply designated as ‘City 2.’ It landed slowly, extending numerous skids as it set down in the nitrogen-rich atmosphere on an exterior pad. It was one of many newer models produced by Star Force’s competitors, and was capable of making slow jumps between planets in the same system, forgoing the need to use dropships to load/unload orbital starships that accomplished the same task.

Star Force, meanwhile, had been sticking with their familiar dropship designs and gradually upgrading their gravity drives, so that now a trip from planet to moon didn’t require a starship, and while it was technically possible to travel between planets, efficient travel would require a larger gravity drive than the craft fielded. Star Force had instead pushed their production of basic, cheap interplanetary transports of far greater size for the dropships to transfer cargo to/from that would remain purely starships.

That was the more economical route, but for some midlevel haulers and independent operators the one-ship fits all duties platform was preferable, giving Star Force’s competitors a small niche in the market that the mega corporation didn’t care to directly compete in, making the Juniper-class transport setting down in the Star Force spaceport a fairly common sight.

There wasn’t as much private commerce within Star Force colonies as national or independent ones, but there was still a fair amount of open market trade where the basic necessities were already covered by location production sources. Clan colonies were a bit more reclusive, but they also allowed for people and cargo to come and go as they chose, with many non-Star Force businesses operating out of Star Force worlds, necessitating that the design of the shipyards be able to accept not only Star Force-produced craft, but their competitors’ versions as well…hence the large, open air landing field.

Given the unlivable atmospheric conditions Glasir’s spaceports were internal, with the atmosphere being kept at bay by energy fields that the dropships could pass through, but for the exterior landing pads there were subsurface tunnels running out to small bunkers scattered about like boulders on the otherwise smooth, flat plain…each of which contained an array of modular shield generators that would extend a bubble of normal atmosphere out to mate with the loading doors on the large transports, or in lieu of that extend smaller physical tubes out to connect gangways to the large ships’ airlocks.

Today the shields were to be used, and once the pilot had set the juniper down in the correct position five tiny arms reached out from the bunker to the hull of the transport forming the outline of the shield conduit, then they powered up starting at the base and extended their shield walls out between them along with a plug to push out the bad atmosphere similar to an aquatics’ shield column.

The arms glowed blue once the seal had been established, giving the offloading crews a visual indicator that all was safe, then the main cargo door/ramp detached from the ship and pivoted down exposing a cavernous cargo bay…out of which walked a half dozen passengers, followed by a procession of cargo lifters carrying crates.

The six men dressed in civilian clothes walked into the bunker and ducked out a personnel exit that led them directly to the city interior with only a small security checkpoint to pass through, given that they’d arrived on a non-Star Force flight. Three corporate employees, one personnel division and two security were seated behind a protective clear wall within the hallway, allowing a narrow walkthrough scanning tunnel as the only way past.

The first man went through cleanly, then began to deal with the dark blue uniformed attendant who required his ID. As he reached into a pocket and brought out his identification card the second man in line came through the scanner and waited in line.

When the third came through and set off the device, all hell broke loose.

The first man grabbed the attendant and smashed his head into the table while the second simultaneously jumped up and over the counter, rushing the pair of guards…both of whom were wearing stinger pistols in hip holsters. The Word operative kicked one of the gold/white uniformed men back into the wall while wrenching the other’s arm out away from his body as he reached for his weapon…then the man who’d set off the sensor leaned over the counter where the attendant was pinned down face first and aimed a plasma pistol at the nearest guard, shooting him at a range of 2 meters.

The Word operative swung the other guard around and into the firing line, with him being dropped just as easily, never having a chance to draw his pistol. The first man released the attendant, who also caught a plasma lance to the chest as the other men came through the sensor tunnel, all of them setting it off, then they passed out weapons and body armor to the first two men who made them disappear inside their loose clothing before the six walked out into the city drawing a few startled scares and screams, but once they split up and got into the pedestrian flow they quickly disappeared amongst the masses, using a small scanning device to locate the reflectivity tag within the city.

Agent woke up in his bed…not a prison bed, but his bed back in his apartment on Tyr. He blinked his eyes, not seeming to get them fully open. He was groggy, and he found the sensation familiar. As his mind began to process more and kick off some of the sleep drunkenness faster than his eyes, he remembered going through this before and wondered why he wasn’t sleeping right.

Still unable to get his vision completely clear he sat up and swung his legs over the side of his bed, hoping that would wake him up further but it did not. Resigning to work himself out of his stupor he stood up and went about his morning routine of shaving, showering, and receiving a delivery at 8:32 on the spot. He went to the door, now freshly dressed in a blan set of civilian clothes, and accepted the warm breakfast packet with a smile and tipped the delivery man.

He locked the apartment door behind him and went back into his small dining area and sat down on the half table sticking out of the wall just below a vid screen that held daily news broadcasts, but his eyes were so bleary that he couldn’t make them out, not that he cared anyway. He opened the box and felt the steam rise up from a plateful of eggs, two pieces of toast, and five strips of synthetic bacon, given that Brazil didn’t allow the sale of meat, taking after Star Force’s protocol like a whimpering pup following its mother around.

There was a disposable fork in the box and he set to eating the eggs as he reached for his sunglasses that he’d left on the table. He slid them on and the genetic recognition software confirmed his identity and activated the built in HUD and wireless receiver that allowed him to tap into The Word’s private information net.

He blinked his eyes again, trying to make out the data that popped up but only got a few words…then seeing those his mind seemed to wake up a bit and more text flowed, along with several data graphs that he’d been looking at the other day. As he ate he ran through a list of projects he’d been keeping tabs on, finding no new updates.

That was strange, he remembered, because he was supposed to have gotten word back from Operative Alpha 32 last night. Even if he got delayed he should have logged in early this morning.

Agent’s eyes flashed over to the news vids, wondering if his kidnapping attempt had been unsuccessful. Even if he’d been killed, word of that sort of thing usually made the news, and he could think of no other reason why he wouldn’t have reported in.

Then something in his mind clicked, and he checked the updates feed again, finding not one new piece of information.

He pulled his sunglasses off and looked directly at the video screen…finding himself unable to make out anything other than a wibbly wobbly picture that had no detail, only a familiar sound and images, such as the news desk. Agent focused hard on it, then just as he was about to realize it wasn’t real he blacked out, returning to a dreamless rest as Nathan removed his fingers from the man’s forehead.

He sighed, standing up from the head of the cell bunk and walking back out past where the containment shield usually would emit. It was shut off at the moment, but Nathan tagged it back on as soon as he was on the other side, then checked the wall clock, seeing that he had 3 more minutes until it was time to wake him and start the interrogation cycle all over again, meaning he wasn’t going to have a chance to run another mental simulation.

He’d gotten fairly proficient at it, not just because of the experience he was gaining working on Agent and the other Word prisoners, but because he was becoming familiar with the way this man’s mind worked. Normal interrogation methods had been almost completely ineffective on him. He wouldn’t respond to deal making, logic, intimidation, lying, flattery, insults, or any of the other mind games Star Force typically employed to glean information out of prisoners.

Unlike unsavory intelligence agencies, Star Force didn’t rely on torturing prisoners to gain information, rather both Star Force security and the Archons relied on mechanical and eyes-on reconnaissance to gather data, with anything gained from prisoners being extra, and usually suspect. They could trust their own eyes and sensors, but what an individual chose to tell them was not so easy to swallow if they couldn’t confirm it, which was why the information they were getting from the rest of The Word operatives and associates was being treated as leads rather than facts.

That said, the Archons did employ a few physical prods where the security division didn’t, one of which was self-imposed sleep deprivation. Recently the Archons had been keeping Agent awake round the clock, with them taking shifts talking with or to him…though aside from Nathan he rarely spoke to any of them. When he would begin to nod off they’d poke him or shake his shoulders, nothing violent, but just enough to keep him awake until he agreed to ‘earn’ his sleep by doing workouts.

2 miles a day at sub 8:00 pace got him 6 hours of sleep, which David had been running him through, both as guard and pace keeper when he took him over to the track, which other Archons and personnel were simultaneously using. Agent had found that odd, but given that David never got more than a few meters away from him at any time there was no real security issue to deal with. What could have been mistaken for sloppiness actually worked to reinforce Star Force’s dominance over The Word, for it became clear that neither David nor anyone else on the track was concerned about the skinny stick that was waddling around the track at pedestrian pace.

That almost seemed to embarrass Agent, but if he wanted to sleep he had to do the workouts, so once a day he’d go over to the track with David and get his 8 laps in, then shower in the Star Force locker rooms nearby before being brought over to the interrogation/conference rooms for another round of questions/lectures by varying individuals. He’d have to stay awake despite the powerful urge to nap until they were finished, with his meals brought in, then he’d get to go back to his cell and sleep…only to be woke up before he was truly rested, meaning he was carrying some lingering fatigue with him, something the Archons were intimately acquainted with.

That fatigue had loosened his mind, if not his lips. No longer was there a solid wall of resistance within the man’s conscious thoughts. It was sagging a bit, having to compete with his wobbly head…and if he refused to run the workouts he’d be even worse off being sleep deprived, so either way it was working on him in a way Agent had not anticipated.

Actually, Nathan had learned that Agent had undergone resistance training to interrogation, including sleep deprivation, which was why the man wanted to avoid it at all costs, knowing how it would affect his mental state. Star Force would never subject someone to it unless they had an out, but in this case the out was working more against Agent than he realized, all because the man had never done much physical training before and his mind was being inundated with new sensations and stresses, along with his body, whose hamstrings, back, and shins were quite sore.

Nathan found that amusing, but it also tied up more mental power that Agent couldn’t use to hold his mind clenched up. During interrogation sessions he was still hard to read, but there were a few slivers of memories that he and the other Archons had pulled in response to questions, mainly due to the fact that his normally quick reacting mind had slowed due to his lingering fatigue and there were reactive thoughts breaking through into the Archons’ psionic range for a second or two before he could lock them down.

Using those tidbits Nathan had begun constructing mental simulations and feeding them to Agent as he woke up from one of his 6 hour stints…but he didn’t let him fully return to consciousness. He kept him in a semi-dream state where he could access his mind, but not enough for the man’s senses to interfere with the fiction he was feeding him. In the beginning the simulations hadn’t lasted long before Agent saw through them, but each time Nathan gathered more information and used it in later sessions, making a more complete scenario that kept the man inundated with normalcy for a longer period of time.

It also helped that after the workouts Agent was butt tired, so when he went to sleep he released all his mental walls and was truly out of it until he woke up. By keeping him from reaching that point Nathan had access to his surface thoughts without any resistance until he started to suspect something, such as when the news vids were unreadable. That had been necessary, for when Nathan had replayed old versions from the man’s memory he caught on pretty quick, and newer ones that Nathan had watched couldn’t be projected with enough clarity, given that the Archon’s skills in this department were still limited.

He could only project a small range of images, so he had to use Agent’s own memories and allow him to draw on them while the Archon changed small things.

When the clock reached the completion of Agent’s 6 hours, down to the second, Nathan hit the buzzer that woke the man up in a start, with the sudden shock shaking off any remainder of the ‘dream’ he’d just gone through, though Nathan doubted any of it had remained after how deep he’d sunk the man back into unconsciousness…though it didn’t hurt to be thorough.

“Wakey, wakey,” he said with a smile as Agent reached up and put a hand on his forehead as he sat up, clearly feeling the effects of continuous days of training. His body probably needed 10-12 hours of sleep to adjust to the stresses, so only 6 was leaving him fried even when he woke…though not sleep deprived, for his eyes cleared quickly enough and he got his feet back under him and stood up, waiting for Nathan to lower the shield.

He glanced at the clock as Nathan removed the energy barrier. “Punctual as always.”

“Workout time,” Nathan said, motioning him forward. Agent sighed and followed him out and down the row of cell blocks, each of which had a wall and door separating them from the hallway so the prisoners couldn’t see or hear each other, keeping with Star Force’s prisoner isolation policy.

Nathan escorted him out of the security station and into the city where he handed him over to David, who then took him through the semi-crowded streets over to the track, almost daring him to try and escape.

When they came back Nathan was waiting in the interrogation room, having his own breakfast tray at one end of the table and Agent’s opposite his…with the Archon’s being stacked up three times as high with foodstuffs.

“What’d you finish in today?” he asked as Agent walked over and sat down without preamble.

“15:57,” he said, looking at his tray, then at Nathan’s. “I must admit, I am beginning to understand your affinity for sugar,” he revealed, taking a bite into an iced muffin.

“Finally making some progress,” Nathan smiled as if he was a buddy rather than an enemy, chewing into a long sugar stick.

“Are you Archons always this sore?”

“No.”

“Then it appears I must adapt further,” he said, taking a small swig of water while Nathan gulped his, having gotten his own morning workout in before his ‘dream’ session with Agent.

“I’ll swap you training advice for Word secrets,” he offered.

“I’m not that sore.”

“Yet,” Nathan smirked before sinking his teeth into a long donut, twitching halfway through the bite as his earpiece chirped, though only loud enough that he could hear it. That was odd, because they weren’t supposed to be disturbed during interrogation sessions.

All the smirk disappeared out of his face as he stood up, dropping the donut in his hand back onto the tray and quickly chewing what was in his mouth.

Agent noticed, and Nathan’s smirk seemed to migrate its way over to his face, though he didn’t say anything, but he did lock eyes with the Archon.

Nathan frowned even deeper as he telepathically sensed minds nearby moving about in an agitated state, with one disappearing entirely.

He stepped over to a shelf and grabbed a set of handcuffs, then ran over to the end of the table and pulled Agent out of his chair, binding his hands behind him.

“You could at least let me finish breakfast,” he said sarcastically, but offered no resistance.

“Stay put,” Nathan said, shoving him back down into his chair before running out the door.

9

When David dropped off Agent he didn’t stick around, instead leaving the security station and heading towards the city’s small Archon sanctum to get his own workouts in before coming back and working on some of the lower level operatives. He’d been making progress with some of them, and two had already cracked, accepting deals in exchange for information. Altogether the bits and pieces of mostly unconfirmed intel were painting a picture of The Word’s operations on Tyr, but the most valuable bits were coming from Agent, due almost entirely to Nathan’s efforts.

They knew this Agent hadn’t been the only one operating on Tyr, but rather one of three. This one’s ‘name’ was number 7. He was responsible for operations within the city’s populace, rather than the Word’s infrastructure. He’d been recruited at least 30 years ago, and had done some very basic fitness training to increase his longevity…but more so in recent years as The Word tried to ascertain the source of Star Force personnel’s longevity, though they still didn’t fully buy the training angle.

Nathan had uncovered more than two dozen operations The Word had previously conducted, or were in the process of conducting when the Tyr operation began, giving Green Team some leads that David had the others tracking down, leaving only him, Nathan, Lio, and Axe to lead the interrogations, though they had the support of the local security force and the scattering of Archons assigned to the city.

David was 50 meters out from the security station when a group of Regulars came rushing out behind him, running towards the nearest elevator…with one of them flagging him down and lagging behind as the first few disappeared into an open car.

“What’s going on?” he asked, running over to them.

“The spaceport has been compromised. More than 100 enemy troops have broken through and are working their way to city control.”

“Who?” David asked as the next five armored security guards claimed the next car, leaving four times that number waiting in line.

“Don’t know. They’re wearing armor we don’t recognize.”

“I’ll meet you there,” David said, having heard enough and sprinting off through the pedestrian crowd that so far hadn’t been told there was an invasion underway. As he wove his way between the clusters of people enroute to the Archon armory where he’d stashed his armor and weapons he tapped his earpiece and filled in the other three members of Green Team on what was happening.

As he was doing that and the bulk of the security station’s forces were deploying, along with troops from multiple stations across the city as well as the small defense garrison, the six Word operatives emerged from the crowd and slipped in the front doors of the station, pulling out their weapons at the last moment and gunning down the lone guard that remained along with two attendants before scrambling inside and fighting through those personnel in the building that responded to the weaponsfire, enroute to the reflectivity marker in Agent’s body that had been exposed when the time-sensitive blocking chemical had run its course.

Nathan ran out into the hallway that stretched the length of the interrogation rooms, or rather the rooms that had been repurposed to handle that function. He kept a lock on Agent’s mind to insure that he did in fact stay put all the while sensing a beehive of activity a couple levels below him near the stairwell. One of the minds disappeared, meaning they either dropped into a very, very deep unconsciousness and the output of their mental processes dipped below his detection range, or all mental activity ceased, meaning someone had just died.

Ahead of him an armored Regular stepped out of a side room and headed towards the stairs ahead of Nathan and the Archon let him go ahead, given that he was both unarmed and unarmored. When they got down to the level below them two lances of plasma fire shot past the Regular, with a third hitting him in the shoulder of his dirty white armor as he fired back with his stinger pistol.

Nathan tracked the nearby minds and sent Fornax blasts into each of them in sequence, knocking them off balance and allowing the Regular to close range while he waited on the stairs out of the firing line. He felt the minds intermix and clicked on his Pefbar while maintaining the Fornax blasts so he could see through the wall as the Regular engaged the men hand to hand, using their own bodies to block the firing lines of the others as he took another plasma hit to his armor.

Wobbling as they were, two of the attackers charged forward and used their mass to try and tackle the Regular, but the longtime veteran smacked one aside and held the other at bay, punching into his chest and knocking him backwards, but the man came away with his stinger pistol, leaving the Regular only his armored body to fight with.

Wisely the Regular stepped forward and grabbed one of the enemy’s dropped plasma pistols and shot the nearest operative as Nathan disabled him again. The man took a nearly pointblank hit to the chest and the Regular twisted to the side to shoot another one jumping for him…then the first man who’d been shot got back up and dove onto the Regular, knocking him and his compatriot down.

The others didn’t wait, but rushed on past with Nathan knocking down another two, unable to hold a Fornax field without also disabling the Regular, though he was about to do that anyway so he could get down to them and grab a weapon. He didn’t have time, for the operatives left the others behind and jumped up the stairwell coming around the corner to where Nathan was.

Disabling another he retreated back up to the next level and took cover behind the corner. When the first of them came up onto the platform and entered the hallway Nathan disabled him with a Fornax blast and punched into his chest with a stiffened palm, expecting to knock the man out with a single blow, then turn his attention to the next one coming up…but his hand hit something hard and he realized the men were wearing armor beneath their civilian clothing.

The momentum still knocked the man back, but not out. Those behind him slipped by, firing ahead of them into the hallway while Nathan was to the side, not allowing him to charge through to get to them. Had the doorway been narrower he could have ambushed them one at a time, but he could ‘see’ them coming up side by side half a second from shooting him.

He hit them both with a short range Fornax field as they pressed through and aimed at him, spraying the wall with plasma as he dove into a nearby door, smashing the latch down to open it as his shoulder hit it. He tumbled through, with the jerky arm of one of the men firing an erratic plasma blast that caught Nathan in the right calf.

He collapsed, but managed to turn it into a roll and came up on his knees facing the door, putting his left leg up and pressure on that foot, ready to jump in whatever direction he needed as the pain seared from the burnt hole in his otherwise disabled right leg.

His Pefbar and Ikrid tracking had disabled with the hit, so he didn’t know where the operatives were for a couple of seconds until no one came after him and he got a lock on their minds again, seeing that they were bypassing him and heading straight for Agent.

Standing up on his good leg and hopping towards the door he’d rammed through, he poked his head out into the hallway just as the Regular came up the stairway, his armor a mess of burn marks and holes.

“They’re after the prisoner,” Nathan said, pointing down the hallway just as one of the operatives came back out and sprinted towards them, firing plasma. Nathan ducked back inside the door and reached out with his mind to send a Fornax blast into the man just as the hallway behind him exploded, sending a concussion wave of compressed air and debris down towards them.

The operative took flight and the Regular was also knocked down, with Nathan being partially obscured but still knocked backwards by the blast and onto his butt, given that he couldn’t catch himself on his other leg. When he rolled himself over and up onto his hands and knees he saw the operative trading punches with the Regular through the doorway, then the commando slammed the enemy down onto his back and landed an elbow jab into his armored midsection.

“Unsung sparrows migrate underne…” Nathan heard the operative say, then thinking fast he pulled a Vader and telekinetically gripped the man’s throat, pushing in on his windpipe so he couldn’t speak the detonation trigger.

“Shoot him,” Nathan said, working hard to hold the pressure.

“He’s not going anywhere,” the Regular said, looking around for his stinger pistol.

“Quickly,” the Archon urged. “He’s a walking bomb and I can’t keep him silent forever.”

The Regular did a double take from inside his helmet, then saw the man’s plasma pistol nearby and dove for it, having to release the operative to do it.

“Un…” the man tried to say, massaging his tight throat with his hands as he stayed put, focusing entirely on the detonation phrase. The next moment a lance of blue shot out from the side of the doorway and hit the man in the chest, but the armor stopped most of it.

“Unsung spa…rrows…”

“In the head!” Nathan yelled.

Gritting his teeth, the Regular walked up to the man and brought the pistol within a foot of his forehead and pulled the trigger.

The operative flopped back onto the floor and Nathan was able to let go of his intermittent Lachka, which had been near to failing entirely. Down the hallway where Nathan couldn’t see a few other people came out of the interrogation rooms, walking over the rubble and trying to figure out what was going on. The Regular spotted them, saw that they weren’t loose prisoners, then walked in towards Nathan.

“How bad are you hit?” he asked, kneeling down in front of him.

“Forget me,” Nathan said, spitting out a bit of blood from where he’d bit his tongue when he got hit. “Where are the others?”

“Down below.”

“Find and kill them all,” Nathan said icily, but it was danger rather than vengeance driving the order. “If they speak a few words they can detonate…the triggers and explosives are inside their bodies. Kill them all, even if they’re unconscious, and do it quickly.”

The Regular swallowed hard, not liking the order. “I understand,” he said, retreating out the door to do what was necessary. He’d seen the blast a few rooms down and he knew what kind of destructive power the Archon was referring to, even if he wasn’t familiar with The Word’s Dargomir-laced Human bombs.

Nathan stayed put, looking down at his leg and wishing he hadn’t. There was a hole burnt straight through his calf muscle, leaving a charred little tunnel that was seeping a lot of blood. He knew if he tried to stand on it he wouldn’t be able to, and would further shred the muscle in the attempt.

David was too far away to hear the explosion, already having gotten most of the way to the armory when it went off. Once he got there, into his armor, and back out to where the fighting was happening it was mostly over, with only a few roaming Word troops left in play, and those were being hunted down by closer teams than him, leaving the Archon little to do other than sort through the bodies, almost all of which were the enemy’s. Even with the element of surprise, Star Force’s security teams and a pair of Archon adepts that had been within response range had torn through the invaders quite efficiently, making him wonder what they had been attempting to accomplish.

The question of who they were was quickly answered when he got a look at their plasma rifles…typical Word make, though the dark brown body armor, complete with helmet, was a new addition. It hadn’t done much to stop the stingers though, for their stun energy had soaked right through, leaving most of those down merely unconscious, with security collecting their weapons and bagging their new prisoners with hand and ankle restraints.

“What the hell were you guys after?” he said, getting on his helmet comm and contacting Green Team. “The incursion is all but over. Security is rounding up the strays. They’re Word troops, maybe here to go after the prisoners? I don’t know what they were after, but they didn’t get very far.”

“David…” Nathan responded, and he could tell by his strained voice that there was trouble. “They got a team through. Agent is dead and I’m hit. Their troops are walking bombs.”

“Where are you?” David asked, his mind racing at he looked out over all the prisoners lying in front of him. Before Nathan could even respond he pulled his stinger rifle off his back and started shooting the unconscious/semi-conscious prisoners, knowing full well all it would take is a handful of words to turn themselves into living landmines.

“Security station. Got a Regular cleaning up their team. Don’t let any more detonate, take them out with plasma.”

“We’ve got most unconscious and I’m going to make sure they stay that way,” David told him as he continued to pump out more rounds. “I’ll warn the remaining teams. How bad are you hit?”

“Plasma burn straight through the calf. I won’t be running anytime soon.”

“Hang tight and we’ll get you back to Earth.”

“I’m fine,” Nathan lied, “focus on the exploding bad guys please.”

“Already on it. Get back to you when we’re secure.”

Nathan grimaced, leaning forward onto his elbows and trying to hold his injured leg still as he stared down at the floor back towards his knees. Pushing past the pain he tried to slip into Sesspik mode if just to accelerate the scabbing process and cut down on the bleeding, which had now accumulated into a small puddle near his foot.

He turtled up into a ball and stayed put, doing quick mental checks of the surrounding area now and then, but otherwise focusing on numbing his mind against the pain and healing what little he could on his own.

The remaining Word troops were taken down without explosions before David could get out to any of the teams hunting them, then he ordered massive stinger hits on all the captives as he called in medical teams to do immediate surgery to remove their detonation triggers. The first few unconscious bodies they lugged over to the nearest medical station, however, didn’t have any.

In fact none of them did, making David wonder just who had gotten to the security station, killed Agent, and wounded Nathan. When he finally confirmed all the potential explosive enemies were duds he headed back over to the station and saw for himself the explosive damage, as well as the dead operatives that had yet to be removed, with the onsite medical personnel attending to the Star Force casualties first, including Nathan, who’d he’d already talked to outside on the way to a med bay.

“No armor,” he commented to a pair of Regulars standing guard nearby, having been redeployed from elsewhere to secure the now vulnerable station.

“Look under their clothing,” one of them suggested, having been onsite for longer than the Archon had.

David knelt down next to one that had a plasma burn in the side of the head and undid the buttons on his loose shirt. He got through two of them telekinetically, given his armored gloves weren’t so good at such tiny tasks, then just said to hell with it and ripped the shirt apart, revealing a form-fitting chest plate, not dark brown, but very pale tan that was a shade lighter than his skin.

“Pulled security away with a diversion, then came in with these walking bombs. Well played, you assholes,” David said as he stood up, looking around the lobby and heading for the stairs. He passed three other bodies on the way up, then saw a fourth at the end of the hall that led through the interrogation rooms…or what was left of the hall. As he turned the corner he saw that a huge section down on the left was gone, both walls, ceiling, and floor.

David walked down to the edge of that crater, seeing a pile of debris on the level below them where the junk had settled and deposited, marking the center of the blast zone…right where he’d dropped off Agent after his run not so long ago.

Most of the other Word prisoners were still alive, with only three having been killed in the blast. Most of the rest were in holding cells on lower levels. Two Star Force personnel had been killed, and a third badly injured, when they were hit along with the prisoners. The rest of the people on the interrogation level had survived, some with injuries, some unscathed. None of the prisoners had gotten away, given that security had already pulled a head count, meaning that this attack had been for one purpose and one purpose only.

To deny them access to Agent.

That told David a lot about their operational authority and knowledge…and how little they worried about what the rest of the prisoners might know. The Word could take the hits of their minor intelligence breaches, but they couldn’t risk an Agent being compromised.

While it had proven effective, it felt like a kneejerk reaction to David, for The Word had broken their cover and made a blatant attack on a Star Force facility, and in doing so they’d revealed the fact that they were not only a criminal organization with highly capable intelligence assets, but that they also had an army to call on, and in this system no less. There hadn’t been enough time to bring in men from Sol or elsewhere, meaning they’d accomplished this through local assets only.

David didn’t know for sure what it all meant, aside from the fact that their agenda now appeared to be a great deal more ambitious than stirring up public dissent. There was no way The Word could challenge Star Force on a military front, which begged the question what else were they up to?

Not having an answer to that worried David more than a fleet of warships. Those he knew how to fight, but an unseen aggressor with an unclear target was something virtually impossible to defend against, for you never knew when or where the strike was going to land.

10

August 1, 2430

Solar System

Earth

Davis stepped out of one of Atlantis’s many elevators and walked through a sparely crowded hallway up to the rotunda that held a broken circle of workstations staffed by half a dozen people, with the pedestrian walkways splitting around either side. In the center of those workstations were two security guards, an almost unnecessary gesture given that the public no longer had access to Atlantis, but they remained there just in case, guarding the rising staircase in the center that led up to Davis’s office above.

He passed through one of the breaks in the workstation ring, offering a few ‘hellos’ and ‘good mornings’ to his executive staff of gophers who stood ready to find, or find someone else to find, whatever he needed. They handled most of the mundane, repetitive duties associated with his position atop the Star Force ‘empire,’ allowing him to focus on new things and crises as they arose.

Davis passed between the security guards and climbed the twisting staircase two steps at a time, just having come from his morning workout. He knew the Archons pulled doubles, even triple workouts per day but he was doing well off of just one, and he preferred to get to it first thing in the morning…that way all the time spent sitting at his desk served as rest rather than stagnation.

When he got to the top of the stairs he walked out into a low sunrise visible through the panoramic 360 degree window that stretched the entire length around the perimeter of the circular office. His daily routine had him getting up before sunrise and running 4 miles at sub 6:50 pace, then a quartet of 150 meter strides kept under 30 seconds. He’d been doing that workout every morning for the past year and a half and knew it was time to make an upgrade, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

The pace and feel of the workout just seemed so natural to him now that it wasn’t a bother, more like stretching out his muscles every morning. He was debating between dropping down to 6:30 pace and hammering it out until he adjusted, or nipping it down to 6:45 and just eating up that little bit of improvement as he settled back into the routine. He was leaning towards the latter, but a part of him felt like hammering, so he was still undecided, which was why he was delaying making the change. Whatever he chose he was going to stick with it, so he wanted to be sure before he made the upgrade.

Davis walked over to his desk and activated the holographic displays as he sat down, with the top of his clear table/desk  sprouting colorful ‘objects’ that contained status reports, sales graphs, message bundles, and a host of other tools that he used to keep track of his ever growing corporation, which now spanned 73 star systems. Unfortunately they were still having to rely on couriers for communication between them, but the first test of their new interstellar transmitters was due to begin in less than a year, and if it succeeded they would be able to cut the weeks of message delay down to less than a day in most cases.

The Bsidd had finally gotten around to extending the Alliance network of communication relays out to Epsilon Eridani, giving them access to a flood of data that was then being relayed back via ship to Earth. The Archons operated out of Corneria for the most part, so military intel rightfully went there, but Davis was also keeping tabs on the war effort and had welcomed the illumination provided on the fog of war.

That said, if their own transmitter prototype performed as expected, they’d have the ability to transmit data far faster than the alliance…though at a significantly reduced range, meaning they’d have to string together a lot of relays, but they’d finally be able to keep in direct contact with each system, even all the way out to Retari where Paul and several other trailblazers were battling it out with the lizards in what he’d been told, and shown, to be nearly an even fight.

Until then he had to rely on snail mail to get his updates, of which appeared on a specific screen…one that was flashing a level 4 notice.

Davis frowned and brought it up first, seeing a report generated by members of his staff downstairs after receiving information from numerous divisions within Star Force. They’d summarized it for him while including the link to the raw data, one of which he pulled up.

It was a YouTube video tagged as ‘Star Force’s assault on Tyr.’ As he watched he saw a drone cutter hovering over the city, filmed by some camera set outside on the barren moon’s surface. Then a missile sprang up from a topside launch port and arced over, coming down on the city and blasting a hole in the armored roof that sprayed out a plume of debris and bodies across the moon’s surface as the city’s internal air pressure fueled the destructive fountain.

Davis saw other videos tagged as related, and pulled up one that showed Archons setting up and releasing chemical weapons on the civilian population in order to neutralize security checkpoints. The plumes of smoke were recognizable to Davis, for he’d already seen their use from security camera footage taken from Tyr that had been included in both Green and Red Team team’s reports.

He pulled up other videos, listening to one analyze the attacks attributing it all to a hostile takeover by Star Force in response to some dispute with Brazil. Another said it was a test bed for Star Force’s new line of chemical weapons, and they’d needed to blow a hole in the city to evacuate the excess gas when some element of the mixture proved to be too powerful.

Other videos had snippets of the internal damage…bloody corpses resulting from the gas, plasma-burned Brazilian guards who’d died fighting off the Archons, and pictures of the explosively decompressed civilian bodies found inside the city after the patch in the hull had allowed atmosphere to be returned to the depressurized areas.

The footage was gruesome, and the comments being left on the videos were a mix of disbelief and justifiable outrage.

In addition to the raw videos that were exploding across YouTube, there were also news stories cropping up elaborating on what had, and was continuing to happen on Tyr. Given that the moon was in another star system, albeit a very close one, there was no way for the public in Sol to know what was going on over there save for the tidbits passing jumpships brought back and the tales from travelers who’d witnessed the events, few that there were.

The summary that his staff had put together indicated that these videos and stories were sprouting up all over the Sol internet with no known source, and that the public was reacting harshly. The major news networks had held off on reporting on the story, demanding to get Star Force’s explanation before they went public with it, but the groundswell was already happening and anyone who had ever had a doubt about Star Force’s integrity was now going to have evidence to back up that suspicion.

Davis knew that even without having to read the theoretical implications attached to the report. There had always been a lingering anti-Star Force movement, but it had never had any real teeth after the first century. Star Force had proven itself to be reliable, honest, and above all else the good guys that intervened to stop the bad…a beacon of hope and prosperity for Humanity.

The Word had been trying to diminish that with seemingly random sabotage, but now their aim was both obvious and effective. Even as he read through the report new items were being attached to it as the story continued to grow and spread around the system through the internet and mid-tier news agencies.

The reputation he’d built up over 400 years was being hacked apart in minutes, and he knew there was going to be a segment of the population that he’d never be able to convince otherwise. They’d throw their support to the nearly dead anti-Star Force crowd, giving them new life and resources…which The Word would no doubt gain from, in the form of a social wedge, at least, that they could subtly hammer into various cracks they discovered or would create.

Davis knew this would quickly turn into a nightmare if he didn’t jump on it. Some of the public was already lost, but 400 years of consistency wouldn’t be so idly abandoned by many, and they needed to know the truth before their minds could run wild with theories.

Touching a key on the edge of his desk he brought up a holographic keyboard and started tapping on the touchscreen tabletop, requesting immediate contact be made with the Brazilian ambassador. Then he sent a request to security’s intelligence division to have them break down the missile strike footage, which he knew to be phony, so they could get that out to the media as soon as possible. The Archons’ reports had indicated the hull breach was caused by an internal explosion of unknown origin, but given the camera set up outside he had no doubt The Word had killed all those people just for this photo op.

Star Force had succeeded in kicking The Word out of their sanctuary, but their enemy had turned that defeat into an advantage…and had probably been planning this ever since they’d infiltrated the moon, counting on the fact that Star Force would find them eventually.

Davis sent out many more messages, then got a response back from the Brazilian ambassador. He flipped on his office transmitter and stepped out from behind his desk, taking his place on the holopad.

“I’ve just seen the news reports,” Rodrigo said with a very displeased look on his face, “and I can assure you we had no knowledge of this.”

Davis waved off his concern with a swipe of his left hand. “I know you didn’t. This is The Word’s handiwork.”

The ambassador seemed relieved to hear that, though his scowl didn’t fade. “What can we do to assist you in battling this ridiculous propaganda?”

“It’s not all propaganda,” Davis said calmly. “Most of those images are real, I assume, just taken out of context. I intend to make a statement within the next few hours laying out what really happened, including your involvement. I’d have preferred to keep this confrontation with The Word private, but I no longer see how that’s possible. The people need to know the truth, regardless of how many supporters The Word might gain.”

“As you wish,” Rodrigo agreed. “I don’t like admitting how easily they stole Tyr away from us, but you’re correct in pointing out that we need clean air on this. Too many people have died, and now thanks to these brutes their deaths are visible to everyone. If we don’t explain who is at fault it will fall back on Brazil, and Star Force as well.”

“I’m not sure what The Word expects us to do, but I’m going to lay it all out there, including the sabotage they’ve been committing over the past years that you’re not aware of.”

Rodrigo raised an eyebrow. “May I ask?”

“Star Force doesn’t have industrial accidents,” Davis said flatly. “My people are too good for that.”

The ambassador sucked in a deep breath. “Perhaps it is best if you filled everyone in on what you know. Brazil would like to know what else they have been up to. Do you want us to issue a joint statement?”

“No, let me take the lead on this. Brazil can confirm what it likes after the fact.”

Rodrigo nodded. “I’ll get things moving on this end.”

Davis nodded and cut the transmission by stepping off the pad. The carpet resealed behind him as he headed back to his desk, but he didn’t sit down. He typed out one last message then headed for the stairs at a jog, wanting to get out ahead of this social revolution as much as he could.

“This looks like a movie to me,” Victor Anderson told his son as he watched one of the viral YouTube videos on a datapad, seeing the cloud of blue smoke billowing out from the canister, obscuring the Archons who’d set it off along with everything else a few seconds later as it reached the camera.

“No way, Dad. This stuff is everywhere. They even blew a hole in the city and vented the atmosphere. You can see the bodies coming out.”

“Why would Star Force do that?” Victor argued.

“I don’t know, but they did. It’s right here!”

“Don’t believe everything you see.”

He heard a noise from the kitchen and suddenly his wife walked into the living room where they were having their little family discussion. “Have you seen the news?”

“I’m showing it to him…he doesn’t believe it.”

“They killed over 100,000 people,” she said earnestly. “I really think it’s time you got a new job.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Victor said, trying to quell the rising tensions despite the fact that he was also concerned. “What does Star Force have to gain from attacking Brazil? More likely this is just some giant hoax to drum up YouTube views.”

“It’s on the regular news channels too,” his wife said, grabbing the remote and turning the vid screen on. When she did a press conference was being shown, with Davis center stage.

Victor frowned, realizing this had to be a lot more serious than he’d given his son credit for if the big man himself was addressing it.

“…which was when I sent an Archon team in to investigate the situation, probe the criminal element, and remove it from Tyr, returning the moon to Brazilian possession.”

“The Archons confirmed that the criminal organization responsible for the takeover was a familiar one. They call themselves The Word, though we know very little about them. Star Force has been hunting them down for over a decade in response to a number of sabotage attempts and successes against our infrastructure. Their personnel are very elusive, and have no qualms with committing suicide to avoid capture. The Archons managed to take several of them alive on Tyr, and we’re still in the process of interrogating them, though their organizational structure appears to be cellular, with each operative only knowing what is necessary for their mission. Thus we are having a difficult time assessing their full capabilities.”

“The takeover of Tyr was a far bolder step that we’d expected of them, but they surpassed it when they began slaughtering civilians dressed in Archon armor costumes. A lot of you have already seen those vids. They’re little more than actors engaging in real manslaughter. All our troops sent into Tyr were equipped with nonlethal weapons. We didn’t know who was a member of The Word and who was a loyal Brazilian security officer following orders from superiors he thought were legitimate.”

“We stunned and captured the local Brazilians, all the while a replacement force was being sent from Mars to take control of the moon. They didn’t know any more than we did who had been compromised or not, so they sent in an entirely new administration and security force, then began to sort through the local personnel, determining who they could trust and who they could not.”

“While Star Force was fighting and stunning the local population, Word operatives used the chaos to their advantage, staging raids dressed as my people and recording them to create this propaganda. To my current knowledge the deaths you are seeing on those vids are real, but the identity of the attackers has been faked.”

“The missile strike on the city never happened. Star Force had a warship on hand to prevent any ships from leaving. We wanted to contain The Word to the city rather than allow some of them to escape. The explosion that occurred originated from the interior, probably also The Word’s doing, given that the camera that recorded the explosion was neither Star Force nor Brazilian in origin. We believe it was placed there before the assault, along with explosives in the emergency shelter, so they could record their deaths and offer them up to the public as proof of Star Force’s imagined misdeeds.”

“Both Star Force and Brazil wanted to root out this criminal organization quietly, but given their recent wave of propaganda that is no longer an option. But whereas we’ve been keeping quiet in order to hunt down the leads we’ve had, so too has The Word kept knowledge of itself quiet, and that ends today. Following this broadcast I am releasing files of the varying crimes The Word has committed, ranging from thefts, to kidnappings, to murders…bank fraud, smuggling of contraband, copyright violations. You’ll get the full list, but be aware that these are only the activities that we’ve discovered, and there are probably far more that we have not.”

“This is the enemy we face. They know they cannot stand up to us militarily or economically, so they are trying to strike at us through other means. Whether or not you will hear from them now that I’ve outed them, I do not know. Regardless, we are making progress in hunting them down and will continue to do so, but I will tell you this…as a few of you already have heard by word of mouth. Shortly after the reclamation of Tyr, there was an assault on a Star Force city on nearby Glasir.”

“That attack was accomplished by The Word’s private army. We do not know how large it is, or where they are based, but they attacked one of our spaceports in full combat gear and were quickly subdued. We have them now as prisoners, but while their attack seemed to be futile, it was in fact a ruse to pull security away from the area where we were holding The Word prisoners from Tyr, including one of their leaders we managed to capture.”

Davis hesitated, and you could see the fire in his eyes. “Six men dressed as civilians attacked the holding area and fought their way in to where the prisoners were being held. Once they found their leader, they detonated an explosive they were carrying, killing him so that we could not glean any further secrets from The Word.”

“The other 5 were killed before they could detonate themselves…and yes, we did lose several Star Force personnel in both the attack and the explosion.”

“So there you have it…the truth. I know many of you will believe what you want to believe, and honestly I don’t care about you. I’m standing here explaining this to the rest of you so that you will have the truth available to you in this war of lies The Word is waging. These men are evil, and will do whatever they deem necessary to accomplish their agenda, and what that is we still don’t fully know. They are secretive, intelligent, amoral, and dangerous. They thrive on corruption and deceit, which is why it is important that you know the truth.”

“I will say that The Word isn’t the only threat out there, and there are many that Star Force deals with without you ever knowing about it. We don’t do this to hide it from you, but because you don’t need to know. This isn’t a game or entertainment or a hobby. This is real people’s lives being affected by evil men, and Star Force exists to hunt them down and stop them…not to record it in vids to play for the rest of you on the news.”

“I would have preferred to have dealt with The Word quietly, but they have begun to wage a different kind of war. They strike at us with lies…thus we strike back with the truth.”

On that seemingly abrupt end Davis stepped out of camera, leaving only the Pacific ocean backdrop as seen from a tower in Atlantis in place for a few seconds, then the news anchors reappeared and began to weigh in on the revelations.

“Damn,” Victor whispered.

“Cover-up,” his son declared instantly.

The father pointed a stern finger at his son. “You shut your mouth. Sean Davis is the most trustworthy person on this planet. If he says Star Force didn’t do this, then that’s the truth.”

“Whatever,” his son said, walking him off.

“I don’t know what to think,” his wife said, sitting down next to him as they continued to watch the newsfeeds, which were just now being updated with the data the Director had promised would follow.

Victor glared at her. “Who are you willing to trust more, a corporation with a track record 400 years long or some anonymous poster on YouTube?”

“If Star Force isn’t responsible, how could they have let this happen?” she countered.

Victor turned away from her gaze, looking back at the vid screen. “Davis said this Word was dangerous.”

“It’s Star Force,” she countered. “They can defend us against aliens, but not some tiny criminal organization?”

“Who managed to take over an entire moon without anyone noticing.”

“That’s just my point!”

“It wasn’t a Star Force moon,” Victor said, huffing. “If the damn Brazilians can’t hang onto their own territory that’s not Star Force’s fault!”

She raised her right hand, forestalling any other comments. “I’m not trying to fight, I just don’t know what to believe right now.”

“Star Force wouldn’t do this.”

“I wish I could be sure of that.”

Victor didn’t say anything after that, nor did his wife. They just sat watching the list of alleged Word crimes being displayed and commented upon by the news anchors.

Two weeks later the first public broadcast from The Word broke its way onto the internet, with an unremarkable man laying out their mandate to return Humanity to its true purpose while defending it against outside threats. The man, who talked very much like an average everyday citizen, pointed out that they did not want to destroy Star Force, but that its leaders had lost their way and must be replaced, for the organization itself was key to Humanity’s survival and prosperity…and that they were exposing the corruption and murderous vein within the mega corporation so that the rest of society could cleanse it.

From that day on the confrontation between Star Force and The Word would be a public one, with the latter gaining followers by the droves, managing to unite the anti-Star Force sentiment in a way no nation had succeeded in doing before and creating a true and almost instantaneous split within Human society.

The sides had been laid out, and every nation, corporation, and person was rushing to pick one or another, drawing in old vendettas to the new social battlefield and escalating the tension far more than The Word could ever have done on its own.

Paradigm

1

December 2, 2430

Lejat System

Endor

“Command says we have contacts heading our way,” Reggie said in a whisper inside the surface blind that concealed the entry point to the Canderian base.

“Details?” Vitor asked.

“No transports this time. The lizards sent a battle fleet to check up on their missing ships. We’ve got a cruiser incoming escorting a hoard of kirbies.”

“Damn,” Vitor said, his eyes scanning the forest outside through a slit of a one-way window. “What are our orders?” he asked the Evocati.

“Others will handle the big boys. We jump the kirbies same as before.”

“And hope the cruiser doesn’t blast our asses to oblivion in the process?”

“Pretty much,” Reggie said as a few more Canderians in green camo armor, complete with the force field faceplates they preferred over the Archon/Knights’ full helmets…or at least on a planet like this, with breathable atmosphere and plenty of trees for their enemy to hide behind, which was why they liked their ears exposed so they could clearly hear every little creak and snap nearby.

“Have the Ninkis been alerted?”

“I assume so,” Reggie said as he walked to the door that was covered only in a concealment hologram that he couldn’t see out of, nor could anyone see in through. He clicked on his headset comm. “Check in.”

Vitor clicked his own comm, sending a signal out to his Evocati that registered his readiness on his HUD. Once all 42 members of his Evocaton showed up Reggie led them outside into the evergreen forest as they headed away from their concealed, subsurface base towards the Ninkari village/city off to the southwest.

None of the Canderians talked along the way, not only because they needed all the breath they had for running through the underbrush that continually tried to slow them down with a mixture of vines, leaves, and thorns that dragged on their armor, but because they knew better than to make any extra noise than necessary, given that their voices would carry out of their partial helmets, as opposed to the Star Force variety that was fully concealed.

The Canderians ran at just shy of a sprint across ground that held no trails…for they could lead back to their base. The trailblazers’ orders had been specific: Protect the primitive Ninkari population of the planet, and do so without drawing further lizard attention here.

That was a new exercise for the military civilization, for they lived out in the openness of space and fought in a similar manner…though as the years passed they were getting better and better at operating on planets, and in this case, hiding on one.

Or rather beneath it. Everywhere the Ninkari had a hut city there was a Canderian base nearby so that they could react quickly when the lizards arrived. They’d been on the planet a quarter of a century, and in that time the lizards had sent ships to harvest the natives 8 times, each of which was thwarted by Canderous. Apparently they’d finally got tired of sending off ships that never returned, and now they had come in force to see what had been happening to them.

It wasn’t the first time they’d investigated. Many times the lizards had sent a jumpship with cruisers attached in system to find their missing ships…and found nothing. No ships insystem, lizard or otherwise. No debris from where they might have been destroyed, in orbit or on the surface. Canderous had been good about leaving no traces and had apparently dumbfounded the lizards. Now they had sent a fleet to investigate and harvest at the same time, meaning they weren’t going to be able to operate with the same methods.

But that wasn’t Reggie’s concern. What happened upstairs wasn’t his department. His was to keep the lizards from picking up any of the Ninkari from the city over the small ridge ahead of them, while other Canderian units were doing the same elsewhere. Trick of it was, there were over 120 million Ninkari on the planet, thanks largely to the fact that Canderous hadn’t let any of them be harvested. They reproduced quickly, and were expanding so fast that Star Force had to help them plan out their settlements to avoid starvation.

The ‘Ninkies,’ as they’d come to be called, were semi-intelligent, compared to Humans anyway, and Star Force had assigned a team of liaisons to the planet that had managed to construct a simple language they could use to communicate with each other, given their native language was a series of barks and chirps that Humans couldn’t well reciprocate, and on top of that it was a muddled mess of syntax. The new language was much more efficient, and gave the Humans a way of communicating with the Ninkari, who’d come to see them as both guardians and teachers.

Thanks to that relationship being established, shelters had been dug underneath the Ninkari cities, giving at least some of them a safe zone to run to when/if the lizards came back. Reggie appreciated that, for the less of them out in the open the better. Thankfully the lizards wanted to take them alive, or they could just have blasted away at their huts from the air rather than landing collectors on the ground and going after them with tranquilizers and nets.

On foot Reggie knew it’d take them 11 minutes to get to the edge of the village, given the number of times they’d practiced making the overland trek, but finding exactly where the lizards were going to set down would be a matter of luck, though he knew they preferred wide open landing zones and this city was nestled up into the thick forest, leaving only a handful of spots he hoped they’d go to…otherwise they might get to the Ninkies before Canderous did.

The Canderians had debated linking an underground tunnel with the village and using it to quickly get there when needed, but they wanted their base to not be connected in a way that the lizards might find it, else they could draw a military response that would further endanger the locals. They had to be ghosts in this, and to do that they had to keep out of the village until needed, come in, hit, and disappear before anyone could check up on what was going on.

Inside his helmet’s HUD, which was projected via hologram just inside the shield that covered his face, Reggie got updated tracking data from the passive sensor stations set all across Endor’s surface. They weren’t as good as active stations that sent out a sensor beam, but they still provided them a heads up via the disturbance in the atmospheric reentry as well as visual spotting. Other than that the lizard tech was hard to pick up on sensors anyway, given their signal absorbing armor plating.

Reggie saw that there were dozens of signals heading towards their village, all of which he assumed were kirbies. Elsewhere there were other contacts, visible on his battlemap when he zoomed out, heading for other settlements, meaning there were hundreds coming down from orbit to this region of the planet…and who knew how many more elsewhere, making this the largest harvesting attempt to date, giving his Evocaton more targets to deal with than he’d expected.

But this is what they’d trained for and he was eager to take it to the lizards, so as his six Triarill came over the crest of the low ridge and the mass of wood huts came into view, obscured by some tall tree clumps but otherwise out in the open and vulnerable to attack, the Canderian accelerated his pace on the downhill as he issued deployment orders, tagging various locations within the village on his battlemap via waypoints.

The six Triarill that made up his Evocaton split, with one staying with him and heading for the largest open area available, which was just this side of the village center. The other Triarill, each comprised of 6 Munifex and one Triarii, diverged slightly as the line of soldiers broke apart as they listened for the sound of engines that they knew would be approaching soon.

Reggie hit the edge of the village first with the outlying huts, some of which were multiple stories tall, already having been evacuated. It wasn’t until his command Triarill was a quarter mile inside the perimeter did he come across any of the short, bristly Ninkies, passing them by as they huddled up together inside one of the larger huts, with one poking its narrow head out the wood slat door. The open air windows were also visible with the Ninkies’ green eyes that seemed to glow from the reflected sunlight.

As per Canderous’s previous instructions, the Ninkies were clearing the streets, which were little more than dirt paths winding in between various huts and trees, offering a varied battlefield with no linear geography. That favored close range combat, which the Canderians liked, but it also made it difficult to navigate to the hot spots and respond in a timely manner, giving the nature of the zigzaggy course one would have to run.

When Reggie passed one of the taller huts he pointed a finger towards it and one of his men veered off, going inside and climbing up to the top to act as a spotter/sniper. Rather than camping out in the structure itself, the Munifex climbed out onto the roof and jumped to the tree branches a meter away, then crawled up further into the pine-like needles, obscuring himself near the trunk and picking out a good viewing spot of the clearing that Reggie was headed to with the others.

They got there a couple of minutes before the first of the kirbies arrived, hearing their telltale hum of the lizards’ anti-grav engines. It wasn’t loud, but it did have a different pitch than Star Force tech, which was usually far more quiet. In truth the anti-grav propulsion was silent, but the cooling systems that kept the components from overloading and melting made the noise, and the larger the pull the more cooling was required.

The lizards liked using sensor-stealthed ships, but they didn’t care about noise levels at close range, so when the kirbies came overhead the Canderians could feel the hum in their bones, even though none had yet set down. A few hand signals from Reggie and his Triarill split up, with him taking position behind a tree on the edge of the clearing that was made up of pounded dirt around a water well the Ninkies had dug. It was no longer functional, given that Star Force had taught them how to make better ones that were indoors, but they’d asked the Ninkari to leave it in place so as to draw the lizards in…which it now was.

Three kirbies from the 10+ that flew overhead dropped down to make use of the exposed dirt, landing in a triangle around the well and hovering a meter off the ground as they opened their side hatches.

Suddenly a rocket zipped across the clearing and into the side of the nearest kirby, detonating within and killing most of the lizard troops waiting to come out. That detonation triggered a hail of plasma lances from around the perimeter as all 7 Canderians shot every scaled head that came into view.

Reggie nailed one in its protective vest, having hit low. That knocked it back into the hold, but it was shoved out again by those behind and it caught its balance upon landing, then scurried off to the side as a sniper shot from a lachar rifle nailed it in the head, coming down from a high angle. The Evocati held his position near the tree, lighting up the lizards pouring out with accurate plasma blasts as another two Canderians overlapped their fire with his own, mowing down all but six of the lizards that got free and scattered around behind or under the kirbies, giving them some cover.

Without him even having to order it one of the other two nearby Canderians sprinted out to the kirby and hopped up into the hold, disappearing from sight as he headed for the cockpit, intent on taking out the pilots. Reggie stayed put and dropped to the ground, holding his plasma rifle a couple of inches above the dirt and firing underneath the kirby at the lizards’ legs behind it.

He nailed three of the appendages, but one of the creepy crawlers took cover behind the well where he couldn’t target. Reggie scanned the area underneath the other two kirbies, finding another set of legs to shoot at, despite the further range…then one of the kirbies started climbing out of the clearing, attempting to run away while the other two were still on the ground.

Two rockets leapt out from different locations, one of which splattered shrapnel against the kirby’s shields. The second one breached the energy barrier and scarred the hull, but didn’t do much damage. As the cargo bay door resealed more rockets came up from the pair, blasting into the side and causing the kirby to keel over, coming back down into the side of the clearing and nosing into a hut where it grounded itself.

Another rocket followed, hitting the aft of the kirby and knocking out what anti-grav it had left, bringing the entire blocky ship crashing down to the dirt…whereupon one of the intact plasma cannons rotated around and started taking pot shots at the Canderians.

That reprisal didn’t last long, for a hail of plasma lances targeted the now shieldless battery and slagged the weapon, followed by the others that were visible on the half buried ship, though none of them returned fire, having had either their power feeds or control lines severed from the rocket damage.

The other two kirbies never fired a shot, having been boarded almost immediately upon landing. With their pilots dead they floated in place while the Canderians hunted down the last of the lizards outside, then signaled the all clear to Reggie.

“Open the door on the downed kirby,” he ordered, followed by another pair of rockets being launched into the side of the already damaged ship. After the smoke settled he could see a hole in the side, leading to the interior hold, which he hand signaled towards.

Two of his Munifex ran forward and hopped inside, going after the lizard pilots. A few moments later he got a sitrep over his comm.

“Lizards are down, one casualty. Ona took a couple hits to the chest on entry.”

“Is she fighting capable?” Reggie asked.

“Burns only,” the Canderian responded as the pair climbed back out the hole into the sunlight. As they did he could see the scorch marks on one of them, but as far as movement was concerned Ona didn’t seem too disabled.

“Retake positions around the perimeter. These might not be the last heading our way,” Reggie ordered as he ducked back behind the tree and in front of a hut, giving him a partially concealed position from where he could check up on the other Triarill via his battlemap and comm. When he did he noticed something much larger on approach.

“Everyone get under cover. We’ve got a cruiser nearby. Don’t let them see you.”

8 klicks away from the village, which held over 100,000 of the small Ninkari, a small patch of dirt in between the thick evergreen trees was covered in a thin layer of grass and weeds, soaking up the sunlight as a lizard cruiser floated its way over the forest, watching the kirbies as they spread out to take their living plunder. When the first signs of resistance sprouted the cruiser altered course, heading towards the signs of trouble while deploying fighters.

As it did that patch of grass suddenly took flight, ripping out from the ground around it as a concealed Canderian assault tower rose up above the treetops, powering up its weapons and defense shields as it targeted the enemy cruiser some 3 kilometers away, well within its firing range.

A cleansing beam reached out across the relatively short gap and punched straight through the lizards’ shields, tearing into the hull and drawing an almost immediate response from the wisps in the air. The lizard fighters wheeled about and headed for the tower as the cruiser slowly did the same, returning plasma fire as it came about that impacted and exploded the trees surrounding the turret, with only small pieces of the green fire getting through to the shields, which rebuffed them easily.

As the plasma continued to flow from the cruiser the forest around the tower was set afire, with the gap between the two targets clearing out and giving the lizards a better shot at the spindly Human construct. When the fighters got close they lit up the shields with tiny specs of green, all the while the anti-air defenses powered up and began firing rapid lachar blasts back at them from multiple cupolas.

The wisps dropped from the air like flies as the cleansing beam continued to cut into the lizard cruiser, then the turret’s plasma cannons came online as a shield generator on the cruiser was hit and a portion of its hull was exposed. Two blue orbs shot out, blasting into the hull plates and making like shrapnel bombs while the lizards’ deluge of plasma blasts hadn’t yet penetrated the turret’s shields.

The exchange went on for another 20 seconds before the cruiser pulled up and accelerated away from the tower, heading almost straight up as it tilted to give the aerodynamics a better edge on the atmosphere, getting it out of plasma range first, while still taking cleansing beam strikes well after it shrank to a tiny dot in the sky.

Elsewhere around the planet identical towers were popping up and scaring off other cruisers while the Canderian ground troops were making quick work of the kirbies via ambushes and heavy weapons. Those few that got back into the sky were taken down by deployed towers, while a scattering of others were pursued and eliminated by drone starfighters launched from hidden bays and piloted by Canderians safely tucked away beneath the surface.

Every kirby formation that came to ground was eliminated, and every cruiser that came within range was turned back damaged. Once the enemies were gone the turrets retracted back into the ground, though the dirt wasn’t replaced over top of them, figuring the lizards already had their positions tagged anyway. Some of the kirby formations that had further to go to get to their targets were recalled, fleeing back up to orbit or to nearby cruisers to dock upon.

Altogether the lizards’ harvesting attempt was thoroughly and bluntly blocked, with the lizards in the warfleet overhead beginning to plan out new, more robust assaults on the towers while landing troops outside the villages so they could hunt down the ambushers who they thought were Human, though very few reports had made it back from the teams on the ground.

As the cruisers and kirbies were on their way back up to orbit and making runs to dock with the pair of jumpships and the fleet of cruisers they’d deployed, more contacts began arriving on an unusual jumpline, not coming from the star but from another planet in the system and putting them about an 1/8th of an orbital arc away from the lizard fleet.

The lizards weren’t going to get the chance to plan and launch an assault of the planet, for the Humans had their own warfleet in system, and it was heading straight towards them.

2

“Sensor contact made, Captain. Two lizard Carrier-class jumpships, 52 cruisers, and six jump-capable transports with kirbies enroute.”

“Very well,” Captain Jamke said, studying the battle hologram on the bridge as enemy data was being updated both visually as well as verbally. “Deploy the fleet. Target the cruisers, and give me attack lances headed for the jumpships and transports. I don’t think they’ll stay long, but just in case I want ships in position.”

“Aye, Captain,” the first officer said, relaying the appropriate orders in more detail.

The single Warship-class Star Force jumpship began disgorging its drone warships as it accelerated through as low of an orbit as it could, trying to close with the lizard fleet before it had a chance to bug out. That said, the odds were relatively even, and keeping ships contained in orbit was almost impossible, so if the lizards wanted to leave there was little to keep them from making a micro-jump out of planetary orbit…save for the chance to fight the Humans.

As the approaching fleet began braking maneuvers using a pair of repulses strung out between Endor and one of its moons to get the right vector, the lizard jumpships zipped off, jumping out from the planet and quickly leaving sensor range. The cruisers, however, stayed behind setting themselves to receive the Star Force fleet while the transports ducked down to a slightly lower orbit to pick up what kirbies had survived the surface ambush.

Jamke didn’t know if the cruisers were buying them time or if they wanted to fight it out, but either way he intended to do them some damage. With the Meteor hanging back and remotely controlling the attack fleet made up of a quartet of heavy cruisers on down through a mix of cruisers, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, and cutters, the Captain watched as the leading ships of both formations crisscrossed and began exchanging fire…the lizards with their potent green plasma and the blocky Star Force ships with their mixed assortment of weapons ranging from missiles to maulers.

Each ship potentially had a different layout, given that they were partially modular, and Jamke had configured his fleet for close up combat, using a large number of the new mauler mods that gave his ships shield disrupting capability, in that the weapons severely messed with the lizards’ shields on impact, allowing them to punch through far quicker than normal and letting even his smallest ships inflict hull damage before the lizards could take them out.

As per his standard alignment, he had his warships clustered up into trios that picked on individual lizard targets. Whether it be a destroyer and two cutters, or a threesome of corvettes, each little battlegroup worked together to maximize its collective weapons package, hitting the lizard cruisers hard as the fleets continued to close with one another and start the main melee.

Two of those battlegroups sidestepped the heaviest fighting and went lower in orbit, headed for the transports. One of the enemy cargo ships jumped out immediately, but the others remained, still picking up kirbies coming back from the surface. Those began taking long range lachar hits, which also penetrated their shields, putting small pot marks in their hull armor…which quickly started to add up, forcing another to jump prematurely leaving some 6 kirbies behind as it made an emergency micro-jump away from the planet. The line it took lead nowhere, meaning it was going to have to do some serious navigating to find the star or another planet to land on before drifting off into interstellar space.

But the tradeoff was that Star Force would be hard pressed to follow them out, and Jamke didn’t intend to. He wanted to do what damage he could and run them out of planetary orbit, which happened some 10 minutes later when the transports decided they’d picked up as many kirbies as they could before turning away and jumping out of sensor range.

As soon as that happened the cruisers, who’d been trimmed down from 52 to 39, also made micro-jumps away from the planet, but with much slower acceleration given that they didn’t have the massive drive cores that jumpships carried. Still, it was enough to get them away from the Human fleet, whose continually developing weapons and shield tech was beginning to outclass theirs.

Suddenly low orbit was clear, save for the remaining kirbies that didn’t really have anywhere to go. Some accelerated on their tiny gravity drives and tried to leave the planet the same way the other ships did. A few made it past the Star Force fleet, though most were gunned down by the ships’ lachars, leaving a handful of kirbies heading back down to the planet to try and escape the orbital guns.

“Get me course plots on those outgoing kirbies and potential intercepts…and a line to Canderous,” Jamke ordered, with his crew carrying out his last order in a matter of seconds, generating a hologram of a Legat just off his bridge command chair.

“The enemy fleet has been run off, but there are a few kirbies returning to the surface,” the Captain explained without preamble.

The Legat nodded. “We’ll take care of them, one way or another. Can you remain in orbit for an active sensor trace?”

“As long as you need,” Jamke offered, knowing that most of the Canderian sensor outposts were passive, so as not to give away their locations. “We’ll be cleaning up ship debris for a few hours at least.”

“Will you call in the salvage ships? I’d rather not send out that strong of a signal, given that there are still enemy ships in the system.”

“Next item on my list,” Jamke said, glancing at his comm officer, who nodded his understanding of the indirect order.

“As far as I know, none of the kirbies that got away contained any Ninkari, so do not concern yourself with capturing them.”

“I wasn’t,” the Captain admitted. “Most of them hadn’t even made it to the surface.”

The Legat seemed to bristle at that, but he didn’t voice his feelings concerning the Captain’s sloppiness. If one of the kirbies had taken a Ninkari onboard and was then destroyed, that would have been a mission failure…one that could easily be avoided by the Canderians tagging the ship with a ‘no kill’ marker. They hadn’t needed to, but the Captain’s explanation made him wonder if he would have even double checked before blowing them all away.

“We will need at least one transport on the surface. Two or three if you can spare them.”

“You’ll get at least 2. Surface cleanup takes priority.”

“Thank you. What are your plans concerning the surviving lizard ships?”

“We’re not taking their jumpships unless they make a mistake, and I don’t think they’ll be coming back without a larger fleet, which they’ll probably be needing over Atlantica.”

“Back to hide and wait then?”

“Seems so. We’ll stay close for a week or so, just in case they have other plans.”

The Legat nodded and ended the commlink.

“Where are we with those traces?” Jamke asked, standing up from his command chair and taking a step up towards the main hologram that was detailing the slice of orbit that they were currently located in. None of his officers answered him, but the holo did zoom out with 9 lines indicating where the kirbies were making their slow jumps out from. Only now were they actually approaching the speed of the ship’s sensors and dropping off their active scans, but due to the ballistic nature of space travel between gravity wells they had a good idea where they would be heading in the near future.

The lines on the holo connected at their origin with dotted lines indicating the quickest intercept routes to get to those jumplines with the closest of the Meteor’s drone warships. By his visual inspection, Jamke had enough cutters and corvettes operational to pursue all of them.

“Go after them, boomerang protocol,” he ordered.

Situated within the widely spaced fleet and now drifting debris field from the battle, a Star Force cutter received new orders, using both its differential gravity drive to push off the nearby moons and planet to reverse its orbit course, along with conventional thrust engines to diminish the time to target as the smallest of the rectangular warships headed for one of the jumplines. After six minutes of heavy acceleration it coasted for another 2, then likewise decelerated until it came to a stop on the exact jumpline, hovering over the planet below on its gravity drive now that it no longer had any orbital speed.

Ramping up the repulsive field while obscuring the pushes from the nearby moons, distant planets, and star, it launched up the jumpline, accelerating in a fluid motion that quickly shrank it to a dot that was traveling well faster than the kirbies could manage, but not so fast that it would overshoot.

Soon the cutter passed out of communications range with the Meteor, given that it was traveling faster than the control signals, meaning that it now was operating on preprogrammed instructions. First among those was to continue up the jumpline with active sensors scanning ahead until it found the target or a certain amount of distance/time expired.

The kirby showed up as a hazy signal at first, due to the signal lag and range, but it was enough for the computer onboard the cutter to start plotting an intercept course, reaching out to the star and planets to give it some small amount of deceleration by combining those various trajectories and playing them off at one another. It didn’t offer a lot of thrust potential, but it did save precious conventional fuel, as well as allowing for course corrections where ships without differential drives were forced to sit through a coast phase.

The lizards had differential drives, which was how they maneuvered around in atmosphere without having to expend a great deal of conventional thrust, meaning the kirby had the ability to move off its jumpline slightly if it wanted, though it hadn’t. Once the cutter made contact and got it in a sensor lock it was only a matter of time before the intercept occurred, given the larger ship’s more powerful engines and navigational capability.

Many more minutes passed until the cutter closed within weapons range, at which point the kirby did try and alter course, pushing itself to the side and hoping the cutter would pass it by, but the computer program recognized the altered trajectory and corrected itself, staying on the kirby’s tail as the enemy contact accelerated, pushing forward and gaining a bit of ground on the cutter before it again corrected and started to eat up the gap.

Once within a predetermined range the drone began sniping with its lachars, stitching the kirby with immediate hull breaches, given the size of the weapons on the warship. The kirby’s thrusting ended almost instantly, allowing the cutter to close even further and douse the chewed up hull in plasma, burning the corpse in a delude of blue fire in successive blasts that was clearly overkill, but the computer didn’t recognize that, for it was only following its programming.

It continued to batter the remains until the sensor signature diminished to rubble, which then triggered the computer to tag the target as ‘dead,’ at which point the boomerang programming kicked in and the navigational computer took note of the positions of the planets and star, then started pushing off their weak gravity wells to move it into a trajectory that would lead it to one of them, in this case the 3rd planet in the system.

It took it some 29 hours to reach its destination, upon which it easily and quickly braked against the gravity well and settled into an orbit that would bring it around on the jumpline back to Endor. That jump took all of 38 minutes, at which time it returned to the short range control signals from the Meteor once the warship orbited its way around the curve of the planet…or more accurately, one of the Canderian transports orbited around the edge of the planet and relayed the straight line signals to the drone, acting in lieu of a Star Force communications grid that typically would have had orbital or surface installations to relay the signal around the sphere.

A pilot onboard the warship took the drone back under direct control and flew it into the ship’s external carrier bay, sliding it up into an empty slot along with most of the others. Those missing were either on patrol alongside the gigantic craft or had been damaged/destroyed during the battle.

The damaged ones still capable of flight had been sent off while those not capable of movement had been towed back to the Meteor, which would deliver them in person to the repair yard some 9 days later.  At the moment four Canderian transports were harvesting the battle debris from the lizard cruisers, already having gotten to the Star Force debris first.

With it being a full day past the battle, the cleanup of the dead kirbies on the planet’s surface had already been completed, with the battle scars in the Ninkari villages being patched over with new construction, tilled soil, and new seedlings where appropriate. The hidden Canderian turrets were also being resodded, so as to take root as soon as possible to conceal their locations, though it would take time for new trees to replace the burnt ones. The grassy clearings would have to suffice in the meantime, but with each day that passed the concealment would literally ‘grow’ more effective.

After Jamke’s fleet finished watching over the transports as they cut and picked up battle debris, leaving orbit clean of any trace of either lizard or Human presence, he took his escorts back inside the jumpship and made a micro-jump out to the 15th planet in the system, which was only a short hop away from Endor. There the Meteor stayed, so as to be in close proximity should the Canderians call for support again.

The Captain lingered there for more than a week before making another micro-jump out to the 73rd planet in the system, one of the furthest away from the star on the very edge of the system. The Meteor braked against its small gravity well then redirected towards its even smaller moon that was about a tenth the mass of Luna…though that mass had been reduced greatly, requiring a specially built gravity drive to nudge it back into a stable orbit, for it had started to spiral out from the planet a bit as the Canderians had gradually hollowed it out to build their concealed seda inside.

It was the largest built to date, surrounded by a rocky exterior miles thick that made for better armor than anything Star Force had produced to date. It was so large, in fact, that they had included an internal shipyard where they could both build new ships, including the salvage transports they used to clean up the lizards’ mess whenever they sent ships into the system, and repair the damaged ones, both those drones already having traveled to the moon under their own power and those the Meteor was now releasing from its grasp to be towed inside.

The jumpship had repair facilities onboard that could rebuild the drones if necessary, but a lot of that construction had to happen on the ship’s exterior rather than in a full slip cradle. Bringing them to the seda would yield both faster repairs and more efficient ones, which was why the Meteor was making a stop at the moon. Otherwise it normally camped out around random planets in the outer zone of the system, bouncing around so as to keep out of sight of the lizards as it waited for recall.

Once it offloaded its wounded ships it maneuvered back over to the planet then jumped out, not wanting to draw attention to the secret seda, who had opened its massive rock-covered bay doors over the space of 6 hours to allow the damaged ships inside, followed by another 6 hours reclosing them…not because they lacked the necessary torsion power, but because they were moving a rocky exterior miles thick as the doors pushed out then flowered open, reclosing the same way to maintain the seda’s camouflage.

From the seda other ships would come and go, servicing the Canderian bases on Endor with supplies and rotating field deployments, all of which was designed to keep the system clean of Human presence so as not to draw the lizards here with a target to hit, for their mission wasn’t their destruction, but the defense of the Ninkari. The trailblazers had been convinced that a stealth defense could be successful and evacuation of the Ninkari to another planet would not be necessary, and if their efforts on Atlantica bore fruit, the lizards would probably be so busy fighting there or at Namek to not pay much attention to the Ninkari…or barring that, not be able to produce a large enough fleet to outmatch both the Meteor and the Canderian bases on the surface.

If the worst case scenario came to pass, a courier ship docked within the seda would be dispatched to whistle up reinforcements, after which the Ninkari could be relocated, but so far the plan was holding to form and Star Force intended to keep it that way and the Ninkari on the world the lizards had deposited them on, if for no other reason than to thumb their nose at them and their barbaric food supply chain.

That was something the Canderians could appreciate, and they reveled in their responsibility in the system, as well as their zero failure record to date.

3

February 23, 2432

Karmena System

Epipo

Sara watched from the bridge of the Hawkeye as the drone warships in her fleet took out the remains of the lizard defense fleet and then began pounding the orbital infrastructure around the planet. It was the less developed of the two inhabited planets in the system, and the location where she’d chosen to stage her raid. Her fleet of 5 warships had easily overwhelmed the planetary defenses, then reinforcements from nearby Iradon jumped in as she’d expected.

That battle had been more lengthy, but the outcome had never been in doubt. While both planets were heavily encroached with lizard bases/cities, their naval defenses were limited compared to the fleet she’d brought with her. Rather than get coy, the lizards had thrown everything they had at the Human fleet up front, leaving her forces with little now to do other than blow up their orbital infrastructure, including a handful of battle stations that her cleansing beam-equipped warships were sniping apart from range.

She didn’t like the slaughter, but time and again the lizards had refused to surrender, and now was no exception. The trailblazer had sent out the customary offer, and as usual there was no response…not from the lizard commanders, the planet below, or any of the ships or stations in orbit. The lizards were determined to either dominate or die, with surrender not being an option on the table. Sara kept waiting for the time when one of them would make another call, but so far neither she nor any other Archon had encountered an independently thinking lizard, making it even more apparent that they were bred for purpose, with any singular concerns, such as staying alive, having been hardwired out of their biology, or more probably suppressed.

No matter what genetic engineering had taken place, each of them was still a person with at least the option of making choices. If they didn’t exercise that option that too was their choice, but Sara wasn’t going to get in the habit of assuming every lizard was a bloodthirsty blockhead, though today wasn’t showing any evidence to the contrary.

While she didn’t like slaughtering them, she wasn’t stupid enough to try and send troops over to capture the lizards crewing the stations in orbit around the planet. That would be putting her people in unnecessary risk. To date no lizard had willingly accepted imprisonment, and those that had been compelled had tried to kill themselves at every turn, either through kamikaze attacks on their jailers or through self-mutilation. When that option had been taken away from them, in the form of claw covers that latched onto their wrists like cuffs, they tried to starve themselves to death.

There were still some alive, last Sara knew, having to be fed by IV as some of the trailblazers worked on trying to communicate with them. They could speak the language, but the lizards were mostly unresponsive. Greg had reported a few limited breakthroughs, but none to the point where they could trust them not to kill themselves.

Given that situation, the taking of lizard prisoners by force had pretty much been taken off the table, though the voluntary offers were still par for the course.

As she watched another of their communications stations bite the dust in a wash of blue plasma, Sara glanced over at the battlemap looking for surface activity. There were several small shipyards on the surface that had their doors closed, meaning there could be ships inside that were at least partially battle capable, but above that there were thousands of other smaller craft on the deck, ranging from kirbies to transports, and she was curious what they were going to do now that Star Force controlled orbit.

The transports, at least, she thought would try and make a run for it, either to elsewhere in the system where their sensor stealthy armor would allow them to hide from the Humans, or over to Iradon to hide behind the battle stations in orbit there.

No activity was tagged as of yet, which Sara found a little surprising. The lizards didn’t accept defeat, they tried to do everything they could to beat or confound you, so them sitting still and waiting for the rain to fall didn’t quite fit their MO. That suggested to the trailblazer that something else was in play, like perhaps reinforcements being whistled up from a nearby system. That would encourage the lizards to hunker down and weather the storm, but there shouldn’t have been any sizeable fleets nearby, not since Paul had put the final nail in their coffin over Atlantica.

Living up to his moniker of ‘The Admiral,’ Paul had lead them into a total rout of the lizard forces in orbit once Star Force had received a steady stream of new fleets coming out from Sol and Epsilon Eridani. The lizards had also been receiving reinforcements, but the ones Paul, Sara, and the others on station were receiving were the newest models, giving them increased tactical options.

Paul had stretched those options to their limit and worked a bit of his strategic magic, moving the enemy around the system as he wanted, setting up a hammer blow assault that cracked their strongest formations, leaving scattered remnants for the trailblazers to clean up afterwards. Sara had taken part in the fighting alongside him, but Paul’s genius in naval combat still outmatched hers, and she had no qualms in giving him credit for the winning strategy, though it wasn’t his efforts alone that won them naval superiority.

The battle under the water was another matter entirely, but now that they’d cut off almost all lizard resupply runs to Atlantica Kyler expected that to change, given that the lizards didn’t harvest resources from the sea floor as easily as they did on land. Now knowing where the major lizard bases were on Atlantica, Star Force was working its way towards a major aquatics offensive, but now that orbit had been bottled up there was no need for multiple trailblazers in the system, so they’d split up to other tasks, with Sara taking one of two fleets out to harass nearby lizard systems and keep them on the defensive while Star Force continued to colonize new systems in the expansion zone that stretched out from Earth’s original territory around Sol to Namek.

That ‘gap’ between Star Force and lizard territory was slowly filling in with side projects, some of which were Hycre, who’d been colonizing several systems. The area was vulnerable, which was why Star Force had pushed into the lizard lines, drawing the battles to Atlantica in order to keep the lizards from finding and hitting their more vulnerable areas. Those areas were now strengthening, so as long as the handful of trailblazers on the front could keep the lizards distracted for another decade or so, the weakness in the expansion region would diminish on its own.

After Sara’s fleet finished up the lengthy process of demolishing the lizards’ orbital infrastructure around Epipo they made the jump across the system to Iradon and continued the eradication process there, which took considerably more time given that the planet had a larger lizard population. Once that process was completed Sara picked a single target on the surface and had it pounded flat with the fleet’s rail guns, obliterating a large lizard base/city before retreating from the planet.

The trailblazer had her fleet pulled back into the Hawkeye and its 4 sister jumpships, which she then split up with orders to pinball around the system from planet to planet pulling scans and looking for additional lizard assets. They spent the better part of a week doing so before rendezvousing at the innermost planet, a small red gas giant that looked to be a few centuries away from being consumed by the system’s central star.

Once back together her fleet jumped out of the system, heading back to Namek via several other systems well below the destination on the galactic plane.

Three weeks later the Hawkeye decelerated against Nevarsor’s central star, arriving behind the other four warships that took up low orbits around the large yellow/orange sphere waiting for their command ship to arrive. Once Sara’s flagship did they made micro-jumps in series out to the 4th planet in the system, then across to the 7th that was Namek.

There they encountered a slew of orbital infrastructure, but sparse in number compared to Earth or Corneria. That said, the puzzle pieces that Paul was back to constructing were usually larger than a jumpship and equipped with enough shields and defenses to hold out on their own for a short period of time before the planetary defense fleet arrived.

Those ships, all drones controlled by the local comm grid from command centers either on nearby stations or from surface command centers, were sprinkled around low and middle orbit like the colored namesake on donuts, giving all orbital infrastructure at least some ships within quick response range should the lizards show up again.

The two moons that orbited the planet were barren and rocky, both in high orbits. Those also had a few orbital stations, connecting back to Namek via shipping lanes as they brought additional raw materials and manufactured goods produced on or around the moons back down to the planet for use in the ever growing infrastructure there.

What Paul had built in orbit paled in comparison to what was on the surface. It had been 30 years since they’d first set foot on the dry world, and in those three decades Paul had built one enormous city rivaling those on Corneria. Shield generators of massive size protected the city from orbital bombardment on a scale that even Sara’s five warships wouldn’t be able to penetrate even if they rained rail gun slugs down on them all day.

It was what was called a ‘strong point,’ around which other infrastructure could be built and people could evacuate back to if needed. There were hundreds of small outposts scattered across Namek, mainly resource gathering operations, but the population and industry was all within the city, safe beneath the shield that could even hold back a kamikaze cruiser falling from orbit.

A kamikaze jumpship was another matter, and as impressive as Star Force’s shield technology became, there was always a way to penetrate it…with that being adding more mass.

That was why Paul had devoted a great deal of resources to the planetary defense fleet, so it could intercept any kamikaze ships before they could make a run on the city. There was no such thing as an impenetrable target, but Paul had done a good job of making one very difficult colony for the lizards to crack, and apparently the enemy had thought so too, for after a few sniffs of combat at Namek they’d given up the attempt, focusing their efforts on Atlantica instead.

Sara’s fleet accessed the local grid and plotted a course to one of the storage/repair yards that orbited nearby a shipyard, both of which were located on the boundary between low and middle orbit, which put their full revolution at just under 24 hours, given that Namek had slightly less mass than Earth. The ships took their time getting there, conserving fuel and bouncing their way in between stations as they pushed against both planet and moons to adjust their trajectories until they got around to the side of the planet where their target currently was.

The station dwarfed all five warships, given the fact that it was mostly empty space inside, but it was still an impressive and intimidating perfect cube, even more so as the primary bay doors opened up, giving Sara’s fleet enough room to fly inside if they wished, but that wasn’t the plan.

The Hawkeye and other warships disconnected their damaged drones, some of which had already underwent patch work on site, and flew them out away from the fleet while replacement drones came out of the massive construct. The controllers in the fleet exchanged ships with the controllers in the repair yard, though the handoff occurred without any visible twitches, and within an hour Sara’s fleet was back up to full strength, minus the ordinance they’d expended. That they’d have to pick up along with foodstuffs and other supplies via dropship shipments which were already being scheduled by her command staff that worked silently on the bridge while she opened up a commlink to the surface.

“Welcome back,” Paul’s hologram said upon popping into view. “Any problems?”

“Not really,” Sara said, almost disappointed. “There was less resistance than we thought. We eliminated all ships and orbital infrastructure, then took out a base before bugging out. Surface activity was nil, which made me think they might have been holding out for reinforcements, but none arrived before we left the system. I pulled a survey run before we left.”

“We lost a cargo jumpship,” Paul said bluntly. “Bad jump.”

Sara’s eyes narrowed. She knew well the dangers of interstellar travel, but so far Star Force’s record had seen only a handful of accidents over the past three centuries. The mathematical calculations and drive control technology were critical to making an accurate jump, but such things had always been well within their engineers’ ability, making her wonder what had happened.

“Where?”

“Here we think. It was part of a convoy from Corneria. 18 jumpships left, 17 arrived. We also picked up stellar disturbance that coincided with its arrival ETA, so we’re pretty sure it hit the star.”

“Braking malfunction?”

Paul shook his head. “The disruption pattern on the star was widespread.”

“Damn,” Sara said, closing her eyes. That meant the jumpship failed to decelerate, not due to a shipboard malfunction, but because it’d been damaged/destroyed mid jump…meaning collision with debris on the spacelane. “Which route were they taking in?”

“Hadren,” Paul said, naming the system the convoy had jumped from in order to get to Nevarsor. “I’ve flagged it as yellow, given the other 17 ships made it through in the same timespan.”

“Where was it in line?”

“5th.”

“Any damage to the others?” she asked, knowing slower moving bits could have collided with the ships behind, or hit the ships ahead when they decelerated and the debris did not.”

“Not so much as a scratch.”

Sara’s mind was flipping over, trying to wrap her head around the danger. “So what do we do, call this a fluke or tag it as impassable?”

“We’re rerouting convoys through other jumplanes, but I wouldn’t recommend red flagging it entirely. For whatever reason 17 other ships got through, though losing even one is enough to warrant a redirect.”

“What’s it been, 50 or 60 years since the last one?”

“53,” Paul said, already having looked it up. “Andres to Palora.”

Sara recognized the names of two of Star Force’s inhabited systems with a direct line between them…no stopovers or redirects needed. That spacelane saw an enormous amount of traffic, and despite the lost jumpship the route had never been flagged. Then again, they didn’t know what had happened to it. It hadn’t been part of a convoy, but a single transit that simply didn’t show up on arrival. Questions still hadn’t been answered, and there were a number of people who suggested that the ship had misjumped and missed the target star entirely, doomed to be lost in space as it coasted through the interstellar void hoping to stumble across a gravity well to brake against.

“No chance of a misjump here?”

Paul shook his head. “Doubtful.”

“How much time does that add to our convoys?”

“13 lightyears distance, as for time that varies depending on the how new a jumpship you’re talking about,” he reminded her.

“I was afraid it would have been more than that,” Sara commented, knowing that there were already several red flagged spacelanes in the expansion region, and tagged as such because of either the Hycre maps labeled them as dangerous or because of Star Force’s own exploration, which saw them sending out computer-controlled survey ships. When several of the tiny jumpships didn’t return from a target system, they labeled the route untenable and searched elsewhere.

As a result the quickest routes geographically weren’t always available, meaning the distance from one system to another varied widely. Also, with every new generation of jumpship, the distance they could make a single jump across accurately was increasing, opening up new, longer spacelanes than Star Force had previously been able to utilize…though ones that the Hycre used regularly.

“We got lucky,” Paul admitted. “I sent a courier out around to warn incoming ships, but it shouldn’t have arrived just yet. After that it’s heading back to Corneria to request a boatload of survey ships. I’d rather not lose that spacelane if we don’t have to.”

“Not losing all of them makes me wonder too.”

“You sticking around or heading back out?” Paul asked, changing subjects.

“I’m going to rotate crews out and give the regulars a bit of time planetside. You have another target for me, or am I going back for seconds?”

“Nothing definite, but a few probables have shown up. We also have a diplomatic envoy on the way out. Seems the Hycre have found another race that’s sticking it to the lizards.”

Sara arched an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Primitive bunch,” Paul said before she started to get any ideas, “but they’re really big.”

“How big?”

“Remember Lord of the Rings?”

“Yeah.”

“Think Ents.”

“Who pulled that assignment?”

“Emily.”

“That should be an interesting debrief to read.”

“My thoughts exactly. You up for some challenge runs?”

“Always. Psionic or regular?”

“Thought we’d go old school.”

Sara smiled. “I’ll be down within 24 hours.”

4

April 22, 2432

Ventross System

Albo (lizard territory)

Kara sat on her hands and knees in utter silence, adhesively attached to the hull of a drone cutter as it raced towards the yellow planet’s atmosphere with a host of lizard warships in pursuit from multiple angles, but given the approach speed it was mustering it was going to beat them all to the insertion position, then slingshot around the planet and hopefully return to the single warship in extreme high orbit that had brought it and the Archon here.

Sitting inside both the shield boundary and the inertial dampening field of the ship, Kara felt nothing as the drone made several navigational tweaks, then decelerated hard against Albo’s gravity well. Inside her Zen’zat armor’s scale-like second skin she monitored the telemetry being fed to her by the drone and awaited the arrival at the drop off point…or rather the point she was going to drop off from, given that the ship wasn’t going to stop.

As had been programmed prior to its released from the Broadsword, it inserted into a very low orbit at high speed, belly down…with Kara riding on the underside so that from her perspective the large, yellow planet was above her and bracketed by clusters of bright stars in constellations unfamiliar. On her back was a large bump that her armor had expanded to cover, inside of which was a pack of supplies attached snugly to her spine. She didn’t feel the weight, nor any weight, given that riding on the exterior hull of the drone there was no gravity, real or artificial, to pull on her. All that held her in place were her hands, knees, and booted toes that gripped the Adamantium hull armor in a bonding mechanism that Star Force had yet to fully understand.

When Kara’s telemetry indicated that the drone had reached the proper position a countdown appeared on her HUD, which rather than appearing in front of her eyes, which was an option with the V’kit’no’sat tech, it appeared within her mind, given the Ikrid link between person and machine.

When that countdown expired she walked her feet up underneath her and mentally severed the adhesive link to the hull, then using the power of her legs and the powered nature of the red, scale-like armor she wore, Kara jumped off the hull, passing through the shield perimeter and falling towards the planet’s atmosphere below.

Once she had separation she rotated around so that the planet was below her feet, then using the engine technology within the armor…technology that far surpassed that on the drone warship…she began arcing her trajectory and coming down into the atmosphere at insanely high speed, protected by her own personal shields as she dropped like a meteor down towards the surface.

Once into the thick of the air and well away from the lizard warships in orbit, Kara began decelerating more than friction alone would allow, and after a long braking maneuver she leveled off some 12 kilometers above the surface of a mountain ridge with a humongous lizard city visible on the edge of the horizon, which was her ultimate destination.

With her mental link to her armor she could feel the lizard sensor beams hitting her body…and being absorbed, making her as much of a sensor ghost as the lizards had once been to Star Force tech. Her own sensors tagged lizard fighters patrolling in clusters over the city, probably deployed when the drone appeared in orbit, but they didn’t move in her direction, for they didn’t detect her presence.

They may have seen her fiery reentry into the atmosphere, she acknowledged, but that was now no longer the case, for she was flying level to the ground searching for a nook to set down in from which she could then approach on foot. The city, like most lizard bases, had a shield topping it, preventing her from dropping directly inside, besides which, at that close of range it would be difficult for her to evade detection even with her small size and stealth armor.

Other than that she had no idea what she was going up against. This system was far inside lizard territory…which she’d had to travel to in order to find infrastructure of this size. She was here for one reason and one reason only, and that was to hunt down lizard variants that they hadn’t encountered before.

This mission would have been a suicide run for anyone else, but given the Vorch’nas attached to her wrist, Kara had options none of the other Archons had, and she was glad the trailblazers acknowledged that fact and allowed her to go on solo missions such as this…though to be fair this was by far the most risky one she’d attempted thus far, as well as the furthest away from Star Force territory.

Kara spotted a good looking crevice in the jagged mountains and descended to it, coming down through the yellow foliage that was larger than her body. She dropped to the black soil gently, glancing around at the huge tree trunks surrounding her, then back up at the spherical leaves that could easily have doubled as a blanket for her or the lizards.

Her sensors didn’t detect any lifeforms nearby, so she retracted her armor, with the red scales pulling back off her body and retreating into the clear gem on her left wrist, leaving her dressed in a skin-tight environmental armor suit that would protect her against cuts and scrapes and little else. Her hands and head were left exposed, and on her back she carried her pack of supplies that contained no weapons. For combat she’d be relying on her Vorch’nas entirely.

Kara sucked in a deep breath of the air, smelling the odd forest and the musty scent that it contained. The soil was damp, but not wet, though she had seen a storm front approaching from the north as she descended, meaning she was probably in for some rain within the day.

Visually getting her bearings, Kara walked up the ridgeline, concealed beneath the high yellow canopy, as she quietly made her way across the forest towards the lizard city, knowing that she had 1 week to do her thing before another drone warship would make a collection run through low orbit, at which point she’d have to fly up to it else miss her ride for another full week…and the supplies she’d brought with her wouldn’t last forever.

Two days later, after walking/running through miles of forest, Kara encountered the first of the lizard patrols surrounding the city. They were situated well out into the forest, with groups of three moving through the more or less clear soil that surrounded the car-sized tree trunks. The canopy overhead was thick, allowing no direct sunlight to the ground, leaving only small plants or mosses dotting the forest floor. The lizards were roaming about on well beaten paths in the dirt, with multiple trios in the nearby area as they crept their way north to south.

They would have been easy enough to get by or take down, but Kara intended to do neither. Slipping off her backpack and stashing it up next to a tree trunk, Kara used her Vorch’nas to raise her up the length of the tree and into the lowest branches. From there she hopped across the gaps, scattering a number of birds and other critters inhabiting the upper levels of the forest as she stalked the lizards on their patrol routes below.

Once she was directly over the paths they were traveling she found a nook up against the main trunk and sat down, wrapping her legs around the thick branch and reaching out with her mind. She’d already been picking up the lizards’ presence with her Ikrid, which now seemed to always be on in at least a passive sense. She could turn it off if she wanted, but when her mind relaxed a type of mental radar always worked its way into activity, letting her know when a mind was near.

Concentrating, she extended that range out greatly, picking up 21 lizards beneath her, all of whom were walking slowly, so Kara knew she had to either work quick or keep pace with them.

She’d had plenty of experience working with alien minds, not just lizards, but their allies on Daka, some with their permission, some without. Each race had a distinctive feel to it, and then each individual was different in lesser ways on their own. When she touched the lizards’ minds, which were not blocked as Humans were, the feel was what she would have described as ‘purpose.’

The lizards didn’t think as individuals. They were part of a larger organism, each one with a role to play, based on their biological variation and their assignments. These lizards on patrol were bored, she could sense, but they were none the less alert and committed to their task, as tedious as it was, patrolling the perimeter on a secure world.

As she searched through several of their minds, accessing their surface thoughts, she realized they weren’t just here to guard the perimeter against invasion, but against the local wildlife as well. Her skills weren’t developed enough to probe much beyond their current thoughts, but she caught the gist of there being large creatures roaming the forest that on occasion would encroach on the lizard cities and do some damage.

These lizards, she discovered, were looking for signs of trouble so that they could relay position data to takedown teams that stood ready within the city…which explained why these lizards were wearing only trousers and a belt, rather than their normal vest armor. Each of them carried a comm device and plasma pistol, and Kara could sense that that was far from enough to take down one of the native creatures should they come across one.

The boredom suggested that they hadn’t encountered a target in some time, and they didn’t think they would anytime soon. The hunters had done most of the hard work already, leaving only the wild regions of the planet as a threat, but the creatures in those areas could still migrate out, hence the regular patrols.

The lizards kept walking/creeping along, acquitting their task while otherwise being uninterested in it. None the less the sense of purpose was still there, as it had been with all lizard minds Kara had ever touched.

In contrast the Calavari minds, as far as Kara would describe them, felt like ‘honor,’ whereas the Protovic were ‘curious,’ the Gnar were ‘greedy,’ the Bsidd were ‘calculating,’ the Kvash were ‘committed,’ and the Scionate were ‘eager.’ She’d never encountered a Nestafar after her psionics had manifested, nor a Hycre, which very few Humans had ever encountered face to face. Other Alliance races each had their own mental idiosyncrasies, some which blocked most of her mental control due to their incompatibility with Human thoughts, but the more she worked with them the more capable she became at reading and influencing their thoughts and senses.

Lizards were easy to read now, and she probably had more psionic experience with them than any other Archon. Still, the raw power the Zak’de’ron had utilized in subduing the Nestafar on Daka still caused her jaw to drop, especially now that she had some context with which to define it. She was an ant to the dragon’s very large boot, and there was no question as to who had been in command back in the day, for the Zen’zat simply didn’t have the power to challenge their masters.

Which made all the more sense to make them immune to Ikrid control, otherwise one race within the V’kit’no’sat could control them, using the Zen’zat as a wedge against the others and create more internal conflict. By keeping the Zen’zat neutral it created an equality between the various races, and an equality between the Zen’zat and the dinosaurs. She got the distinct feeling though, that the Zak’de’ron had simply done it to keep them from being so pathetic, and because a tool that an adversary could take control of would have been a liability as much as an asset.

The Zak’de’ron didn’t need to control the Zen’zat’s minds…for they were already so dominant it truly didn’t matter.

But whereas the Zen’zat were the inferiors in that regard, compared to the lizards they were the ones who dominated…even one as young and inexperienced as Kara.

Sitting up high on her branch she examined the lizards as they passed below, then focused on the rearmost of the lot and linked to its mind, assuming control over its nervous system despite the range involved. She thought it was just close enough and realized she was right when her remote hack gave her access to its body, despite the limited ‘bandwidth’ she had to operate on. Had a Zak’de’ron tried this it wouldn’t have even needed to blink to make the override, but Kara had to focus all of her Ikrid energy to create the link down to the lizard and render it unconscious.

It tripped over its own feet and sank to the ground, the noise of it falling being swallowed up by the damp soil.

Kara pivoted around her branch and fell off, pulling a Mary Poppins with her Vorch’nas to drop her to the ground below, where she ran up on the fallen lizard and planted her fingertips against its skull, keeping her eyes and Pefbar locked on the other two lizards in its trio that were still continuing on ahead, ready to take them down if they noticed her or the lack of their companion. They had about 20 meters of spacing in between each of them, so Kara figured she had at least a brief window of opportunity.

With the direct physical connection her available ‘bandwidth’ shot up exponentially, now that she wasn’t having to transmit across a gap. Linking into the lizard’s brain directly through its own nervous system she dug into its recent memories, locating an outpost not far from here. She followed that memory to others linked to it, quickly getting a crude map of the area.

Not wanting to press her luck she jumped up into the air and flew back up into the branches, then remote linked to the lizard’s mind and half woke it up, getting it to stand back up and start walking forward before coming back to full consciousness. After that she let go her control but monitored its thoughts, wondering if it would notice anything.

It did, but not knowing what had happened to make it black out and fall behind the others it shook off the weirdness and jogged up to reform with the others, keeping Kara’s presence undetected.

She waited a few seconds, then hopped off through the branches and back over to where she left her pack, though it took her a while to find it. Once down on the ground she pulled out a vial that held tiny cubes and slipped one out telekinetically and flew it into her mouth, smashing the concentrated ambrosia sugar cube between her teeth before swallowing as she put the container back in its place.

Kara slid the backpack over her shoulders and attached the waistband to hold it firmly against her spine, then took off running, crossing the trail behind the lizards and heading in the direction of the nearest outpost on her mental map. As she moved through the very sparse underbrush she was conscious of the footprints she was leaving behind, but hoped the next patrol through wouldn’t notice. If they did they’d be hard pressed to catch up with her, but sounding an alarm would make her jog a lot harder. She needed to remain a ghost on this world as long as possible.

About half an hour later she picked up a weird mental signature on the periphery of her passive sense, just before a massive spider-like creature dropped down from above in eerie silence and fell on top of her, pinning her inside a cage of ten spindly legs.

The torso of the creature knocked her down, shocking her given the suddenness of the attack, but as soon as she smacked the ground her instincts took over and an invisible shield covered her body and pack a split second before her Vorch’nas spat out its red scales in a wave that quickly encompassed her body, but even before that happened an orifice on the underside of the spider opened up and a sharp tooth-like spear jutted out, hitting the dirt as Kara kicked her way to the side, dragging her pack across the ground like an anchor.

She pointed her left wrist up and a weapon formed on it, followed by a quick yet powerful pale green stun blast that rendered the creature unconscious and dropped it down on top of her…but her shields caught it, which she expanded outwards in a sphere to lift it off her.

“Huph,” she said, blowing out a relieved breath. She had been about to blast it, but then had the presence of mind to go for the stun to avoid a corpse that would have told any lizard patrols that whoever had killed it was in the area.

Using her shield like a giant ping pong ball, she flew her way to the side, pushing the spider’s legs out away from her body until she got into the clear, then she switched it back to energy mode and got her feet under her, looking back at the ugly critter that probably out massed her by a factor of ten.

Expanding her mind out she searched for others nearby, finding several lifeforms up in the trees, but none that felt like this one.

“Guess their hunters missed one,” she whispered to herself, hoping the lizard patrols were more alert than she had been. Enemies they might have been, but she didn’t like the idea of anyone going out that way as spider food.

Lowering her shields into standby mode and retracting her armor all the way back into her jewel, Kara jogged off, accelerating back up into her cross country cadence as she stretched out her Ikrid senses to a considerable range, actively scanning both the area ahead and above so she wouldn’t get caught off guard again.

5

April 23, 2432

Ventross System

Albo

Kara knelt down on a tree branch more than a meter wide, looking out through the breaks in the huge leaves and down on the expansion zone around the lizard city where they were adding another section of buildings, having cut back the forest to accommodate the new construction. The area expanded out from an almost solid barrier wall formed by old building sides across a 3 kilometer gap that stretched out as far as the Archon could see to the left and right, making it appear that the lizards were adding a new ring to the more or less circular city.

The new construction ended her forest cover, meaning she was going to have to start playing cat and mouse to go any further.

Before she did that she wanted to get the layout, which involved a slew of partially built structures and a beehive of lizard activity as they delivered parts and crews to the sites. Not all areas ahead of her were currently active, but it was going to be hard to avoid the construction crews all the way up to the pseudo wall that marked the boundary of the original city.

Most of the structures were typical lizard, yellow/tan in construction with an emphasis on the tan. Some were shaped like bread loafs, others were teepee variety, but Kara also saw numerous combinations of the two, along with architecture that they hadn’t typically seen in other lizard bases. They had reconnaissance from the Alliance about the more heavily populated lizard worlds, and the infrastructure here definitely matched up more with those than the frontier worlds that Star Force had been fighting the enemy on.

A lot of these buildings also didn’t match the blueprints Star Force had of lizard infrastructure, captured from that first battle back in Epsilon Eridani. Those, they now knew, held the full schematics for the technology the lizard expeditionary teams had available to them, including the genetic material to grow 11 distinct lizard varieties. Star Force had actually used the enemy’s tools to build their own lizard base on Corneria, learning from their technology and testing their own against it, figuring out where exactly to hit their fighters, predators, coppers, etc for maximum damage.

Trouble was, useful as those schematics were, they were almost 200 years old and, Star Force had learned, not the full extent of their tech tree…or their biology. A lot of the buildings Kara was seeing now, both those fully constructed and partial ones fell outside the expeditionary tech she was familiar with, meaning this world was definitely higher up the ranking chain, which she hoped also meant more variants for her to hunt down.

To do that she had to get inside the city, but daytime wasn’t her best option, so she decided to wait out the long rotational cycle in her tree, observing what she could and planning out her infiltration. Fortunately none of the defense turrets in the expansion zone were operational, and she hoped their ground forces were likewise elsewhere…then again, her experience with those came from front line bases, so maybe a city like this had less active defenses. The Alliance reports indicated more large scale defenses on other worlds, but neither they nor Star Force had scouted out this one, meaning she was having to learn everything about it from scratch.

When night finally came she slipped out of her tree, dropping to the ground with her Zen’zat armor concealing her in the deep red scales that she adjusted into a stealth mode. The V’kit’no’sat battle strategy wasn’t one that favored cloaking technology, so they’d never attempted to develop it. Their MO was to come in the front door and kick the crap out of everything that dared to get in their way…and with an attitude like that who needed to sneak around?

Scouting was another issue entirely, but the same direct approach was taken. Like their warships, they favored diminishing sensor range rather than hiding altogether, and not even the Zak’de’ron had seen fit to develop even an active camouflage system for themselves or their Zen’zat, but fortunately they did allow for color alterations, as well as for sensor dampening technologies within the armor. That allowed Kara to both change her scales to a null-like black that would soak up excess light and take away any glare the normally shiny scales would reflect.

It didn’t make her invisible, but rather a shadow amongst other shadows…so long as she stayed out of the lizard lights, of which there were many, so when she got to the edge of the forest she began hopping from one structure to another and sticking to the shadows they made, set against orange flood lights.

She didn’t have the area to herself, for the construction crew continued building round the clock, but with a few Jedi mind tricks here and there she was able to slip by them, ducking from cover to cover and making her way across the construction zone so long as she was patient and waited for her openings.

Kara got stuck once when a flock of kirbies came in with several large beams suspended by lines beneath them for the building directly next to her. She had to camp out in a shadowy crevice between pillar and wall for half an hour before they eventually flew off, then she was able to dart across the dirt streets and continue to make her way in towards the city wall.

When she got there it looked a lot less solid than it did from a distance. There were roadways breaking through at multiple points, and the buildings weren’t arranged in a straight line, but were sticking out like blocks in random fashion, making what had looked like a smooth boundary really a mottled mess of incoherent infrastructure.

The roadways did switch over from dirt to stone-like paving as Kara crossed the blurred line between new city and old, and the shadows that had been present in the construction side now vanished with street lights that made it impossible for her to walk about unnoticed…so she went up to the rooftops where there were still some shadows to be had and began jumping her way from one to another, trying to avoid the low ones for fear of being seen out a nearby window, few as they were on lizard buildings.

Finding a path in through the city was tricky, for the rooftops were not all flat. A lot of them were teepee shaped or slanted, meaning she either had to bypass those or go Spiderman on them. Kara did both as needed, working her way several kilometers into the city before finally going inside one of the larger buildings through a roof entrance.

She shifted her armor over to the color of the lizard interior hallways, giving her a yellowish look that would stand out less than pitch black, but with her psionic advantage she didn’t plan on relying on her visual camouflage, limited as it was. Moving down into the building she pried what she could from several passing minds, then ambushed one with an angled head that she knew to be a higher level coordinator variety they referred to as ‘librarians.’

Kara took the librarian down on its way through a hall with four other lizards within sight, but through a little psionic trickery they didn’t notice when the librarian veered into the wall and slumped halfway down to the ground, only to have a pair of armored hands reach out from a doorway and drag it inside.

When the Archon got the door shut she released her Ikrid link to the others, having had to juggle four different sets of senses simultaneously, not to mention knocking out her target. That had strained her, but she’d managed to pull it off, based on the lack of reaction from the minds of the others as they continued on with their duties on the other side of the walls from where she and her captive now rested.

It was a large room, with two other lizards already napping in it. Those she’d knocked out when she’d come down from the balcony above. The two story room held an obelisk in the center that was some sort of data device, or so she’d gathered from the two users. It was low priority and sparsely used, which should give her a bit of privacy in which to conduct her ‘interviews,’ though she still had to keep her Ikrid radar alert for others coming in on either level.

She pulled the librarian over to a bench and got to work on his head, finding his mind more complex than the standard variants across the room. This type of lizard was used to deal with data, and as such should provide her with valuable intel…specifically where in the city the higher ranking lizards were.

That information wasn’t hard to retrieve, for the lizard’s mind was segmented like a computer database, with the hierarchy well established. It served a command variant, which Star Force already knew about. They labeled them ‘administrators’ due to the fact that they didn’t command anything in combat, but ran large scale operations from a logistics angle.

It was its superior that Kara was interested in, and the librarian gave her not one, but three others, two of which were on planet. Images were fuzzy, but she got the location of one of them on the lizard’s mental map of the city, giving her another building to get to.

Not wanting to overstay her welcome, she let go of the librarian and jumped/flew up to the second level, heading back through that level to a maintenance shaft that led to the service area directly underneath the roof, distracting a few minds along the way. When she got back outside she ran across the rooftop to the edge and jumped across the street, angling up to the wall of a much larger building, this one shaped like a teepee.

Kara hit the side and clung to it, then flew up the side keeping her body pressed as close to the building side as possible to reduce her silhouette until she reached the peak. It had no entrance, but a dome-like cap that glowed orange that she sat down upon, making her armor go reflective so she blended in with the massive light as she looked out over the city, trying to spot her next target.

Star Force cities had buildings of various size, but none clustered together in the center like the nations of Earth used to have. This lizard city seemed like a throwback, with the tallest buildings all located towards the center, including three massive ones that stood more than twice as tall as the others.

Those weren’t where the librarian had unwittingly directed her. Instead, the location it’d tagged was a massive building alongside those, but only 1/3rd the height. It was a fat teepee that dwarfed the one she now sat upon, but looked small given how far away on the horizon it was. She guessed it was at least 20 kilometers away, and her armor sensed her mental question and popped up a rangefinder in V’kit’no’sat measurement units, which she mentally translated into approximately 42 kilometers.

Kara sighed. She’d wanted to probe a big lizard city, and that’s just what she’d got. Resigning herself to a lot of indirect building hopping she eyed her next target, quashing the urge to just fly directly over there. She didn’t want to tip off the lizards to her presence, and this close in it would be unlikely that their sensors couldn’t detect her if she got up into the air…and it would be almost impossible to avoid being visibly spotted if she flew low over the streets.

She really hoped she wasn’t wasting her time, but so far no troops had been whistled up to come after her and she didn’t want to risk squandering whatever opportunity she had, so she slid off the top of the building, switching her armor back over into null black as she fell…then kicked off the side of the wall and crossed to another building top, coming down in a crouch as she looked around both with her eyes, her armor’s sensors, and her psionics.

No one was on this rooftop, despite the various protrusions sticking up that made her feel like she was standing inside a giant, inverted ice cube tray.

“One down, 50,000 to go,” she said, working her way over to the opposite side of the roof and picking out her next target, feeling for all the world like she was playing Frogger.

Wanting only to travel in the dark, it took three Star Force days and one and a half night sessions for her to make her way across to city center in zigzag fashion, camping out inside the buildings during daylight and catching a bit of sleep when she could, but she was reluctant to completely nod off, for she wanted to keep a watch on any nearby minds that came within her proximity.

Kara then found herself clinging to the outside of her target spire in the cover of night looking for a way inside. There was no roof, but only a lighted dome, meaning she had to either find or make an entrance…and it was looking like it was going to be the latter, unless she wanted to go down to the surface and try the front door.

After scouting around she finally decided to go in through one of the windows, but finding a room without occupants was difficult and took her the better part of an hour to locate, with her knowing that it might not stay unoccupied for long.

Looking like a Garfield car toy, she stuck to the outside of the triangular window and used her Dre’mo’don to melt through the surface, carving a wobbly circle and pushing the plug inside as it clung to her right palm. She crawled through and dropped to the ground on her head, rolling out into a somersault to bring herself back up to her feet.

She set the glass plug down on the floor just inside where she’d cut it, not sure what the lizards would make of it when they saw it but having little other choice. She needed to find this higher level lizard and to do that she had to get inside the building.

Kara crossed the small room, hopping over some sort of bench/chairs to get to the door, outside of which she felt several minds nearby, all of which were standard lizards. She accessed one of them and pulled what situational information she could, getting the basic layout of this level and those that that individual frequented…then it passed out of her Ikrid range and she tried another, and another, and another, picking up additional data and piecing together what she needed to know.

The off limits region of the building was only a few levels up, and having learned of secure check points inside, Kara decided to go back out through the window and climb up. When she did she couldn’t find a room without occupants, though she went the entire way around the spire looking for one. Settling on making some waves, she picked one and systematically picked off the minds inside, rendering them unconscious even as the others sprang up in panic and alarm.

She got to them before they could signal for help, she hoped, then climbed up onto the window and cut her way inside. All of the 9 lizards were librarian variants, and she pried the closest one up off a data console and set it back in its chair, delving into its mind and pulling out the location of its boss.

With a clear target set one level down on the other side of the building Kara set off through the hallways, distracting and blanking the minds of those she couldn’t otherwise slip past, hoping they didn’t have internal camera surveillance…or at least if they did that they weren’t actively monitoring it.

Boldly walking down some of the hallways that she had no choice but to go down, Kara worked her way over to an altogether separate complex that appeared to be a mix of command center and residential…all to serve the lizard variant that inhabited it.

Kara had to take a group of lizards down with a Fornax sphere when she entered one of the control nexuses, then she picked off a few minds, rendering them unconscious before Fornaxing the others again as she worked through them a few at a time. When she was finished she crossed over their unconscious bodies and headed for the one mind she sensed nearby that was slightly different from the others, entering a small elevator and moving up to a living center larger than any quarters she’d ever seen, Star Force or otherwise.

Inside she disabled a pair of guards and six attendants, then telekinetically yanked the comm device out of the larger lizard’s hand as it pulled the device from beneath its dark green robe.

Kara then hit it with a Fornax blast, taking the 7 foot tall lizard down to its knees before worming her way into its mind and sending it into sleep mode.

It slumped over, with its thick tail sticking up underneath its robe from the face plant it was doing. It was by far the largest she’d ever seen or heard about, literally dwarfing the maulers they used for hand to hand combat. Why their leaders were bigger she didn’t know, but she was glad Star Force wasn’t having to face down these in the field, for while they stood as tall as Knights, she guessed they outmassed them by 50% or more, especially with that muscular tail.

“I don’t have much time, big boy,” she said, peeling back the armor from her hands and placing her fingertips on its brutishly wide head, “so let’s see what you know.”

6

The structure of the lizard’s mind surprised Kara, for it was far more advanced than the others, not just in processing power but in complexity, and after only a cursory look through its recent memories she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the variant of ‘Mastermind’ that Paul had speculated to be operating on Atlantica.

Like the trailblazers, this lizard was tasked with overarching strategy and troubleshooting, leaving administrators to handle repetitive and mundane oversight duties. This one in particular was overseeing the infrastructure expansion on this city along with dozens of others on the planet, escalating up to what it labeled as Tier 9. Information on that was hard to retrieve, for it was buried deep within its mind, in such a way as it was considered common knowledge and didn’t need to be spelled out in cognitive thought.

From what she could pull from it, Tier 9 was another leveling up of the lizard infrastructure of not just this planet, but this star system. Once reached, it would give them more capabilities…capabilities that this mastermind needed to extend the dominion of the lizards in this section of the galaxy.

That meant this guy wasn’t just in charge of this system, but multiple ones. Meaning Kara had definitely found one of their big guns.

She followed memory to memory, unable to ‘search’ for specific information. It was like bringing up the most recent web page the individual had been to, then following the links on that page to other pages, then following more links from there. It was an indirect way of sifting through memories, but the only one available to her short of bringing the lizard partially back to consciousness and interrogating it with questions intended to jog specific memories.

Kara didn’t feel like going that route, so she just kept searching, following any connected memories that seemed pertinent. It took her a while to get used to the way this lizard categorized data, but once she did she was able to jump from ‘page’ to ‘page’ rather quickly, allowing her to soak up a wealth of data, tricky as it was given that it was all stored in visual, audial, or language formats…and her knowledge of the lizard language wasn’t that great.

Her armor had a translation program that the lizard language had been uploaded into, so she could hear what they were saying around her without having to try and think through the translation herself. She could even speak it back to them, allowing the armor to synthesize the appropriate sounds and pitches that her own voice had trouble with, but in this mental digging it was completely unhelpful, for it couldn’t connect to the lizard’s mind, only hers, and asking for a translation of individual words was tedious…so Kara did the best she could with her own knowledge of their language and pulled on visual memories as much as she could.

Numbers were much easier, especially when it came to strength assessments. This lizard had an enormous number of ships under its command, spread out across 28 star systems and 78 inhabited planets Tier 4 or higher. Not just cruisers, which seemed to be the lizards’ preferred ‘do it all’ starship, but battleships, dreadnaughts, carriers, assault pillars, and invokers…all of which took higher tiered colonies to produce.

The last two versions were new to Star Force, and Kara dug into the memories of them deeply, discovering that the ‘assault pillars,’ which was her best translation of the lizard terms, were massive siege weapons, one of which could utterly rip apart a seda with a single shot from range. That scared Kara instantly, knowing how much Paul and the others relied on the sedas as strongpoints in orbit. She had to get this intel back to him as soon as possible so he could upgrade their defenses, otherwise they could run right over Atlantica’s defenses with ease…or even Namek’s.

So why hadn’t they? Kara started to get the sense that the lizards had only been playing with the Humans so far, or the Alliance for that matter, because these assault pillars had never been mentioned in any of the tactical analysis briefs she’d read. Nor the invokers, which operated like a gigantic mobile battle station that used area of effect weapons against attacking fleets.

Kara didn’t understand that straight off so she delved deeper, horrified by the tactical clarity that the lizard’s mind then provided. The invoker looked like a huge black spider, with arm-like pylons jutting out at numerous angles. They ‘invoked’ what looked like a space storm, with energy cascades similar to lightning stretching out into nearby fleets and savaging them with a single discharge. One memory she pulled showed a H’kar fleet engaging one of them with upwards of 1000 warships and being torn asunder within minutes.

A chill ran down Kara’s spine, but she pressed further. She needed this intel badly, no matter how much it creeped her out. These invokers were fleet killers, and judging by the approximate size were bigger than a seda. She got the sense that they weren’t easy to build, but rather were used like chess pieces on the galactic playing board, reserved for the truly large engagements and densely defended worlds. Apparently the Alliance didn’t rate that high on the lizards’ enemy list, but the H’kar did…that was something the Alliance had told them from day one, along with the fact that once they were done killing the H’kar they’d turn their full attention on the Alliance.

That was before the Nestafar had backstabbed them and made an Alliance victory even less likely…but with technology like this?

Kara knew what Star Force had to do…they had to get to the invokers first and take them down before they could be deployed against them. To do that meant excessive trickery, and she was sure Paul would come up with something. If not, she might have to go in alone and try to mess one up from the inside.

But that could wait till later. She didn’t know how much time she was going to have with this one so she didn’t want to waste what she did have speculating. Kara searched for more high level tech, coming up with a slew of different ship variants, some combat capable but most were mission specific, such as dedicated mining vessels, couriers, and whatnot. It was their infrastructure tech that blew her away, with so many ground-based weapon systems that she literally blushed from embarrassment at having thought Star Force might one day make an excursion into the lizards’ home worlds and knock them out of contention before they could destroy the Alliance.

It was the Tiers…it was all about the Tiers. Each level up they progressed they opened up more tech options, meaning the longer you left a lizard world alone the more powerful it would become.

As soon as that thought hit Kara’s mind it triggered a strategic memory within the lizard, and a galactic battle plan emerged like a mental map…and she suddenly realized what the lizards were doing.

“Oh shit,” she whispered, realizing how much trouble they were in. The lizards weren’t aggressive brutes…or, well, they were, but that wasn’t what was driving them to expand. They were builders, engaging in frontier wars while they strengthened their core worlds. Their entire fight against the Alliance was to keep them preoccupied, which was why they were sending lower tech forces out to face them.

If they lost, they’d gain information on the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses, then send another assault force to experiment with modifications. The fighting would keep the enemy on the enemy’s turf, not the lizards…and the lizards had so many midrange worlds surrounding their core that even if the enemy pressed in they’d have star system after star system to hack their way through to get to the prime lizard defenses.

And the lizards were adding midrange worlds. What was once frontier, if left unchecked, would grow new lizard colonies. Those colonies would push out, planting outposts and probing the surrounding systems as a distraction of their own while they advanced to the next Tier, adding yet another line of defense to the overall lizard empire.

If the lizards won worlds in the frontier wars, so much the better, but either way they gained time to strengthen and grow their core…and it was a strategy that they’d been employing for millennia, going all the way back to their original homeworld when they had to fight against three other races across 5 continents.

The lizard’s mind flashed back to those stories, seeming to cement the strategy into the very fabric of their race. They’d only had one variant back then, one that they didn’t even use now. All the others had been genetically engineered over time as needed, with the aquatics version being the most recent addition.

Following that thread Kara pulled the identity of this lizard’s superior, discovering that it wasn’t one that was grown. Almost as soon as she made that realization the mastermind’s memories linked all the way back to its beginning and Kara could see the flash of light as its development cocoon was opened to air and it stepped out into the cold fully mature, driven by genetic knowledge and a singular sense of purpose as it worked its way through basic orientation drills and exercises, then within only a few weeks it was given control over this world’s strategic workings, learning and growing along with the colony.

But now it wasn’t in full control, for a higher ranking lizard had been brought in…not grown, but brought in from the lizard core. It was one of the ruling brood that, unlike the rest of the lizards, was part of a bloodline. Kara loosely translated its title as ‘templar’ and dug into the mastermind’s assessment of the one on Albo.

It was not the intellectual equal of the mastermind, and the lizard knew this, but it did serve a purpose…a very important purpose. Whereas mastermind had been grown on this world, never having seen the core worlds or anything else of the lizard empire, the templars were the glue that held their vast interstellar empire together. Like Star Force’s Archons, the templars were all family, and viewed each other as such…not as competition.

That was key, Kara knew, for otherwise it would have been very easy for one region or system to break off and go rogue, given the travel times and comm lag between one part of their empire and another. All the genetically grown lizards had a purpose in serving the mission needs of the local region, while the templars functioned as their link to the commonality, focusing on empire-wide concerns.

The templar here had a purpose, as did the mastermind, and ironically there was no clash between them. Sometimes the templar would need resources to be dispatched back to the core, which the mastermind would supply, or specific systems to take, guard, or abandon…all according to the overall strategy of the empire, which the ruling brood kept to themselves. The masterminds were the warmasters, and the templars were the ones who moved them around the galactic chess board assigning missions, leaving the genetic constructs free to micromanage as they saw fit, for the templars knew they were not as brilliant as those they commanded, and kept to their designated role within lizard society.

Higher up their ranking, amongst the ruling brood, was another lizard variant…this one a biological upgrade to the templars, keeping to the live birth bloodlines. The lizard Kara was probing had never seen one, nor probably ever would unless this world rose to a very high Tier. They were the uber-leaders of the lizards, which she dubbed ‘sovereigns,’ who oversaw legions of templars.

Kara knew that the local templar could one day upgrade into a sovereign, but the mastermind’s memories said that was a distant possibility, tagging this one as very green, thus it had been given a periphery command where it could learn and develop while still serving the empire’s overall purpose…which Kara realized was to spread out and dominate the galaxy. Lizard society was all they knew, and all they would tolerate.

This mastermind knew that enslaving other races was one option it had, but they could never be treated as equals…only tools.

That meant the Nestafar were going to get backstabbed themselves, because the lizards would never tolerate another power within their borders. She rather liked that part, aside from the fact that it meant the lizards could only be stopped through defeat and probably annihilation. There were no diplomatic channels available…they were what they were genetically designed to be, and unless those handcuffs were removed their individuality was not going to surface. Without it, they couldn’t be reasoned with, and were essentially slaves to their own race.

That both saddened and impressed Kara, for all they’d accomplished, dishonorable as some of it may be, they deserved a nod of respect…but the idea that they could have come so far and yet be so blind at the same time made them pathetic, which Kara felt that any advanced race didn’t deserve to be.

Both sentiments faded as the strategic implications of her newfound intel rose back to the forefront of her mind, along with the immense danger they posed to the Alliance and Star Force. Both had time to counter the lizards, given their current lackadaisical war strategy, but it was only a matter of time before they escalated the conflict, multiple times, until they overwhelmed their opposition.

Kara desperately hoped the H’kar could give them more trouble than expected, but she didn’t hold out hope that the once great rimward race had any chance of winning…not now that she knew what kind of tech the lizards were holding up their sleeve.

The Humans’ greatest asset was the fact that the lizards didn’t perceive them as a significant threat, coupled with the fact that their territory was on the frontier and farther away from the lizard core worlds than that of the rest of the Alliance. That made it all the more imperative that Star Force suck more technological upgrades out of the V’kit’no’sat database and set up a solid line of defense before the lizards got wise to their true potential.

Kara realized for the first time that the Alliance, her team that she’d never give up on, was going to get beaten, and beaten badly…even if the Nestafar had stuck with them. Knowing that, Star Force had to adjust its plans…and Kara made a mental note to have a very long chat with Paul about that when she got back.

She started digging into recent memories, trying to soak up some tactical knowledge of this mastermind’s plans in the local region, hoping to remember the flurry of images she was seeing when her spidey senses started to tingle with Ikrid contacts outside the room she was in.

“Damn it,” she whispered, trying to glean the current location of the templar then giving up as armed lizards came in and found her kneeling over what looked like their dead superior.

Kara knocked them down with a Fornax field as she sensed hoards more surrounding the chamber. She popped out her forearm weaponry, resealing her armor over her hands, and shot the downed guards with fast firing blips of green energy. She glanced down at the mastermind unconscious beside her feet and considered killing it, but a part of her didn’t want to, given how advanced it was. So out of professional courtesy, and the fact that they’d just grow another, she gave it a swift kick in the abs for all the trouble the lizards had caused, then ran off towards the main entrance where the other lizards were now coming in.

She fought her way through them with relative ease, given the fact that they couldn’t get past her shields, let alone her armor in the small hallways that diminished the number of weapons they could bring to bear on her simultaneously…and then add in the fact that she was knocking most of them down with Fornax blasts before they could even pull the triggers, and she made her way to an exterior room rather quickly.

Kara shot three lizards inside then extruded a different weapon on her right wrist that wrapped around her hand and created a hard circle in her palm. There she produced a small orb of green/white energy as she threw her hand forward towards the intact window as she ran, releasing it a meter prior to impact.

The window vaporized in a flash of energy that also melted the rim around it…then her armored form shot through into the night air, falling a couple of meters under the influence of gravity before she shot off in a straight line like a missile, abandoning stealth in favor of distance and hoping that the alarm the lizards were sounding was contained to just the building behind her and that they hadn’t put the entire city on alert.

Dropping low, she moved down into the city streets, hoping to keep beneath their sensors, and flew Ironman-style right through the lizard infrastructure, moving so fast there was a boom of compressed air whenever she flew past.

Her black form didn’t go unnoticed, and before she’d managed to zigzag a third of the way back towards the city’s edge a repetitive screech sounded throughout the city and a number of blips showed up on her armor’s sensors, indicating that one of their fighter patrols had been pulled in and were angling towards her approximate location.

“Time to dance,” she said, pulling up out of the streets and accelerating into a blur as she hit clean air.

7

“Stay low, stay low,” Kara said as she zipped across the lowest rooftops within the city, bouncing between one canyon-like area to another while avoiding the taller buildings as her armor tagged numerous anti-air batteries scattered across the cityscape.

She’d accelerated up to more than twice what her speed had been flying through the streets, but she still couldn’t take a direct line to the city’s edge without exposing herself…meaning it was a race between her and the fighters moving towards her position, despite the fact that she had her sensor-dampening ‘skin’ on.

Kara was flying so close to their equipment that she knew she was impossible to miss, but get those fighters over her head and a lack of restraint in firing down onto their own city and she’d be in for a world of hurt, for these were just the first few, with new contacts popping up on her sensors from numerous hangars…meaning she had to get out of here fast.

Weaving her way below the firing lines of the anti-air batteries, Kara got halfway out to the city’s edge before the first stunted green plasma lance flashed by her and hit a building ahead, melting into the rooftop.

Instinctively she pulled off to the right, feeling the excess aero drag of her pack underneath her armor coating, but that couldn’t be helped now. A couple more flashes hit behind her, then she pulled a hard left turn and shot off down a row of low buildings with the wisp turning more sluggishly to follow behind her as it leveled off at nearly the same altitude and started firing at her feet.

Kara kept dancing about, all the time keeping under what her armor showed to be the anti-air altitude boundaries that kept changing depending upon what battery she was nearest. That still left her a lot of wiggle room in between the taller buildings, given her small size, but another pair of wisps came up from high overhead and started making strafing runs so they could fire down on her, adding to the green streaks hitting all around her…then one hit her in the shields covering her feet.

“Oh no you didn’t,” Kara said, registering a significant chop in her shield strength just before she flipped over onto her back and put her palms together, forming a green orb that she cradled in both hands as more plasma came her way.

Ignoring it and sighting the wisp behind she sat up a bit, still flying level to the ground and backwards across the building tops as if she was coasting, and stretched her arms out in front of her as she got a mental lock on the target, releasing the energy orb like a bullet popping out of a gun. The glowing ball of light slightly smaller than her head shot back in a straight line and sank into the hull of the lizard fighter, then detonated in a bright puff of confetti that had once been the wisp’s hull.

Kara smiled momentarily, then flipped back over to fly chest down, letting the tiny bits of debris left over from the shredded fighter fall in her wake as she saw more fighters dropping in behind her, as well as some gathering ahead, having predicted her course across the lowest building tops.

Rather than facing them head on she made a detour, cutting close to the edges of lizard structures when she turned, hoping to get lucky and peel off a fighter in the process, but unfortunately their pilots weren’t clumsy enough to run into their own buildings. Some of them went high and wide, while a few others kept on her heels, all the while more were coming in from the periphery and boxing her in at a respectful distance.

Kara could do the basic math in her head and knew time wasn’t on her side, so she tucked her arms in close to her body and eyed the nearest anti-air battery, plotting a course directly underneath it and up out the other side, then she accelerated hard, feeling the air dragging against her shields as she zipped down across building after building until she had no more room to maneuver and it was either slow down and turn or ram into one of the taller ones.

Kara arced up and into what was soon to become a firing range above the city, putting herself through a wide spiral as the anti-air battery that showed up directly behind her spat a slew of plasma shards, each similar in size to the stubby lances the wisps fired, at the shrinking dot that was the armored Human as she tore across the cityscape gradually gaining altitude and speed.

The buildings began to whip by her, with the forest ahead seeming enticingly close, then what looked like the fourth of July broke out ahead of her and the air was filled with plasma shards…with the lizard fighters wisely holding back and letting the city defenses take a swipe at her.

Kara’s only saving grace was her tiny size, because even with her ever increasing speed the batteries were still able to accurately track her. She took a hit early on, then got by most of the short flight to the city edge without incident…then took three hits over the course of 2 seconds that nearly penetrated her shields.

Before she even realized what was happening most of the anti-air fire cut out as she reached the construction ring around the city, with her dropping back down in altitude and skimming the partially constructed buildings to cut out most of the rest…which was when the now swarm of fighters moved back up in pursuit and began taking long distance shots at her, all of which missed initially, but sooner or later they were going to get lucky just through sheer numbers, as there were now well over 200 fighters on or near her tail.

Every second that passed her shields regenerated…far faster than any Star Force shields, or even those of the Kvash, so she dropped low to canopy when she crossed over the boundary from lizard construction sites to forest, trying to use the limited topography to her advantage, but the mountain ranges were a bit further off yet, giving the lizard fighters a large field of yellow trees to fire down upon in the hopes of hitting her, now without having to worry about collateral damage.

The sky around Kara lit up in green, and she took another pair of hits, both grazes, to her arm and leg, but her shields held…then she hit the brakes as fast as her armor could manage and her tiny dot of a body sudden fell back into the lizard fighters and collided with one.

It exploded in a puff of confetti-like debris, then another one nearby did the same…which sent the others into a frenzy, zipping about every which way as they tried to track her movements while avoiding running into each other at the same time.

Kara killed two more of their fighters at pointblank range before accelerating off in a straight line again, leaving them to come to their senses and reform their chase pack, allowing her to get some quick distance. She pressed her acceleration hard, building speed with every second as the air tugged heavily on her shields…which she reformed into a pointed tip to give her a more aerodynamic profile, feeling a sudden rush of speed accompanying it.

The wisps were fast too, and a dozen or so of them began closing on her, but she’d gotten far enough ahead of them to almost be off their sensors. A few wiggles here and there, along with dropping down and literally skimming the treetops, and she was able to subtly veer off their current flight line, which told her she was almost in the clear.

She held her line, letting them get further and further away…then they broke up and went multiple directions, trying to reacquire her signal.

Kara pushed on, getting away from all but two of them who managed to catch a bit of a sensor image and redirect her way with the others turning to follow, lagging far behind. With the mountains just ahead of her Kara kept low and headed for the first jut of terrain popping up from the flat terrain and swung around it, blocking her from their sensors.

Then she began swerving, hopping, and mimicking the ups and downs of the increasingly rough terrain, tricking the fighters into going the wrong direction, only to reacquire her sensor silhouette again. After several minutes of cat and mouse they lost her altogether and she was able to fly deep into the mountains while they pulled up to higher altitude in search mode, now too far away to pick her up while she was sensor dampened.

Kara flew well away from them, curving to the south while they held a westerly vector, then she gently slowed to a stop and ducked down through the yellow forest canopy as the sun was beginning to rise. The branches and leaves scraped against her armor, now that the shields were down, but they didn’t scratch the black material. Like a rock sinking through water, the forest seemed to part for her as she dropped down to the dark interior, with her armor scales returning to their normal red after she confirmed that there were no lizard foot patrols nearby…or giant wildlife.

Kara retracted her armor from her head, pulling in a fresh breath of forest air and almost choking on the moisture. She hadn’t seen it from above, but now that she was down on the ground she realized she was standing in a cloud that had formed below the treetops, covering the area in a thick mist.

She could see just fine with her Pefbar, and otherwise it was still night anyways, or would be for a few more minutes. She took in several breaths, getting used to the vapor, then looked around with her second sight, finding the nearest ridgeline. Retracting her armor all the way back into her forearm jewel, Kara hiked up the hillside and found a small, level spot on top where she pulled her pack off and sat down, resting against one of the massive trees.

“Well that’s done,” she whispered to the not so quiet forest, for there were chirps and creaks galore. “Don’t suppose they’ll settle down soon enough for me to go back and have a chat with the templar, so I guess it’s down to camping out the next few days.”

Kara didn’t like that at all…the idea of just sitting and doing nothing. So after a couple of hours to let the wisps get bored with looking for her, she ate a snack and pulled her pack on, then headed down the opposite hillside on foot, managing a decent paced run without slipping and falling on her face on the way down to the bottom of the ravine. Once there it leveled out enough for her to make a go at a cross country run, for no other reason than to give her something to do and to keep her body from stagnating in lieu of the workouts she was missing.

So Kara ran and rested the remaining days until her pickup was scheduled to arrive. When the countdown in her armor was getting close, she pulled her pack off and dropped it on the forest floor, glad to be free of its weight. With a mental twitch her scale-like armor reformed over her body and she summoned up another green orb that she used to blast apart her pack, leaving only bits and pieces of debris along with a hole in the dirt, a lot of which had sprayed up on her in the explosion.

She shook and it fell off, cascading back to the ground as the construction of her armor resisted the grime. Now clean and lighter, she started mentally plotting the rendezvous point in orbit, adjusting for her current position and expected flight path…which told her she had another 22 minutes and 18 seconds to wait.

Kara hopped up into the treetops and perched herself on a branch tall enough that she could look out through the leaves into the sky. Off in the distance she could see the edge of the lizard city, but it was far from her current position and the anti-air weaponry was well out of range. Some of the other defensive weapons weren’t, but there was no way other than sheer luck that they’d be able to hit a moving target as small as her, even if they could pick up her sensor-stealthed armor.

Forcing patience, Kara waited until the timer counted down to 00:00, then she jumped out through the leaves and flew through a sharp arc heading straight up into the air for a few kilometers before pulling back into an angle that gave her both height and lateral distance as she needed to accelerate up past orbital speeds to make her rendezvous, which even now should have been pushing past the lizard defense ships on a high speed approach to extreme low orbit.

With her sensors in stealth mode she couldn’t pick it or most of the lizard warships or stations up as she ascended, so she had to rely on position data alone…but when she reached the upper atmosphere the target materialized on her passive sensors, along with the lizard ships racing to catch it.

They weren’t going to, for the cutter had apparently got the jump on them again. It was moving too fast for them to overtake, but it did have to slow down somewhat for Kara to rendezvous with it, meaning it had to have a gap on the enemy whereas upon delivery it hadn’t. That said, it did have an ample head start on the pursuit, so as long as Kara could get up to speed and meet it at the proper height and time there shouldn’t be a problem.

Such a hot pickup was extremely complicated, but the math was easy enough for her armor’s computing systems. It gave her the appropriate vector, speed, and timing she needed to make the intercept, so as long as she followed the prompts she didn’t have to concern herself with anything else.

And that’s just what she did. Using the anti-grav in her armor she rose up above the atmosphere, gaining more and more lateral speed until the cutter was only 100 kilometers behind her and closing fast, at an altitude 2 kilometers above and on almost the exact same directional heading. Following her navigational prompts she continued to accelerate as it went through its own braking maneuver and the closing speed dropped smoothly.

When it got within 5 kilometers their speed differential had almost nulled out, allowing Kara ample time to get the proper altitude and wait beneath where the cutter would come across. With the lizard ships visible on her now active radar, she flew off the tracking program directly over to the cutter who’d entered a coasting phase rather than braking as it dipped down towards the atmosphere on a trajectory that would not sustain orbit, for both it and now Kara were moving too fast laterally to maintain a natural orbit, and only she could maintain an unnatural one, meaning the cutter was going to be leaving the planet one way or another when it bounced off the atmosphere, giving her only a brief window of opportunity to get aboard.

As she approached she confirmed that the drone warship’s shields were down, then she came up underneath it and latched onto the smooth hull with her adhesive grips, locking her toes, knees, and hands to the hull before signaling to the computer-controlled ship that she was aboard.

With that prompt the cutter altered its course prematurely and missed the atmosphere entirely, pushing off against the gravity well fiercely as it made a microjump away from the planet, shooting through the lizard orbital infrastructure and fleet and heading off towards high orbit without Kara feeling any of the acceleration now that she was safely inside the extended inertial dampening field of the drone.

From her perspective everything was still and her grip on the ship was almost unnecessary…but float up a meter or so and that’d change greatly, so she kept herself tucked low to the hull and rode the warship out away from the lizard planet as it pushed against neighboring gravity wells to get some course and speed adjustments enroute to a rendezvous in extreme high orbit where the jumpship was passing by.

Both ships had lizards tracking them, with the jumpship only having returned to planetary orbit a few hours ago. It had been hiding elsewhere in the system until the appropriate time, now it was making an orbital insertion to pick up the cutter, much as the cutter had to pick up Kara, only on a greatly exaggerated scale.

With the lizard fleet closing from a distance, Kara rode the cutter up to the jumpship then leapt off as it maneuvered to slide back into its parking slot alongside the other drones this warship/cargoship hybrid was carrying. Where half of the normal drone ship complement would have been were interior cargo bays, one of which Kara flew to, arcing her way through open space as if she were Ironman, completely independent of gravitational physics.

Her armor produced no physical thrust, as the drone was having to do in order to align itself with the docking slot, but she was still able to curve her way around the hull and fly into one of the open bays, passing through the containment field and into the ship’s artificial gravity, which her suit was then able to push off of for flight dynamics. Kara flew halfway across the bay and came down midway into an open area of the deck, dropping into a smooth walk and peeling off her armor by the third step as she casually strode across the hangar as if she’d been there all along.

With her inside, the bay doors closed and she headed over to a comm terminal, informing the bridge that she was aboard so they could micro-jump out of planetary orbit as soon as possible. After that it was a short rendezvous with the system’s central star, then the beginning of a 3 month zigzaggy trip across multiple star systems back to Namek, where she was going to have that long chat with Paul on Star Force’s strategy against the lizards.

8

October 8, 2432

Retari System

Atlantica

Kyler watched from the bridge of the Black Pearl as it floated its way across the sky looking down on the world-spanning ocean. The churning water ahead was finally settling down, which prompted one of dozens of skeets circling far overhead to make a diving run towards the surface and release another warhead.

It fell straight and cleanly entered the choppy waves as the fighter pulled off. Underneath the surface the turbulence was stiff, but the lengthy torpedo steered a course through it, dropping down towards the seafloor where a carpet of plants covered the watery landscape.

Except they weren’t plants, but rather tower-sized lizard defense tendrils, copied from Elarioni tech and produced in massive numbers to protect the subsurface base set beneath. They had similar defense tendrils at their other bases, but nowhere near this number. With the battleships’ shield columns they could take out the tendrils one by one, but it was a slow process, and given how many were situated below it would take days at minimum to break through, if not weeks.

There was also a huge lizard aquatics fleet below, swimming in and around the tendrils ready to strike out at any Human fleet that dared to hit the base. Kyler knew it would be a nasty fight, even with all 9 of their battleships committed, so he’d decided to change the game and hit them from the air, keeping his fleet right next door but out of the water and out of both the tendrils’ and lizard ships’ reach.

The wreck of a lizard cruiser and dozens of wisps lay on the seafloor now, with the wisps having come from carrier ships that rose up to the surface, but neither they nor the starship were a match for 9 battleships, even if they were in airship mode. Their maulers had torn the cruiser into shreds with only the Triton taking damage in the fighting.

It was patching itself up at the moment, still holding its anti-grav hover over the ocean as the battleships moved into position over the city that the skeets had been bombing for some time now. The most recent torpedo followed the track of the others, heading straight down into the mess of defense tendrils and detonating against one of them…taking out 6 of the huge constructs with the resulting blast/concussion wave.

The bomb wasn’t a nuke, but rather something far more powerful…powerful enough to push around an enormous amount of water and turn it into a weapon of its own, for while 6 of the intact tendrils were ripped apart, many more were damaged, leaving yet another wide crater of damage on the tendril carpet below.

The lizard fleet had thus scattered rather than risk getting caught up in the blasts, having retreated within the base itself or scurried off to the fringes, passing beyond the boundaries of the tendril field and putting as much distance between them and the bombing as possible. Star Force rarely used bombs, preferring more surgical strikes, but that didn’t mean they didn’t make them nor knew how to use them, which the lizards were learning the hard way right now.

Kyler was glad to see it was working, having half expected them to have some surprise defense against the attack, but aside from the almost panicky cruiser/wisp counterstrike the enemy hadn’t been able to touch them above the water and now looked to be on the defensive, though for how long that would last he didn’t know.

A massive bulge in the ocean rose up like a dome beneath the battleships, then sank back down into a depression with the walls of water rolling in and twisting about in a violent vortex as the liquid water and flash vaporized gasses sorted themselves out chaotically. Once the ocean settled down the skeets dropped another bomb at a slightly different location, mowing the grass, so to speak, on the seafloor below one strike at a time.

The craft carried only one torpedo each, and after the drop each skeet took off heading for the upper atmosphere and the long trip back to Seaquest, the nearest Star Force city, some 2,490 kilometers away. They had more than enough fuel to get there, but it was a long turnaround to get reloaded and fly back out, which was why Kyler had planned on only the one assault, having assigned multiple flights of skeets to accompany the battleships out so he’d have all the ordinance he’d need on hand.

“No response to communications,” Captain Voru said, stepping up beside Kyler as he looked at one of the video screens of the ship’s exterior. “Looks like they want us to come down and get them the hard way.”

“In time, Captain. Let’s see how many of their toys we can break first.”

Voru cleared his throat. “We could take the opportunity, while we wait, to eliminate some of their fleet, given how scattered they are right now.”

“You won’t get many unless they turn and fight.”

“Why not take a few now when we can?”

Kyler sighed. “Alright, but I don’t want any of the ships near the shockwaves. What targets do we have furthest out?”

“The Waverunner is currently tracking a small group that got clear before the first blast…they appear to be undamaged and holding close formation. They should be able to drop on top of them and kill or disable half of the ships before they can flee outside plasma range.”

“Save the squids,” Kyler ordered, “then tell them happy hunting. What else do you have?” he asked, knowing Voru already had a plan of attack in place before he’d brought it up for discussion.

“Four other groups well outside of the blast range, none of which are a match for one battleship.”

“Dispatch four of the others, but keep us here.”

Voru nodded, then walked off leaving Kyler next to the vid screen. He was right about taking the opportunity to eliminate some of their ships before they saw them again on another battlefront, but Kyler wasn’t wholly convinced that Star Force had the upper hand here. If events continued to follow form it appeared that he’d found their achilles heel…but that just didn’t feel right, especially given all the tactical headaches this smart lizard had been giving him and Paul.

He watched as another torpedo dropped and swam its way down to the tendrils, blasting more apart and pushing the water surrounding them back so far it formed a huge void that caused the surrounding water to vaporize due to the nonexistent pressure once it began to collapse. That bubbled the new air up through the debris in a pyre that marked the detonation point on the holographic battlemap beside him, with only a small amount of the destructive energy reaching the surface to be seen on the exterior cameras.

A few more drops and they’d be clear to head down themselves and begin taking out the tendrils around the entrances to the base, of which there were many. This main base of theirs had been under surveillance for quite a while now, even as Star Force hit and destroyed the smaller ones scattered around the ocean closer to their own cities. Once they’d gotten their first breadcrumb of a trace, they’d followed it to a transitional base, and from there out to several others.

One find led to another, eventually leading them here, to a mid-level section of the ocean deeper than the Star Force cities were located at, but shallower than the great depths where neither side seemed inclined to go just yet. Kyler had been keeping their strikes conservative, focusing on disrupting the lizards’ growth rather than seriously cutting into their numbers as he forced most of his resources on repairing the damage done to Manaan and building more battleships, which he knew was the key to their victory, for the lizards had no viable counterpart as of yet.

Their surveillance of this base had indicated multiple shipyards somewhere beneath the tendrils, for resources would come in and new ships would come out. How many lizard ground troops were down there was unknown, as was the actual size of the base, but the tendril field covered over 130 square miles and massed more than all three Star Force cities combined, having consumed an enormous amount of resources to build…which suggested that whatever was beneath it was vitally important to the lizards’ operations on Atlantica.

Which was why Kyler didn’t feel confident about the bombardment, nor his 9 battleships being enough to take this mega base out, but so far he hadn’t seen any brilliant masterstroke on the part of the lizards to combat them…but then again, they weren’t in the water yet either.

Then one of the bombs took out a section of tendrils, simultaneously breaching what looked to be a concealed entrance to the base, giving the sensors onboard the Black Pearl a good view of a very wide shaft heading straight down into the bedrock. No massive amount of air came up from the site, meaning it had already been submerged…probably a navigational tube, suggesting the base itself wasn’t right beneath the tendrils, but buried deep underground where the bombardment couldn’t follow.

“Captain, redirect the next torpedo on this shaft and run a telemetry feed up here.”

“Shaking the beehive, aye,” Voru acknowledged as one of the vid screens switched over from ‘window’ mode to the perspective of the torpedo, still hanging underneath a skeet with the craft just visible in camera on top.

When the skeet moved into its diving run the ocean appeared, then the torpedo detached and fell straight through the waves, quivering a bit as its engines fought the turbulence of the last explosion, but it maintained its course down to the crater and sank to a lower depth than the others had, now that there were no tendrils blocking the way.

It passed through the broken concealment doors and into the shaft, with the camera view having to switch to computer enhanced imagery due to the lack of light at that depth, despite the glows being cast from the intact tendrils that looked like a field of ugly Christmas trees. Inside the rectangular tube there was nothing to see for some time, then the architecture made a turn and shallowed out, running lateral a bit before coming up to another set of closed doors that it detonated against.

The feed cut out, and there was a delayed reaction before a tiny bit of turbulence made its way up to the ocean surface, with the lizard passageway acting like a squirt gun to direct the blast straight up rather than out spherically, allowing it to reach all the way back to the surface, carrying a lot of tendril debris with it that arced over and drifted back down into the field.

Kyler kept staring at the ‘signal end’ message on the vid screen, chewing on his fingernail as it switched back to an external view.

“So that’s how it’s going to be then,” he whispered, seeing his easy assault just get a lot more complicated. The lizards were burrowed in good and deep, meaning that Star Force was going to have to go down through predictable entrances and engage them at places of their choosing…and who knew what was waiting for them down there.

“What’s the width on that passageway?”

“Widest point is 580 meters,” Voru answered a moment later.

Kyler nodded. “So they can come in and out, but our battleships can’t.”

“It appears that way, though our squids will have no problem.”

Kyler shook his head. “We’re not playing their game. I’d bet our mastermind is down there, and he can stay all comfy and incommunicado until he’s ready to come out. Begin a search for comm lines, buoys, transmitters, and signals. I want this place under blackout…or whiteout if necessary. We can build jammers if we have to, let’s just make sure they haven’t got any buried lines that can circumvent it.”

“We’ll need to be in the water for a tight scan…and I suggest we use the squids to maximize our coverage area.”

“Put a hold on that. Direct the rest of the torpedoes to the likely entrances and peel off as many tendrils as we can. I don’t want the lizards sneaking out once we submerge.”

“No guarantee we’ll get them all, given the size of the field,” Voru cautioned.

“We’ll disassemble the rest with the battleships.”

Voru raised an eyebrow. “That will take some time,” he understated.

“No rush,” Kyler said offhand.

The Captain smiled. “And no resupply for the lizards in the mean time?”

“Not here anyway.”

“Where do you want the Pearl?”

“As soon as the water calms down I want us over the big entrance…and a probe sent down inside to see what damage we did. Have the rest of the battleships go hunting. If their fleet hasn’t already gotten out of sensor range, see that they don’t live to learn from their mistake.”

The tiny probe jetted its way out from the underside of the Black Pearl, arcing over into a dive that brought it down through the water towards the broken entry doors as multiple blue lances flashed around it as the battleship targeted the closest defense tendrils with its shield columns and delivered plasma blasts down the waterless conduits to their targets.

The man-sized probe eventually got low enough that the debris shrouded its view of the tendrils under attack, then the camera angles were consumed by the interior of the rectangular tube. The probe continued straight down for quite a ways before it encountered any floating debris, then the remote pilot in the Black Pearl slowed it down and zigzagged its way through until it came to the turn. It paused there briefly, receiving new programming, then pushed on, with the control signal from the battleship weakening the further in it got, given that it couldn’t pass through the solid rock.

The camera signal returning to the battleship eventually disappeared as well, with Kyler waiting nearly half an hour before contact was remade and a data dump of data flooded back up to the Pearl. As the bridge crew deciphered the sensor data a holographic map began to form, drawing Kyler’s attention away from the ‘window’ that showed the ongoing tendril destruction.

The doors to the passageway had been destroyed, along with chunks of the rim that led into a massive underwater chamber that was clogged with ships…some intact and others damaged or destroyed. Kyler knew instantly that this was one of the lizard shipyards, even before the construction slips were displayed, attached to the rocky walls.

Connecting tunnels exited out four other points around the large chamber, but the probe hadn’t ventured down any of them. Instead it had explored the intricate lattice work of cargo modules that had been cracked open and warped by the explosion, meaning the computer had wasted most of its scanning time nudging its way through a maze of junk.

That was the downside of computers…they could only do what they were programmed to, unable to improvise where a person easily would, but at least the wasted time had kept it away from the active lizard ships in the chamber, allowing the probe to survive long enough to return to them with the data it had.

“Your thoughts, Captain?”

Voru rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “All that debris would make for a chaotic battlefield, giving more value to the nimbler ships. I’d recommend shipping in another load of tactical torpedoes and shoving them in there rather than going in with ships. I’d still give us the advantage if we brought enough forces to bear, but it’d get really messy and we’d lose a lot taking it. I also don’t like those connecting passageways. We have no idea of how many more ships they have to reinforce this chamber with.”

Kyler pointed to several points on the ever growing map near the entrance.

“No to the torpedoes. They’re erecting minnow launchers. They’ll take them out before they could breach the interior.”

Voru frowned. “They do learn fast. We could still use one, detonated prematurely, to push those defenses out of position with the blast wave, then send a second before they could get them realigned.”

“Some potential there,” Kyler granted him, “but I don’t want to fight their fleet without the battleships. We bring them out to us.”

“And if they don’t feel like it?”

“This base is neutralized one way or another while we take the fight to the others. For now we need to focus on getting this entire tendril field cleared.”

“Permission to use our onboard ordinance?”

“Denied. I still don’t trust the lizards not to have an ace up their sleeve. Be patient and use plasma only. The next move is theirs. If they feel like sitting on their hands then we’ll systematically take down the field with our only losses being plasma and power. Time is our ally in this…let’s make the most of it.”

9

October 19, 2432

Retari System

Atlantica

Kyler ran through Manaan’s interior corridors, bouncing in and out of people walking by as he shot his way towards the command level, then when he finally got there he bypassed all of the staff and ran across to the command nexus and logged in with a quick touch to the Ikrid sphere, bringing up the systems in a hurry.

The holographic map of the planet shrunk down and highlighted the location where his battleships were still working their way through the lizard defense tendril field, having cleared more than 60% of it and revealing 5 different entrances to the subsurface base…but that wasn’t why he was in a rush. It was the plume of lizard aquatics ships coming up out of one of the entrances that his fleet hadn’t gotten to yet that had prompted a quick comm call from his staff that had pulled him out of Balboa Lane.

There had only been so many hours he could keep himself from going crazy using the Black Pearl’s treadmill and other limited training equipment, so after it was clear that there wasn’t going to be a massive battle for control of the lizard base, he’d called for a dropship to come pick him up and return him to the city while Voru and the other Captains went about their work clearing the field. Apparently the lizards didn’t like the idea of all their entrances being exposed, so they were now coming out to engage the Star Force fleet while they still had some tendril defenses left to aid them.

But it only took a quick look from Kyler to see that the lizards weren’t engaging the battleships…they were running, while using part of their fleet as a sacrificial distraction, hoping to draw the battleships in to the tendrils.

Using the nexus controls the trailblazer set up a no-go line on the hologram, indicating that the battleships shouldn’t press any closer in towards the tendrils, even if the lizards withdrew into them…which they were doing, making it almost impossible for the battleships to get a straight shot at them, because the tendrils would sway and snap the shield columns before they could fire on the ships.

That left hundreds of lizard light cruisers and frigates with cover to fire their torpedoes and minnows out of the tendril field against the closest battleships, covering their shields in a flurry of impacts that their point defenses were allowing through. The battleships wisely let some hit the shields, knowing that they could absorb the gnat-like blows while saving PDMs for later, but that was only going to lengthen the engagement, for there were so many lizard weapons coming their way that there was no way they were going to be able to keep shooting them down, at which point they’d be forced to retreat or advance into the field where they could not go.

The Highwind and Nautilus maneuvered up to the surface, then over top the field so they could fire down directly on top of the tendrils, hoping to aim through the gaps between them…but the large moving strands of what looked like living machinery bent over to provide cover, not allowing the vertical shield columns any more luck at reaching the ships nestled below the tendrils, which glowed with thousands of plasma nubs that would wreak havoc on anything that they came into physical contact with.

The lizard ships were immune, however, and the tendrils knew not to brush up against them, even turning off the plasma nubs nearest to their hulls so there would be no accidental grazes…all the while more torpedoes and the slightly smaller minnows kept swimming out and hammering the battleships in a lengthy torrent, which the larger ships more or less shrugged off, though they couldn’t keep that up forever and Kyler knew it.

Now would have been a perfect opportunity to use a tactical torpedo…had they any left. He guessed the lizards had waited until they were fairly sure that Star Force had expended all they had before launching this counterattack, for the turbulence alone from a detonation would have knocked their ships into the tendrils, effectively using their own defenses against them in one masterstroke of a blow. And even if the tendrils deactivated in time the ships would still receive hull damage from the collisions and the concussion of the blast.

But no, Kyler had used all of them to take out the tendrils as fast as possible, and even if he had pulled more out of storage in Seaquest there was no way to get them here in time, for the lizard ships were continuing to come out and saturate the tendril field, all the while part of them shot off in a straight line away from the battleships, making a run for the edge of their sensor range while the others kept up the torpedo barrages.

Kyler immediately tagged two of the nine battleships with orders to go after the fleeing ships, and a few seconds later they almost synchronously started to rise up towards the surface, knowing that they could travel farther and faster in air than the lizards could underwater. The trick was in keeping them in sensor range, and scanning from the air down into the water was more problematic than scanning through water only.

Even as he gave the order Kyler suspected it was what the lizards expected him to do, so he waited and watched…then he saw another strand of ships come up from a second hidden entrance and shoot off a different direction while more and more came up the first one and added additional torpedoes to the attack on the closest battleships.

Kyler knew the lizards…no, the mastermind lizard…was trying to divide the battleships up and he was succeeding, but was it doing it to whittle them down and hope to win a battle, or as a diversion while something made a run for it? With the sacrificial nature of lizard war tactics he didn’t expect the boss lizard to be trying to save his own skin, but they were definitely not making a random push, meaning they had an objective in play. Now what was it?

As Kyler watched the escaping convoys of ships stretching out like fingers his gut collapsed into a cramp as he had a thought, then he zoomed the map out a bit and saw the ends of the lizards’ communication relay network that Star Force had cut the base off from, and the fact that the ships were heading directly for them…meaning the mastermind would be able to relay signals through the line of ships and out to the intact infrastructure, giving it the ability to both send and receive messages for at least a brief period of time.

Kyler knew that wasn’t the main reason they were fleeing, just a side benefit. It was clear that the lizards didn’t feel like they could hold the base so long as Star Force didn’t feel like trying to fight it out inside, and rather than be neutralized by a siege they would prefer running and…doing what?

Even as he formed the mental question he knew the answer. Their mastermind would pull a Thrawn and devise a better defensive system than the tendrils alone, after scattering their fleet across the planet where Star Force could only get at a few of them…essentially resetting the game with a disadvantage of resources, but with an ocean of anonymity to hide within, letting the lizards hold out and play for the long term, perhaps hoping for a reversal in orbit.

Kyler didn’t want to let that many of them get away, and he had no idea where the mastermind was, let alone how to confirm they’d found it if they ever did, so he opened a comm line out to the Black Pearl in lieu of typing out orders and got Voru’s hologram in response.

“Sorry you’re missing all the fun,” the Captain commented.

“Deploy squids down the cleared tunnel entrances,” Kyler said quickly, knowing they had little time to waste. “Use a handful at the junctions for relays and scouts down to probe for booby-traps and defenses…then push through en mass and flank these bastards from inside.”

Voru’s eyes narrowed quickly, then eased back open as he comprehended what the Archon was saying. “With pleasure.”

Kyler cut the hologram off and returned his main view to the battlemap, which was being relayed from the battleships on site through an aerial buoy floating on anti-grav above the ocean, allowing it to transmit through the air back to their cities rather than trying to do so through underwater relays. Before the lizards had knocked down any such vulnerable objects with their air power, but now that it had diminished to almost nothing Kyler had gotten more bold and started to reset the aerial relay grid, with a special buoy having been brought with the battleships to this location to allow them all to submerge and still stay in contact with the rest of the planet.

It was his only link to his ships on the battlefield so long as they were all underwater, just as the line of fleeing ships was about to give the mastermind its link to its underwater grid, allowing it to organize in the same way…though there couldn’t have been enough ships nearby to call for aid, so whatever it intended it probably didn’t have to do with this battle, and launching a simultaneous assault elsewhere was nearly futile, given that it would only take a handful of hours for the battleships to relocate via air to wherever needed within Star Force territory.

Kyler knew it had something up its sleeve, but right now he couldn’t do anything about it.

The first of the squids were popping out of the battleships on his battlemap now, reminding him that even if the lizards had some side objectives going, they were at the disadvantage here and he needed to push for as many gains as he could get before they had a chance to regroup.

He switched over to binary view, with the battlemap shifted to his left and the right side of the nexus’s holographic display becoming the first person view of one of the squids heading for a descending tunnel around which all the defensive tendrils were gone. It zipped down the passageway at decent speed, then came up against a wall of torpedoes and the signal dropped out.

Kyler pulled up another squid, this one further back in line, and saw a hoard of the remote-controlled aquatics craft rushing forward to overcome the torpedo launchers with sheer numbers. The first few soaked up a lot of hits, churning the water about chaotically within the tube, but as much as that affected the squids it also buffeted around the torpedo launchers at the far end.

Like a football running back pushing through blockers and the defensive line, the squid Kyler was watching through got past the debris and came up on one of the blocky launchers that looked like it was part of a frigate that hadn’t been fully assembled, probably pulled from their construction facilities and repurposed for use here.

Whatever its origins, Kyler’s squid latched onto it with its four gigantic arms, gripping it so tight it left grooves in the hull as the drone extended a short shield column out from its ‘mouth’ and poured plasma into the torpedo launcher multiple times…then the explosives must have been hit, for the entire assembly exploded, taking the squid with it.

Kyler shifted view over to another, and followed it in past where the impromptu defenses had been laid out and inside a much cleaner chamber than Kyler had seen at the previous entry passage that they’d sent the probe down. There was no floating debris here, but rather an almost completely empty sphere of water with construction slips around the periphery. A few lizard ships remained, and Kyler could see other squids go after them while his and the main body pushed on through the chamber towards one of the side tunnels.

When it ducked in, Kyler could see that it was the same width and shape as the external shaft, but not nearly as long, for it opened up into a much smaller chamber that reminded him of a parking lot with a large building attached, having been dug into the rock face. With nothing there to attack the squids pushed on through to the far side and back into another tunnel, with the battlemap updating and expanding as they and other squid groups worked their way through the other entrances…all of which were headed towards the intact region of the tendril field where the enemy fleet was coming out of.

Eventually Kyler’s squid, being piloted by a crewer onboard the Loch Ness, came out into a chamber that was not deserted…at all. It was packed full of warships, apparently having been pulled from other areas of the base and awaiting their turn to go up the shaft in the ceiling and exit through the tendril field.

The trailblazer almost blanched when he saw how many they had built, then his squid accelerated in behind another trio of the drones and headed for a lizard destroyer, bypassing a host of smaller ships and sharks. As he watched the arms, which had been clenched together into a rough arrowhead shape for maneuvering efficiency, split apart just before it rammed into the whale-like hull and grabbed hold.

Kyler’s holographic screen was filled with hull as it extended its shield column out and started hammering through the lizard hull with blue plasma strikes. He watched it break through and begin slagging internal components, then just as he was about to switch to another squid he saw his get hit by minnow strikes that took down its shields.

He pulled back from the camera view and went straight to battlemap, seeing swarms of the sharks hammering the squids that had attached to the large ships, all the while more of the Star Force craft were pouring out of the connecting tunnel into the already crowded chamber. It was the equivalent of two boxers being shoved into a phone booth with each other and trying to go at it with only inches of separation, with chaos ensuing.

Kyler started tagging targets, trying to get his team organized while the lizards panicked and shot at anything that moved. First thing he did was mark the destroyers and cruisers as non-primary targets while putting the most emphasis on the frigates, which carried a disproportionate amount of the lizard’s torpedoes. The larger ships had more and stronger versions, but using them was doing as much damage to their own fleet as it was the squids, so Kyler wanted to trim down the enemy’s precision weapons, given that with the forming debris field the bigger ones would have a hard time getting to their targets.

The sharks were too fast to easily target, but thanks to the less than amicable moving options the squids were able to catch some of them, not even bothering to hit them with plasma and merely crushing them with their arms…which also helped to keep from detonating their onboard minnows, or rather what they hadn’t already fired off.

As the melee ensued, the nearest sharks quickly ran out of ammunition, allowing the incoming squids more freedom of movement. The lizard light destroyers, amazingly, had put up their defense trees, looking like swollen puff balls trying to block what little room there was in the water and getting a mess of debris in their defensive netting as a result. That said, they were spitting out hoards of minnows, with the squids hard pressed to get at them through their strands.

Kyler ordered them to just ignore them and focus on other targets, namely the frigates and the now pesky corvettes that were clamping down and crushing the squids as they held onto other targets. Meanwhile the portion of the lizard fleet that was situated away from the entrance the squids were coming through either held position or moved around a bit trying to get into a position where they could engage the enemy…if they could only get past all the others in the way, plus the debris.

Most of the lizard fleet kept siphoning out the shaft to the surface, but it was so narrow and the fleet so big that it was like trying to sip up a gallon of water through a single straw…all the while the carnage of the squids was eating into the lizard numbers at a considerable rate, with every drone destroyed being replaced by more coming through from behind.

Kyler switched battlefields and saw a similar engagement occurring in another chamber, though that area was only half as congested, with more conventional warfare ensuing. Two other engagements had also broken out, with a third just starting as the other groups of squids rushed through the lizard base in search of targets, and found plenty.

He knew most, if not all of the squids were going to be lost, but that was acceptable, given that they were unmanned and expendable. The trailblazer didn’t like losing assets in this way, because he knew there were cleaner ways to fight, but time was of the essence and if he had his forces pull back and engage tactically more lizard ships would get out and away, so he did what he could organizing and pushed the fight hard into their fleets, racking up as much damage as possible.

Kyler pulled back out to the master battlemap of the engagement, seeing the battleships taking hull damage from the ongoing torpedo impacts, but none of them were in serious damage. They’d been built to take a beating and keep on fighting, plus they were returning torpedoes for torpedoes, given that their shield columns were proving ineffective in the tendril field.

Kyler half smirked, then typed out a message to Voru, reminding him that this was why wasting ordinance on the tendrils would have been a bad idea earlier.

A minute passed, then a pithy response came back, also in text.

Savvy.

10

November 12, 2432

Nevarsor System

Namek

Paul watched as the lizard aquatics fleet fled their underwater base, amazed at how many ships they had managed to build and content with the number that Kyler was knocking down, both with the battleships up top and the squid armada he’d sent around through the back door. Many got away, slowly moving off in groups on various headings, some of which a few of the battleships were intersecting and poaching, but with thousands of ships to hit there was no way they could contain them, and the lines began arching away from the splash down points, with the battleships’ shield columns stretching out to hit whatever they could before they fully scattered.

Using the control pedestal in the command nexus, Paul fast forwarded through the long battle, pausing occasionally to see a specific item or encounter, including some ships that hadn’t been on their lizard list before, though they didn’t appear to be warships. A lot of transports had been holed up in the base as well, and most of those had gotten away as the battleships focused their firepower on the armed lizard ships, knowing they were the true threat, not just in the here and now, but down the road as well.

Eventually the streams of escaping ships coming up from the tendril field thinned out, then a few squids emerged, marking the end of the line as they pursued the last of the lizard ships out from the base. Paul immediately knew that was a mistake, and watched as the nearby tendrils bent over and brushed up against the squids, detonating their plasma nubs against their hulls and blowing them into bits while the lizard ships moved harmlessly through the field.

After a quick learning moment the remote pilots stopped bringing the squids up and that ended the majority of the fighting. The battleships still sniped at what ships they could, but the lines quickly filed away from the tendril field and base, leaving it in Kyler’s hands as they ran off to who knows where. Fortunately the battleship Captains were smart enough to drop probes and have them follow the lizards at a distance until their limited fuel supply ran out, but it was enough to establish general headings after they left the battleships’ sensor range.

From those vectors, Kyler noted, they were exposing more lizard infrastructure, but none as large as the base they’d just taken, with his fellow trailblazer suggesting that they may very well have just broken the back of the lizard operations on the planet, assuming they weren’t going to get any more supplies from offworld.

Along with his battle reports was a thorough analysis of the base, which Kyler indicated they were going to repurpose for their own uses. The tendril field was coming down, given that they were still live and self-powered, and Paul had to admit the technology, stolen as it was from the Elarioni, was impressive. Its ability to discriminate between friend and foe alone made it a significant threat, given that simply by navigating through the field a lizard ship could use it for either offense or defense, and not have to coordinate at all. It was completely automatic, and Paul appreciated that sort of defensive technology.

Given the lag on these reports, Paul guessed that the field had already been destroyed, though he doubted cleanup would be complete any time soon, given how many tendrils the lizards had built. It put their own construction efforts to shame, as well as backing up Kara’s report of them being master builders that had only been toying with the Humans and the Alliance to date…though they did appear to be at a disadvantage as far as gathering resources underwater.

That was something he wanted to take up with Kyler the next time they met, for if they could get a foothold on aquatics warfare they might be able to press the advantage on other worlds that were part land, part ocean. As a rule, the lizards didn’t like to take worlds that were fully ocean, with Atlantica being an exception, so the trick would be in keeping their land forces from resupplying their aquatics…or maybe even using the aquatics to draw off resources from their land bases?

It was definitely an angle to pursue, but that was a conversation that was going to have to occur in bits and pieces over messages for the time being, for Kyler still had a lot of lizard opposition to hunt down and eradicate, even if they had lost their primary base. Paul wondered if the mastermind had gotten out on one of the ships, and figured that he’d give the scale head the benefit of the doubt. It would use what bases and ships it had, which was still a lot of the latter, to wage a convincing war against the Humans, but both Kyler and Paul felt like they had just turned a major corner, and that Atlantica was now theirs to lose rather than the even playing field it had once been.

After Paul finished going through the battle records and other data he shut down the command nexus and headed out into the city to inspect some of the new construction personally. It wasn’t something he had to do, but he liked being able to overlay virtual maps with actual memories of the layouts. After all, it wouldn’t do for him to design and build a huge city and never to see more than a handful of buildings inside of it.

He hopped inside one of the nearby elevators and took it down below ground level, then walked a short distance until he came to the terminal of the underground rail network. From there he took a small tram out to the dirt ring that isolated the core of the city and came up inside one of the mech bays where he got into a Starbright-class mech and walked it out onto the city streets.

Its body was thin with a T-shaped shoulder frame and no head. Its legs were normal jointed and computer controlled, unlike the neo he usually piloted in both simulators and reality. The starbright was a Star Force original mech, rather than one patterned after the Battletech fiction from long ago. It felt to Paul like a walking turret, but it moved nimbly and that was the point. It wasn’t the largest mech Star Force fielded, nor the smallest, but it was one that was totally dependent on plasma weaponry, hence the name, and it had several unique varieties of weapons.

Paul wouldn’t be needing those today, for he was just on tour ‘driving’ it down the streets that were used to mech traffic as much as vehicles. It was a long walk out to the city’s outskirts, but once he got there the turret-like vantage point was worthwhile and he spent the better part of an hour nosing around the construction and excavation equipment, almost blending in with the fabrication mechs that were lifting and holding components in place while an army of workers buzzed around them making connections and hard seals to lock the new pieces into the frameworks.

The trailblazer knew how to observe yet stay out of their way, and he was so preoccupied with the construction efforts that he didn’t notice another military grade mech approaching until it was within 100 meters of him off his back quarter. The ID tag registered as Emily-023.

Paul opened a comm line. “When the hell did you get back?”

“Nice to see you too,” she replied from the cockpit of a hunchback, which stood slightly lower than his starbright. “About 2 hours ago.”

“And you just felt like taking a stroll?”

“I know better than to interrupt your Grand Admiral thing unless something is urgent, so I figured I’d just join you out here and fill you in.”

“Right, so how are the Ents?”

“Bigger than our mechs…and now allies, thank you very much.”

“Bigger?” Paul reiterated.

“Half again,” Emily explained. “And they’re not plants.”

“I figured that much. What’s their situation?”

“Lizards had a small presence on the planet, almost like they were fighting them just to study them and learn new ways to fight beings of that size. I smashed their bases from orbit and the survivors scattered, so I don’t know if we did enough or not, but the Ikrotor are in no immediate danger and are very grateful. We’re going to take stewardship of their planet via orbit in exchange for natural resources, which means building at least 1 seda and having a small fleet stationed there permanently.”

“What kind of resources?” Paul asked, curious as to what she’d negotiated for.

“Lots of things…including some massive deposits of corovon that they have no use for.”

“Jackpot.”

“No kidding. Last I checked our stockpiles were getting low.”

“We’re always running low,” Paul pointed out, given how the metallic subatomic particle was used in literally thousands of compounds critical for Star Force’s advanced tech, including gravity drives.

“Well we won’t be if my scans are even half accurate.”

“Heavy grav world?” Paul guessed.

“304,” she said, referring to the percent compared to Earth.

“Ouch.”

“You should see their vegetation. Everything is rock hard.”

“What do they look like?”

“You didn’t read the brief?”

“I did, but they didn’t have any close up pictures.”

“Their bodies aren’t as hard as they look. A lot of the ‘stony’ patches are solid, but others give under pressure. The lizards figured out which were which and strategically targeted the weak areas, but the thing is plasma only tickles them. Their body temperatures are sky high internally, with their thick carapace containing the heat. That’s one reason why the lizards were having trouble with them.”

“No change of weapons?”

“Recently yes, which is why I think the lizards were experimenting. They brought out what looks like mini rail guns, both on vehicles and hand weapons.”

“How effective were those?”

“Lethal…in large amounts. The Ikrotor are so massive the lizards had to pour projectiles into them to take them down…or hit them with capital ship levels of plasma. The bullet philosophy worked better, but these guys are tough kills no matter what angle you take.”

“What about an ice gun?”

Paul heard Emily scoff. “It took three weeks before that thought occurred to me, and you pull it out within three seconds.”

“Lizards haven’t tried that angle?”

“No, but I think it could be effective. I didn’t have that discussion with them, though.”

“What’s the language situation?”

“Solved prior to my arrival. Seems the Hycre got them schooled in the trade language. We’re still working on decoding theirs.”

“Are they going to turn into a protectorate, or have combat potential?”

“If the lizards reestablish on their homeworld, definitely combat potential, but I don’t know how eager they are to expand their territory. Right now they don’t even have computers, let alone spacecraft. Big fingers don’t lend to building tiny parts.”

“But they have some tech?”

“They’re working on developing machinery to accommodate the size problem, but we can do more to help in 10 minutes than they’ll accomplish in 10 years.”

“Trustworthy?”

“I don’t know,” Emily admitted. “Gratitude goes a long ways. We’ll see what happens when it wears off. They did make a point of not wanting us to set up operations on the planet. They’ll do all the resource collecting and processing, then turn it over to us at specified drop points.”

“Did the lizards know about the corovon?”

“I’d have a hard time saying no, unless they never bothered to pull a planetary scan. Most of their tech doesn’t require it, so there’s a chance they weren’t looking for it.”

“I doubt that too…so when they don’t hear back from their people on…wait, what are we calling the planet?”

“Midgar, and yes, that’s a possibility. Which is why we need a warship put on permanent station as soon as possible.”

“We can cycle one of the old ones over. I want the newer model gravity drives devoted to the raiding missions.”

“Anything happen while I was gone?” Emily asked, walking her hunchback to the side to let a pair of construction mechs pass carrying a huge structural rib between them.

“You hear about Kara?”

“No, what did you have her off doing this time?”

“She found and interrogated a mastermind variant.”

“Where?” Emily asked suspiciously.

“A planet called Albo on the Hycre charts.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“It’s deep lizard territory. She had to go pretty far to find a world big enough.”

“Typical…what did she learn.”

“There’s a ruling family of lizards, which we’re referring to as Templars and Sovereigns…the latter is an upgrade, physically as well as rank. They rule the overall empire, while the genetically grown versions deal with local matters. That’s how they keep from having rogue systems splitting off from the whole.”

“Back up, you said ‘family’ and not genetically grown?”

“Live births…or, well, as far as eggs go. They maintain a bloodline rather than genetically growing what they need. But that’s not the big thing she discovered.”

“No?” Emily asked, finding that rather significant.

“She got a glimpse of their overall battle plan. They’re not aggressively gobbling up every system they can get their hands on, they’re being patient. Very, very patient.”

“Since when?”

“They’re toying with us and the Alliance while they build. They’re master builders, and the combat on the frontier is a diversion away from their other worlds. As time goes on those worlds level up through a tiered system, unlocking bigger and better tech, some of which we’re going to have huge problems with. They’re far more powerful than even the Alliance knows, and instead of rushing ahead and bleeding themselves dry, they’re building more than they lose, and they never stop building. Every year that passes all of their untouched worlds get stronger.”

Emily was silent for a moment.

“Sounds like they’re playing the same game we are.”

“Except their ultimate goal is to spread across the galaxy and keep on going.”

“Good luck with the V’kit’no’sat.”

“True, but from their point of view they are the rightful inheritors of everything and they have to dispossess the squatters. They’re not doing this in self-defense or because of a grudge…they’re purposefully trying to dominate everything and everyone. And by dominate, I mean kill just about everyone else, save where they can find a use for slaves.”

“What about the Nestafar?”

“They screwed up big time.”

“Serves them right,” Emily said, thinking hard. “Where does that leave us?”

“I’ve only talked to a handful of the others, but from here on out we’re going rogue. The Alliance is doomed, and while we’ll honor our commitments and help out where we can, that avenue to victory has always been a mirage. If we’re going to survive the storm that’s coming we have to do it on our own.”

“I don’t follow how we’re better off alone than with the Alliance.”

“We have something they don’t.”

“The pyramid,” Emily said, catching on.

“We have to upgrade past the lizards and establish a strong hold on our territory. We have to build a wall so strong the lizards can’t get in no matter how many trillions they throw at us. Wasting resources going to the aid of our allies would diminish our ability to build that wall in the time we have remaining.”

“How much time are you figuring?”

“Maybe a century, it’s hard to tell. Depends how much of a pain in the ass we are to them.”

“So we should stop making raids?”

“No, odd as it sounds. We do that and we’ll invite an escalation. If we keep them on the defensive they’ll wonder how strong we are and hold back until they’re ready. If they perceive us as weak they’ll try to expand into us and grab as many worlds as they can, then push on further letting those worlds level up while we’re distracted on other battlefronts.”

“So they’re fighting on a bluff out here?”

“Out here, yes. They don’t have the strength to hold as many worlds as they take, and rely on intimidation to shield them from counterattack. But go further back into their territory and they’re sitting on an enormous fleet and resource base.”

“So they’re just playing with us, letting their JV get some experience?”

“They don’t consider us or the Alliance to be a credible threat, and haven’t gone all in as a result. If they ever do, watch out.”

“If we’re going to build this virtual wall, does that mean we stop sending fleets off to fight the Nestafar?”

“We’re working on a plan for that now, and the answer is no. We keep fighting the Nestafar and aiding the Calavari…just with a slightly different agenda. Sara named it Operation Conduit, and I’d like your input before we send a draft back to Corneria.”

“Not one of your projects then?”

“Not directly, no, though it will require cooperation across multiple star systems and fleets. I’m staying here and keeping the lizards busy, distracting them while they’re distracting us,” Paul said ironically.

“You’ve got me curious. What’s the gist of it?”

“Annexation.”

Knighthood

1

December 4, 2434

Iona System

Kirit

Randy sat in the Star Force enclave, a small Human dot situated amongst the world-spanning city that was now Kirit, reading the news briefs that had just arrived insystem via jumpship from the home territories. The Iona system was now considered to be mid-range out from Sol, opposite Paul’s expansion region into the lizard front. Randy had sole command of the ‘neighborhood,’ as he liked to think of it, which was a coreward extension around and out from Iona.

Travel times were still lengthy, but far shorter than what they’d once been, especially given the new jumpship that’d just arrived. It was one of the first Binary Differential Gravity Drives, in that it had a revolutionary breakthrough that now put Star Force on par with the Hycre. The gravity drives were no longer just anti-grav, but gravity enhancing as well.

This meant they could push and pull against gravity wells, whereas before pushing was the only option. Randy had already begun making plans for secret installations in Iona outside the orbit of the furthest planet in the gigantic star system. Kirit was the 8th planet out of 20, which was rather low on average, but the central star was a huge white variety with a gravity well far larger than average…meaning the geography of the system was much more spread out, able to hold multiple Sols or Epsilon Eridanis within its gravitational borders.

Usually the outermost planet in the region marked the boundary from which all starships could not cross, given that they wouldn’t have anything to push off of outside of that to return on…save for conventional thrust which had limited range. Now with the Binary drives the range from which Star Force ships could travel out from the star was extended greatly, for they could now pull on the star itself to bring them back in, leaving the trailblazer with the opportunity to build bases in the outer areas, or doldrums within the system, where other races couldn’t go.

At least he could so long as he had a ship that could get there. It would be decades at least, if not a century, before all Star Force jumpships were upgraded, but all new models coming off the line would be so outfitted, meaning that they’d have more navigational options as the calendar crept forward, which would help him greatly in the Beta Region.

As he’d been learning from pouring over Star Force, Alliance, and V’kit’no’sat maps, population clusters didn’t become denser closer to the core and thinner out towards the rim as most people naturally assumed, but rather there were clusters of habitation everywhere, each with its own internal geography. Paul’s expansion region, loosely dubbed Alpha Region amongst the Archons, was sparsely populated, yet it had dozens of races within it, and that was only the explored sections.

Beta Region was much more populated…but still with isolated, desert-like stretches of untouched star systems that the other races saw as ‘fly over’ country. There were many potential colonization opportunities nearby, and many other races just as close. As it was, Babylon 2 saw more activity than the original Babylon diplomatic station in Epsilon Eridani, which was saying something.

Randy had expanded it twice to make room for the, at present, 132 enclaves that it fielded. That meant 132 different races that felt like establishing permanent diplomatic contact, with many more out there that didn’t. He’d known the galaxy had an insane number of races from what he’d read in the V’kit’no’sat database, but in the time since it’d been updated the geography had changed drastically, making this a whole new neighborhood to get to know.

Randy had expanded Star Force and Clan Star Fox holdings out to 8 additional systems within the Beta Region, pushing their perimeter towards the core while mapping expeditions went well further. Nevil-037 was overseeing a small Gamma Region that was stretching out beneath Sol on the galactic plane, which was around 1,000 lightyears thick, meaning that Star Force was essentially sitting inside a giant sphere of star systems, nowhere close to reaching the galactic edge no matter which direction they travelled.

Each area they mapped brought them into contact with more civilizations, expanding their presence out to more than 500 races, many of which had never even heard of the lizard juggernaut that was slowly creeping their way. Good news was, most of those races were either on par with Star Force or their inferior, with the Alliance making up the bulk of the advanced races, all of which were loosely located in what had been tagged as the Zeta Region to Sol’s ‘left,’ if you were at galactic center looking out.

Epsilon was to the ‘right’ while Delta was ‘above,’ giving the Human Empire six 3-dimensional directions to orient its geography on. Zeta was not being expanded into, other than a handful of systems in the ‘central’ zone that surrounded Sol like a rough sphere. It was Star Force’s core zone, much as the lizards had their own central territory, while Zeta held the jumplanes connecting Star Force to the Alliance.

Most of Star Force’s colonial expansion was happening in Alpha, which was 5 times the size of Beta and was also being lightly colonized by the Hycre and encroached upon by the lizards. Conversely, Beta was almost off the Alliance maps, untouched by the lizards, and a blank slate that the Humans had to deal with entirely on their own merits.

Opening up Star Force systems to trade had helped their reputation immediately, with many races arriving in Iona and establishing diplomatic contact deciding to extend their own interests up further into Star Force territory, with the exception of Sol, which was deemed off limits. They didn’t all trade with Star Force, but they trusted the Humans to keep their own territory clear of pirates and other malcontents, making them safer ‘roads’ to travel and allowing them contact with other races more to their liking than the Humans, who they regarded as neutral arbiters.

Many races closed off their star systems to others…officially. It was impossible to keep a jumpship out, and very hard to intercept one just passing through, braking off the star and repositioning for another jump, so the threats by others were mostly for show, but you didn’t want to risk the chance of bumping into an insystem patrol near the star to which you just decelerated against…after which you’d have to wait and recharge your capacitors to get enough power to make another interstellar jump.

If unable to do that immediately, they’d have to make a micro-jump elsewhere in the system and play a game of cat and mouse until they’d recharged enough to make a run back to the star, find their jumpline, and get the hell out of the system. That minimal possibility of interdiction kept many races out of each other’s territory, forcing commerce lanes to travel in convoluted paths through unclaimed systems in order to ensure safe and reliable transit.

So Star Force’s claim to unfettered access was a popular policy, backed up by their military fleet that was well capable of keeping poachers at bay. Randy pushed that reputation regularly, and had established a multi-racial economic partnership within Beta Region with many neutral exchange centers, some Star Force, some not, where the local races could deal with one another face to face rather than having to search out distant star systems in the hope of finding trading partners.

As he did so Randy kept looking for any hint of the V’kit’no’sat, both in their ongoing mapping expeditions and in their relations with the other races, but so far not one of them had indicated knowledge of a race that powerful, with the Skarrons holding the primary ‘bad guy’ rep in the area, though their territory was much deeper into the core than Beta Region currently extended.

Friendly as most of the racial interactions were with Star Force, though not necessarily with each other, Randy knew he needed hidden bases throughout the region should anyone start planning against their very open infrastructure, making the Binary Gravity Drives a considerable boon to his future plans.

That bit of good news wasn’t all that had come in the message packets. Updates from both the lizard and Nestafar fronts were included, along with a slew of database data that he never directly looked at. It was meant for their computers, so he’d have searchable access to what was happening on every other star system within Star Force’s domain, ranging from population statistics to economic transfers and infrastructure maps. Likewise, data from Beta Region was being carried back via jumpship traffic, keeping the others up to date on what was happening in his neck of the galactic woods.

Randy was drawn to the V’kit’no’sat database updates, which contained useful entries the research teams had pulled out, along with blueprints for new technology upgrades. He particularly liked those, for they were tech that Star Force had already worked the bugs out of, having reverse engineered it from the V’kit’no’sat specs, built, tested, and tweaked for their own uses.

In this update came a genetic scanner that he’d been requesting for years, given the amount of traffic that Babylon 2 and his other public commercial centers saw. Unlike previous scanners that required physical contact, this one had a range of .94 meters and would scan against templates rather than take samples. That meant he could put people in a line, send them through a sensor arch, and be able to identify their race without having to touch them. According to the specs it would work through thick clothing, though armor would probably block the sensor beam.

It would take time to upgrade his infrastructure, but it was a valuable puzzle piece he needed in Beta Region as he grew what he considered to be an economic Alliance between the various races in the region.

In the message packet there were also log updates from some of the other trailblazers which he’d sort through later, but with them came a few flagged items, including one ‘Operation Conduit’ brief that he opened up and skimmed through, his brow furrowing as he went back to the start and read it through line by line.

Randy set the datapad down when he finished, then stood up and walked over to the panoramic window that stretched around his command tower, reminiscent of Davis’s office in Atlantis. This version rose up on par with several nearby Kiritas towers outside the Human city, though they didn’t surpass it. A sign of Kiritas gratitude and respect for their Star Force allies.

Randy’s view out to those towers was unobstructed, given that all other Human structures were lower in height. He stared out past them to the Kiritas buildings, which mimicked the Star Force infrastructure while maintaining an alien tinge, and lost himself in calculated thought for some 20 minutes before he finally walked away from the window to the central staircase, but stepped over the inner railing and grabbed hold of the fire pole that the staircase wound itself around.

Slackening his grip he slid down several stories through the gap, landing in the main control center for the Clan Star Fox city, the Iona System, and all of Beta Region.

“Is the High Council currently in session?” he asked one of some 30+ staffers coordinating his mini-empire.

“Should have began an hour ago, and they typically go for three or four.”

Randy nodded contently and headed for the exit, passing down through the wider sections of the tower below until he got to the surface streets. He crossed over to a nearby hangar and grabbed a skeet, then flew the green/brown starfighter up above the buildings and crossed into the Kiritas zone, flying over the crowded streets full of wheeled vehicles, for the corovon elements necessary for anti-grav technology were reserved for their space and aerial craft, unlike on Star Force worlds where flying traffic was as common as ground vehicles.

Randy flew straight over to the Kiritas capitol building, which they’d purposefully located near to, but a respectful distance from, the Star Force enclave. He was given direct access, bypassing security and landing on a topside pad reserved for high ranking individuals, such as the High Council and Human traffic.

When he set down and exited the topside hatch Randy slid off the side onto the ground with 8 Kiritas waiting for him. Two were guards, armed with their anatomical version of stinger pistols, while the other six were pad workers, one of which walked/hopped over to him and looked up at his face from its lower height.

“What do you require?” it asked in English, which all Kiritas now spoke as their native language. The Alliance trade language was their preferred secondary, with their original language now having been relegated to the annals of their planetary history.

“Is the High Council in session?”

“Yes it is. Would you like to meet with them?”

Randy nodded. “I have something important to discuss.”

“Follow me,” the short, stubby kangaroo-like creature said, turning and hopping off towards the pad entrance to the building beneath them. The two guards took up ceremonial flanking positions alongside the Human, who was dressed in his standard Archon ranger uniform and unarmed. Kirit was probably the safest world in Beta Region, given that the populace was almost entirely pro-Human. Star Force was upgrading their society by leaps and bounds, both with technology and knowledge, and many Kiritas would glad jump in front of an enemy to save a Human without a second thought.

The area around the Human enclave saw a fair amount of Humans mixing with the local Kiritas, but other than in this part of the planet Star Force was more legend than reality, with the rare encounter seeing the Humans treated with greater respect than the Kiritas’s own leaders, with whom Randy was now enroute to.

The capitol building wasn’t a spire, but rather a thick building designed to shield the internal core from potential weaponsfire and protecting the leaders against attack, taking from Star Force’s own tactical designs. Several other nearby buildings were taller, but none the larger, for it held the command infrastructure for their entire civilization that now spanned 5 star systems and 18 planetoids, thanks to Randy’s help in teaching them how to build jumpships.

When he got to the guarded doors that led into the High Council chamber the Kiritas immediately opened them for him, interrupting the ongoing meeting. Randy walked into the now silent room down the middle of a rectangular promenade with rows of seats on his left and right, along with a short set of rows directly ahead. A hologram of some data chart disappeared from view in the gap between them, giving the Archon the full attention of the assembled Councilors as the doors resealed behind him.

“Greetings, Archon Randy,” one of the 58 Kiritas said, its voice amplified by speakers. “Your presence is most welcome, though we would gladly have come to you if you’d requested it.”

“I know,” Randy said, glancing around at all the leaders, most of whom he knew by face, having dealt with or trained them all. Still, they weren’t Humans, so at times he had trouble differentiating one from another, though now he had the ability to pull a mental profile and memories if needed, so he rarely made a mistake as to who was who.

“But what I have to say is more appropriately said here than in one of our facilities. You have asked for many years to assist us with the war against the Nestafar or lizards, and I have declined your requests given that your warfleet is not yet a match for their technology. Above that, it’s also not your fight…at least not yet.”

“However, recent information has been sent to me indicating that the lizard threat is far greater than we anticipated. They have amassed a huge empire deep inside their widespread territory where we can’t scout. They are waiting and growing their strength rather than throwing their full resources against us. When they do, we will be sorely outmatched, even with the combined might of the Alliance. We do have time, however, to prepare, for they are not choosing to launch their full power against us yet. They still have a powerful enemy on their rimward border, known as the H’kar. So long as they exist, I don’t believe we will draw their primary attention.”

“Given the recent information we’ve gained about their strength, we are implementing a new battle plan…and for that I am here to ask for your help,” Randy said, letting that point hang in the air.

The High Councilors visibly stirred. This was the first time in their 86 year history that the Humans had ever asked for their help, and the Kiritas had been continuously eager to both prove their worth to their superior allies as well as to repay them for the lifesaving changes they’d implemented on Kirit in any way, shape, or form possible, hence the previous offers of military assistance.

“What do you require of us?” the Military Councilor asked. Each of the 58 High Council members led a portion of Kiritas society. They were not elected or appointed, but rather experienced leaders having risen up through the ranks in their respective divisions, patterned heavily off of Star Force’s own personnel structure, though without any Archon or Davis equivalents.

“Something big,” Randy said slowly, making eye contact with many of the shorter aliens who were seated above his eye line. “Something that will change the Kiritas once again.”

Some of the Councilors practically bounced out of their seats with anticipation, for they knew that whatever this was, it was monumental.

“Ask,” the Food Supply Councilor prompted eagerly.

Randy let out a slow breath, then looked up at his Kiritas friends, knowing how much of a shock this was going to be, given the population restrictions they lived under.

“We need you to grow.”

2

“There are half a trillion Humans,” Randy continued after a round of frenzied questions, “spread out through 74 star systems. There are five and a half trillion Kiritas, spread across 5 star systems. You can reproduce faster than us, which has been a problem in the past, but it can also be an asset.”

“You need more soldiers?” the Military Councilor asked.

“We need more resources,” the trailblazer clarified. “We’re not asking you to fight, we’re asking you to help us build. This region of the galaxy has many uninhabited star systems with worlds that hold vast amounts of natural resources. Star Force has claimed only 8 systems, and those that we do have are not well developed yet. It will take time to expand and grow, but even as we do it will not be enough to counter the resources the lizards have available to them. We have to close the gap, and you are the key to doing that, if you’re willing.”

“Of course we are willing,” the Reproduction Councilor said cautiously, “but how will we sustain greater numbers, above and beyond our current growth scales?”

“I do not want you to alter your current plans. Your civilization is now stable, and growing at a substantial rate. You’ve taken what we’ve taught you and applied it well, but what I’m asking of you now goes far beyond that.”

The High Councilors exchanged glances with one another, but it was the Reproduction Councilor that spoke for them all.

“We do not understand.”

“Star Force is comprised of many parts,” Randy began, knowing this was going to take some explaining of things the Kiritas had not been previously informed of. “We have a military and a civilian split, with the Archons controlling the military and Administrators controlling our cities. We work together, much as you do with your respective divisions. This you know, but what you do not know is that there are more parts to Star Force.”

“I am of Clan Star Fox, but unlike the clans that Kirit once had, my Clan is independent and self- supporting. This is critical, in that if the major network of Star Force infrastructure was to be taken down, Clan Star Fox could survive on its own. In addition, there are 99 other Clans, each capable of independent operation. We are each an individual empire, with our own cities, sometimes our own worlds. We have our own military, some of which is present in this system, the rest are standard troops, assigned here from the primary fleet, which is far larger than what any Clan fields.”

“We are all Star Force, but we operate in different ways, structured for a future day when we are badly defeated. If and when that day occurs we will not crumble, for the Clans can continue on without the others…just as the primary fleet and colonies can continue on without the Clans. We are stronger for this, but the primary fleet and the Clans are not all that there is to Star Force.”

“There is also another entity called Canderous. You have never seen them, for they are not present in this region of the galaxy, but they co-inhabit many star systems along with the Clans and the primary colonies. They are Humans that we, the Archons, have trained to be a military civilization that lives almost exclusively in space stations. They have some resource gathering infrastructure on the surface of worlds, but their colonies are always in space.”

“They are independent as well, but they take orders from the Archons, and are part of Star Force. Our terminology can be confusing at times, for ‘Star Force’ can refer to our primary fleet and colonies, or it can refer to our overall empire that includes the Clans and Canderous. Also, in our home system, there are Human factions that are independent from us. Some are allies, some are not. They are small and insignificant, a remnant of the past, but they are also under our protection, so when we speak of Humans they are included, and when the term ‘Star Force’ is used for Humans, it can also apply to them, and the population number I gave you includes them as well.”

“What I am here to ask of you…or perhaps I should say offer you…is for the Kiritas to become part of Star Force, part of our empire, while maintaining a level of independence, same way the Clans and Canderous do.”

That set the Councilors off, and the din of hushed conversation between them was too convoluted for Randy to make out, even as it escalated into a full blown roar. Using his psionics, he could get the general sense of their mood…which was elated…and knew that they were going to accept in some form or another, for what he had just offered them was being received as a great honor.

The frantic discussions went on for nearly 2 minutes before the Reproduction Councilor brought the others into order with a series of audial tones that sounded like a musically inclined jackhammer.

“A point of clarification, Archon Randy. You said earlier that you needed us to grow, now you say that you want us to join with you. How are these two things connected?”

Randy smiled, glad that he’d caught that.

“As I said, your civilization is stable, and we do not want to upset that stability. We want to bring the Kiritas into Star Force as you are, while at the same time creating another Kiritas from volunteers. Long ago the Kiritas clans referred to those of you who were trained by us to be Kiritak, and separate from the rest of you. I plan to build a new Kiritak civilization, one with the sole purpose of collecting the raw resources we need to build the ships and infrastructure we need to defend ourselves against the lizards when they finally move against us en mass.”

“The Kiritak would be led by Humans and use our technology, as we establish hundreds of new colonies with the sole purpose of collecting resources. We, the Humans, will monitor and control the population growth rate of the Kiritak, as well as supply all foodstuffs they require. We only need your volunteers to begin, along with as many eggs as you can spare.”

“Meanwhile, the Kiritas will continue to advance on your own. Know this…we need you to be independent and capable of operating without the rest of Star Force. You need to advance your technology, your fleet, and be able to protect your own worlds when we are not here. When the lizards come, we may have to pull our ships away, and in their place you will have to step up.”

“The Star Force fleet will guard the Kiritak and their colonies while the resources they harvest will be shipped out, for the most part, to the lizard front. There they will build warships and battle stations to prevent the lizards from ever coming here. You can help us defend ourselves against the lizards by providing us resources…resources that we cannot collect ourselves, for our numbers are too low. They are growing, but you have far more people than we do, with the potential to raise that number considerably higher over a much shorter period of time.”

“That is why we need you to grow. Continue your stable growth as Kiritas, and channel to us your explosive growth through the Kiritak. Both will become part of Star Force. At present, you are our friends and allies. We are offering to make you our brothers. What say you to that?”

The Kiritas Councilors exchanged glances with each other again, but this time there wasn’t much discussion. One of them put up a voting hologram above Randy’s head in the chamber in a simple ‘yes or no’ fashion, and the Councilors quickly input their votes, needing no further discussion or clarification.

The tally quickly shot up to 58 yesses, making their decision unanimous.

Randy smiled, and clasped his hands behind his back as he stared up at the tally, and then them.

“Welcome to the party.”

Four years later…

Morgan raised her strapped right arm up level to the ground, with her neo mimicking her movements and doing the same with the machine’s appendage, on top of which sat a small mauler cannon. With a twitch of a finger she triggered it to fire, sending a brilliant blue mass of energy across a couple hundred meters into the side of a Nestafar super dragon.

The corrosive energy ate into the normally stubborn chrome armor, literally dissolving it in a splash of melted material that left a hole in the underside of the giant walker as Morgan’s neo ran up to and underneath it, getting hit with a red plasma blast from a leg turret in the process. Her mech’s energy shields caught it fully, spreading out the blast so that it surrounded her in a momentary cloud of ionized gas before the shields drained it of power and it reverted back into harmless hot air.

Morgan pumped another mauler blast into the hole she’d just made, overlapping impact craters to get a small opening in to the interior of the gigantic walker. Standing underneath it as its six humongous legs propelled it onwards towards the Calavari battle fort, she raised her neo’s other arm, this one containing a plasma cannon, and started firing at near pointblank range in through the hole that was well above the mech’s head.

The ranger got off three salvos before her shields failed and her neo’s armor started to take hits, prompting her to get moving again. She ran across to the other side of the giant walker, targeting one of the leg batteries that was firing on her while other Star Force mechs took the opportunity she’d given them and targeted the hole with plasma fire and missiles while Morgan tried to snipe the heavy weapons that had been devastating the Calavari flying tanks.

Meanwhile the super dragon’s primary weapon fired off another long range stream of thick plasma into the shields of the fort up ahead, this time penetrating the defensive barrier and winging one of the defensive cupolas on top, with the excess plasma passing harmlessly through air and out the far side of the base. Morgan saw the shield failure notice on her battlemap, and despite the armor damage she was taking, moved up to the front of the super dragon, dancing between its six giant legs to avoid being stepped upon, and fired her mauler up into the main cannon’s orifice.

The energy hit a small shield protecting the walker’s primary weapon, blocking it from doing damage to the vulnerable mechanism, but the excess ate into the armor surrounding it, and Morgan knew that even if the shield didn’t go down, the armor would melt away with a few more hits.

The Nestafar gunners on the massive walker realized that as well, with every available heavy weapon still operating on the legs and underside turning to target her mech.

Luckily she saw it coming and ran back through the legs, knowing that the Nestafar weapons batteries rotated slowly. She caught a few plasma hits, one of which her renewed shields blocked before failing again, before she exited out the back end of the walker into the face of a giraffe as it collected red plasma at the peak of its head, preparing to fire at her.

Morgan didn’t slow, but ran straight into it, jutting out a corovon alloy blade from the left wrist of the modified neo and hacking through the neck of the walker with one strong swing…though the blade stuck three quarters of the way through, but it was enough to sever the power conduits and render the walker’s primary weapon useless.

Turrets on the back of the super dragon’s legs lit her neo up just as an internal explosion sent a plume of fiery debris back out the small hole in the left side. Two of the legs stopped functioning, bringing the massive beast to a frozen stop. Its weapons on the right side continued to fire, as did the main plasma streamer, which launched another ruby beam towards the Calavari fort, with this one hitting the barrier wall surrounding the buildings and melting through the artificial rock construction.

Morgan deactivated the mauler on her right arm, regaining the use of her mech’s hand and grabbed the neck of the giraffe. Using the leverage she pulled her blade free, then ignored the nearly decapitated machine as its smaller weapons chewed at her mech’s legs and chest. She pivoted around, coming up on the super dragon’s left side and passing through or underneath the firing lines of a dozen or so Star Force mechs as she moved back up to the front and targeted the main weapon again as gold plasma orbs and streaks were nipping away at the walker’s almost impervious armor from a host of Calavari tanks halfway between it and the fort.

Morgan’s neo was the only mech on the battlefield that had a mauler, so she knew she had to take out the primary weapon else it’d wreck the Calavari base like it had two others previously. With her own armor down to 50% in places she knew she could take a few more hits and tagged the nearest batteries on the super dragon as targets, hoping the nearby mechs could whittle them down before they roasted her.

When she got up past the first leg on the left she pumped another mauler shot into the side of the stubby main cannon, melting some armor off as she shot a plasma blast into the shield covering the muzzle, discovering that it was still in place and wondering just what kind of matrix it was using, for the mauler usually disrupted shields. Then again, her mauler was just a baby mauler, so she hit it again with both arms’ weapons, and this time saw a little bit of plasma sneak through following the mauler.

Then another huge ruby beam leapt up, with the defensive shield dropping a fraction of a second before it did, and reappearing afterward. Morgan didn’t even look at the damage it had done, nor to the flashing red on her own mech’s armor schematics, she just fired again and again until the mauler did its magic and penetrated the shield, melting the outer barrel and letting her plasma get in too.

A hail of golden plasma followed, most of which missed but a few hits got inside the only vulnerable place on the otherwise armored weapon, followed by a radial plume of plasma as the weapon tried to fire again and malfunctioned, eating through its own armor as the magnetic constraints in the barrel were no longer powered.

A sizeable amount hit the fort, but the rest opened up the barrel, melting away its components and causing a backwash that gutted the weapon. Now with a new spot to shoot at, the Calavari tanks, which were still getting picked off by the super dragon’s remaining secondary cannons and support walkers, concentrated their firepower and pounded the ‘head’ of the huge walker furiously as Morgan got the hell out of their firing line and retreated back behind her fellow Star Force mechs, who shifted to targeting the spiders and giraffes that had been escorting the big machine.

Only then did Morgan take a good look at her armor, seeing it was chewed up and her shield generators had been slagged…or at least the emitters had been, with the internal generators still labeled as intact, but without the emitters they were useless.

Walking with a slight limp, due to an excessive amount of armor having been sheared off the right leg that was now unbalancing the mech, Morgan circled around behind the three stars of mechs that were distracting the enemy from her and picked out a peripheral target, running up alongside a madcat and using her still intact mauler to help take down the spider it was targeting by slagging the belly plasma streamer in one shot, taking out its most potent weapon.

With the super dragon down, the rest of the battle came to a predictable end. Morgan lost two of her mechs, but the pilots were recovered intact…the same couldn’t be said of the Calavari tanks that littered the road between the mega walker’s corpse and the fort, whose shield generators had survived the attack and were now covering the base with its protective canopy once again.

“Morgan, you have a minute?” a voice asked into her spherical cockpit where the Archon was strapped into the control harness half nude.

“Go ahead.”

“A relief fleet just arrived in orbit.”

“Who’s?” she asked, frowning.

“One of ours, and it’s a big one. Says they’re looking for you.”

“Who’s in command?”

“Jenna-732.”

One of her Ninja Monkeys, and a high ranking one at that. Whatever this was about, it had to be important else they wouldn’t have assigned an Archon of her caliber to babysit a fleet. It couldn’t be another taskforce, for only Morgan, Taryn, and Leif-069 had been assigned to the Calavari/Nestafar front, with replacement and relief fleets being sent out to them rather than having the trailblazers return to Star Force territory periodically for resupply.

This new fleet had to be one of those, but if it was a lower ranking Archon would have been escorting it here. Jenna was too important to be wasted as backup to what usually was an all naval theatre of war. This particular ground excursion had been an exception, meaning that most of the Archons in Morgan’s taskforce usually sat on their butts onboard their warships twiddling their thumbs or training in the onboard sanctums. Most of the strategic and tactical planning was carried out by Morgan and her fleet Captains, meaning the Archons she did have with her were usually second string, yet seasoned fighters.

“Connect me to her now,” Morgan ordered, still picking her way across the debris field of downed Nestafar walkers looking for living enemies, machine or biological, that could still pose a threat as the Calavari sent out troop transports to take care of any Nestafar crews trapped inside their disabled walkers.

With resources spread thin on many worlds like this one, she had to keep an eye on them to make sure they didn’t gun down surrendering Nestafar, though they probably deserved it. Star Force wasn’t taking permanent prisoners, and the Calavari didn’t want to waste foodstuffs on prisoners when their own people were seeing heavy rationing on war torn worlds. That said, the Nestafar usually didn’t surrender, but Morgan wasn’t going to let any battle she was in devolve into a mindless slaughter.

“Morgan?”

“Here, Jenna,” she said to the audio-only commlink. “What’s up, Monkey?”

“Big things in the works, including a convoy route back home that doesn’t rely on the Hycre. The ships I’ve brought with me are fresh out of the shipyards with the new Binary drives. We’ve got a link from Drema to Corneria that’s 3 and a half months long,” she said, referencing the relatively secure Calavari world that the Hycre had been dropping Star Force fleets off at, then letting them make their way across the Calavari spacelanes hunting Nestafar targets of their choice.

That was almost as good as the Hycre’s 8 weeks, considering they wouldn’t have to wait for available carrier jumpships which always had load limitations. In fact, it’d allow much more in the way of cargo transfer once Star Force had enough upgraded jumpships to flood the route with.

“Sweet,” Morgan said, knowing how important that would be, but knowing that wasn’t the reason why Jenna was here. “What else?”

“Stuff I’d rather not say over the comm, no matter how good our encryption is.”

“I had a feeling it was something like that,” Morgan said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll be back in orbit within the next 10 hours. Meet me on the Red Ranger…but first, tell me whose brainchild this is.”

“A team effort that originated with Paul, I believe.”

That meant it wasn’t big, but huge, otherwise he wouldn’t be involving Morgan’s war theatre when he had his own to deal with.

“Figures. See you in a few. I’ve got some cleanup work to finish down here first.”

“Copy that, boss. Take your time. We’re not in a rush.”

3

March 19, 2439

Karchonis System

Elomirit (Calavari territory)

Morgan and her personalized neo, or rather what was left of it, returned up to orbit via dropship and rendezvoused with the trailblazer’s taskforce that consisted of 43 warships and an additional 28 cargo jumpships. Huge as the fleet was, it paled in comparison to the 263 jumpships that were holding position in a slightly higher orbit, each of which was twice the size of the Red Ranger and full of new tech.

They were the largest jumpships Star Force had ever constructed, with several variants. Only a handful were warships, Morgan saw as she studied the dropship’s link into the fleet battlemap as it ascended, with the rest being a mix of pure cargo ships and hybrid carriers. Those carriers were empty, which she found odd. They were designed to carry other ships, drone or otherwise, and it didn’t make sense for Star Force to send them out here with empty loads. She hoped their internal cargo bays weren’t likewise empty, because she could use as many resources as she could get out on this very lonely battlefield.

The Calavari civilization was in shambles, or rather parts of it were. There were still strong areas, bunches of star systems that the Nestafar hadn’t yet been able to touch, but by the same token there were vast areas of carnage that may have been labeled as Calavari territory on the map, but it no longer truly belonged in that category. Some of them had fallen into Nestafar hands, but most were just empty battlefields littered with machines and bodies from both sides.

The Calavari had made two reprisal campaigns into Nestafar territory that had cut deep, and after that everything seemed to get lost in the fog of war. Information coming from the Alliance was sketchy, with Morgan, Taryn, and Leif coordinating with each other through a network of courier ships. They were hitting targets of opportunity rather than engaging in the heaviest of fighting, often being able to blindside Nestafar fleets and ground troops that were in more or less the same condition as the Calavari.

The two civilizations were pounding each other so hard, it seemed like whoever came out the victor would be a mere technicality, for they were decimating each other in the process.

Morgan was doing what she could to help, as were the other Alliance races, but the Nestafar had committed their entire military to this blood feud and the Calavari had been forced to respond in kind. The Bsidd and Kvash had been assisting them primarily in the contended region with the lizards, insuring that the Nestafar threat wouldn’t pull Calavari out of that fight and leave the door open for the real enemy to come in through. Meanwhile the Hycre were all over the map, making strikes with their dominant naval power but never staying in one place for too long.

The lesser Alliance races, Star Force included, were helping out where they could, but in the case of the Humans they just didn’t have the numbers to make a significant difference on the overall warfront. They were making a huge difference to the systems they were intervening in, as well as racking up a sizeable kill count of Nestafar ships, which Morgan was most definitely keeping score of, but it was still just a drop in the galactic bucket, with the overall outcome remaining in the hands of the Nestafar and Calavari.

Had she more resources Morgan could have made a bigger dent, which she hoped had been provided by Jenna’s fleet, but seeing the carriers empty made her reconsider that and question what in the blazes were they really doing out here.

Once she got back onboard the Red Ranger Morgan didn’t have to wait long to find out, for Jenna was waiting for her inside one of the ship’s map rooms.

“Ok, what’s going on?” she asked, stepping into the medium-sized room and only seeing Jenna present, which was odd, for these workrooms were typically busy with overflow duties that couldn’t be accommodated on the bridge.

“Shut the door,” Jenna prompted.

Morgan frowned but turned around and spotted the door control on the edge of the entryway arch and telekinetically pressed it, with what looked like a blast door closing behind her. She waited until it had sealed before looking Jenna in the eye and raising an eyebrow.

“I can brief you in full,” the Ninja Monkey said, holding up a small data chip, “but first you need to see this…so you don’t bite my head off.”

“Nice to see you too,” Morgan said, walking up to the main holographic table and standing next to it on the opposite side from Jenna as she input the chip into a slot on the underside, with a half-sized image of Jason appearing to stand on the table between them facing the wall to Morgan’s right and Jenna’s left.

“My apologies,” the prerecorded message began, “for keeping you in the dark for so long, but we thought it’d only serve as a distraction for you until we had the assets in place to allow you to take action. You’ve been kicking the crap out of the Nestafar and we didn’t want to jinx you, so we didn’t include any of what you’re about to hear in the standard message packets.”

“If it makes you feel any better, we told everyone else except you three because, well, we just don’t like you,” Jason joked as his hologram snapped its fingers and a star map popped up beside him. “Operation Conduit provides us a link to Calavari space independent of the Hycre, freeing up their carrier jumpships for other uses and allowing us more tonnage than they could provide…save for Daka, which they are still providing transit to.”

The star map outlined the zigzag course from one pinprick of light to another starting at Epsilon Eridani and ending just inside the outer boundary of Calavari space, crossing a huge gap of territory in which the majority of the Hycre worlds fell, along with a number of other smaller races.

“Now, here’s the part we didn’t want to distract you with, and what Jenna will explain in detail. The Conduit isn’t meant for us to supply you with additional resources. It’s meant for you to start sending Calavari back to us, quietly, so we can start rebuilding their civilization within Alpha Region. As we discussed earlier, the Alliance is doomed one way or another, but we intend to save the Calavari…some of them anyway…and make them a part of Star Force, similar to what we’ve done with the Kiritas.”

“From the reports you’ve been sending back, we know there’s a lot of worlds the Calavari aren’t resupplying, either because they’re short on resources or because they’re now behind enemy lines. I’d suggest you target those Calavari for removal. There’s no need to consult with the Calavari government, for these worlds have already been abandoned in one form or another.”

“They also might not like the idea of us annexing their race, so be careful how you proceed. We know we won’t be able to evacuate even a tiny fraction of their overall population, but we have facilities in place to handle all you can send us via the Conduit. You’ll be getting more of the new jumpships sent your way as the years pass, and we intend to make this operation one of our top priorities. Aside from their friendship with us, the Calavari are too valuable of an ally to let them be destroyed. Whereas the Kiritas aren’t well suited for combat, the Calavari are another matter entirely. Put them in Knight armor and…well, you can use your imagination.”

“We didn’t want your actions tipping our hand prior to now, which is why you weren’t informed. Taryn and Leif I’ll leave you to update and coordinate with.”

With that Jason’s hologram and star map winked out, leaving Morgan looking across the table at Jenna.

“I only found out a year ago, so don’t blame me,” she said, raising her hands up defensively.

“No, it’s alright,” Morgan said, waving off her concern as she started thinking hard. “What’s your fleet’s carrying capacity?”

“Conservatively, 80,000 Calavari per jumpship, half that for the hybrids, with sufficient supplies onboard for the trip back home. Roughly 14.5 million capacity with the ships I brought.”

Morgan sighed and shook her head. “That’s not enough, not by a long shot. Most of the Calavari frontier worlds hold 50 million plus. With all the losses they’ve taken we might be able to evacuate one.”

“More jumpships will come, and these will rotate back. We know this is going to be a long process. Our primary concern is finding Calavari that want to be rescued.”

“’Rescued’ isn’t the concern,” Morgan said, knowing well by now how the Calavari thought. “Whether or not they’ll want to leave the war zone is the real question. If this war was happening in Star Force territory and the Calavari came and pulled you off a destroyed colony, would you want to leave or get back into the fight?”

“Dumb question there,” Jenna answered.

“Don’t assume their military is going to be any different, for the most part. We’ll have to be choosey, as well as offering to relocate the ones who don’t want to leave…probably just drop them off at Drema, but there’s only so many refugees they can take on, and we don’t want the Calavari government catching on to what we’re doing. We need to deal exclusively with the Calavari colonies that have been lost or are in really bad shape, and I can’t go up to them and offer to evacuate half of them,” Morgan pointed out.

“So we don’t evacuate the military, just the civilians.”

“Their females may be ‘civilians’ but the males aren’t. They all fight, one way or another,” Morgan said, tapping her fingernail on her teeth as she thought.

“This is your end of Operation Conduit,” Jenna said bluntly. “Get Calavari back to the others however you like and they’ll take them from there.”

“Where is there, exactly? If they’re going to a planet in the expansion zone, stopping off at Corneria is out of the way.”

Jenna pulled up the map that had been alongside Jason’s hologram and highlighted the conduit’s route…then brought up a spur several segments away from the Epsilon Eridani System.

“Here’s the point where the Calavari transports will break off…all other jumpships will continue to Corneria as usual.”

“Are the Hycre aware of this?”

“No.”

“What system is that?” Morgan asked, pointing to the end of the spur.

Jenna zoomed in on that portion of map, expanding out Alpha Region until it filled the table.

“Prolio. It has one large, habitable world with conditions favorable to the Calavari. We’re building Star Force infrastructure there already, but tailored to their physiology. You don’t need to send Calavari construction crews back, just the people themselves.”

“Can I offer the Calavari sanctuary here if they travel on their own ships?”

Jenna nodded. “That’s a contingency plan that’s been discussed. If they want to construct their own colony here they’re welcome to, but we’re planning on assimilating the refugees into Star Force, not recreating one of their homeworlds. We can do both, if necessary.”

“Well that’s something then. What kind of numbers can we support, foodstuff wise?”

“As many as you can send our way. With the help of the Kiritak, we’re setting up bioharvest facilities on a scale we’ve never attempted before, some of which are being placed in Alpha Region to directly feed the Calavari. One of them will be operational before you can get the first refugees there.”

Morgan nodded. “Useful little buggers, aren’t they?”

“I had a chance to meet a few before we left. They’re very eager to help, and they speak perfect English, which is a little disconcerting.”

“Randy’s doing…what’s their efficiency like?”

“Better than ours, mostly. Their smaller size is letting us design more compact factories, and we’ve got a very basic ambrosia formula worked up for them…so they’re very hyper.”

“Not sure that’s a good idea,” Morgan scoffed, trying to imagine what that would look like.

“It’ll increase the odds of them reaching self-sufficiency, and that will help maintain a workforce rather than having to cyclically replace…”

“I know, I know. I was joking.”

“Oh,” Jenna said, having missed that cue, probably due to the fact that she hadn’t seen Morgan in more than 20 years.

“Who’s handling the Calavari at Prolio?”

“Jason and Jace. Jace with the training and Jason is organizing the entire operation from a seda he built in orbit. They’ve got the relay network extended out that far, so he can link in with Corneria and the rest of the inner zone.”

“Have they got it out to Namek yet?”

“Working on it, but they’re still missing a few links.”

“Do the warships you’ve brought have telaris sensors?”

Jenna nodded. “Both the jumpships and the drones.”

“Well then…looks like I’m claiming a new flagship. We’ll swap out my oldest ones and put them on convoy duty.”

“What about Taryn and Leif?”

Morgan shrugged. “First come, first serve,” she said with a smirk.

Jenna mirrored her expression. “Jason wanted me handling the convoys, unless you had another place for me?”

“Sort of,” Morgan said, thinking fast and already having outlined a rough playbook that she’d be working out of for the next decade. “The Captains can handle themselves moving up and down the conduit, what I need you to do is oversee the transfer from my taskforce back to Drema…and to make sure we don’t lose that planet, otherwise our convoys coming up the conduit could be walking into an ambush. The Nestafar are fairly good at insystem intercepts, and if a ship is caught sleeping they’ll nail it.”

“I’d hope none of our Captains are that sloppy.”

“They’re not, but some of the Calavari are, and the Nestafar have picked up a lot of experience at their expense, so they’re not so hesitant to try as others might be.”

Jenna nodded. “How many warships do you want to leave me?”

“Enough to hold Drema and patrol the routes out to ever changing pickup points,” Morgan said, taking control of the map and zipping it over to Calavari territory…which was far larger than all six Regions surrounding Sol combined.

She pointed to their current position, then ran her finger back through several systems until she got to Drema.

“We’ll have to coordinate well, but I want fingers coming out from Drema that will be your responsibility to guard. Me, Taryn, and Leif will bring the Calavari transports to the end points where they’ll meet up with your escorts. Once they do and move back to Drema, the finger will move to another position, that way neither the Nestafar nor anyone else will be able to peg our movements and get inventive.”

“I’ll have to know where to go ahead of time,” Jenna pointed out.

“I’ll send the next finger endpoint back with the jumpships, so will Taryn and Leif. You plot the best route to get there…and be mindful of the geography, there are some jumplanes that we won’t use, but the Nestafar will.”

“I thought our shields were on par with theirs by now?”

“The newer models are better, actually, we’re just more cautious with navigation. They’re losing so many ships per day that the odd debris collision during jumps probably seems minor compared to the distance savings.”

“Glad I’m not on their side.”

“The Calavari are doing the same thing, as far as I can tell. Information on their movements is sketchy, but they’re desperate. They know they’re losing, even with Alliance help. Their naval disadvantage is proving too great, but then the Nestafar can’t easily take the worlds they’re claiming from orbit. That means really messy ground combat that is eviscerating the Nestafar.”

“We’ve been picking off as many ships from orbit as we can,” Morgan continued, “but have left most of the ground engagements to the Calavari. We’ve pacified this region more or less, but we keep moving about so as not to draw attention for a counterattack. Thus far it’s been easy pickings, but equipment wears down and ammunition is depleted, limiting what we can do. So I hope somewhere in that big ass fleet of yours there’s supplies for me and just not the Calavari?”

“Well, we had to fill the empty interiors with something for the trip out,” Jenna said, smiling.

“Why are the carriers empty then?”

“They’re only empty since Drema. We dropped off a lot of stuff to fortify the planet.”

“Good,” Morgan said, relieved that Jason was on top of the planning. “Now give me the rundown on who and what you brought.”

4

August 27, 2439

Renx System

Lrat (Nestafar Occupation Zone)

Bronsor ducked behind a tree trunk as a pair of Nestafar infantry flew by overhead, pulling his four arms in close to his chest and trying to hold still. He and the rest of his unit had fled into the hills surrounding the city of Sassma when the garrison finally fell, and they’d been hunted ever since, though the Calavari had been taking down a good number of them from range.

These had gotten in close, meaning Bronsor’s unit was either out of place, incapacitated…or dead, otherwise this pair would have been sniped out of the sky by now. Give the Nestafar the sky and they had a significant advantage, but force them down to ground level and the odds weren’t in their favor. The trees here weren’t the thickest, granting many gaps for the Nestafar to fire down through and leaving Bronsor in a tight spot when he’d been expecting fire support.

Luckily the Nestafar didn’t spot him and flew on past. The Calavari held still for several seconds afterwards, listening for more wing flaps or footsteps and hearing neither. Unfurling his arms from his sides, he pulled up his one remaining rifle and held it at the ready in his lower right hand. He only had a few dozen shots remaining, and after that he’d be down to his knives, which wouldn’t be very useful against Nestafar in the air, especially given that he wasn’t very good at throwing them.

Bronsor walked away from his tree, trying to stay under the thick parts of the reddish/brown canopy as he moved further into the forest and away from the city…heading to a small training outpost where he and the others hoped they’d find some supplies. Ammo they needed, but food and water were more scarce, and Bronsor hadn’t eaten anything the past 2 days, leaving him lightheaded but none the less committed to reaching his target and finding a way to survive.

Ten minutes later he heard a rifle shot nearby, but couldn’t see anyone ahead through the brush or any Nestafar in the air from his position underneath the broken canopy. Gripping the upper branch of his Y-shaped rifle with his top right arm as well as the lower, he readied himself to shoot quick and headed in the direction the sound of the shot had come from.

It didn’t take him long to find a Calavari lying dead beneath a tree…but he hadn’t been killed by the Nestafar. The plasma burn to his forehead had come from his own rifle, which lay nearby at an angle that told Bronsor that he’d triggered it with his foot while placing his head over the barrel, meaning he’d killed himself.

Bronsor closed his eyes for the moment, then opened them and picked up the rifle. Checking its ammo supply he found it only had 8 shots remaining, but it was 8 more than he’d previously had so he switched it over to his lower left arm and carried it away with him, leaving the body where it lay and wondering how much longer he could hang on before being tempted to do the same as Chavva had just done.

The Nestafar owned the planet now. Sassma had been one of the remaining holdouts, but now it was gone, overrun by the flying bastards and their hard armored walkers. Their infantry the Calavari could handle, but the walkers were damn near impossible to take out when they hit you with numbers, and they’d assaulted Sassma with more than 40 of them.

With air support they might have been able to do something about that, coupled with heavy weapons on the ground, but the Calavari Valeries had long since vanished from the skies of Lrat, and only bits and pieces of military units were left scattered across the planet trying to claim some minor victories or, like Bronsor’s group, just trying to stay alive.

He’d seen what the Nestafar had been doing in Sassma on his way out, taking a moment to look back from atop a hillside in the forest. They weren’t capturing the city or taking prisoners…they were razing it, with their walkers moving in through the buildings and methodically taking them apart one plasma blast after another.

Bronsor doubted many would have survived, save for fleeing into the forest as he had, but like he’d seen, the Nestafar had scout patrols out hunting the survivors down, so this really looked like their last stand, scattered amongst the trees wondering whether they’d die of Nestafar plasma or starvation.

He wasn’t ready to give up all hope yet, for so long as he lived there was a chance he could kill at least one more of the bastards that were annihilating his people. So he pushed on, weary and wobbly as he was, walking slow but steadily towards the training outpost that one of the local soldiers had marked on a map before evacuating.

Bronsor wasn’t from Sassma, but rather he and the others of his unit had been shifted here after the defeat at Nonssa, and before that at the primary spaceports in Luissen. Originally he’d been assigned to a counterattacking army that had got its ass royally kicked during the first months of the planetary assault, then he and the survivors had been bounced from one defensive position to another, until now there was nowhere left to evacuate to, nor anyone to do the evacuating.

Another couple hours went by before he heard another shot, this one further away and Nestafar…quickly followed by several more. Eager to get some payback, Bronsor spotted the nearest high ground and found a gap in the trees wide enough that he could see partially around the perimeter, because he didn’t think he had the strength left to climb up any of them.

He didn’t have to, for off in the distance, hovering just above the tree line, were a trio of Nestafar infantry firing down on what was probably another member of his unit. They’d intentionally scattered, all heading for the training outpost from different angles to keep from giving their position or their heading away…but also close enough that they could support each other should one of them get attacked.

Bronsor dropped his own rifle on the ground, then held up the one he’d gotten from Chavva and activated the long range holographic sight on top, seeing the three targets appear before zooming in on them while trying to hold the rifle still.

Having two arms on it helped greatly, but he reached over with his other two for extra stability as he saw one of the three Nestafar fall to a golden plasma lance from far off to his left, meaning one of the others was sniping as well. Bronsor fired off a shot, missing badly, then pulled the trigger four more times before finally dropping one of the remaining two out of the air. He wasn’t sure if it was dead or just winged, but he hoped if it was the later that whoever was down on the ground would finish it off personally.

The third flier went evasive, but the other sniper took it down and Bronsor deactivated the sight on his rifle and got moving again, knowing that he and the others couldn’t linger. He was also angry with himself for using 5 shots on one target. No matter how weak he was getting he shouldn’t have missed 4 times. That was just wasted ammo.

The Calavari walked on…and on…and on, eventually coming to the approximate location where the training outpost was supposed to be, wondering by now if it was even real, or if it had just been a false hope given to him and what remained of his unit as they fled the city. Realizing there wasn’t anything else to do aside from lay down or die, he kept looking around for another hour until he spotted a Calavari who flagged him down and motioned him to come over.

Relieved that at least he wouldn’t have to die alone, he trudged across the forest, now with every step feeling as if his large feet were dragging weights on them. When he got close to where the other was situated, it stepped out and offered him its top two fists, which Bronsor tapped back in a welcoming gesture.

“Good to see another friendly face. Name’s Atriaacs.”

“Bronsor. I was told there was a training outpost around here.”

“There is,” the Calavari said to Bronsor’s relief. “I’d point you in the right direction, but you look like you can barely stand. Follow me,” he said, taking one of the rifles from Bronsor to lighten his load.

“It’s almost out.”

“We have replacement packs,” Atriaacs said as they weaved their way between the tree trunks, which were thicker in this part of the forest, leaving less aerial visibility, though there were still occasional breaks where the sky could be seen. “Every weapon is useful. It was good of you to bring two.”

“The rest of my unit should be here soon, if not already.”

“We will find and bring them in if they get here. This location is well hidden. Hopefully we can outlast the Nestafar…and give them a good fight if we can’t. Their walkers can’t get up here, so you walking all this way wasn’t for naught. Just a little further now.”

“Do I look that bad?” Bronsor asked.

The other Calavari turned around as he continued to walk and gave him a once over glance. “Yes.”

Bronsor tried to laugh, but his throat was so dry it came out as a cough.

Atriaacs waved to someone ahead of him in the forest, then pointed Bronsor ahead.

“He’ll take you the rest of the way in. I have to return to my post.”

Bronsor nodded his thanks, but didn’t speak again as the Calavari went their separate ways. He walked up to another of his four-armed kin and was escorted up over a short ridge, then down to the bottle of a bowl-like depression that held a number of trees and one well camouflaged entrance to a subsurface base.

“Food and water inside…get yourself patched up,” the other sentry said, clapping him on the back and sending him down.

Bronsor walked down the narrow steps, trying to keep his dizzy head from losing its balance. He managed to get down the three flights, then stepped off onto a stone floor with a pair of armed guards standing watch. They hurried him inside the facility, which looked like a basic hideout. No power or equipment, just hollowed out tunnels connecting empty rooms that had begun to be filled with portable equipment and supplies.

Ceiling lights were stick-ons, battery powered, as was everything else. Bronsor was eventually escorted into a larger room with a number of portable bunks, half of which were occupied, but his eyes went straight to the water keg set on a table. He walked over and downed several cups worth before a higher ranking Calavari could get over to him.

“Easy there, or you’ll choke. How many of you got through?” the slightly taller soldier said, handing Bronsor a foodstuff package.

“There were 12 of my unit that got out of the city, along with a handful of others. We split up to avoid attention. Other than hearing rifle shots, I haven’t had any contact with them…aside from a body.”

“No comms?”

“There was word that the Nestafar were tracking them, so we left them in the city.”

“Get some rest,” the larger Calavari said, placing a hand on Bronsor’s head and giving it a slight double tap. “You did well in getting here.”

“For what it’s worth,” he said, opening the package and biting into a hard ration, his jaw aching from lack of activity.

“We’re not dead yet.”

Bronsor nodded, then what he assumed was the commander walked off leaving him alone. He sucked down another cup of water then walked over and sat down on a bunk, feeling like his legs weren’t going to allow him to get back up again. He ate the contents of the package, all three items, then laid down, still feeling hungry but knowing from experience that he had enough in his stomach…it was just a matter of time before digestion kicked in and got the food into his bloodstream.

Bronsor woke up some time later, realizing he had nodded off without noticing. The room was empty, with the other occupants having left him to sleep. He found that odd, then heard people scurrying around elsewhere in the outpost, with him fearing the worst. Forcing himself to sit up, he looked for his rifle that had been at the foot of his bunk, but it was gone.

Guessing that it had been added to the communal armory, he stood up and stumbled his way to the open doorway and out into the hall, following the commotion until he caught up with the others.

“What’s going on?” he asked to the backs of half a dozen of them.

“We don’t know,” Dwermat said, doing a double take. “Good to see you again, Bronsor.”

“Likewise,” he said, walking up to the group and trying to look over their shoulders.

Up on the surface the Calavari commander strained his hearing, barely able to pick up the sound his sentries had heard but were unable to identify. It had a repeating pattern, not identical, but rhythmic…and not anything of either Calavari or Nestafar make.

The commander slowly cracked a smile, then pointed upwards to the nearest of the sentries before he jumped up and grabbed a low tree branch and began climbing.

“What is it?” the sentry asked halfway up.

“It’s a battle song,” the heavy Calavari said, having to carefully select branches that could hold his weight, though he had no trouble lifting himself from one to another using all four of his muscular arms. “A call to arms.”

“Nestafar?”

“No, of course not.”

“I didn’t know we had battle songs?”

“Not like this, no. If I’m right, it’s one of our allies,” the commander said, getting up high enough to push his head up into clean air. “And they’ve got a ship nearby transmitting.”

“Which ally?” the sentry said, coming up on another tree nearby.

The commander’s smile went from understated to full blossom as he saw the tiny block of a starship hovering over the distant city of Sassma and firing down on it with blue plasma.

“Humans,” he said casually, then he raised his voice and shouted back down to the base and the rest of the nearby sentries. “Humans! Our allies have arrived! The Humans are here!”

“So’s our enemy,” the sentry pointed out, extending an arm to the southeast, almost in line with where the city lay.

“Damn them…get everyone armed,” he ordered at seeing the flock of fliers wheeling about and heading their way thanks to his shouting. One last glance at their approximate position and he started climbing back down in a hurry.

“Get a comm to the Humans,” he said as he came down, with the others in the outpost surrounding the entrance as they came up, some with weapons, some not. “Let them know where we are and take up defensive positions. We’ve got Nestafar infantry coming in from that direction,” he said, pointing.

Those with weapons gave him a few excited nods and moved out, while the others filed back inside ahead of him.

Bronsor came up to the surface a few minutes later, having found himself a fully loaded plasma rifle, and moved to one of the better sniping positions outlined by those that had been here longer than him. By the time he got there he only had a few seconds before the sound of wing beats obscured the music of ‘The Imperial March’ that the Human warship was blaring across the landscape. He didn’t know what the sound was, but to him it meant hope and help, only now they were going to have to stay alive on their own merits a bit longer…and that was a fight he was more than up for.

He set himself against the side of a thick tree trunk and aimed up through a gap in the canopy as plasma fire from both sides overrode the thrumming of the wing beats. A moment later a group of Nestafar flew over in a hurry and he fired up at them, tagging one in the wing and causing it to fall into the treetops, but it didn’t come down to the forest floor.

Bronsor fired again and again every time a Nestafar passed over, seeing red plasma come raining down through the leaves where their enemy wouldn’t. Two deadly raindrops hit the ground near him, but he didn’t get hit and continued to fire back up at every enemy he could see while the other Calavari did the same.

Then a tree fell nearby, having been cut off at the trunk by a series of plasma hits. It dragged a couple of others over with it, exposing a larger swath of sky that Bronsor used to his advantage, knocking down two Nestafar in quick shots…then he had to duck behind his own tree as the enemy swarm dropped lower into the opening and fired on him and the others.

Bronsor ducked back out for a quick shot, seeing some 6 Nestafar blow apart into confetti when he fired. He knew instantly that it wasn’t his doing, but that of a Calavari scattergun…but where in the world had a Valerie come from?

Before he could wonder a gray blur flashed by overhead, skimming the trees and poaching the Nestafar, which was when he realized it wasn’t a Valerie, but one of the Human skeets whom the Calavari had gifted with the scattergun technology.

As the bits and pieces of Nestafar bodies fell down onto the felled tree Bronsor smiled for the first time in weeks. The Calavari leadership had chosen their allies well.

5

August 28, 2439

Renx System

Lrat

Bronsor walked up into the back of the Human dropship, which had squeezed itself down in between several trees to get low enough to the ground. The alien gray/white ship was a welcome sight in the morning light, after a long night of watching the plasma flashes over in Sassma. The battle there had apparently ended in the Humans’ favor, for their warship hung over the city most of the night before flying off less than an hour ago, and now they’d sent one of their transports to pick up the Calavari survivors.

There were 38 of them in the training outpost, with only 22 of them having fit into the first transport. It had left Bronsor and the others behind, waiting on this one, which the Calavari was more than glad to climb aboard.

The ceiling was a bit low, but at least they didn’t have to duck down. A few of the Calavari ahead of him sat on the Humans’ low benches while the rest of them, Bronsor included, stood in what appeared to be the cargo section of the craft as the rear hatch sealed up and the dropship lifted off. One Human, nearly their height, stood in gleaming white armor at the entrance to the cockpit, separating them from the pilots as it answered questions.

It seemed Sassma had already been evacuated with only a handful of survivors being found. Bronsor and the others were being transported up to a Human ship while their fleet was out pounding the Calavari across the planet and evacuating all the survivors they could find…meaning they were either conceding the planet to the Nestafar or there were no intact Calavari cities left to move them into.

The trip up to orbit was uneventful. The Humans had small handheld screens on which exterior views could be monitored, for their ship had no windows. Bronsor didn’t get a chance to see one, though he was curious as to how many ships the Humans had brought with them, but most of all he was relieved to be alive and leaving the planet he had once called home. It had become a graveyard, and short of a major effort to rebuild he no longer wanted to be here with the memories of what had occurred.

His mind flashed back to Chavva, who would still have been standing beside him now if he’d only held out a little longer. At the time he’d agreed the situation was hopeless, but was both saddened and proud now. He had survived long enough for help to come, but Chavva could have done the same if he’d only been a bit more stubborn.

As the Human ship left the atmosphere and accelerated up towards the waiting fleet, Bronsor began to feel the effects of having escaped near death…for now his mind was starting to unnumb and a wealth of emotions that he’d been suppressing were beginning to play out, though he managed to keep them off his face as he and the others rode quietly in the back of the Human ship.

Eventually they landed and the hatch behind Bronsor cracked open, lowering into a ramp that he and the others walked down with a host of the shorter Humans waiting for them…but across the huge hangar deck they now stood on there were other Human vessels flying in and unloading more Calavari survivors, which was a welcome sight. Up until now he didn’t know if anyone aside from his unit had survived, and right here in front of him was at least 1,000.

“Welcome to the Hermes 18,” a dark blue uniformed Human said in the trade language as it stepped out in front of them. “This jumpship is going to be your refuge in the near future, and we need to organize your survivors according to your skills. If any of you are techs, please step forward and follow this woman,” the attendant said, pointing to a yellow haired Human in an identical dark blue uniform.

“We are all soldiers,” one of the Calavari beside Bronsor told the Human.

“In that case, follow him.”

Another Human stepped up, held up its hand, then walked off leading them to wherever they were destined to go. After a couple of exchanged glances the Calavari complied, with Bronsor stepping third in line as they dropped into single file on their own accord, much as the rest of the Calavari across the expansive deck were doing.

Once they were several steps away from the dropship the entry port came into view, and outside of it through the containment energy fields Bronsor could see six other Human ships stacked closely nearby, all jumpships. He wished he could see more, but there was a narrow tunnel leading to the outside of the ship that constricted his view, but it was clear that the Humans had come here in large numbers, despite their much smaller populated race.

He looked around at the others, seeing a large number of females and infants…lots of infants, in fact, coming off a trio of the Human ships. They must have evacuated a training brood that the Nestafar hadn’t gotten to, which was fortunate, given their enemy targeted them specifically once they broke into their cities.

Bronsor followed the Calavari in front of him as they left the hangar deck and moved into the ship…which to his surprise had Calavari height hallways. He’d expected it to be compact, but that wasn’t the case.

Eventually they arrived at a set of stairs which they climbed…and climbed, until they got off on an upper level and were led to an area with other Calavari, where the Human dropped them off. Bronsor walked inside the large doors that two of the bigger Humans guarded and was met by a higher ranking Calavari that got them moving through a series of checkpoints where they turned in any equipment they were carrying, removed their clothes, had a quick but thorough injury check, then were shuffled into a bath house.

Bronsor washed off the grime he’d accumulated over the past few days with the ice-cold water jets the Calavari preferred. How and why the Humans had such things built into their ship he didn’t know, but it felt good to find some familiarity on the alien jumpship, and the cleaning did his mood a world of good.

When he exited the cleansing station he found Calavari-sized clothing of Human make, and while it wasn’t familiar material it fit well, as did the boots that they somehow knew to make in the standard Calavari sizes. Apparently they’d come prepared as a relief ship, having gotten information from other Calavari…which made Bronsor worry about how the war was progressing across their territory, if they were assisting the Humans in creating relief ships rather than warships.

The accommodations were none the less welcome, as was the pallet of foodstuffs available outside the dressing area. It was all Human food, but with enough familiarity to suggest that there had been a Calavari cook involved in its preparation. Bronsor filled up a triangular plate and sat down on Calavari-sized tables along with others dressed in the same red clothing as him…and who were having similar reactions to the Humans’ knowledge of Calavari needs, for there was a lot of low level chatter going on amongst the tables and not in the trade language, which they figured was what the Humans would understand.

Bronsor would get no answers as to what they were doing here, but he did hear numerous stories from across the planet, all of which were thoroughly depressing. Their defensive effort had been a total rout, with the number of survivors coming in from various locations occurring only in handfuls.

After he and the others finished eating they were directed into another nearby chamber that held 50 or so seats, also of Calavari size, and once they were filled the door was shut and another Calavari commander stood before them along with a Human.

“I have been here a few days longer than you,” the Calavari began, speaking the trade language for the benefit of the Human, “so I’ve had more time to process what is going on. At first I didn’t like it, but now that I’ve had time to think it through, and the fact that they’re giving us a choice, I have come to respect the Humans’ plan. We all owe them a debt for saving us. On that merit alone, hear him out.”

The Calavari beside the Archon crossed both sets of arms over its chest and remained silent, offering the short man a ‘go ahead’ nod.

“You are fighting the Nestafar,” the level 65 adept began, wearing his casual white uniform rather than armor onboard on the jumpship, “but despite your long history with them, the true enemy is the Cajdital. The Nestafar are fighting you on their behalf, and doing a damn good job of it.”

That caused a bit of stir amongst the seated Calavari, some of whom were mere hours past active combat with their longtime nemesis. The higher ranking Calavari raised one hand to settle them, but didn’t take sleight at the Human’s words.

“They have devoted their entire military to destroying you, and you in turn have devoted your entire civilization towards your defense…and while you have the help of the Alliance, you are still fighting the Cajdital on another front, as is most of the Alliance, which means that none of us can devote our full strength to helping you. Star Force is, at this moment, engaging the Cajdital on a battlefield far from here where they are encroaching on our territory, and we have split our resources and fleets between fighting there, and fighting the Nestafar here.”

“We believe the Cajdital are biding their time, using the Nestafar to either destroy or cripple the Calavari, leaving you nearly defenseless for when they make a larger push. Or perhaps they mean to go after the Bsidd or the Kvash…and you won’t be in a position to help them. Regardless of how they plan to proceed, the Nestafar are intent on destroying you, and the Cajdital mean to use this blood feud between you to their own advantage.”

“The bottom line is, you can’t win this war. The Nestafar are too powerful of a match for you. Even now, as your fleets see victory in key star systems, dozens of others are being abandoned…not by choice, but by lack of available resources. Lrat is one of those worlds, and I don’t need to remind you what happened down there.”

“But I can tell you that this is happened across Calavari territory. Up until recently, Star Force has had roving fleets attacking Nestafar targets rather than establishing defensive lines around your worlds and waiting for the enemy to come to us. We’ve killed many of their ships, their fleets, and their pesky walkers because we’ve been able to choose our battlefields. You have not had that luxury.”

“While our approach is working, it is not enough. Our population is small compared to yours, as is our fleet. We don’t have the numbers to hurt the Nestafar enough to push them back, but we have no intention of letting our Calavari brothers be wiped out…not by the Nestafar…not by the Cajdital…so we’ve come up with a different strategy.”

The Archon activated a large hologram set behind him and the Calavari commander that showed the most recent map of Calavari territory they had.

“The Red is secure territory, the Yellow is Nestafar held worlds, with the Blue being systems that are currently under contention. The Green is worlds that you still hold, but are so weakened that the Nestafar can take control of them at will, if they choose to devote the resources.”

Bronsor looked at the sea of blue, with only small patches of red remaining…he also noticed the black on the opposite side that he knew marked Cajdital-held worlds. Near it was a narrow slice of blue, indicating that they weren’t making a major push forward, but were still inching their way in.

“Star Force has decided to hit as many Yellow worlds were we can, as Lrat just was, and evacuate their populations. Same goes for Green worlds. Both of these categories are beyond the ability of the Calavari government to affect, for they’ve got their hands full fighting in the Blue and defending the Red.”

“Star Force is evacuating as many off these worlds as we can get to all the while hitting Nestafar targets. When we take out their ships on their low priority worlds they have a choice to make…leave them undefended or move troops away from battering the rest of you to counter us. We’ve retaken many worlds since we’ve been out here simply because they don’t have the ships to send to take them back, but long term, it’s the key systems that are going to determine the outcome…while worlds like Lrat get abandoned by both the Calavari and Nestafar.”

“Eventually someone will come back to claim them, and there’s a good chance that it’ll be the Cajdital. We don’t like that, so Star Force is claiming them…or rather, their populations. We know the Calavari need every military asset they can get to fight this war and defend the worlds you already hold, which is why we’re not asking them to participate in this endeavor. We’re picking up people like you…who have been cut off from reinforcements and resupply. Many of whom are starving to death.”

“We’re taking your females, your young ones, your techs, your medics, and other civilians out of the war zone…far out of it, to a planet where they will be safe. There Star Force is beginning to rebuild the Calavari civilization using our resources, our tech, and creating a fallback point should either the Nestafar or Cajdital defeat you.”

“Now hear me out,” the Archon said as some of the Calavari began to get up out of their seats in livid protest. “Please, you’re not the only ones to react like this. If we take you back to your territory, they’re not going to have room for you. Refugees from thousands of worlds have been fleeing back to your safe systems, and as a result they are overloaded. Food shortages are common, with strict rationing taking place.”

“I know you want to return home, and if I was in your position I would not be running away from a fight…which is why we are willing to return you, the soldiers, to a safe Calavari world where you can rejoin your military and do what you can against the Nestafar. You are fighters, as am I, and we will not deny you that path if you wish it, but we will not send your civilians back only to face another Nestafar attack. We are taking them away and helping them rebuild, combining what they know and what we know, and making a stronger Calavari civilization…one that, if we work quickly, could send fleets and troops back here to fight before this war is over.”

“Whether that happens or not, we intend to give your people an escape route, a fighting retreat back to new territory we are providing you. We are not going to let the Calavari be annihilated, even if all we can save is a small piece of your empire.”

The Calavari commander dropped its lower left hand onto the Archon’s shoulder, knowing that he was done speaking, for they’d gone through this speech many times already.

“If you wish to return to the fight, I can understand that,” the four-armed giant said with a deep voice that seemed to calm down the rest of them. “The Humans have offered us training and equipment, of which I have been able to witness a small amount of here. Their skill is not to be underestimated. I would ask that some of you go with them…learn from them, and build a stronghold for the rest of us to flee to, if the war should go ill for us.”

“However, there is a third option. I am not returning to our military, despite the sense of duty I know you all feel. I have requested, and the Humans’ have granted, permission to join their warfleet that is fighting the Nestafar and rescuing survivors such as we just were. The more of us that we can return to the fight, the better it will be for all Calavari. Those of you who wish to stay with me, we will be fighting the Nestafar again within weeks!”

“What training?” Bronsor asked, swallowing hard as the others turned to look at him, realizing he had spoken out of turn. “What do you think you can teach us?”

“A fair question,” the Calavari commander agreed, dismissing the impertinence of the question, given the situation they found themselves in. Normally Calavari didn’t interrupt a superior, rather saving questions and comments until after they were done speaking. “Come forward.”

Bronsor stood up and walked to an aisle, his mind reeling from the choice before him. Running away felt like dishonor, not returning to the Calavari military seemed like abandoning his duty, and going back felt like a drawn out death sentence, leaving the soldier thoroughly conflicted.

The commander glanced at the Archon, who offered a nod of agreement.

“Pin this one to the floor, if you can,” the commander said, gesturing to the Archon, who took a step away and dropped his shoulders an inch or so into a combat stance.

Bronsor frowned, but did as he was told, not seeing much challenge in it. The Human was tiny.

When he reached for it with his upper arms he had them knocked away with blindingly fast punches, then a small hand grabbed his huge wrist and yanked, pulling the Calavari forward and off balance.

Bronsor reached out with all four hands, grabbing for the Human that was no longer there. It had backed up and moved to the side. The Calavari stumbled forward, keeping from falling, but as he stood back up and started to turn in the direction his opponent had moved he caught a hard elbow in the waist just below his right arm.

Bronsor bent into the blow, then found a thin arm looping around his neck from behind, followed by a kick to the back of his knee that crumpled his left leg. He fell backwards, but as he did the arm vanished and he hit the floor without squashing the Human…who quickly appeared over top of him, planting a palm against his forehead and using its full weight to pin it in place so he couldn’t sit up.

“Enough,” the commander said before Bronsor could swat at him with his huge arms.

The Archon let go and stood up, taking a step back as Bronsor did the same.

“As I said, they have many skills, despite their missing arms. Will you accept the challenge of learning from them, and helping teach the others we send after you?” he said in the Calavari’s native language, making it a more personal request now that the Human was out of the loop.

“Promise me I will see combat again.”

“I don’t need to promise you what you already know. We have more enemies at our throats than we can deal with. There will be no shortage of fighting in the years to come.”

“Very well,” Bronsor said, making his choice. “If this is what you think is wise.”

“I know it is. We need a future to fight for, and this is our chance,” the commander said, turning his giant head and looking out at the others still in their seats. “Who else will go?”

6

October 8, 2439

Jasne System

Drema

Bronsor had mixed feelings, seeing many of his comrades departing the Human jumpship via their oddly shaped dropships to head down to the surface of the Calavari world they now orbited. Many more Calavari had chosen to stay onboard and make the trip back to the promised world the Humans were claiming to give them, though most were females and techs. Very few soldiers had agreed to go, and he just felt out of place.

But he’d made a commitment and he intended to see it through. While everyone else was scrambling to fight the Nestafar, he would be attempting to build the groundwork for a new Calavari army, comprised of forgotten and abandoned soldiers that the Humans were gratefully rescuing. For that much, at least, he figured he owed them, for had they not come to Lrat he would probably have been dead by now.

That didn’t make it any easier seeing the others leave. Those Calavari that were staying behind to help in the rescue efforts had already departed piecemeal to other Human ships, but this mass exodus had a different feel to it, partly because Bronsor knew they would be leaving Calavari territory shortly thereafter…at which point he’d be entirely in Human hands.

After watching the departing refugees board their craft and saying farewells to the few he knew personally, the Calavari retreated into one of the Humans’ training areas and continued to work through their fitness program he’d started over a month ago. It was challenging enough to distract him from most of the negative thoughts swirling through his mind, and was altering his body in a way to increase his speed while decreasing his muscle mass…something that he also had mixed feelings about.

He and the other soldiers onboard trained constantly, while the civilian Calavari had other tasks to keep themselves busy with. The Humans had prepped their transport ships well, so that even before they could get their passengers back to the new world, they were training them for what they would need to do upon arrival rather than wasting precious time sitting stagnantly onboard ship.

Ever since the ‘demonstration’ his first day onboard, Bronsor had wanted to spar with one of their Archons again, but unfortunately none were left onboard for the journey back to their territory. That he could understand, given that they were warriors who wanted to be where the action was, making him feel even more out of place, save for the fact that some of the bigger Humans were onboard and proving to be a nearly even match, despite the fact that they had only two arms. They were called ‘Knights’ in the Human tongue, and Bronsor had been told that their training and what the Calavari were going to be put through were quite similar.

Once the jumpship departed along with 5 others carrying Calavari, not to mention a slew of Human cargo ships escorted by only a single warship, Bronsor and the others spent the next 4 months training in four sessions per Human day. That kept him busy with little time to think, complain, or sorrow…with him grateful for the constant activity. The Humans knew well how to treat their fellow soldiers.

When they eventually arrived at their destination Bronsor and the other Calavari were flown down to the surface via dropship, and this time the Calavari did get one of their ‘datapads’ so he could observe what was outside. They were no longer packed inside the back, shoulder to shoulder, but seated at regular intervals that gave them plenty of leg room, though the Human seats were clearly designed for two-armed individuals with no indented arm rests for their lower set.

But that didn’t matter to Bronsor, who’d gotten accustomed to the Human designs. He was interested in seeing this new planet the Calavari would be building on, and as soon as the dropship left the jumpship’s bay he got a view of one of the Human stations in nearby orbit. It was perfectly round and colored deep gray like most of their ships were, and he knew from his recent reading that it was what they called a ‘seda,’ but because of the color he knew it didn’t belong to Canderous, which always had green sedas. That meant it was a Star Force seda, placed here as both an outpost and battle station to guard orbit and the planet below.

The soldier in him wanted to know how they fought, for the Humans hadn’t provided any battle footage, only schematics and general details.

As the dropship passed it by and moved down into the planet’s atmosphere the exterior cameras clouded up a bit by the aerial disruption, then cleared again letting the Calavari see the city below them on the arid planet. Bronsor knew there was no vegetation or native lifeforms, but the atmosphere and gravity were habitable, and would allow them to begin seeding the planet with forests if they could scrape up enough water from beneath the surface…otherwise they’d have to find a way to recycle the carbon dioxide into oxygen artificially.

That wouldn’t be a problem inside sealed cities, but if they wanted to roam free on the surface it would eventually become a problem…and one that the Humans seemed to be on top of already, for he could see a narrow stripe of green around the northern edge of one of their cities, three of which could be seen on the small datapad he held in his hand. The one they were headed for was a military city, where the new Calavari army was going to be trained, with the females and infants being located elsewhere.

As the dropship descended to the middle of the three visible cities, the other two slowly disappeared over the horizon and the landscape below them opened up into a very alien cityscape, far larger than Bronsor had expected it to be. He’d been told that the Calavari would be using Human tech in addition to anything they could build of their own on site, but he hadn’t realized how much infrastructure the Humans had already prepared for them.

The city below them could hold millions of Calavari, judging by the size, making it abundantly clear, along with everything else the Humans had done for them, that their allies were overly intent on reestablishing the Calavari powerbase here, so that they could recover their strength and help the Humans in the war against both the Nestafar and the Cajdital.

When the dropship landed and the rear hatch opened, Bronsor walked out onto the surface of his new home and looked up into the sky on the landing pad, seeing a slight pink haze and tasting the dry air as any doubts as to his coming here erased themselves from his mind. This was a place of power, and a sign of the respect the Humans had for the Calavari, making his success here all the more important, both to his own race and their ally.

Purpose…that’s what he was feeling, and that’s what had been lost on him for some time now. This city, this world surged with hope, drive, and above all else, purpose. This was the Calavari’s future, even if they did manage to hold onto key systems in the war zone. Here they would build a force capable of rescuing the others…and that felt right to him in a way he couldn’t fully articulate.

Fortunately he didn’t have to, for he and the other Calavari remained silent as they walked across the exterior spaceport deck and were passed on to another Human handler that showed them into and through the city, first onboard a hovertruck that took them along the city streets that were a mix of both Humans and Calavari pedestrians, as well as a number of other hovering vehicles. They also passed one of the Humans’ upright walkers as it stomped its way between buildings, loaded with weapon pods.

Bronsor huffed his approval as they passed, as did several of the others beside him in the open aired vehicle that held 8 of them plus a driver. Their Human attendant stood beside the also Human driver without sitting, then led them off and into another blocky Human building when they’d arrived at their destination.

Inside they were given individualized quarters, learning that this was the Humans’ form of a military barracks. To Bronsor it seemed like a lot of wasted space but he didn’t complain, for the sizing was all Calavari, right down to the table tops and doorways, making the few Humans walking around look especially tiny.

He was given an access code for the door, and showed how he could alter it to whatever he wanted, not seeing the point. Calavari didn’t use locked doors except where outsiders were concerned. If your fellow soldiers couldn’t be trusted not to steal your stuff, then there was no way they could be trusted on the battlefield. None the less, with so many Humans around Bronsor thought it was an acceptable safety precaution, despite the fact that he didn’t have any possessions to steal, nor did any of the others.

That was to change within a few hours, when their handler took them ‘shopping’ for all types of gear and personal items…all Human produced for the Calavari. Bronsor picked out several uniforms that he felt were acceptable, along with a comm device, datapad, data chips, person grooming device, and an assortment of other things that he’d not had the luxury of owning on the jumpship. He and the others carried multiple boxes full of items back to their quarters and began organizing them, taking away the empty feeling the multi-roomed chambers had as they were given the rest of the day off to settle in.

Bronsor roamed around the building, then went out with a few of the others to scout the nearby area, discovering that while the architecture was Human, the buildings’ functions were familiarly Calavari. Everything was different, with a Human feel to it, but this had been designed as a city for the Calavari and followed many of their traditions…including a wrestling bar where they could lightly spar with one another over drinks, except that the Humans didn’t allow for any intoxicating or damaging confections.

In their place they had a wide range of new liquids and snacks, most of which Bronsor actually took a liking to. He spent the next several hours there with the scattering of other Calavari in what he learned was still a very low populated city. It was near empty, in fact, making him and the others some of the first evacuees to arrive.

Bronsor squared off with a tech, taking the slightly smaller Calavari down quickly 3 out of 4 times while having to work a bit harder on the fourth. Neither was injured, and the wrestling gave both of them a way to blow off steam against someone they weren’t familiar with, offering a refreshing sparring challenge compared to his fellow soldiers whose fighting styles he’d grown familiar with.

From the tech he learned that the Humans, who preferred to be called Star Force, were having the Calavari learn their tech as well as teach them theirs as they designed new equipment specifically for the Calavari…including their own version of combat walkers to replace the tanks they traditionally used, though they were also upgrading those into remotely controlled drones, similar to the Star Force warfleet.

Bronsor asked many questions, and the techs were eager to talk with their own kin after being surrounded by Humans for most of the day. At first, they admitted, they’d taken affront to Star Force redesigning their military, as if it hadn’t been good enough, despite the fact that the Calavari empire was infinitely stronger than the Human’s tiny territory, but quickly enough they saw it was combat efficiency that they were after. They wanted to keep existing troops deployments intact by building better equipment to protect the soldier, rather than training more soldiers to replace those that were lost.

It was then that Bronsor learned how old some of the Humans were, and he suddenly understood the logic behind their military peculiarities. Some of them were hundreds of years old, with combat experience eclipsing the eldest Calavari…and they did it by making what normally would have been death blows into survivable defeats.

That also told Bronsor that Star Force, small as it was in numbers, was far more powerful than others gave them credit for. For if they could preserve what they had, they could face down much larger enemies and prevail due to attrition being in their favor. The more Bronsor learned from the other Calavari who’d been here for a while, the more impressed he was becoming with the Humans and curious as to what else they had to offer in this newfound brotherhood.

He eventually left the bar and returned to his quarters, sleeping well and too shortly, for his fatigue was greater than he’d realized. When his wakeup call came, he reported for training duty along with the others at the base of the building and was carried off through an underground transit system to a much larger facility, inside of which there were other Calavari soldiers going through a series of training drills…some he recognized, others that were entirely foreign.

As he learned quickly enough, there were no training sessions here…just a long, arduous day with short breaks, none long enough for them to leave the facility. Bronsor was almost ashamed at how out of shape he was compared to the Human trainers that were doing the same workouts alongside them and were barely showing any fatigue. Most of them were Knights, but a handful were the tiny Archons who were unbelievably fast, not to mention overly strong for their size.

Bronsor returned to his quarters at the end of the day with a couple of hours of free time to spare before heading to bed, but he was too tired to go anywhere so he just crashed on the circular pad that was one type of Calavari couch and turned on the vid screen. Half of the available channels were in the Human language, with the other half mostly being in the trade language. Two were native Calavari, but they weren’t the news programs he wanted, so he sat in the glory of sore muscles and well-earned fatigue, for Star Force was very keen on running workouts, and watched/listened to the planetary updates from Calavari commentators in the trade language.

His interest kept him awake for half an hour, then he woke up to find that he’d dozed off for another 45 minutes in what felt like a matter of seconds. Pulling himself up and into his sleeping room he committed himself to an early start on his sleep cycle…only to begin again the next day in an arduous routine that would slowly transform his muscular form into a tight, fast, and powerful frame some months later.

Only then would he realize that he’d completed basic training…and was going to advance to the next level of even harder trials.

7

July 3, 2440

Prolio System

HTC

Bronsor woke up bleary eyed as normal, pulling himself off his sleeping pad and dressing in a rush. He had to get down to the cafeteria and grab something to eat before the others left for training. Normally he’d allow himself a bit more time to wake up, but today was special and he didn’t want to lag behind.

Apparently the others felt the same, for when he got down to the eating hall most of them were already chowing down on foodstuff bars and cakes, all of Human fashion and designed not to be a drag on the stomach…though the Calavari still knew better than to overload himself with fuel before entering a training session. Their trainers didn’t take it easy on them, with heavy workouts hitting them the moment they arrived rather than seeing a gradual transition, so he carefully chose a plateful of items and a single bottle of water and began eating as fast as he could.

He made up some time and left about middle of the pack, hopping into the subsurface rail lines that took him over to his designated training facility where he and the other ‘advanced’ students were shuffled off into a sort of briefing room, breaking with their normal routine. Inside there were no chairs, but rather a lighted demonstration area surrounded by stacks of crates, by which several of their Human trainers were standing…along with an Archon in his white uniform, though this one had a green stripe down the side.

Bronsor stiffened. He’d learned about Star Force’s various ranks and knew that very few of the Humans rated a green stripe. It meant this person was what they called a ‘ranger’ and was one of their war leaders. Had he not seen what the other lower ranking Archons were capable of he would have assumed this Human was a fit weakling, judging by his size, but Bronsor’s eyes had become accustomed to sizing up their smaller race and he could tell by looking at him that this one was different, despite the uniform.

“Today,” Jace-013 began speaking the trade language, “those of you who have progressed to training tier 4 are going to get an upgrade. Traditionally, you’re used to wearing shields as defense in combat…well, we’re one upping that and giving you proper armor, for which you were already measured. These suits are custom fitted for each of you, so no sharing or trading. We have units that can be adjustable, but trust me when I say that your custom set will be far more comfortable and agile than one of the generic ones.”

The trailblazer glanced around the assembled Calavari, some 50 of them, and pointed to one.

“Your name?”

“Nratch,” the larger biped said, looking down towards the Human.

“You get to be first. Step into the circle.”

The Calavari huffed and walked over to the lighted area, leaving the dimly lit remainder of the room where the others were standing. As he came up the handlers opened one of the crates and began pulling out pieces of armor painted bright orange.

“Your armor comes in pieces,” Jace explained. “When you strap it on the various pieces will interlock and you’ll have an airtight seal with a short term backup oxygen supply that will allow you to survive in vacuum for a brief period of time. It will also allow you to move under water and will lock down against airborne toxins automatically. When that happens you need to get to clean air before you run out of reserves, but it will allow you to survive in situations where others won’t if you’re quick enough.”

Nratch stepped up at the prompting of one of the handlers as the Human slid an open boot underneath the Calavari’s thick, pedestal-like foot. When he stepped back down he gained a couple of inches of height, then the handler began cinching up the internal grip lines, ensuring that the boot wouldn’t slip around when moving, then he began locking the hard plates in place over top as Nratch stepped up to receive his other boot.

“The armor has weight, obviously, which will slow your movements. This is why you must train for speed without it, mastering the required movements, then learn to repeat those movements with the extra weight, meaning you will be training in the armor as well. Over time it will become natural, like a second skin, but in the beginning it will be cumbersome and you will be going to bed stiff and sore.”

“The armor has no powered joints, meaning your muscle is what moves it, same as our armor. As you become stronger you will gain access to stronger plates, increasing the durability of the armor in battle. While this may be new to you, it is something we Archons have grown accustomed to over the past 400 years.”

With the boots locked in place and coming up to cover Nratch’s knees, the Calavari stepped up and down in place, testing the weight and traction, then three handlers came over with more sections, the first of which was the cod piece that locked around his waist and looped down between his legs. When it was attached like a belt, the other Humans brought in the upper leg pieces and wrapped them around his tree trunk-like quadriceps.

The halves locked together smoothly, but were still loose where they butted up against the boots and cod piece.

“Now,” Jace said, talking directly to Nratch. “Wiggle around and the pieces should lock together.”

The Calavari wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do, but he followed orders and began moving his leg side to side. Suddenly there was a click on his right knee and the armor became more rigid, but still flexible enough to give him considerable range of movement. Nratch tried to mimic the same motion on the other leg and, after a few attempts, got it to lock as well.

The hip movement was trickier to master, but after several embarrassing attempts in which he almost tipped over and fell, the leg pieces locked into place and the Calavari was fully armored from the waist down.

“You can wear the armor with or without a uniform underneath,” Jace said as the handlers retrieved additional pieces. “On occasion it will bunch up if you leave a crease, so be careful to smooth any out when you put the armor on. The inner gel layer will mold to your body, spreading out concussion from a single point to a wider area, allowing you to hit and get hit harder than normal, but you still have limits, so don’t go jumping off any cliffs and expecting the armor to save you.”

“One advantage you have over our original designs is a built in shield generator,” he said as the torso piece was brought up and wrapped around the Calavari’s huge upper body…huge not only in size but in height, for it stretched out longer than a Human’s to accommodate the two sets of shoulders. “It’s extra protection, and will allow your armor to survive longer, but don’t get in the habit of walking out into the line of fire. That’s not what this armor is for…that’s what your physical shield is for, which we’ll get to later.”

“You are to train and fight in the armor as if you had none on. Over time you will learn how far you can press your advantage, but now that you’re just learning, treat every situation as if you were still exposed…and we have several new training challenges waiting for you that will reinforce that point.”

Nratch’s chest plate latched together with the back piece at multiple points along the side and near the neck, then he wiggled around to get it to attach at the waist without having to be prompted to do so, learning quickly.

“The energy shield will stop plasma and other forms of energy weapons, but it will not stop physical impacts…that’s what the armored plates are for. Later on we might integrate physical shields, but so far it’s been more effective in this manner. We’re constantly experimenting with our own armor, and any advances we make will eventually trickle down to you, so you can consider this to be your prototype armor. By the time you see real combat, you’ll probably have an upgraded version.”

“Now,” Jace continued as the arm pieces were slipped over Nratch’s wrists and pulled up to his shoulders, minus the gloves, “the color. Archon armor is either red, silver, or green at this point…and we’ll be adding another when our skill level merits it. Star Force Regulars have dirty white armor of a similar design, though it’s not identical to ours. The Knights have pure white armor, also of a slightly different design, and the Clans have identical armor to the Regulars, though they’re all individually colored to match their affiliation.”

“Your armor is orange, and designates you as a Calavari Knight. You are, as of this moment, a part of Star Force’s military. Other Calavari soldiers will not possess this armor. What they will have has not yet been determined, nor is it your concern. You are here to train, to learn, and to grow to the point where you will be sent back to fight the Nestafar and Cajdital, and you will do so as an integrated part of Star Force.”

“Obviously, there are differences between you and the Human Knights, both advantages and disadvantages. You will learn from each other, test each other, and make each other better…but be warned, you are infants compared to the rest and still have a long way to go, but today marks the beginning of the Calavari Knights, of which this armor is a symbol, but it’s far more than that. It is a weapon unlike any you’ve used before.”

Nratch wiggled on the first pair of arms, repeated the process with the second, then pulled on the armored gloves he was given, locking those in place. His helmet came last, but it was Jace who brought it to him, hesitating before he handed it over.

“The helmet has comm gear, and access to our battlemap. You haven’t used it yet, but it allows for tracing of allied and enemy units by relaying data from one unit to another. We have a network that shares that data, allowing one set of eyes to be shared by all. There are a few switches inside that you’ll have to learn to use your tongue to manage, but the interface controls are on your forearm gauntlet…lower left, I believe.”

Jace nodded at Nratch, and the Calavari looked around until he found the release, then pulled an armored panel up on a hinge, revealing a slew of large buttons…or large for a Human’s finger, but normal for a Calavari.

“There are a lot of options, which you’ll be educated in later. Know that the helmet is what contains the transmission gear and power pack, and it links in to the other systems at the back of the neck. Those systems are minor, and will not help you move the armor. Again, that comes from muscle power, which you must develop further. The power pack for your energy shields is separate, and located in the torso section.”

Jace handled the Calavari the helmet, who took it up higher than the Archon could reach and slipped it on over his large head, then snapped it into place, completing the air tight seal.

Then suddenly the Calavari was gone…replaced by a bright orange, four-armed Knight.

Jace walked over to another crate and pulled out what looked like a thick suit case with a green helmet attached to the top. He pulled it off and unfurled his own armor into one sprawling piece that he stepped into and locked up inside of 30 seconds, finishing off with his helmet that altered his voice into a slightly more mechanical version.

“Alright guys, suit up. We’ve got some drills to run through.”

Bronsor walked forward with the others, each finding the crate that held their armor. He opened his and pulled out one of the boots, finding it was heavier than he’d expected. He put it on, trying to duplicate the procedure he’d seen with Nratch, and had it halfway fitted before a trainer came around and showed him how to adjust the tension straps.

He got his other boot on with less trouble, then proceeded to the cod piece, thighs, and torso section, making sure to smooth out any wrinkles as he went. He walked around a bit, just a few steps here and there, surprised by the weight/agility level. His movements were smooth, yet slowed, as if he’d suddenly lost a great deal of fitness. He wondered about that as he pulled his arm pieces on one by one, then locked them in place and went for the gloves. Unlike the Archon’s and Human Knights’, the Calavari’s armored hands only had four fingers that were considerably thicker. Fortunately the gloves fit perfectly to his anatomy, allowing him most of his original dexterity while cushioning his digits against the hard plates that now covered them.

Bronsor liked the feel and flexed his hands thoroughly as he shifted around, making sure all the clicks were completed so that his armor was connected properly, then he held up his helmet, looking inside at the tongue switches and hitting one with his finger before sliding it on.

That one was the power switch, which he then tested with his thick tongue, making sure he could reach. He flicked the power off and back on again, then snapped the helmet in place, making connection with the rest of the armor and getting a status diagnostic that showed full strength on his armor plating…or was it his shields?

He wasn’t sure, as most of the internal helmet displays were new to him, but at the prompting of the handlers and the Archon he didn’t worry about it. After all of the Calavari got into their armor Bronsor followed Jace out, feeling his movements were slow yet strong, and walked to a nearby chamber that held a running track.

“Ok, first rule…no stopping, no walking. Run as slow as you have to, but keep going. It’s going to take a while for you to learn the new movements, then a long time to adapt to the armor, so be prepared to suffer for a while,” Jace said, stepping out ahead of the group and down to lane one. “Your size and strength are assets in combat…but it also makes you slow, which is a disadvantage, even for a Knight. You have to lessen this disadvantage, which the armor makes even worse. Today you get four laps in the armor. Try to make it before I get 8 in.”

With that Jace took off around the track and Bronsor’s jaw dropped inside his helmet as he saw how fast his little green armor was moving.

“Move, move, move!” one of the trainers yelled as a pair of Human Knights bumped arms with the Calavari and started pacing them around the track wearing their bright white armor.

Bronsor and the others got going, realizing they were on the clock as Jace disappeared around the first turn. At first the running seemed normal, but by the time he’d gotten past the first 100 meters his body seemed to change its mind and start to drag on him, but as he’d been instructed he slowed down and continued running, not able to keep pace with the white Knights who evenly trudged their way around the track, making it painfully obvious how inferior the Calavari were.

A few brave ones stuck with them for the first lap, heaving their two sets of arms back and forth to maintain rhythm, but they all dropped off pace over the second lap as the Archon came around and lapped them all before they even completed the first circuit. When he passed Bronsor the Calavari was laboring, and he got the message the Human was trying to impart.

Wearing armor required a higher level of strength and skill. It wasn’t just something you put on and you were instantly more combat capable…you had to adjust to it first, meaning that he and the others had to learn to wear it, and that it wasn’t just something that Star Force could give to the rest of the Calavari to use in the war against the Nestafar.

That realization made the Humans all the more impressive, especially the Archon, who moved with such a fluid grace and speed that seemed to defy the physics of his hard plating. Jace finished his 8 laps 100 meters ahead of Bronsor, who crossed the finish line to realize there was a clock running. He marked a 10:53, which was more than 4 minutes slower than his best time of 6:04.

When he crossed the line he almost collapsed, but had the sense to clear the line so others could come across and walked a few steps further, then bent over and breathed deeply, finding that the helmet didn’t cut back on his oxygen intake despite the close cage over his mouth and nose.

“What’s the matter guys,” Jace gloated with his synthesized voice booming from the speakers inside the Calavari’s helmets as he transmitted directly to them over the comm. “That was just an easy run for me, and my armor is a lot denser than yours. Come now, are you going to let a pathetic Human show you up?”

“You are anything but pathetic,” one of the Calavari answered back over his exterior mic, not knowing yet how to respond over the comm.

“No, I’m not,” Jace agreed. “But I’ve had 400 years of training to get this far. You’ve only had a handful of months. Longevity is the key. That’s why we needed you to come here and train instead of going right back at the Nestafar. Training is everything, and with it, you can unlock a power you’ve never known. This armor is the first major piece of that power.”

The trailblazer glanced at one of the Knights, who were noticeably not winded as the Calavari were. He walked over in his white armor and clapped a slightly larger Calavari on the back as it was doubled over, still gasping for air.

“Welcome to Star Force…and a whole new kind of warfare.”

8

March 2, 2441

Prolio System

HTC

Bronsor ducked behind his ‘half’ shield, with several stingers splattering against it from the nearby turret. He kept his helmeted head down, knowing well that the training armor he was wearing wouldn’t absorb the stun energy like his combat set would. Then again, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge if he and the other 5 Calavari on his team could just walk up to the finish pedestal with impunity.

He pulled out one of the specially made stinger pistols Star Force had designed for the Calavari from a hip holster and held it at ready behind his left shield with his lower hand, knowing he was going to have to be quick or get a face full of paint. Bringing his right side half shield around, which was actually more of a 3/4ths version of the Knights’ full shields, he touched the inner edges together, making a wedge that he hid within, hoping the turret wouldn’t hit his exposed feet as he stepped forward.

Bronsor felt the stingers impacting the shield and felt just a hint of numbness entering his forearms as it soaked through the material, but it wasn’t enough to cause him to drop them. Plodding forward under the turret fire he got within 10 meters and cracked the shields apart, popping the pistol out through the gap and firing repeatedly at the target sphere atop the turret with orange paint.

Two of the red stingers got through the gap and hit him in the chest. His arms went weak and his shields split even more, allowing the kill shots through. Bronsor blacked out from multiple hits and keeled over unconscious, only to wake up some time later staring up into the white helmet of a Knight.

“What did you do wrong?” Marshal asked behind the faceplate.

“I opened myself up to attack in order to land a killing shot,” Bronsor answered in English, sitting up and shaking his head clear. One of his armored gloves had been removed to inject him with the destunning serum, which he now pulled back on, looking down at the globs of red paint covering his dull gray armor.

“Stupid,” the elder Knight pronounced. “It takes more than one hit to take down a turret, and you exposed your center line on top of it. You have shields and four arms, use them!”

Marshall stepped back and Bronsor stood up. He was a few inches taller than the Human, but he felt the smaller, for the Knight was far stronger than he could ever hope to be.

“Pick up your shields and weapon.”

Bronsor leaned over and retrieved his gear, seeing none of his team around. The challenge had obviously ended, but he didn’t know if they’d won or lost.

“Repeat what you did.”

Bronsor faced the turret and split his shields slightly, sticking the pistol out into the gap.

“Hold,” Marshal said, walking around in front of him. He grabbed his left shield and pushed it wide, tucking it back along the Calavari’s left shoulders. Then he grabbed the right shield and pulled it across his body so it shielded his torso and came within a few inches of the other shield, but set at nearly a 90 degree angle.

“There, now poke your weapon out.”

Bronsor did as instructed, seeing the improved cover…but little else.

“I cannot see the target,” he said, with the right shield blocking his eye line to the turret.

“And it cannot see you, which is the point.”

“How do I shoot it…guess?”

“Bronsor,” Marshal said harshly, “you have lasted longer than most of the others because you are committed, but commitment doesn’t make a Knight. You have to be smart, and in order to be smart you have to learn to figure some things out for yourself. You have a stationary target…that is all you need to know. Prepare yourself, the turret is going live in 10 seconds.”

The Knight stepped away, leaving the Calavari where he was.

“Oh, and some of the others are too. Get to the finish.”

“As instructed,” Bronsor said, holding position and waiting for the turret to come online. He was trying to figure out how to aim when he couldn’t see, then the paint started flying and he huddled up behind his shields in the form that the Knight had instructed. It worked in so far as allowing his pistol to fire out without him exposing more than his hand, but he couldn’t see what he was shooting at.

He fired off a few shots guessing where the target was…then he remembered what the Knight said. It was a stationary target, meaning a fixed location that wouldn’t alter.

Bronsor took a step to the side and rotated around quickly, bringing the narrow gap between his shields across his eye line for a blink of vision. He rotated back again and repeated several times, mentally approximating where the target sphere was atop the turret with each flash, then he tucked back up to the shields and fired where he remembered it to be.

He fired off 5 shots, then flipped the gap back across his vision, seeing some paint on the underside, meaning he had been shooting low. He fired off another pair blind then check again, whipping the gap across his vision fast enough that it was unlikely a stinger was going to get through in the split second his face and chest were lined up.

Those two orange splats had hit, so he tried to repeat the process, wasting a lot of missed shots but eventually getting the turret up to its saturation limit where it deactivated.

Bronsor poked his head out to make sure, then seeing the barrels no longer puffing out the little paintballs he walked forward and passed through the narrow corridor the turret had been guarding. When he exited out the far side of the artificial mini-canyon he caught another red splat on his left shield, seeing that there were more active turrets on the other side.

On reflex he rammed his way forward, tucked up behind his shields and pulling out his second pistol so that he held the shields with his upper arms and the pair of stingers in the lower hands. Getting a feel for where the two turrets were he slid his shields in to the alignment the Knight had showed him and poked one pistol out the gap, then brought the other around the far side of the shield where…

Suddenly his back went numb as several stingers hit him from behind, then he blacked out and dropped hard with a crunch of armor on shields.

“They’re slow learners,” Marshal said to Jace in the observation blind over the training course as Bronsor woke up from the stun on his own and stood…only to get mowed down by the same turrets again, this time without his shields blocking two of the stinger streams.

“Ouch,” Jace winced in sympathy. The Calavari had head to toe armor on, but the sheer number of hits meant an awful lot of stun energy going into his body…which would end up with pins and needles galore when he woke up again naturally. “Guess the situational awareness is a bit low.”

“They’re brutes,” Marshal said emotionlessly. “They should be better than us, given their advantages, but they’re physically and mentally slow, and unless they learn to counter that it won’t matter how many hands they have.”

“Easy,” the trailblazer said, taking remote control of a hidden turret and popping it out of the ceiling where he aimed at Bronsor and fired a single paintball down onto his chest…this one carried in it a cancelling effect that would negate some of the stun and bring him back awake faster, though it was coated in red same as the stingers, so the trainees wouldn’t know the difference. “They’re first gen.”

“So were we,” Marshal pointed out.

“You didn’t learn very fast, if I remember correctly,” Jace recalled. “If they had other Calavari to learn from this would be going faster…and it will once we get this group squared off.”

“They have us to learn from and they’re still progressing at a snail’s pace.”

Jace looked up at the helmetless Knight that stood more than a foot taller than him. “You had the Black Knight to pattern off of, they have a bunch of skinny, two-armed bipeds to emulate…which they can’t do, so they have to learn what it means to be a Calavari Knight, same as you had to learn what it meant to be a Knight.”

“We weren’t this slow.”

“They’re making progress, which is all that matters. If that stalls out then we’re in trouble.”

“We’re down to 8,” Marshal reminded him. “I’m not sure we’re going to have any in the first class make it through qualification.”

“We’ll get them there if they’re willing,” Jace said, watching as Bronsor began to stir. “Just remember, they’re coming in as ignorant as you were when you came from the MMA.”

Marshal looked down at the Archon. “I’m surprised you remembered that.”

“Also remember, that you’re not a 450 pound mass. They’re going to have to work harder to meet the same agility standards.”

“Unlike you, I’m well aware of the difference. I didn’t always weight 340.”

“My point is it’s worse for them, and when you’re used to moving slow your mindset centers around that. Being quick and devious is totally alien to them.”

“I don’t need devious, just some ingenuity to work with.”

“They’re used to being used as cannon fodder,” Jace pointed out, “with some upgrades. Their shield belts gave them some longevity, but standing toe to toe and slugging it out has been the Calavari way.”

“Same with the MMA,” Marshal countered.

“Ok, point there.”

“My point is, if they can’t hack Knight standards they don’t deserve to be Knights, no matter what they weigh, orange armor or white. We can’t have separate standards…the battlefield doesn’t discriminate, so neither can we.”

“Is there a suggestion in there somewhere?”

“Push them harder. Learn by failure. Break their group think.”

“That’s already happening.”

“More challenges, less training.”

Jace rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “If they’re going to increase their agility, it’s raw training they need. Which is more valuable at this point?”

“Knowing when to duck,” Marshal said, pointing down to Bronsor as he crawled back to the narrow choke point rather than stand up and get shot again, though there was no promise that the turrets wouldn’t tilt down to shoot him on the floor.

“Keep the others on schedule…but see what you can do with him. I think he can take more than the others, not much, but a little more.”

Marshal smiled. “That’s what I hoped you say. By the way, what do you mass out at now?”

“Without armor?”

“That is what we were talking about, right?”

“Without armor, 155 pounds. With, 215.”

“Damn runt. Why haven’t any of you taken the size enhancements? You know the Zen’zat are our size.”

“A lesson we learned from Dragon Ball Z.”

“Oh?”

Jace looked up at the Knight. “Beware the small ones.”

Bronsor dragged his numb right leg behind him as he crawled beneath his shields along the wall. This was the 6th time he’d reawoken after getting knocked out, and yet the challenge wouldn’t end. He assumed it was some sort of a test…which he was failing. The parts of his body that were awake screamed in discomfort, but the pain of transition he could handle, it was the lack of response from his leg that was getting to him. He couldn’t stand on it yet, but he wasn’t just going to sit still and wait for his body to come back to him…he had to be making at least some progress forward, or he could be stuck out here forever.

He didn’t know how long it had been, though it was possible he’d been unconscious for hours. No one else was on the training course, but the turrets were still live and acting unconventionally. Some didn’t move until he closed within a predetermined range, appearing dead then coming online when he was exposed. Others didn’t fire until he’d passed them, meaning he couldn’t trust that any inactive turret that he saw was truly offline, making him run the full course by himself whereas before it was supposed to have been a team effort.

The Calavari had tried bullying his way forward several times, but had eventually determined that he would make no further headway unless he changed his tactics, and his numb leg further encouraged him to focus on making small progress, even if it was only a few inches at a time.

Right now though he needed to hurry, for the last turret he’d taken down would reactivate after a certain period of time and he to get to cover before that happened. One upside was that a low wall was covering him from another turret that kept pinging stingers off the top of his shields that were laid over his back, unable to depress low enough to hit his exposed sides or head. Before he wouldn’t have considered crawling, but now that he was forced to it made perfect sense why the low wall had been placed where it was…to encourage him and the others to think of alternate ways of getting past the turrets aside from shooting them into submission.

Bronsor held his two shields in place over his back like an insect and crawled forward on his lower arms and good leg, dragging the numb one in a rhythm that he was getting better at, then as he rounded the corner a wave of stingers shot out at his feet, nailing his already numb leg with another splatter, though he couldn’t feel it. He pulled his leg out of the firing line and took a moment to rest and look around at where he was, finally seeing the finish pedestal ahead on a platform that had three possible approaches, each of which crossed a disqualification pit on various sized bridges.

He looked them over, spotting the turret locations and trying to think of a way past. He couldn’t run, and even if he did there was at least one turret on ground level that he knew would shoot his feet, tripping him up when they went numb. Bronsor thought back to the low wall that he’d just used as cover, wondering if the Humans had hid any more clever approaches in the architecture.

He knew he needed to look where a Calavari normally wouldn’t, and mentally ruled out all the ‘common sense’ approaches, but aside from the three choices he couldn’t see any alternates, nor any little tricks he could use to pass through one of them.

Before he would have taken off and tried to bully his way through anyway, but now he decided to stay put and think, knowing that with his leg out of commission he wasn’t going to be able to shoot his way through. The Knight had said to get to the finish, so he had to find a way to do that somehow.

As he leaned back against the long wall that was blocking him from the turrets he’d just escaped, his eyes got caught on a pair of grooves set into the concrete on a tall pillar that separated two of the route choices ahead. The pillar beside it that separated the others, identical in every way, but didn’t have the grooves, which he’d thought were decorative…but then he remembered that Star Force didn’t do anything decorative, and if they were present on one pillar and not the other, then they probably meant something.

Just then it occurred to him, and Bronsor looked around eagerly, trying to judge the firing lines of the turrets ahead…then wondering about those behind him and if they would fire over the wall or not. If they did he’d fall, but it was worth the chance of having a straight route into the finish.

The Calavari punched his numb leg in protest, then crawled over to the far pillar, passing the entry point for routes 1 and 2 and glancing down their footbridges to cover on the far side. It had to be a decoy, a lure to draw them in, while this pillar was the real way across.

When he got up to the base of the concrete pylon he slipped his armored fingertips into the groove that sat just above his head, then tilted one of his shields up and tried to fit it inside. It took some wiggle work since he couldn’t stand well, but once he got up on his good knee he was able to slide the shield in several inches where it stuck firmly, making for an impromptu platform.

Bronsor huffed in approval and crawled up on top of it, using his three free hands to haul his body up. The shield supported his weight, and looking back he could see the long wall was still higher than his head, meaning it was blocking the previous turrets, so he was safe for the moment.

Getting up to a knee by leaning against the pillar, Bronsor raised his second shield up and slid it into the next groove, then grabbed the edge of it and hung off, using his lower two arms to pull out the bottom shield and flip it around over his back where his left hand held it in place. Using his right he three-armed his way up onto the top shield, ending up face down on it as he glanced back at the wall, seeing himself now level with the top of it.

The turrets were just below it, but he could only make out the tip of one of their target spheres, meaning they still couldn’t shoot at him…at least not until he stood up. There was still one more groove left before he got to the top, but looking up he could now definitely see the grooves in the ceiling that he had guessed were there, camouflaged as they were.

He took a couple of deep breaths, then leveraged himself up and onto his knee, glancing back and staring at one of the turrets on the other side of the wall. It didn’t rotate to track him, which he took as a good sign, but he wasn’t going to stick around for long and let it change its orientation, so he leveraged his free shield up and slid it into place, making a small roof over his head.

Gathering himself, he climbed up on top of it, then up on top of the pillar another half meter higher to a small platform. From there he could see the ladder in the ceiling that crossed over the disqualification pit and bridges below…as well as the numerous turrets that could easily rotate up and knock him off into a long fall. With his armor on he didn’t know if he’d break anything, but he’d definitely be injured…but if that was the case why would the Humans have put the ladder here?

He decided to take the chance, then carefully stood on one leg and reached up to the now low ceiling, grabbing hold of the rungs with both upper arms. Checking his grip twice, he pulled his body up off the platform, seeing if his arm strength would hold up. It was shaky, but possible.

He wrenched himself up high enough that his head almost hit the rungs, then he reached his lower arms up as far as he could and grabbed hold as well, finding that configuration more reliable, albeit slower, but at this point it didn’t matter. He just needed to get across.

Bronsor moved a hand forward, then another and another, about once per second and pulled himself off the platform, hanging over the freefall below. Ignoring everything else but his hand placements, he looked up at the rung ahead of him and got into a rhythm, his numb leg now no longer an issue. One hand release…one hand grab, always having three locked on tight to support his weight.

It was slow going, but it was steady progress, as he’d come to learn was the point. When he made it halfway across and hadn’t been shot down he knew he was going to make it the rest of the way, for his arm strength was serving him well…and now that he’d found a way to win, there was no way he was going to relinquish his grasp on it.

When he got to the far side there was another platform waiting, which he dropped off on, allowing himself to fall on his face rather than tip over the side as his numb leg collapsed underneath him. From there he slid down a curvy slide that deposited him behind a low wall that hid the slide from view and left him two meters away from the finish pedestal.

Bronsor crawled out and smashed his large hand on top of it, triggering the challenge complete tone and ugly blue lighting the Humans used along with it, but right now it was a welcome sight.

From the concealed exit the Knight walked out with a destunning injection and pointed to Bronsor’s hand. The Calavari detached the armored glove and let him inject the cool relief from the pins and needles that traveled down to his leg and brought it back to life as well. After a few experimental twitches he stood up beside Marshal, who simply tapped a finger against his own helmet, then turned around and led the way out.

Bronsor got the message. Fighting wasn’t always enough. Sometimes victory required one to think their way through, or out of, a bad situation.

9

January 22, 2442

Prolio System

HTC

Bronsor came out of the last turn on the track sprinting, in full armor, knowing that he had victory in this last piece of qualification if only he held his pace down the straightaway, but pride made him dig a little deeper and eke out some more speed. He needed to run under 5:45, and had been 12 seconds ahead of pace at 3 laps. Though his fatigue was wearing on him there was no way he was going to squander that lead so long as he kept the pressure on.

Which he did, and then some. The Knight armor he was wearing had been designed for running and allowed him to stretch out his thick legs and pound his way down the straightaway. When he crossed the line in 5:31 he knew all his hard work had finally paid off and coasted to a stop, breathing heavily inside his helmet. That was it…the last piece of the puzzle. All the combat challenges and tech training had already been completed, leaving only the physical fitness requirements between him and official Knight status, same as the Humans, and would give him the same white armor they wore...along with a combat assignment.

It also meant he was the first. The first Calavari to qualify as a true Knight. There were several hundred others in training for the same thing, but out of his ‘class’ there were only three remaining. The others had given up the full Knight qualification goal, sticking with the orange armor they’d already earned and a position in the new Calavari military being built on their new homeworld. Star Force called it HTC, but the Calavari had come to refer to it as Hamathrat, or ‘home’ in the Calavari language.

Bronsor was now going to have to think of it as HTC, given that he was no longer part of the new Calavari military. He was a full Knight, meaning he was all Star Force now, not just a subsidiary like the Kiritas or Canderous, but part of their line troops…at the lowest level, but he was 100% one of them, and Archon Jace had promised him an immediate combat slot if/when he achieved that feat.

Catching his breath, Bronsor looked up at the others using the track, most of which were plodding around as he once had been. There was no one paying attention to him, no fanfare or congratulations. Only a marker on the scoreboard to indicate his time and completion of the qualification mark.

Somehow that felt fitting, because he’d learned that Star Force wasn’t one for celebration. That was alright, even if it wasn’t the Calavari way, because what he wanted most was to be done with this endless training and get back into the fight.

Bronsor walked off the track, disconnecting his helmet and holding the orange head covering between his upper and lower right arms as he moved out into the hallway. He was planning on going back to the prep room, getting out of his armor and taking a shower before finding one of his trainers and asking for his combat assignment, but to his surprise not one, but two Archon rangers stopped him a few steps out the door.

“Archons,” he said with a respectful nod down at them as he stopped walking.

“Time to lose the orange armor,” Jace said with a smirk. “Follow us.”

“You were waiting?” Bronsor asked as they walked off. In the past he wouldn’t have spoken unless it was vital to the mission at hand, but these Humans were more informal than even the Calavari were on the battlefield, which was something he appreciated. Pointless egotistical ritual had always annoyed him, and so many of the Alliance’s member races lived and breathed their social standings rather than recognizing true skill.

“We can usually tell when someone is close to passing,” Jace explained as he walked shoulder to shoulder with Jason. “You’re the first Calavari to qualify as a Knight, so we wanted to be nearby to get you up to speed as soon as possible. Your time on this planet is over.”

“How soon?” Bronsor asked.

“You’ll be transferring to a seda,” Jason answered, “and training with the Knights there until your jumpship is ready to leave. Probably within 3 weeks.”

“I doubt any of the others will pass before then, so you’ll be the only one going back,” Jace added.

“What of the Calavari Knights?” Bronsor asked, feeling weird asking the question now that it no longer applied to him.

“They won’t be deployed for several years,” Jason answered. “We are sending a few squadrons of Valeries with you, but the Knights, Regulars, Mechs, and Naval aren’t ready yet, and won’t be for some time.”

“I understand,” Bronsor said, following the Archons into a stairwell and climbing up with heavy steps, for his legs were still burning from the mile he’d just ran.

“Do you?” Jason asked.

Bronsor looked at the back of his head as they climbed. “I’m now part of an experienced military. Theirs is brand new and has to prove itself before being given combat assignments.”

Jace glanced at his fellow trailblazer. “Seems he does.”

“Does that bother you?” Jason asked.

“No.”

“Told you he’s one of us,” Jace quipped as they got off the stairs and headed for a room just a few meters down the hallway.

“He’s earned it, but does he understand it?” Jason asked, looking at Jace then Bronsor as they walked inside.

“He’s about to,” the other trailblazer said as the three of them came through the door in the face of a set of Calavari Knight armor set up on a display rack, making it look as if one of them were standing before them. Bronsor looked at the white armor, feeling an immediate sense of pride and accomplishment.

Jace walked past it and pulled a small package off the wall behind it and brought it out for Bronsor to see.

“This goes along with the armor. It is a secret amongst Star Force that most of our civilians do not know about, nor do our allies. When Jason and I went through our initial training we did so in a similar way to you…”

“Except it was way harder,” Jason added.

Jace smiled but continued talking without missing a beat. “Afterwards we were told of this,” he said, holding up a small vile of blue liquid. “We call it ambrosia.”

Bronsor looked down at it, frowning. “What does it do?”

“It gives you additional energy and structural components to make your body stronger. You eat small amounts of it with your food, as we have been doing every day for the past 400 years. Human ambrosia is different from this, which is the Calavari version. We’re still adapting it to your physiology, so this isn’t as potent as ours, but it will help you in training and combat.”

“Think of it like a super sugar,” Jason said, seeing that Bronsor wasn’t fully grasping the concept. “When your body runs out of it you’ll feel low on energy, and when you take too much you’ll get bad headaches, so you have to carefully measure how much you take and when you take it. It’s something you’re going to have to learn on your trip to Calavari territory.”

“I drink it?”

“No,” Jace said. “This much would cause you immense pain. Only a small drop is required, so we measure out the amount and put it into specialized foodstuffs, so you’ll be eating your ambrosia rather than drinking it. And make sure you only take the Calavari version. We also have one basic formula that we give the Kiritak, so it’s important to know what it is you’re taking.”

“What happens if I take the wrong one?”

Jace and Jason exchanged glances. “We don’t know.”

Bronsor nodded. “How do I tell the difference?”

“In its liquid state, Human ambrosia is colored red, Calavari is blue, and Kiritak is green. The laced foodstuffs will also have labels on the containers with the same colors.”

“Is this how you have become so strong?”

Jason shook his head. “No, our training has made us strong. The ambrosia has helped us train harder and longer than we’re normally capable of doing.”

“So in a way yes,” Jace added, “but without the training it will do you little good.”

“The Knights on the seda will help you figure out how to use it,” Jason said, putting the vile back in the box, “just don’t tell your fellow Calavari about it. It’s something you have to earn, and as of now we don’t have very much of the Calavari version made yet…and we’re still working on increasing the potency of the formula.”

“It’s a work in progress,” Jace said, “but we want to get you started on it so you won’t be at too much of a disadvantage when you start training with the other Knights.

“Now,” Jason said, clapping his hands together after having put the box back where he got it. “Time to swap armor. The design is the same, aside from the comm system. This set has more options, given that you’ll be fully active on our network.”

Bronsor set his helmet down on the ground and began unlatching his gloves.

“There’s a lot of new stuff for you to learn,” Jace explained, “but that’s normal for new Knights. You’ll be assigned to a unit that will split up as necessary for missions…usually you don’t all fight together. Knights supplement combat teams.”

“Which is something else you’ll have to learn,” Jason added. “Becoming a Knight doesn’t mean things get easier, it’s a step up to the next level.”

“I’m not afraid of a challenge,” Bronsor said, pulling off the last bits of his Calavari Knight armor and stepping out of the boots. “I just want to get back into the fight.”

“You will,” Jace promised, “but you’ve got a lot to learn on the trip.”

Bronsor walked up to the white armor on the rack and looked at it for a moment, proud of what he’d accomplished, then he took the left boot and opened it up, seeing that it was the exact same dimensions as his previous armor, meaning a custom set.

Jace and Jason didn’t say anything else until he got all the armor pieces on, including the helmet, and let him move around in it a bit.

“Everything fit?” Jace asked.

“Yes, but the visual interface is unusual. It’s all English.”

“That’s the default setting. You can switch it over to the trade language like your old set if you want, but the more you can assimilate our language the easier it will be to link with the rest of our troops.”

“I will adapt,” Bronsor promised.

“Normally Knights don’t carry firearms,” Jason said, “but given that the Nestafar infantry can fly you’ll see them carrying at least a pistol as backup. Given that you have more hands to work with, I want you to always carry one. What’s your preference, stun sword or stun stick?”

“The sword is too long to use with the shields. I use a pair of sticks, though my first choice is the shotgun.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. The plasma shotgun was one of the weapons that Star Force armories typically held, but it was rarely used. “Why the shotgun?”

“When I carry the shields my effective combat range is medium. The shotgun allows the greatest damage and has a shorter barrel.”

“Something we need to look into,” Jason said, glancing at Jace who nodded. “Just be aware, that typically Knights go into battle only with stun weapons.”

“Because you usually take prisoners,” Bronsor said, already having heard that rumor.

“Some situations are different, just remember to focus on the mission objective and how best to accomplish it.”

Bronsor flexed his neck, with a slight clicking of the flexible plates covering it. “I know my duty. I will not let the Nestafar make me stupid with anger.”

Jason smiled. “Welcome to the family. Pack a gear duffle and get yourself to the spaceport. There’ll be a ride waiting for you.”

“Shields and weapons you’ll get from armories,” Jace added. “Duffles are for personal items, though you can get everything you need on site if you want to travel light.”

“We’ll send replacement armor pieces along. Eventually they’ll be standard in armories, but right now you’re the only one that will need a Calavari set.”

“I understand,” Bronsor said, looking down on the Humans. “Thank you.”

Jace smiled. “Go get us some more recruits.”

Four hours later Bronsor’s dropship landed in the Star Force seda’s hangar bay, after which he met up with the Knights onboard who got him situated into temporary quarters and acquainted with the handful that would be transferring out to Calavari territory with him. Thorough and intense as they were, they ran the newb through the works, testing his speed, strength, memory retention, and sense of humor.

Bronsor dutifully went along with the process, and within a few days started to understand how the Human Knights operated, and they in turn began to get a sense of what he could and couldn’t do. By the end of the first week they were practicing group maneuvers and troubleshooting ways to coordinate strengths and weaknesses, usually with Bronsor being center in the formation with the faster Humans in skirmish and flanker positions.

The unit training continued nonstop, with Bronsor being expected to see to a lot of his own fitness training, either at the same time as the others or at a time of his choosing. He worked out with them, so there would be no mistakes as to what he was supposed to be doing, as well as getting a feel for what the Knights trained like, for he’d only seen a few in the roll of instructors or sparring partners before.

His first impression was how fast they were, and Bronsor knew he’d have to work hard to keep up with them. His second takeaway was the fact that they weren’t that much stronger than him, and he could keep pace with a couple of them on brute strength exercises. Overall he was the weakling amongst the group, but given his greater mass he quickly picked up the nickname ‘Ram’ given that’s how easy he could push through opponents when he needed to.

Bronsor clung to that strength as a matter of pride, and was happy to have two or three of the Knights test his strength as they tried to figure out the best way to stop a charging Calavari. With his two half shields locked into a wedge in front of him and a short run up, Bronsor turned his 450 pound mass, plus armor, into a juggernaut that the others had to get innovative to stop.

And that they did, which Bronsor liked. Some of them took to his legs, trying to sweep underneath his shields and trip him up while others used their speed to circle around behind him and latch on to his limbs or neck and drag him to the ground. By the time the jumpship was ready to leave, they’d gone through the exercise so many times they’d gotten quite good at predicting each other’s movements and had quite a lot of fun seeing the other Knights they met up with onboard the troop ship trying to take him down as he ‘ran the gauntlet.’

The drill instantly became part of the Knight lexicon, with a 50 meters or so stretch of deck with a line Bronsor was trying to get to and that the others were trying to keep him from. Sometimes they went with armor, armor and shields, or nothing at all. His ability to successfully get past 2 and sometimes 3 other Knights at a time immediately made him one of the guys, despite the fact that several of the Knights were female, which was something he didn’t have too much trouble getting used to, given that the Humans all looked the same to him.

Show a Knight a weakness that someone could exploit against him, and you just became his best friend and new sparring partner. In return the group helped expose Bronsor’s many shortcomings, as well as helping him learn to counter them. Most of the Knights he was traveling with didn’t have a lot of combat experience, but they were all more than 100 years old and had so much trials experience that they were more knowledgeable about combat than the combat veterans he’d served with in the Calavari military.

Staging mock wars was another thing he liked about Star Force, and from the stories he was told they were more intense than the real thing because the Knights could learn from their mistakes and come back to try again, whereas in a real war you’d just be dead.

Bronsor was learning so much from his new brothers that the long trip back out to Calavari territory passed incredibly quick. Wiser as he was, he felt even more inadequate now than before, learning the depth of skill the other Knights possessed, but none the less he was eager to get his feet back on Calavari soil and within reach of the Nestafar so he could put his new skills and armor to the test.

10

July 19, 2442

Atriann System

Juness

Bronsor and the other Knights onboard the jumpship watched via vid screens as the warships in the Star Force fleet engaged the Nestafar in orbit over Juness…a Calavari world that was involved in a pitched battle on the surface with the outcome up for grabs even before Morgan’s fleet arrived. The troop jumpships were held back in higher orbit around the planet while the warships and their drones dove in low and went head to head with a fleet of more than 150 Nestafar ships deployed in clusters around the planet.

Star Force used that to their advantage, hitting with their full force on a single vector, annihilating the ships there before going hunting for the others. As most naval engagements went, it was a much slower process than a ground battle, but the way the Human ships came in and literally ripped apart the Nestafar was something the Calavari fleet had never been able to do. Granted, the Humans did have greater numbers, but even a Calavari fleet of twice their size couldn’t have defeated the Nestafar so efficiently.

Several drone warships were lost in the fighting, but not one of the control ships was hit, meaning Star Force wiped the Nestafar clean from orbit without a single death on their side. Once again, the Humans’ methodology impressed Bronsor, shedding more light on their now legendary longevity.

Once orbit was secured and the fleet was broken up hunting down fleeing Nestafar ships, the troop ships and Conduit transports were brought down closer to the planet and the Knights were called to the hangar bays where they loaded up onboard a plethora of dropships along with Archons and Regulars. Bronsor waited in the rear of the tightly packed dropship all the way down to the surface, hearing not a word from the other troops.

It wasn’t surprising, given the time he’d spent with the Humans, but while Calavari weren’t overly talkative, there would have been some small amount of chatter about what they were going to come up against or some jokes just to break the nerves. None of that happened here. The professionalism of Star Force both impressed and inspired Bronsor, who kept his own thoughts to himself and remained as stoic as the others until the dropship set down and the boarding ramp began to lower ahead of him.

The troops had boarded the dropship facing backwards, so now as the ramp came down they were facing out. With his shields tucked up against his sides as closely as he could manage, Bronsor watched as those ahead of him filed out, with his helmet receiving a waypoint for him to report to, coming from one of the Archons in command of his current unit.

The Calavari plodded down the ramp next to several Regulars, flexing his arms and neck inside his armor as he moved off with the others towards the glowing marker digitally emblazoned onto his HUD some several hundred meters off across the courtyard they’d landed in. Juness was a high population world with thousands of cities, but not so overgrown as to have them all bleed together into one giant urban mass. Though he’d never been to this world before he recognized the architecture, as well as the large remembrance plaza he was now standing in.

The waypoint took them out of the open and into a gap between the surrounding buildings. The other units coming off the dropships split up on their own assignments, leaving 30-40 troops with Bronsor’s group as they met up briefly before plunging into the cityscape.

After that came a lot of running, which Bronsor labored to keep up with, but he managed. The other two Knights were with him, one ahead and one behind, with Regulars spaced in between them in their dirty white armor. Leading the way were two red armored Archons who knew what their mission objective was, though as of yet the Knights hadn’t been informed.

The Star Force troops ran across the white stone surface, eyes glancing into every gap between the red/orange buildings and seeing almost no people at all, nor enemy troops. Bronsor didn’t take that as a good sign, but as they progressed further a few isolated faces began popping up in windows and around corners, then the sounds of distant battle began to waft their way back to his audial pickups.

It was coming from the direction they were running, which he could tell thanks to the directional speakers that successfully mimicked the origin point of sounds his helmet was recording and playing back for him inside the protective barrier that fully obscured his ears. Bronsor ground his teeth in anticipation and continued running along with the others.

“We have Calavari troops engaging the Nestafar ahead,” one of the Archons finally spoke through their helmet comms. “No walkers as of yet, but keep an eye out for the protomechs. They can move up and down these streets almost as easily as we can. Break up by Knights and follow Archons through, maintain moderate spacing once we’re engaged.”

Bronsor huffed, glad to now have his operational orders. His team flashed on his HUD, identifying him to the Regulars that he was supposed to operate with. As they continued to run the short Humans shuffled about repositioning and Bronsor opened a comm line to his team.

“Form a wedge behind me. I’m going through first.”

Without any unnecessary chatter 11 Regulars fell back even with his shoulders and behind as a slew of Calavari came into view ahead. Most weren’t troops, but evacuees from elsewhere in the city that were clustering together around the entrances to several buildings that must have been being used as temporary barracks.

Bronsor activated his external speakers and jacked them up to a high volume.

“Move aside brothers!” he yelled in the Calavari language. “Make way! Let us get to the enemy!”

Bronsor was in the middle of the Star Force pack, but some of the Calavari had seen them coming and started to move out of the way of those up front…though when he spoke all eyes turned to see the armored soldiers coming and the crowd quickly split, exposing the center of the white stone road to let them pass. When they did the first signs of battle were seen far ahead, as the Calavari soldiers were defending a key position behind several crude barricades with a mass of Nestafar flying in the air beyond them.

When the crowd created the gap for them the two Archons immediately took off sprinting, moving faster than Bronsor could ever hope to. They ran straight up to the Calavari, firing a few blue plasma streaks on approach up into the enemy swarm, then they both leapt up and over the barricades, coming down into the grip of the enemy and drawing attention away from the Calavari and the approaching Star Force troops.

Bronsor clapped both of his inner arms against his chest plate, appreciating the aggressive tactic, then reached down to his sides and pulled out the pair of plasma pistols he had hanging there as he simultaneously brought his pair of shields up in front of him and formed a wedge.

The group in front of him came up to the barricades and the Knight there planted his single shield down on the ground extending the left cover as his Regulars fell in next to the Calavari in the gaps behind the barricades, where they began sniping the Nestafar with a flurry of plasma streaks.

Bronsor didn’t head for the available cover on the right, instead he headed straight for the cluster of crates in the center and hopped up on top of the lowest of them. He didn’t hold there, but came over the far side into the firing lines of the ugly bugs and started taking a hoard of red plasma strikes on his shields as he barreled his way forward with the Regulars tucking in close behind him in a narrow triangle as they fired back.

Bronsor moved up some 20 meters into the open area then claimed his position, coming to a halt and cracking his shields apart as he popped out his pistols and began firing at every flapping wing he saw.

What he didn’t see were the Archons. Ahead of him was a building and a Y-split in the road, both sections of which were full of Nestafar, some of which were on the ground and advancing forward on foot. None of that mattered now, for Bronsor was committed, so he kept his shields close and his weapons hot, racking up as much of a kill count as he could while the Regulars around him mowed down the closest Nestafar while absorbing the few shots the enemy could land on them with their armor’s shields.

Bronsor’s energy barriers had already gone down over his half-shields, but his body armor was still protected by half a charge despite the Nestafar landing a pair of head shots. That defensive barrier began to recharge as the weapons firing at him thinned considerably, and within 30 seconds the choke point had been secured with the other two Knight teams moving up the branches of the road, sniping the occasional Nestafar that flew into their firing lines.

Bronsor got another waypoint move order, heading up the right branch, and sucked in a deep breath preparing for another stint of running. There was a planet full of Nestafar ahead of him, and with the way Star Force fought, always on the move, he needed to pace himself, for this is what he’d been training the past 3 years for, and now that he was here any doubts as to his leaving the fight earlier were officially squashed.

He was far more of a threat to the Nestafar as a Star Force Knight than he had been as a Calavari soldier, and now was the time to put his skills to use in a war that had already been going on for 4 decades…longer than he’d been alive. Rushing into battle before one was ready was a quick road to defeat in a massive engagement such as this…which was another important lesson Star Force had taught him.

And now that he was prepared, and had thousands of more skilled warriors around him, it was time to take the fight to the enemy and save as many of his kin as they could…all in preparation for the massive war against the Cajdital that was inevitably coming.

Taryn stood in the command Nexus just off the bridge of the Winston, studying the progress of her ground troops on the planet below. This was the first time her fleet had seen major ground action in the 30+ years she’d been engaged in this theatre of war. During most of that time they’d made naval raids, but now with Operation Conduit in full throttle they had a mission objective beyond simply neutralizing as many Nestafar ships as they could…they were here to rescue Calavari and take them out of the war zone.

That war zone had seen little shift in the balance of territory. What the Calavari had lost they’d made up for by taking Nestafar systems, and in turn, 63% of the captured worlds were then recaptured by their former owners. Some star systems had flipped multiple times, leaving the only clear result of the war effort so far being widespread death and destruction.

She didn’t have numbers on the Nestafar, but the Calavari had reportedly lost a full third of their population, meaning they’d lost several times over the entire number of Humans…and that wasn’t something you just rebuilt over the space of a few years. Both the Calavari and Nestafar were losing the war, with the only question in play being who would be left standing in the end to rule over the rubble.

That said, even the weakened Calavari still far outnumbered the Humans, both in terms of systems, ships, and population. Their empire was massive, and as such it took a great deal of time to tear it apart…with the four-armed brawlers doing a better job of defending themselves than the Alliance had given them credit for at the outset.

Juness was one of three planets in this system that the Calavari had inhabited, but it held 98% of their population. The other two worlds were merely starter colonies and had been bypassed by the Nestafar entirely. Taryn had already dispatched jumpships to begin evacuating those worlds, but the ongoing conflict on the surface of this planet was still in full swing. Usually Star Force was coming to planets that had already been conquered or were on the verge of destruction, but with Morgan sweeping through the smaller systems and Leif pulling out Calavari units that had pushed too far into Nestafar territory and got cut off, she was left with picking a larger world under siege and coming to its rescue.

The Calavari had lost orbit, but they had not conceded the planet. Both races’ ground forces were in far greater number than Taryn’s, so she had to be tricky in knowing where to insert them and her smaller warships to tip the scale of the ground battle to their favor.

Trouble was, she was going to have to hold this system for several years before Star Force could supply enough jumpships to evacuate all 3.3 billion of them…or at least that’s what their population had been before this invasion had started. How many of them were left alive now was an ongoing conversation amongst her analysis staff. While Taryn wanted as many of them to be alive and rescuable as possible, the more that were meant she was going to have to hold this position longer…and the longer she held it, the more time the Nestafar had to size up her fleet and plan a counter assault.

So far Star Force hadn’t faced any of those, given they were raiding systems rather than taking them, so this was going to be a whole new ball game and she wanted to micromanage as much of it as possible this early on to give herself more options down the road.

She’d held off deploying herself into combat for just that reason, instead deciding to play ‘Admiral’ and organize everything from afar. Her troops had dropped down into 18 combat zones, committing all the forces she had in order to overwhelm the opposition and reduce casualties to both Star Force and the Calavari troops they were aiding. So far two cities had been wiped clean of the Nestafar…two that had not had walkers in play.

Taryn had already dispatched fleets of dropships to head down to those locations and begin picking up the Calavari civilians. She didn’t know how reluctant they would be to leave, but had told her personnel that if they balked to just pass them over and pick up those that were willing, then they’d come back and deal with the others later.

The dropships that had just taken down the ground troops were now being recycled into pulling supplies off the jumpships that the civilians would soon be boarding. Those supplies currently filled every room and hallway, and would have to be pulled out before the people could go in. Most were foodstuffs, with the rest being survival supplies including portable tents, medicine, tools, and a host of personal items the Calavari used. Their purpose was to supply those that they were forced to leave on the planet to wait for future jumpships, but by the look of the planet Taryn guessed that a lot of their industry and support systems were still intact.

With that in mind Taryn began tagging those facilities as priority targets to grab and hold, directing her troops, mechs, and aerial forces like she was playing a game of StarCraft and kept at it for the next 6 hours before forcing herself to abandon the nexus and get in some training time, food, and a nap, after which she was back at it and would continue to be for the next two weeks.

That was the point when she finally decided to deploy herself into one of the hotly contested cities via aerial drop. With her comm system set up so she could manage the entire planetary war from her helmet if needed, Taryn stepped off the boarding ramp of a dropship midflight and fell down through the atmosphere feathering her jump pack controls to land her near the front but still inside the Star Force lines.

Carrying a pair of plasma pistols and a backpack full of replacement ammo, Taryn got to work quickly helping to clear the skies and streets of the Nestafar’s flying infantry, engaging them at short to medium range while her mechs hammered the protomechs zipping about the streets trying to pick off the Calavari and now Star Force infantry. They did their part, she did hers, and the skeets zipping over the city did theirs as they worked through the captured sections of the Calavari metropolis, reclaiming building after building and saving a lot of the Calavari hiding inside.

But for every one they saved, 10 more lay dead on the streets or in the hallways, making it ever more evident that the Calavari were losing this war, one way or another, and that Operation Conduit might very well end up being the only way to save their race if the Alliance wasn’t able to find a way to cut the legs out from under the Nestafar invasion.

Though Taryn didn’t know it, nor would know it for some years to come, the Bsidd, Kvash, and Hycre were planning just such an assault on one of the Nestafar homeworlds in conjunction with the Elarioni, who were giving them all the intel they needed on their former ally.

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"The Imperial March"