Star Force: Earth Evacuation
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 2017-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

1

April 17, 3602

Solar System

Earth

“I got it!”

Jenn Stuzi ran out of the second bedroom in their quarters with a relieved smile on her face when her roommate held up the box for her inspection. The Verratriss logo was emblazoned on it, identifying that it was legitimately from the exclusive Bsidd clothing artists.

“How?” she asked as they both sat down on their couch and began opening the box.

“New stock just arrived from outsystem today. Luckily they had one our size,” Sarah Stuzi explained as she pulled out the chain link dress that seemed to defy the color spectrum and held it up for her sister to see. “It cost 432 credits, but I think it’s worth it.”

“How did you get 432?” Jenn asked, not taking her eyes off the glittering dress that had just the right mixture of material and holes to make it a semi-revealing jaw dropper…but one with cooling circuitry that would wick away body heat and keep you from sweating no matter how warm the room got, which was perfect for the party they were less than two hours away from.

“What do you mean how? I had 437 in my account. We are splitting, right?”

“For this? Hell yes.”

“You get it tonight, no arguing,” Sarah said, referencing the fact that the two girls, despite not being biologically related, were practically the same body size and they’d gotten in the habit of sharing their clothing so they could buy more of it…and not that generic stuff that Star Force made available freely. That was good for down time and workouts, but not for parties when you wanted to stand out. Fortunately the two girls’ shared wardrobe included many specialty pieces that non-workers would never be able to afford, but this was by far the most expensive piece they’d added to date.

“Agreed,” Jenn said, still looking over the slim, body hugging garment that went from neckline down to mid calve. “It’s still cleanser compatible, right?”

“Of course. All Verratriss is cleanser safe. No special fields required. That’s part of why it’s so damn expensive. Don’t just sit here, get ready!”

“Right,” Jenn said, standing up in a hurry and taking off to their shower room to get her body thoroughly spotless before she put on the dress that was guaranteed to show it off.

Sarah let her go but kept the dress, marveling at it once again as she considered how many days of work it had cost them. Both girls had jobs, which in a Star Force city wasn’t required, but in order to afford luxuries you either had to go into some form of Star Force service to earn credit stipends or you could work for private organizations and get paid in lump sums. The downside to that was once the credits ran out you wouldn’t be getting anymore and the stipends were good forever, but both Sarah and Jenn had decided after they graduated from the maturia that they didn’t want to play the waiting game, so they’d put together a plan that had served them well for the past 73 years.

Sarah stood up and walked over to a wall mirror, holding up the dress in front of her trim and youthful body. She was fitter now than when she’d graduated from the maturia at age 24 and had been working hard to stay that way. So had Jenn, for they’d both made a pact not to let either one of them lose their self-sufficiency as many other people did.

Not the higher ups in Star Force, for the leaders of their interstellar empire were over a thousand years old, but for the common civilians that didn’t embrace nearly round the clock training and didn’t have access to the ambrosia that gave them an almost magical boost in performance, it was easy to just kick back and relax now that the basic maturia program was over. Everyone in Star Force had been born into it, and even Sarah’s two children had gone there as well.

She didn’t know their names or where they were now, but Jenn had 6 and kept in loose contact with the 2nd one. The first hadn’t wanted contact, so none was ever made, and that’s the way it’d been with Sarah’s parents. When the time had come for her to learn who they were it had to be a choice that both she and them made, and her parents, whoever they were, hadn’t wanted to have contact so the records had been purged at her birth. Her name had been assigned to her and all of her 99 brothers and sisters in her maturia class, so there was no trace of a connection to her biological parents unless they wished there to be one.

When it came time for Sarah to choose she’d belatedly agreed with her mystery parents. It was better to just let her children find their own way as she had, for there was no real need for a bond there. She’d helped two new people come into the galaxy and that’s what she’d intended to do, not wanting there to be a longer commitment than the 9 months for each it’d taken for the pregnancies.

Jenn was a bit different. She’d opted for her identity to be revealed to the first two children when the time came. The first one hadn’t wanted contact, so she had no idea where he was. The second one did choose, and that girl was known as Ariel Neesham, now 42 years old and living in another star system entirely. Jenn kept in contact with her every now and then, sending messages back and forth, but it was more of a polite relationship. Without having spent any real time together two people couldn’t get close, but she and Sarah had spent every day of the first 23 years of their life together along with the rest of their 98 brothers and sisters.

The bonds between them were still strong, even though most had moved to other parts of Earth or elsewhere in the Solar System. Only 18 of them had left for other parts of the empire, but Sarah and Jenn always kept track of where they were and how they were doing. They were their family and always would be, but their children weren’t, which was why she assumed Star Force didn’t mandate identities be known to either parent or child.

When Jenn had her 3rd she opted not to reveal herself and had continued that practice for the next 3 and probably would for more going into the future. Sarah was done with giving birth, figuring she’d done her part and then some with 2, but Jenn figured things a little differently. Every guy she hooked up with she wanted to have a kid by, and so long as she didn’t start getting ‘crabby’ she’d still have that option going forward.

Unfortunately some of their brothers and sisters were getting ‘crabby’ despite their continual urgings to fight it, with the term referring to when a person’s body went into a stagnant, decaying trend. Star Force medics tried to fight it as much as they could, but if you didn’t train and didn’t really master your own body there wasn’t anything they could do in the long run. Some people had the medtechs revitalize their bodies with a regenerator…another magic piece of technology that healed all the damage done to you. People would go in crabby and come out looking young again, but there was a cost.

The regenerator caused your body to grow new tissue hyper fast, like in seconds, but that new tissue wasn’t as strong as the rest of your body. That was why when someone got hurt they really didn’t want to use the regenerator if they didn’t have to, because it’d weaken them. Over time and with proper training they’d regain their strength, and if the injury was bad enough it was definitely worth it. The regenerators could even bring people back to life if they hadn’t been dead for too long, but as the maturia handlers had drilled into their brains during basic, if you didn’t train then you would eventually grow crabby and no matter how many regenerator treatments you had you would still eventually die, because your body would get so weak one day your heart or lungs would just break from the stress of nothing more than standing up out of a chair.

If you got that weak Star Force wouldn’t give up on you. They’d revive you if possible then tell you the exact amount of microtraining needed to start pulling yourself back from the brink, for no matter how bad off you were there was always a route to recover by, even if it was a monumental task. The more crabby you got the harder it became to recover, but they’d told Sarah so many times now that she could never forget…the key was to stay ahead and train when you were strong, for the weaker you got the harder it was to make a comeback.

The sad thing was a lot of people didn’t even want to try, so despite the fact that Humans and every other race within Star Force could theoretically live forever a lot of people didn’t. They just gave up trying and slowly decayed into crabbiness. When that happened to the girls they lost their ability to have children, and Jenn was using that as kind of a measuring stick to make sure she didn’t start to get crabby without realizing it.

For Sarah she had other ways to keep herself on track, and both girls had agreed long ago to never let the other quit and this new dress they’d gotten would definitely help with that, for there was enough skin showing through it that if you were out of shape you wouldn’t dare wear it.

Actually, that was pretty much the way both of them lived their lives. The quarters they were in were level 5, meaning they had to pay 550 credits per year to have the upgrade, which was technically Jenn’s. Everyone in Star Force had a level 1 quarters assigned to them permanently that cost no credits. If you wanted to veg out after graduating from the maturia you could, doing nothing at all and slowly getting crabby. That’s not the way Jenn and Sarah wanted it, so they’d both gotten jobs and were earning enough credits to share this much larger living space while Sarah’s level 1 quarters were still technically assigned to her elsewhere in the city, but she never used them.

They split the payments between them and that had allowed them to get a level 3 quarters soon after Sarah graduated. Jenn had passed her graduation trials a year before, and that year spent apart had been the hardest on her. Actually leaving the maturia had been hard on everyone, for going from 99 brothers and sisters with you day in and day out down to 1 was not a pleasant transition. How Jenn had handled going without anyone for a year was something Sarah didn’t care to ever experience, but many people did. Sticking together after graduation was actually rare for this many years given how big Star Force was and how many options there were out there.

Earth alone had 337 billion people on it and Sol had upwards of trillion with all the planets and moons combined. Add in all the other star systems and Star Force’s total population was measured in the quadrillions. Knowing that, it was shocking that anyone could keep track of each other in that mass of people, but maturia classmates still did. They just didn’t tend to live right next door to each other, though there were a few others known to share quarters, classmates or not, to get access to higher level units with more space and luxuries by sharing the upgrade bill.

Some even cohabitated with their romantic partners, but that wasn’t for Sarah and Jenn. They both liked their men, but liked them best when they were around part of the time, not 24/7. If you spent that much time with someone you’d either lose some of the fireworks or even grow to despise them. Sarah definitely liked her boyfriends on a date-only basis, though Jenn was a little more possessive than that, but not enough to break up their sisterly pact no matter who she hooked up with.

There wasn’t even the slimmest of chances that would never happen, and even the ex-Commando she had somehow snared wasn’t going to come between the two of them.

That was the reason for the party, actually. Jenn and Brad had been together on enough short term relationship runs that they now qualified for the maximum 5 year extension. It wasn’t mandatory, for they could choose another 6 month, year, or 2 year if they wanted, but today they were going to seal for the next 5 years…which was risky. The two of them got along good, very good actually, but Brad was a completely different type of person, being a 432 year old former Commando that had fought for over 200 years in the lizard war.

And to be perfectly honest, he was out of Jenn’s league. Sarah would never discourage her from going after him, and more power to her for actually getting his attention, but if this 5 year seal went bad they’d either have to stick it out or break it, and while the Star Force relationship network didn’t have any penalties for broken relationships there would be a mark put on someone’s file so that anyone interested in them in the future would be aware that there might be an issue with commitments.

That was why Sarah would never seal with someone for longer than 6 months. In fact most of her seals were for only a single month and sex-only. There was a lot of variation in the types of seals you could get, but the idea of having a guy that couldn’t even kiss someone else without violating the seal seemed stupid to her. There was no way she could ever police that, so what was the point? Her sealing meant she wouldn’t have sex with anyone else during that seal period and that was easy enough to honor. But the kinds with no romantic contact with others and the cohabitation seals were just stupid in her opinion.

Nothing was ever permanent within Star Force, but 5 years was a long time and she’d had many discussions with Jenn about this. It didn’t make sense to Sarah, but if Jenn could get an ex-Commando and seal him in for 5 years she wasn’t going to argue that point. She just didn’t want Jenn to get stuck in a null relationship where both didn’t interact but had to wait out their seals until they expired.

But whatever. Jenn and Brad were making it work and today they were going to officially sanction the 5 year seal at the party. It was Jenn’s decision, and Sarah certainly didn’t mind having Brad hanging around. How Jenn had got him she still couldn’t fathom.

“Dress!” Jenn said, walking out of the shower room naked but fully dry.

“Rock it, girl,” Sarah said, handing it off as her sister zipped by to the room they’d transformed into a huge walk-in closet where they held their hard earned specialty clothing. When Jenn came out later they switched and both got ready in a hurry, then headed out of their quarters into the public corridor outside. Jenn in her new eye popping dress and Sarah in a pair of shorts and tube top that were similar to Star Force issue but with enough alterations and adornments for people to be able to spot the difference.

It was questionable as to who was showing more skin, inch for inch, but as they walked through the residential section and then took a lift car down and into the very active undercity all eyes were on Jenn. Sarah felt a little underdressed and underappreciated, but that was ok. She’d get the dress later and today was all about Jenn.

They went on a small parade through a couple shopping sections then an entertainment complex before coming to the train station that would take them over the channel and into Britain where most of their friends lived. Not their brothers and sisters, but the people they’d come to know and associate with after graduation, including Brad whose quarters were also on that side of the channel.

Fortunately the train was fast as always and the two girls were quickly taken across in clear cars that gave them a good view of the water while everyone else had a good view of Jenn with Sarah suppressing a smile.

That dress was worth every damn credit.

6 hours later…

Jenn, Sarah, and Brad all came back to the sisters’ quarters afterward with the newly sealed pair locking themselves in Jenn’s bedroom. As per protocol, when either one of them brought guys in for sex the other girl would head out, so Sarah got changed into less eye catching clothing but still not Star Force garb. Rather, she put on her dainty Sharpcorp uniform and headed off to find another liftcar that took her the other way through the mainland colony to where she worked at a candy company.

She’d been there for 23 years and had worked her way up to one of the receptionists at their largest store in Europe…a position that required she look as delicious as the candy that, in order to compete against Star Force, had to be the best available to get people to actually spend credits on it. Their #1 seller was a choco sugar stick that arguably was the best in the empire and in addition to the 2.3 credits per day that she got paid, Sarah also occasionally got a free supply of the sugar sticks, each of which normally cost between .05 and .25 credits.

Sarah came back with four of them and tossed the two foot long bundle to Brad who was sitting on the couch with Jenn under his arm watching the vid screen.

“Don’t get fat on me,” she said with a smile as he opened one and started nibbling on the end, alternating bites with Jenn. Sarah walked around behind them and pulled off her shoes, dropping them, her socks, then the rest of her clothes on the floor in a trail that left her naked a few steps before she got to the shower room.

Brad didn’t turn around, his and Jenn’s attention still on the vid screen, but it wouldn’t have mattered. She and Jenn had agreed long ago that this was their quarters and they weren’t going to act any differently than normal if they had guests. In the case of Brad that just meant he occasionally got to see two naked women for the price of one.

That wasn’t a big deal, having grown up with 48 brothers that had seen her naked quite a bit, so Sarah didn’t even think about it after a long 4 hour shift. Her job wasn’t overly difficult most days, but it was non-stop interaction with customers seeing how popular a brand she worked for. Personally, Sarah and Jenn would rather save their credits for more clothes and other permanent things, but some people just really liked the novelty foods.

Problem was, most of them didn’t do the training that required the higher calories and the Archons didn’t visit the store that often, though when they did she was always surprised by how they could chomp the sugar sticks and other products that normal people had to nibble on to avoid getting a sugar overload. Even Brad couldn’t take very big bites, but then again he wasn’t doing the kind of insane training anymore that he’d told them Commandos did on a daily basis and that the Archons easily exceeded.

Sarah was submerged up to her waist in the vertical shower tube as it slowly filled with water streaming down over her blonde hair in the beginnings of what would be a long, relaxing soak when the alarm sounded. That shocked her more than being seen naked ever could and Sarah jerked in reflex, bouncing her arm off the clear, circular tube. She grabbed her wrist and rubbed it as the unfamiliar alarm continued to blare.

It didn’t stop, so Sarah pulled herself out of the tube and skipped the dryer, walking out of the shower room dripping wet and looking at Brad and Jenn as she moved over to their wardrobe room.

“What is that?” she demanded before disappearing inside and quickly pulling on some clothes.

“Brad?” Jenn asked, but the Commando was blankly staring at the ceiling as if he could look up and see the sky through it.

“Hey,” she repeated, poking him in the ribs to get his attention. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Yes,” he said in an even, dark tone that both girls picked up on.

“Well?” Sarah asked, pulling on a shirt as she walked back into the main room.

“I can’t say.”

“What do you mean you can’t say?” Jenn demanded as the news program on the vid screen altered to a ‘Breaking News’ alert.

“Reports of the alarm you are hearing are coming in from all across the planet,” the reporter said with a confused look on her face, “but with it has come an information packet that we’re only now dissecting…”

“Change to the official channel,” Brad said, with Jenn grabbing the remote and tuning the livefeed to the Star Force news that didn’t cover the more interesting social and entertainment stuff, but their reporter wore a trim, standard Star Force personnel relations uniform and did not have a confused look on his face.

“…bad day. Something we have been dreading since the inception of Star Force has finally happened. Moments ago we received word of an invasion force entering our territory. At present we believe their intended target is Earth.”

2

“What!” Jenn and Sarah yelled in tandem, but Brad didn’t say a word. The ex-Commando was just staring at the vid screen and ignoring them both.

“Brad!” Jenn said, walking in front of him and snapping her fingers so he’d look at her. “Do you know what this is?”

“I can’t say.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“It’s classified. I’m sorry, but I can’t say anything.”

“You knew they were coming?” Sarah asked, her jaw dropping.

“No. I didn’t know…”

“If they do come here,” the reporter continued, “follow protocols and evacuation orders. We will guide everyone when needed. Do not randomly try to flee or you will end up creating more problems. We’ve been preparing for this day for more than a millennia. There is a plan in place. Until you receive evacuation orders continue about your normal daily activities. It will be days before they can arrive here and there is nothing for you to do before then except learn about our enemy. They are known as the V’kit’no’sat, and they were the previous inhabitants of Earth over 100,000 years ago.”

“Information packets are being released to bring everyone in Star Force up to date with what our leaders have known since before the empire began, but I will go through the basics that you need to understand. This information was not released previously because we have had no contact with the V’kit’no’sat and it was possible that they would never return. Also, the people who needed to prepare for if they did have known and have been working to defend us, but the sad truth is that we are at a disadvantage. The V’kit’no’sat are still far stronger than us, but I will repeat, there is a plan in place.”

“As for who the V’kit’no’sat are and how they once owned the Earth, well that is simple. Earth was once a colony of theirs that was abandoned, but they apparently left behind a few of their servant/slaves when they departed. They were known as Zen’zat and possessed incredible powers, so much so that they were forbidden from reproducing so that they could never pass those powers on to their offspring. Only Zen’zat who proved themselves to the V’kit’no’sat were granted the powers.”

“Those Zen’zat left behind to die on Earth defied this command, and while we do not know their identities, we know who their offspring are. We are their offspring. Humanity is their offspring, and the powers they had are now possessed by the Archons.”

“As shocking as that is to many of you, that is not the primary issue. The penalty for Zen’zat reproducing is death, both for themselves and all their offspring…and that means the V’kit’no’sat are coming here to kill every single Human in existence and probably all those we have had contact with, meaning they are here to destroy all of Star Force. As to who they are, you already know. You just don’t realize you do. They were here before, and remains of the rebellion that forced them to abandon this colony have been found long ago.”

“Who are the V’kit’no’sat? Put simply, they’re the Dinosaurs…and they are both far more powerful and far smarter than Humans. They control most of the galaxy in near the core, and Earth is on the very edge of their monstrous empire. Now it looks like they’re coming back and it’s time for you to know your enemy that is soon to be entering this system.”

“Is this for real?” Sarah asked, looking at Jenn. “The Dinosaurs?”

“If this wasn’t on the Star Force network I’d think it was a joke,” she said, shrugging.

“It’s no joke,” Brad said seriously. “They are the Dinosaurs, and they are more powerful than you can imagine. Now that word is getting out my silence is no longer necessary,” he said, looking at Jenn and then Sarah. “Have a seat and I’ll explain.”

Both girls went straight to the couch and plopped down, eager to hear what the hell this was all about as Brad began pacing back and forth in front of them.

“There’s too much history to go through, so I’ll make this as simple as I can. I don’t know everything, and not all Commandos knew. I was assigned to tasks that made my knowledge necessary, but I know there are many things that they did not trust me to know. What I can tell you is this. The V’kit’no’sat are a conglomeration of different races, 193 of them, that we call the Dinosaurs. Not all of those lived on Earth, but they all had Human servants called Zen’zat that were selected out of massive populations of Ter’nat. Both are Human, but the Ter’nat have no powers. They are kept as breeding stock on isolated planets where the best of them are picked to become Zen’zat and given the powers that come with that promotion.”

“They are then assigned to serve a race and spend the rest of their lives doing so. It is from information that we recovered on Earth that we built Star Force. Self-sufficiency isn’t something we invented. The V’kit’no’sat can also live forever, and many of them have. Some of them are over a million years old.”

“Bull shit,” Sarah said, not believing a word of it.

“I wish, but it’s true. And over such a long time even a little bit of training improvement will build up to insane power levels. We are badly outmatched, and until now the only thing that kept us alive is the fact that they didn’t know we existed. Now that they do they’ll come and keep coming until we’re all dead.”

“What are trailblazers going to do?” Jenn asked, referencing the highest level military leaders in Star Force.

“What they’ve been building the military for since the beginning. They’re going to fight and take as many of the bastards with us as possible.”

“You’re saying we’re all going to die?”

“I wouldn’t count on that. We know we’re going to lose, but there are evacuation plans in place to run us out towards the Rim where the V’kit’no’sat have no presence. I don’t know the details, but the idea is to fight and hold them long enough to evacuate people out. When they give the word, we go and we don’t look back. I’ll stay with you both, but I have no idea when that will be. We can’t evacuate the system very fast, so our troops are going to have to hold them off for a while.”

“And if they can’t?” Jenn asked, her voice straining a bit. “We get stomped on or eaten?”

“No. They won’t eat you. They’ll shoot you or pick you up with their telekinesis and rip your arms, legs, and head off, but they won’t eat you.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?” Sarah asked.

“I wasn’t joking. When I was told I was shown video of them doing it to others to underscore the point of them being vicious and unforgiving. We can’t negotiate and we can’t surrender. Fighting is our only option.”

“But we can’t win?” Jenn repeated.

“Not unless something has changed since I got out.”

The two girls exchanged glances as Brad reached over and switched off the vid screen, quieting the room to a deathly stillness.

“What is this?” Sarah finally said.

“The truth,” the ex-Commando said firmly. “You didn’t need to know before so you weren’t told.”

“Dinosaurs?” Jenn repeated, still not believing it. “With telekinesis?”

“And a lot more. They can also read minds, but not Humans’ unless they touch you. It’s an immunity given to Zen’zat that the other races in Star Force won’t have. If they get close enough, they can even take control of their minds.”

“No,” Sarah said shaking her head.

“I wish it wasn’t true, but it is. We have some armor to block that ability so our troops won’t start shooting each other, but if they get close enough to you they could make you jump off a building or other stuff to kill you. And if they get close enough for their telekinesis to work, they can reach inside your body and crush your internal organs, killing you instantly. That’s why the military has to keep them away from the civilians.”

“Oh shit,” Jenn whispered, cradling her head in her hands. “Shit, shit, shit..”

“This has to be wrong,” Sarah said, almost yelling. “There is no way…”

“Stop!” Brad said firmly, getting both of them to snap out of their current thoughts and look up at him. “This is real, this is happening, and we have to work the problem. You may not be Commandos but you’ve had combat and evacuation training in the maturia. Remember back to that. What good does panic do?”

“None to you,” Jenn said slowly, repeating from memory those lessons drilled into her mind long ago, “but it helps your enemy greatly.”

“So don’t panic. There is an evacuation plan in place. The best chance we have of living is to stick with the plan. The Archons have been working on this their entire lives. There is no way we can do better than them, so we stay put, follow orders, and work the problem as it presents itself. There’s a fight to be had here before they can ever set foot on Earth, and it’ll be at least a few days before they can get here no matter how fast their gravity drives are. We have a little time to prepare.”

“What do you want us to do?” Jenn asked as Sarah was still locked up in stunned silence.

“Follow normal routines until otherwise instructed. Get the panic out of you today so that when they do get here the shock doesn’t paralyze you. That’s probably why they’re telling us now instead of waiting for them to show up in orbit.”

“Why the alarm then?”

“Those of us who know who the V’kit’no’sat are know that alarm, and the moment it sounded they started running off to do the things necessary to prepare. It wasn’t meant for you.”

“Why aren’t you running off then?” Sarah finally spoke.

“I’m not a Commando anymore. You may think I’m fit, but I’m a lot slower and weaker than I used to be. I haven’t been doing enough training even if I wanted to fight. The most I can do now is stay with you two. I’ve got a stinger pistol in my quarters. It won’t do much good against the V’kit’no’sat, but if people around here forget their training and start to panic it’ll be useful. Security is going to have much bigger problems to deal with, so I’ll make sure you two stay safe from whatever nonsense may break out here. Hopefully it won’t, but this is something none of you have faced before.”

“And you have?”

“I’ve seen war, but on the level of what’s coming our way? No. Not even close.”

3

June 11, 3602

Solar System

Earth

Sarah got off work after a very dead shift. No one was interested in shopping while an invasion of the star system was ongoing, but she and pretty much everyone else was still going about their daily activities as instructed then rushing off to somewhere they could watch the news vids.

So far Earth hadn’t been attacked, but there had been major battles elsewhere in the Solar System. The big defense satellites had been moved in near the star to ambush the Dinosaurs when they arrived, but it hadn’t been enough to stop them. Star Force had destroyed some of their ships there, but then the huge enemy fleet went through and systematically busted up all of the satellites using their biggest ship that was near 200 miles wide.

All of their ships were huge, dwarfing Star Force’s much smaller fleet, but Star Force had many more ships that ended up looking like bees stinging the bear that was coming to steal their honey. In this case that honey was Earth, which she’d been told held the most aggressive defenses of any planet in the system. Maybe that was why they hadn’t…

Sarah stopped walking as she heard a roar from a cupola off the promenade she was walking through. There was a large crowd there and not many people walking about, so Sarah headed over and took a look at the huge hologram in the center that showed the ongoing battles wherever they were being fought…except this time it was showing Earth with what looked like the entire Dinosaur fleet in orbit.

“Oh shit,” she whispered as she turned and ran down the promenade, keeping up the pace all the way back to her quarters where she found Jenn and Brad camped out on the couch watching the news feeds.

“They’re here,” Jenn told her as Sarah sat down with them.

“Where are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do?”

“They haven’t said yet.”

“So we just wait until they’re on top of us?”

“Relax,” Brad urged. “The V’kit’no’sat aren’t thinking about us right now. They’ve got to get through the planetary shields first, and our fleet along with them. They tried with their big ship from range but it wasn’t enough. We’ve got a lot of…there,” he said as the fighting really ticked up as they came in low over the planet and huge glowing beams of energy shot up from the surface and hit the Dinosaur ships in orbit as they simultaneously fought against the tens of thousands of Star Force vessels moving in to confront them.

“What are they…” Brad said, ignoring the girls and trying to figure out what was going on, then he realized what they were up to. “They’re concentrating fire on the shield to create a breach. It means our ships basically have a free shot at them right now because they’re focusing most of their firepower on the planet.”

“Where?” Sarah asked.

“Over Antarctica.”

“Why there?”

“Clan headquarters and a lot of other valuable stuff, but your guess is as good as mine,” Brad said offhand.

“Just be glad they’re not shooting at Europe,” Jenn added. “Are they going to get through?”

“Probably, but I have no idea how strong our shields are and that big ship is firing a superweapon. I can’t remember the name, but it’s something too advanced for us to build and too big for their other ships to carry it…”

“Whoa!” Jenn yelled as a huge explosion ripped apart a building in Antarctica as the shield began to fail and spots opened up letting bits of weaponsfire through. One moment the building was there, then a second later the top half of it was gone and a hurricane of dust and debris mushroomed out to cover the impact site.

“They’re starting to break through. Once they get a clean shot they’ll target the shield generators and open up a permanent hole. This is bad.”

“Are the people down there evacuating?” Sarah asked.

“I hope so. I assume so,” he corrected. “When they saw where the shield was being attacked they probably evacuated the area underneath immediately.”

“That was only minutes ago.”

“Which is why if we’re told to move, we go instantly,” he said firmly. “No bags, just out the door to wherever they send us. Stay with me when it happens.”

“You can count on that,” Sarah confirmed as the three of them continued to watch the battle unfold.

As Brad had predicted, the shield generators got hit once big enough gaps in the protective energy layers covering the entire planet allowed pinpoint accurate attacks from the Dinosaur fleet to target them. Each generator had backup shields covering it, but those only delayed the inevitable. The generators nearest the attack zone eventually were destroyed and a vulnerable dot on the map opened up, allowing the enemy fleet to shoot all kinds of things on the planet’s surface, but oddly they didn’t target much, for once the hole was opened they turned their attention to the Star Force fleet that had essentially been punching them in the gut the entire time.

When they did it became an unfair fight, and even with the weaponsfire coming from the big surface-based guns it was clear that Star Force was losing and the closest of those guns were getting picked off through the hole in the shields, creating a safer route down to the surface for the group of ships that broke off from the main fleet and dove into the atmosphere heading for the hole.

“They’re landing ground troops,” Brad said, pointing to the tiny markers indicating the massive ships, but displayed along with everything else in the combined two fleets they still looked small.

Jenn grabbed Brad’s hand and squeezed it hard, but was still watching the battle intently as the main camera angles shifted to a different part of Antarctica as a massive explosion rocked the surface far away from the hole in the shields.

“What the hell?” Sarah asked. “Who’s shooting over there?”

Brad didn’t have time to answer before a huge beam of orange light reached up from the surface and hit the largest of the Dinosaur ships as additional explosions continued to detonate around its origin point.

“Brad?” Jenn asked as the beam fired again and again, but it was unlike anything else Star Force had attacking from the surface.

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

“Is that another superweapon?” Sarah asked. “It’s the same color.”

“It’s bigger,” Jenn said, poking Brad to get his attention.

“I think you’re right,” the ex-Commando lazily said, for his eyes were locked on the vid screen as the Dinosaur fleet suddenly started moving erratically around the edges but were locked still in the center as the big gun continued to shoot the huge egg-shaped ship that was using its own superweapon to vaporize the smaller Star Force vessels with single hits.

But then other weird energy weapons began firing up from the same location, and as the dust and debris settled around that part of Antarctica the camera began to make out a massive, flat-topped pyramid underneath that Brad had never seen before…and for good reason, because there had been a city on top of it that had just been blown apart to reveal it.

“V’kit’no’sat weapons,” Brad said in awe. “Has to be.”

“What?”

“Earth used to be theirs. They must have left something behind and we hid it this whole time. That’s why they went to Antarctica first. I was never told we had a superweapon.”

“You mean that green/black thing is…”

“A V’kit’no’sat building. Maybe a battlefort or something.”

“Are we winning now?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t know. They’re just standing there taking the shots and…oh crap, it was a trap. They didn’t know it was there. Damn, you guys are good.”

“What?” Jenn demanded.

“The trailblazers. They hid that superweapon underneath the city, I’d bet you anything. And look at their fleet. They’re not moving an inch in the center. We have some ships that can freeze your engines with an IDF. That means they can’t move. They’re pinned there and getting hammered.”

“So we’re going to kill them?”

“We are killing them, but if they can kill our interdictors they can get free and run.”

“Running is still good if it takes them away from here,” Sarah said as the hopeless battle now looked to have taken on a whole new aspect. They saw the shields on the biggest Dinosaur ship go down and its hull start to take hits, but eventually it was able to move off and escape the range of the superweapon on Earth, though many of their other ships didn’t and when they left they left running with the Star Force fleet chasing after them.

Jenn and Sarah felt like cheering, but they were both too unsure of what was going on to take that emotional step.

“Brad?”

“They still got troops on the ground, but not a lot. I think we just won round one.”

“Round one?”

“If that was a trap they won’t be able to do it again, and now that the V’kit’no’sat know where the superweapon is they won’t attack Antarctica again from overhead. They’ll hit Earth elsewhere and move over land to take it out, but that means they’ll have to punch a different hole in the planetary shields and I don’t think they have enough ships left to do that. They’ll have to wait for reinforcements.”

“Wait, what reinforcements?” Sarah asked. “I thought that was all of them?”

“They have an empire that spans half the galaxy. More will come. You can count on that.”

“But not today?” Jenn asked, with Sarah’s expression mirroring the sentiment.

“No, looks like we bought ourselves some time.”

“To do what? You said they’re still coming and we can’t beat them. Can that superweapon do other things?”

Brad looked at Sarah and sadly shook his head. “We hurt them, but given how big their empire is it’ll only be a scratch.”

“So what now?” Jenn asked.

“Now we wait for the evacuation order.”

“But we just won!”

“We won ourselves some time, and if I know the trailblazers they won’t waste it. Right now they’ve got ships to hunt down and troops on the ground to deal with, and I wouldn’t want to be them with our warships overhead.”

“What?”

“Military stuff. Those V’kit’no’sat ground troops are going to die soon, but there might be some hard fighting to take them out. Even if there is it won’t affect us up here. They’ll be confined to that region of Antarctica.”

“When do we leave?” Jenn asked, pain in her eyes at the thought of what lay ahead of them.

“When they tell us to, but right now there’s still enemy ships up there that need removed. After they’re gone I expect the evacuation plans to kick in. When that will mean us I have no idea. It’s a big planet and we’ve only got so many ships.”

“Ok, but until then?” Sarah asked.

“Same routine until told otherwise.”

“Even after all this?” she said, standing up and pointing to the vid screen.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Yeah, like do something.”

“Trust in the plan and wait for orders. This has been a long time in coming. The trailblazers will get most of us out if we do as they say.”

“Most?” Jenn asked, standing up next to Sarah and glaring at him.

“It’s a big planet,” he repeated, “and the V’kit’no’sat ships are very fast. They’ll be back with more.”

“And we’re just supposed to sit here and wait?”

“Better than being in Antarctica,” Jenn pointed out, but she was feeling the same way.

“Well there’s that,” Sarah agreed. “Poor bastards. They got shot by our own weapons.”

“No,” Brad said firmly. “We wouldn’t do that.”

“Didn’t you see that city go ‘poof’ when the superweapon fired?”

“Didn’t you see it not fire immediately when the enemy arrived overhead? They were probably waiting until everyone evacuated from the blast zone. We don’t kill our own,” Brad said angrily. “You should know that even if you aren’t in the military.”

Jenn put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder before she could snap back at him. “Easy.”

Sarah glared at her for a moment then flushed her seething emotions out with a shake of her head as she closed her eyes.

“Sorry. You’re right.”

“Better,” Brad said, also standing with them. “We’ve known this would be coming for a long time and I promise you there is a plan in place even if I don’t know the details. We wait until we get word, then we follow instructions. The military will give us cover as we evacuate. I know that much.”

“Why didn’t they tell us this was coming?” Jenn demanded.

“To avoid this reaction and a lot of pointless worry. Come on, let’s get out of here and do something. Europe is safe for the rest of today, I can promise you that.”

“Do what?” Sarah asked.

“Anything. Spend some credits, run some miles, whatever. This is going to be the new normal and it’s better to process it while doing something else. Standing still and endlessly worrying will get you twisted up into a paranoid mess.”

Jenn grabbed Sarah’s hand and gave it a good squeeze. “He’s right. We need some air.”

“I feel sick.”

“Me too, which is why we need some air.”

“How long before they can come back?” Sarah asked the ex-Commando.

“If they’re nearby, weeks. If not it’ll be months. Space is big and it takes time to travel across it, even for the V’kit’no’sat.”

“Weeks? Fine then, let’s do something, because I think my head is about to explode.”

“You’ll adjust,” Brad promised. “A lot of people are in shock right now.”

“Where out there is it safe to run to?” Jenn asked. “The Nexus?”

“I was never told that, but it’s a big galaxy.”

“So we run and hide or die?”

“I…don’t…know,” Brad said slowly. “Trust the Archons, they’ll know what to do. They always have, and they just got us our first victory.”

“With a trick,” she pointed out.

“A win is a win and we’re still standing here worrying. Start walking and we’ll figure this out on the go. Right now we need activity.”

“Fine,” Jenn agreed reluctantly. “Let’s go.”

“Come on,” Brad said, grabbing each one of them by a hand. “I’ll look after you both, I promise.”

The official evacuation order didn’t come down for another 3 days, but there were lots of housekeeping instructions and explanations prior to it that gave some people work to do, but both Sarah and Jenn no longer had jobs to occupy their time. Most of the private corporations were closing shop, now that luxury items were pointless when you couldn’t take them with you. Only the Star Force-operated shops remained open, and even those weren’t seeing a lot of activity.

The entertainment districts were the reverse, for people were flooding into them in order to take their mind off their worries or to spend up their remaining credits while they had a use for them on anything that could distract their attention away from the impending doom. That didn’t change when the evacuation order came down, because most of the people on Earth weren’t going anywhere…at least not right away.

“What the hell!” Jenn yelled at Brad when he came back to their quarters after finishing a workout.

“What?” he asked, seeing that Sarah was nowhere around.

“That’s what,” she said, jabbing a finger at the vid screen and the enormous evacuation ships that had arrived out of nowhere. Each was more than 400 miles long and could hold an insane amount of people, but as had been noted there were only 18 of the ships here at present to assist the ‘smaller’ normal vessels with evacuation out of the system, meaning they had a lot of round trips to make wherever they were going.

Brad watched the news feed for a minute, seeing that it wasn’t a Star Force channel, and the reporter was quite angry that the first ‘people’ that Project Galactica, as the superships were called, was going to evacuate were the various animal races held in Earth’s sanctuaries.

“What’s the problem?” Brad asked mockingly, though he was slightly peeved at her problem with it.

“My problem? Humans should be going first. Cats and dogs and cows last.”

“The weakest and least able to defend themselves go first,” Brad corrected.

“Even if some Humans die later because there’s not enough time to evacuate everyone?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “We don’t betray anyone.”

“They’re dogs, Brad, dogs!”

“And they deserve to live too. They are our responsibility and we’re not going to leave them here to die.”

“What if we’re the ones that get left!”

“The military are going to be the last ones out. We’ll go before them.”

“I can’t believe you! Star Force having the sanctuaries is a waste of resources anyway, but to put the animals above Humans is just wrong!”

“If we’re going to die,” Brad said, his anger turning his tone cold rather than bombastic, “then we die with honor. We don’t trade lives, barter lives, or betray lives. We try to save everyone, regardless of whether or not we succeed. Those least able to defend themselves and those most valuable go first. We are neither, so we wait our turn.”

“How can you be so cold about this? People are going to die!”

“Stress brings out true colors. I’m sorry to say I keep forgetting how little training the maturia actually gives you.”

“Meaning what?”

“You’re panicking.”

“No, this isn’t panic. It’s anger. The animals don’t matter when Human lives are in jeopardy.”

“You need to stop watching this trash,” Brad said, changing the channel to the official Star Force news vid.

“It’s not trash, it’s the truth. Why are you siding with Star Force?”

“I am Star Force, and so are you.”

“I’m a civilian, and so are you. We don’t have to think like they do.”

“Their thinking is the only reason we’re still alive right now. They know what they’re doing.”

“Like hell they do. Animals first? What kind of bull shit is that!”

“Stop calling them animals. All races have different attributes. Humans aren’t the smartest, you know.”

“That’s debatable.”

“Just because someone is less capable doesn’t meant they don’t have an equal right to live.”

“I’m not saying we should start killing them and eating their bodies. I’m saying that if we have to pick and choose who lives Humans should come first.”

“And what about the Bsidd, Calavari, Kiritas, Irondel…you think Humans should come before them?”

“They can all talk, Brad.”

“So can some dogs.”

“Barely, but that’s not the point. They’re not on our level.”

“That is why they need more protection, not less.”

Jenn put her hand on her forehead and closed her eyes. “I can’t believe we are having this conversation.”

“Neither can I, because it’s a moot point. The decision has been made and we don’t get a say. The trailblazers and Monarchs are in control, and despite what those rag news vids say, they do know what they’re doing.”

“Well maybe they shouldn’t be.”

“Now you are talking crazy. Snap out of it, please. I’d like Jenn back.”

“This is Jenn you’re talking with.”

“No, it’s some panicked crazy person ready to throw everyone else to the monsters to save herself. You’re better than that.”

“If it comes down to a matter of picking and choosing…”

“You have combat training. All Humans have combat training from the maturia. The races in the sanctuaries do not. We can’t even warn them about what’s coming because they won’t understand. We have to get them out of here first along with the younglings.”

“The younglings I can understand,” she said, referring to those Humans still in the maturia whether they be infants all the way up to young adults.

“Well then you’re only half crazy,” he said as the news vid suddenly switched over to a camera shot from in near the star. It was showing one of the incoming jumppoints for interstellar traffic as dozens of huge Star Force jumpships were arriving, but they were of slightly different design. There were already several hundred gathered near the jumppoint, each of which carried more of the drone warships that Star Force remotely piloted to keep their naval combat losses restricted to equipment rather than people.

But these ships didn’t have Humans on them, for they had come from another part of the empire in response to the distress calls sent out from Earth.

“What now?” Jenn asked, seeing his concern.

“Doing the right thing may not always seem the best thing to do when you’re in a panic, but it does have its advantages. If Star Force put Humans first, then we never would have rescued and annexed the Bsidd…and look who’s showing up to help provide us cover while we evacuate.”

“Why wouldn’t they come? They take orders from the Archons like everyone else.”

“There are plenty of Bsidd worlds out there that the V’kit’no’sat are likely to hit later. Why should they waste ships here defending Humans when they could save them to defend other Bsidd?”

“We’re all Star Force, so why would that matter?”

“Exactly. We’re all Star Force, right down to the refugees we take in from across the galaxy and the races too primitive to care for themselves that we support in the sanctuaries. We live as one, we fight as one, and if necessary we die as one. Nobody gets betrayed, nobody gets left behind, nobody gets discarded. You and I will wait our turn. The sanctuaries get emptied first and the Bsidd are coming to help make sure we all get out alive.”

4

July 3, 3604

Solar System

Earth

Two years. It had been two years since the Dinosaurs…correction, since the V’kit’no’sat attacked and had not returned to Earth. They’d been sighted elsewhere, looking, scouting, but not fighting. Some people suggested that they might not return, that the defeat they’d suffered at the hands of Star Force had scared them off, but no Star Force officials had ever said that and Jenn and Sarah, while hoping that it was true, had Brad telling them all along that they’d be back, and now they were.

They came back with 20 times as many ships as before, but were met with an even larger Star Force defense fleet drawn from across the empire to oppose them. There were more than just the Human and Bsidd ships. The Protovic were here, and the Calavari, and the Trinx, and even more subfactions of Star Force all under the combined command of 13 out of the 100 trailblazers. Having even 1 in a system was rare, though this was Earth and Sarah had heard of when there were 2 stationed here or a few more temporarily came back for a meeting or something, but 13 was unheard of.

There was no ambush of the incoming ships like before, and after several scouts arrived and fled, the V’kit’no’sat came in on a very obscure jumpline so they could secure a foothold in the system to deliver their full fleet. After an initial fight there the enemy had driven straight to Earth, ignoring all the other planets and space stations. They had one target and one target only, and it looked like there was nothing that was going to stand in their way.

And with them came not one, but two giant ships that the girls now knew were called Mach’nel and were very rare in the V’kit’no’sat fleet. Both contained superweapons, but neither attacked Antarctica. Instead they pushed in and fought the Star Force fleet over South America where the planetary defenses, combined with the fleet in orbit, made the V’kit’no’sat pay a very heavy price to get through the planetary shields, including damaging one Mach’nel so bad it had to withdraw from the system, but they couldn’t stop them from breaching the shields and landing troops on the ground.

Sarah and Jenn were with Brad in their quarters when the breakthrough came, and they watched as the huge V’kit’no’sat ships descended through the atmosphere and parked over cities in Brazil and pounded them into oblivion even as the Star Force fleet fired into the ships from above and below. Evacuation orders had gone out for the affected areas as soon as the planetary shields over top of them had begun taking hits, but according to the reports it hadn’t been soon enough and a lot of people were getting caught in the orbital bombardment.

As horrifying as that was, it didn’t last. Once it was clear that the people underneath them couldn’t be protected the Star Force fleet went crazy and started sending ships down to surface level and fighting the enemy warships just above the building tops. The sky was blocked out with their masses but it was lit up with the bright flashes of weaponsfire worse than any thunderstorm. Piece of ships fell when blasted apart, then entire hulls came crashing down on top of the remaining people in the cities and the V’kit’no’sat troops, killing both.

Faced with that untenable situation, the V’kit’no’sat ships gained more elevation, rising up back above the atmosphere while firing down on the Star Force ships beneath them so they couldn’t target their ground troops. That lifted the fight high enough that nearby planetary defense batteries could shoot over the curve of the planet and punish the ships that had been below their firing arcs. When that happened they had to pull back even further, leaving six different zones of devastation across Brazil as the warships retreated to a height where the planetary defenses couldn’t target them.

Without that help the Star Force fleet pulled back into defensive positions, trying to run some of their ships down to the surface to shoot the ground troops but the V’kit’no’sat wouldn’t allow that. Each time they tried the warships came back down and forced a fight just above the atmosphere until a standoff occurred with both fleets essentially agreeing to leave the surface alone, though many smaller craft from both sides were dropping down into the atmosphere or flying across it.

“They’re sending troops and we are too,” Brad said, wrapping an arm around Jenn as she cried silent tears. “Their ships are going to stay in orbit unless ours come down again. They’re going to try to take out the remaining shield generators and defensive guns on the ground now.”

“How long until they get here?” Sarah asked.

“A long time. We’ve got a lot of troops standing by and if they try to take out the rest of the planetary defenses with their warships they’ll get whittled down so far that what’s left of our fleet will be able to finish them off. The danger is on the ground now, so that’s where we’re going to hold them and it’s going to be a long, grinding fight.”

“Can the galactica ships still get to us?” Jenn asked.

“I’m not sure. Probably.”

“When are we going to go, Brad?” Sarah asked.

“They won’t bring down dropships near the fighting. They’ll pull us up in the safest area and move people overland to there. Europe and Asia are probably the safest places to do that now.”

“But when will we leave?” she repeated, knowing that approximately a third of the planet’s population was already gone. For all the hopefulness that the V’kit’no’sat wouldn’t come back, thankfully Star Force hadn’t delayed the evacuation. There had been ships running round the clock, many taking people to the nearest star system and dumping them off there while the galactica ships took their passengers much further away, but people weren’t just evacuating from Earth. They were evacuating from Mars, Pluto, Sedna, Krillin, Frodo, and all the other planets in the Solar System.

“As soon as we can,” Brad promised, “but I don’t think anyone knows when that will be.”

“What do we do now?” Jenn asked. “Just wait and watch as they get closer?”

“There’s going to be plenty to watch.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do to help?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t think so. If there is they’ll say so.”

“I need some air,” Jenn said, getting up and heading for the door.

“I’ll go with you,” Sarah offered, hopping to her feet and following her sister out while Brad remained sitting. He let them go, then used the interactive controls on the news feed to watch what was happening on the ground in Brazil. He’d fought in a lot of battles during the lizard war, but that enemy was nothing like the V’kit’no’sat. They were little and easy to kill, but used swarm techniques that made them very dangerous. This enemy was far worse and operated in a completely opposite manner. Most of the V’kit’no’sat were the equivalent of walking tanks, and even now he could see some moving around in their battle armor.

He could also see Star Force mechs being dropped off nearby and gathering to fight them as aerial craft gave them cover. Brad wondered where the V’kit’no’sat air cover was, but didn’t see any for a long time until some of the ‘skeets’ that Star Force used as their primary fighter craft ducked into the rubble and flew around some mile high pieces of dead V’kit’no’sat ship that had fell to the surface and crushed buildings underneath. The skeets flew in and around them, only to be jumped by winged fliers that Brad knew were called I’rar’et, but most of Earth knew them simply as Pterodactyls from movie legend.

They also had armor on, and were firing while chasing the skeets away from what they were obviously claiming as their territory, giving their own ground troops aerial cover. The only difference was they weren’t flying craft, but living beings inside armor, and according to the old records made public, that’s how the entire V’kit’no’sat army operated. They had no vehicles, save for the Zen’zat and a few smaller Dinosaur races, and that was an entirely different type of combat that Brad wasn’t sure how was going to go down, but the trailblazers had been preparing for this for a long time so a part of him was eager to see what happened.

What he didn’t see were Commandos, Human or otherwise, heading out towards the enemy troops. It took a while, but eventually he started to see a few Commando units in the field helping pull people out of rubble and guarding the evacuation routes for people in the nearby area. They were getting them out of there as fast as possible, but it looked like they were already getting hit.

Neither Brad nor the reporters could tell where they were coming from, but individual Zen’zat were popping up everywhere and shooting whatever Humans they could find on sight…then running off and disappearing into buildings or rubble as Commandos went after them, though most were trying to establish defensive perimeters so the civilians would have a safe place to run to.

The dull white armor of the Commandos were everywhere now, but the dark green/black of the Zen’zat were very hard to see and they were moving so fast the civilians never stood a chance. They were here to slaughter them, and for as many as the Commandos saved there were far more that they couldn’t.

Brad gripped the armrest on the couch as he watched, and without realizing it he dug his thumb all the way through the shell and into the padding underneath. Part of him wanted to be out there doing something, but he hadn’t fought or even combat trained for a long time.

And there was no way he was going to leave Jenn and Sarah alone. Looking after them was enough of a mission to suit him for now, but seeing his fellow Commandos out there and him sitting on this stupid couch watching didn’t feel right…but then again, nothing about this invasion felt right.

Brad kept watching for a long time, then the girls came back and he realized 5 hours had gone by. It had felt like half an hour, then as he pulled his hand back he noticed the hole in the couch and how he had been the cause of it. Balling his fist, he stood up stiff and walked past the girls.

“Where are you going?” Jenn asked.

“To find something to punch. I’ll be back.”

“Better be.”

He paused at the door, turning back and looking at them both. “Whether we get out of here alive or get caught and killed, I’ll be right beside you. I promise.”

“Not very reassuring, but I’ll take it.”

“There’s no reassuring now. The planet is in a fight for its life,” he said, then walked out and headed for the nearest gymnasium.

Three weeks later and the V’kit’no’sat were still bottled up in Brazil. Star Force had brought in so many ground troops that no matter how many mechs they destroyed the invaders couldn’t get outside of their landing zones…but Star Force couldn’t get into them either, and for every Triceratops or Stegosaurus that they killed more were being rushed down from orbit with skeets and other aerial craft from Star Force fighting against Pterodactyls and some other V’kit’no’sat flying Dinosaurs. They weren’t going to let them land troops for free, and whenever they tried to bring more down another massive aerial battle broke out with mixed results. Star Force was killing units in the air, but they weren’t getting all of them and that reinforcement was enough to maintain the V’kit’no’sat foothold on the planet.

Meanwhile the fleets in orbit were in a staring contest. The V’kit’no’sat held defensive formation just outside the range of the planetary defenses but close enough for them to intervene if the Star Force warships tried to go after the ground troops. Without that cover the warships would smoke the ground targets and they knew it, so they couldn’t leave.

But at the same time those warships could go after other ships in the system, so the Star Force fleet was essentially standing guard around them in a containment measure while the rest of the Solar System continued to evacuate. The big galactica ships weren’t coming to Earth anymore, rather evacuating people off the other worlds while those on Earth were being taken from planet to planet in smaller craft.

By the time the V’kit’no’sat broke out into nearby Bolivia their reinforcements arrived. There weren’t many enemy ships coming into the system, but they were primarily troops ships and the V’kit’no’sat warships already present made sure they got to the surface after a rough fight in near the star. After that Star Force didn’t try to hit the ships again, instead pulling back into defensive alignments to protect the ongoing evacuation while the aerial forces tried to knock down as many as they could as enemy drop pods continued descending through the atmosphere almost round the clock.

Some that they did shoot down saw ground troops crawling out afterward, for the armor they wore had both resistances to weaponsfire along with energy shields…not to mention regenerators of their own built into it. So even when you killed one they didn’t always stay dead.

It was clear that Star Force wasn’t going to win this fight, but they were doing a remarkable job of slowing it down, so much so that they were still contained to South America when dropships came in to Jenn and Sarah’s city. There were no more individual evacuations now, with everyone nearby getting on and filling up every seat they could. The sisters didn’t make the first group and had to wait another two weeks as the city’s population quickly thinned out, but more people were also being brought in from other areas on the planet so when another group of dropships were due in Jenn, Sarah, and Brad each packed a single duffle with a few clothes and some prepackaged foodstuffs, not even filling the bags up halfway, and camped out at the spaceport along with a lot of other people waiting in line.

They were there for two days, but thankfully everyone was well behaved. Had the fighting got this far that might have changed, but Brad never had need to draw his stinger pistol even once. Everyone seemed to be falling back on their maturia training that surprisingly resurfaced very fast when needed, with everyone staying orderly as more and more dropships came in and people were loaded up.

When their turn came all three of them got onboard the same craft and sat down next to each other with Brad in the middle as they carried their duffles on their laps because the floors were also being used to seat people, squeezing in as many as they could without getting desperate about it. Then the boarding ramp pulled up and the hatch closed as they departed the spaceport and took to the air, heading up to orbit well away from the V’kit’no’sat fleet.

Star Force warships were everywhere, standing by to defend the tiny craft if needed as they moved out to a jumpline and cranked their engines up as high as they could. Normally they weren’t used for planet to planet travel, but everything available had been stretched to its operational limits and the dropships did have the capability, so another flock of them took off and headed out towards Mars.

It took nearly a day to get there, but Jenn was more than willing to suffer the discomfort in order to get away from Earth.

5

September 6, 3604

Solar System

Mars

Living on Mars wasn’t much different than on Earth, save for the fact that you couldn’t go outdoors, but in truth a lot of Earth’s cities were self-contained anyway and Jenn often would go weeks without tasting the outside air. With less of it here and mostly carbon dioxide, you couldn’t survive outside without a filtration mask.

Over the centuries there had been some terraforming that had gotten the atmospheric pressure up high enough that you wouldn’t explode when you walked outside, but the efforts here had been more experimentation than anything. They’d never taken it all the way because Star Force had gotten used to building on dead planets and moons throughout the star system and abandoned terraforming save for select situations, preferring instead to just build enclosed facilities so the habitability of a planet really didn’t matter.

Mars had about a third of the gravity Earth did, but Jenn still felt normal gravity walking around the very crowded city where she’d been given temporary quarters. They were tiny level 1s, but at least there were enough for everyone. So many people had been pulled out of the Solar System already that there was a lot of openings to fill, though Jenn, Sarah, and Brad had volunteered to share the same quarters in order to make room for more people being brought over from Earth as the fighting there was still ongoing.

So far Mars hadn’t been hit, and with their fully intact planetary shields and defensive guns the V’kit’no’sat would have to pay another heavy price to establish a foothold here like they did on Earth, but everyone knew it would be coming eventually. Right now they were preoccupied with taking the primary planet in the system and having a hell of a fight on their hands, so Jenn was glad to be on Mars now though she and the others were still waiting for their evacuation from the system entirely.

There wasn’t much to do here, so everyone was training and filling what jobs they could. Most were industrial and everyone who had skills that could be used were working their asses off to make more warships to replace those that were lost and continuing to be lost, though the facilities on Mars were small compared to elsewhere in the system. There were so many shipyards here that they should have been primary targets, and they were during the first attack years back, but most had been preserved and were even now pumping out replacement drone bricks for the control ships to deploy and use up, gradually diminishing the number of enemy ships here.

But the V’kit’no’sat were also getting reinforcements periodically with everyone knowing by now that the system would fall, but the more warships they produced the slower that fall would be and the more people could be evacuated, so whoever had industrial or mining skills had volunteered even if they weren’t Star Force employees…but everyone else had nothing to do. Some private companies were still functioning and servicing the people here, but many more had already been moved out in part, leaving a lot of workers behind that likewise were doing little more than waiting for their ticket out.

The training facilities were packed, as had been the norm, for with people reverting back to their maturia habits they fell into old rhythms while also working out their frustration of being stuck here with nothing to do but boredly wait.

Jenn was no exception and was heading back from some sparring work as she and others practiced very old skills in the vain hope of being better able to defend themselves if, or rather when this city was attacked. The stronger she and others got the better, but most people knew it wouldn’t make any difference if what they were seeing on Earth made its way over here.

When Jenn got back to their quarters she found the other two were gone…which wasn’t surprising. If they stayed in here too long it quickly got claustrophobic, for the quarters had been built as the minimum for one person, not three, though they weren’t the only people doubling up to make room.

Taking advantage of the peace and quiet, Jenn stripped down and retreated into their shower and submerged herself in the vertical tube, pressing her forehead against the clear glass as she triggered the rain droplets to start falling from the ceiling.

If Jenn didn’t have her training she didn’t think she would have kept it together this long, and even now she was barely hanging on to her sanity. The constant pressure of impending doom was getting to her and a lot of other people here, and though they were trying to give each other their space and make this work, tensions were high and occasional fights were breaking out. Some days Jenn thought she wanted to jump into the middle of one, but so far hadn’t been caught up in any of the non-training fights.

That was another reason why people were sparring a lot. It was constructive and let them beat each other’s frustrated nerves out, but it wasn’t enough for Jenn. If they didn’t get out of here soon she was pretty sure she was going to lose it.

She’d tried not watching the battle reports coming in from Earth, but a part of her couldn’t just ignore what was happening to the people back there. Plus she wanted to know when the damn Dinosaurs were coming here, and as long as they were still on Earth that gave her mind a little breathing room, but as soon as they decided to come out to Mars she was sure that the people trapped here were going to explode before the V’kit’no’sat even got through the planetary shields.

Jenn knew it wasn’t Star Force’s fault, for the reports of evacuation ships coming and going were constant. People were being moved out rapidly, but Sol was the capitol system of the Star Force empire and heavily populated. You couldn’t just pick everyone up and head out unless you had a ship the size of a planet, and even then you’d have to make multiple trips to get everyone across the system evacuated.

But fortunately that size of population also worked against the enemy, for conquering all of those cities and planets was going to take a lot of time unless the fleet was destroyed. If that happened the V’kit’no’sat could just park overhead and blast everything to bits without ever having to land ground troops…and that thought scared the crap out of her. She wished she could help with the building of new ships but that was outside her skillset, leaving her helpless to do anything other than train and worry.

A light knocking on the shower tube jolted her awake as she opened her eyes and twisted her head towards the sound, seeing Brad standing outside.

“Room for two in there?”

Jenn sighed. “Not today. I need some privacy.”

“Take your time,” Brad said with a knowing smile. “I’m here when you want me.”

Jenn tipped her head back against the curved wall and tried to think of nothing other than the raindrops on her head and sliding down her neck to the waterline, but Brad being back was making that harder even though he was out of sight.

Two months later…

“Brad!” Sarah yelled from the tiny living room in their quarters.

“What?” he asked, sleepily coming out of the other room where he and Jenn shared a bed, with Sarah camping out in a sleeping sleeve on the floor that was currently rolled up and stuffed into the corner.

“What’s happening?” she demanded, pointing at the vid screen on the wall near the door.

Brad looked at it and frowned, then his eyes widened in realization.

“They’re going at it.”

“Meaning what?”

“Our fleet is going after theirs. We got a lot more ships from somewhere and we’re pushing the offensive. If we can take them out they won’t be able to cover their ground troops.”

“So they could shoot them from the sky?”

“Yeah, but that big Mach’nel isn’t going to be easy to take down. Damn, it’s messing our ships up,” he said as the carnage of its superweapon plus the thousands of others around its hull were tearing up the huge, yet gnat-like drone fleet that seemed more interested in going after the other ‘small’ V’kit’no’sat ships. In fact, they weren’t attacking the Mach’nel at all.

“They’re stuck,” Brad said, pounding a fist on the wall excitedly. “They can’t retreat or we pound their guys on the surface. They have to fight here.”

“We’re losing so many ships,” Sarah said, seeing the counter continually decreasing like a game score. At least there were no people onboard those drone ships.

“It’s worth it,” Brad said, seeing the enemy hull damage. Their ships were so large they couldn’t be destroyed quickly, but several already had their shields down as the swarm of drones was totally engulfing them. There was nowhere they could run to without ramming into Star Force ships, but as they watched the V’kit’no’sat formation pulled in tighter and to one side of the Mach’nel, forcing the gnat swarm to face it directly on one side…which it didn’t do. They broke off their attack and swung around to double up against the ships on the other side.

The V’kit’no’sat adapted again, spreading out around the Mach’nel and getting in close to it at specific points to leave conduits open for it to fire through. If the drones tried to surround them again they’d have to move into those channels and get blown away.

But that didn’t happen either, for the drones avoided those channels and instead began weaving their way in between the V’kit’no’sat ships all the way up to the Mach’nel, but stopped just short. They kept at least one enemy hull between them and the massive ship and slugged it out with the rest of their fleet, daring the Mach’nel to fire its superweapon.

It didn’t, for shooting straight through a drone would hit the V’kit’no’sat ship behind it. Brad watching with glee as it stopped firing for over a minute, then managed a clean shot near to but missing one of their own. A few more precise shots opened up for them, but the repetitive beatdown that it had been putting on the drones earlier had been reduced down to manageable carnage.

“I think they might actually do it,” the ex-Commando said, mentally rooting them on.

“Can they really kill the big one?”

“They’re not trying to. They’re going for the rest.”

“What’s going on?” Jenn asked, coming out of the back room and bumping into the door jamb half asleep.

“We’re attacking the Dinosaur fleet,” Sarah said, not looking back at her.

“What? Why now?”

“Something changed, I don’t know what,” Brad said, “but they’re going at it hard.”

The three of them sat/stood around and watched the fighting for the next two hours, barely moving the entire time, up until the remains of the Star Force fleet suddenly broke off and retreated, leaving the Mach’nel and a scattering of other ships still intact.

“Did we lose?” Sarah asked.

“I’m not sure,” Brad said, looking through the statistics that were available on a side option. He walked over to the wall and used the menu to sift through what he wanted to see, frowning the whole time.

“It’s moving,” Jenn said as the big Mach’nel suddenly left the rest of its ships and headed in closer to Earth. The Star Force fleet immediately responded, heading back towards it as the superweapon opened up and fired down onto the planet. It didn’t hit shields, rather aiming for a recently exposed section of cityscape whose shield generator had been taken down by ground troops a few days ago.

The giant orange beam vaporized buildings on impact, kicking up a huge circular wave of destruction that expanded outward, soon followed by another a few dozen miles away. More followed as the Star Force fleet engaged the Mach’nel alone and started heavily pounding on its shields. Without the rest of the V’kit’no’sat ships, who had started drifting farther away, the Mach’nel was in a mismatch but it was so tough that it could take a lot of shots to the shields before they fell, during which they ravaged a select portion of the exposed planet’s surface.

Then when they tried to leave they were stuck in place by numerous interdictors creating an IDF field that nullified the Mach’nel’s engines. It then targeted them and killed a lot more drones up until it broke itself free and retreated back to where the other ships were, having its shields completely stripped away and a few weapons batteries damaged, but the armor on it was a rare type and incredibly hard to punch through…meaning it had only gotten scratched in the exchange for the damage done to the surface.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Jenn said, covering her mouth.

“I hope those cities were evacuated,” Sarah added.

The battle reports suddenly highlighted something in a replay, showing a small spot on the Machn’nel that had taken major damage. They showed several drone warships ramming it after a heavy barrage…then even more destroying themselves in an almost vain attempt to damage the Mach’nel, for its armor was even resistant to their collisions. They were doing damage, but the first few didn’t even punch through the outer shell and the others simply disappeared inside the hull, being swallowed up by its insane mass and resulting in no visible explosions that one would expect.

“They got it?” Sarah asked, listening to the reporter say just that.

“Yeah they did,” Brad confirmed with a satisfied smile. “A trade for the damage to the cities. Their superweapon is out of commission. They won’t be able to fire outside of our planetary defense guns’ range again without it.”

“Still…” Jenn said, not sure if the tradeoff was worth it after seeing the damage done to the cities.

“That just bought us a lot more time. We can’t kill their fleet with that Mach’nel there, but it’ll take a while for them to repair the damage. Hopefully a long time.”

“They can fix that?” Sarah asked incredulous.

“The files said they have factories inside that can make about anything, and the majority of the weapon is buried beneath the hull. They probably just broke the outer part.”

“How long?” Jenn asked.

“That’s miles of damage, so it won’t be quick.”

“What now?”

“Maintain the standoff and keep evacuating, I’d guess. Maybe the trailblazers have another plan, but I’m pretty sure that came off better for us than the V’kit’no’sat.”

“If there were people down there…”

“Those nearest the battlelines would have been the first ones evacuated to other parts of Earth. You know that.”

“I hope so. What about the troops?”

Brad’s face soured. “We probably lost some, but most would still be under the protection of the planetary shield unless they were in combat. The V’kit’no’sat won’t have fired on their own troops, but odds are we at least had some scouts down there…if not more.”

“I want out of here so bad,” Jenn said, closing her eyes.

“We all do,” Sarah echoed. “Every hour that goes by more get out. Our time is coming.”

That time didn’t come for another year, and by then the V’kit’no’sat had taken over or destroyed most of South America along with huge sections of the ocean colonies on either side. A month prior to the ships coming to Mars the swimming Dinosaurs had pushed all the way up to the Antarctica coastline where they established a foothold for the land troops to follow. A massive fight had occurred to get them that little bit of land and they had to pay a high price to take and keep it, but as of the first dropship landing in their Martian city the V’kit’no’sat were working their way out from the coastline in the long march towards the site of the Star Force-operated V’kit’no’sat pyramid that held their superweapon.

The trio rode up on another jam-packed dropship, but this time the journey was what the dropships were meant for…going up above the atmosphere and transferring their passengers to a larger ship. This one was a starship along with many others, most of which were civilian models, but the one they were taken to was a Star Force cargo ship and upon landing in one of the gigantic hangar bays they were hurried down and off the ramp with the dropship immediately taking off again, headed back down to Mars.

The same was true for hundreds of others coming and going from the hangar bay as the evacuees were herded into a series of huge doors that led further inside the ship…to the cargo bays. Their size dwarfed the hangars, with the trio walking into a room that was more than a mile high up to the ceiling and filled with portable housing modules stacked into crate mountains.

“Wow,” Sarah said, taking it all in.

“Stay together,” Brad urged as they and others were being waved forward into processing lines where they’d get their quarters assignments for the duration of the journey…which would only end up being a little more than a day after several spent loading people up. They headed in to the sun and used its massive gravity well to give their engines the push needed to travel between stars, then launched themselves off on the jumpline towards the Epsilon Eridani System, a mere 10.5 lightyears away, and the second most developed star system in the empire.

It was also a Human system, but one with an ally present and living in a gas giant. The Hycre were a very odd type of alien lifeform and not a part of Star Force, but they had been the only reason Star Force had survived when the lizard war began and even though the Human-led empire had quickly surpassed them, they still remained close allies and shared a bit of this system.

The rest of it was all Star Force and heavily industrialized. There were plenty of shipyards here churning out more drone warships along with a huge population that they were apparently going to be added to. Jenn especially had hoped they’d be going further away, but as of now there were no V’kit’no’sat in the system and a huge defense fleet waiting here for whenever they eventually came.

Breathing room at last, but there were still a whole lot of people back in the Sol that had to be evacuated…and if they came here, where would everyone go if the V’kit’no’sat followed?

Even Brad didn’t know that, but for the moment they were safely away from the war and that was what mattered most…though it wouldn’t last.

6

December 21, 3604

Epsilon Eridani System

Arrakis

As big as the Epsilon Eridani System was, it was able to handle the incoming evacuees with ease, though Duke Avril also had a head start in preparing to handle more while Sol had waited to get hit by the V’kit’no’sat again. When Jenn, Sarah, and Brad arrived in the system they were sent to a processing facility and then onto a small starship that took them out to the distant desert planet of Arrakis.

Aptly named for scifi lore, it was a huge desert world, but a cold one. It wasn’t completely colonized, with vast tracks of barren wilderness still visible from orbit, but slightly less now than of a few years ago given the massive expansion of pre-fabricated city structures. They were being built quickly, cheaply, but were solid and effective as all Star Force infrastructure was. They weren’t flashy, but when the evacuees got there the inside was almost like a normal city, just a lot more blan without all the ostentation that habitation for centuries often resulted in.

All three were given separate quarters, but arranged to have them side by side with one another. There were plenty to go around so they didn’t have to double up, but they were all level 1 quarters in order to pack as many into the quick built cities as possible. Jenn and Sarah still chose to share one though, with Brad giving them badly needed breathing room by staying in his. The other was left vacant but still assigned to Jenn, and it didn’t look like it was going to be needed by anyone else anytime soon.

Evacuees were coming in regularly to add to the population, but this was just one of many locations throughout the system that were specifically built to handle them. That said, there was a multitude of quarters spread across multiple planets that could also absorb people, so right now there was no population crunch going on, but it wasn’t until a few days ago that they learned more systems aside from Sol were being evacuated here.

There were no other attacks yet, for the V’kit’no’sat were still putting all their ships into their ongoing attack on Earth, but smaller Star Force systems along the enemy’s route to get to Earth were being slowly redirected here, prompting an ongoing discussion.

“Another group just came in,” Brad said as he walked into the girls’ quarters and found both watching the vid screen, Jenn perched on a stool and Sarah in a cushy single chair. “This time from Metti.”

“Metti now?” Sarah said with a sign. “Are they expecting every system to fall?”

“I think that’s the idea,” Brad said, leaning against the wall.

“Did you talk to any of them?” Jenn asked.

“Yeah I did. They don’t know much either, but they’re glad to be here. The defenses in Metti are pathetic compared to what Avril has built up.”

“Didn’t stop them in Sol, and that’s our capitol. You really think we can hold out here?”

“You’re forgetting all the ships we’re killing. They’ll have to bring more in to hit us here, a lot more. Then it’ll cost them huge again to take Epsilon Eridani and every other system they hit. Unless they keep bringing in constant reinforcements their own success will doom them. They’re going to run out of ships so long as we keep hammering them everywhere they go.”

“Think they’ll finish off Earth first?” Sarah wondered.

“I don’t know, but there’s a lot more in Sol than Earth for them to hack their way through.”

“So you think they’ll move us again?” Jenn asked.

“Not for a while. Most ships are probably pulling people out of Sol. When they’re freed up, yeah, I think they’ll move us again.”

“Plus everyone else already here? That’ll take even longer.”

“And where do we go?” Sarah added. “Where’s safe that we can flee to?”

“Away from the fighting. Make them keep hammering through system after system until they lose their appetite for it. Maybe force a stalemate. Their empire is huge and they could kill us all if they wanted, but how high a price are they willing to pay to do it? Maybe if we just slow them down enough, hurt them enough, they’ll be satisfied with taking Earth back and not make a serious attempt to take any more systems.”

“Star Force said they’re going to try and kill us all,” Sarah reminded him.

“I have no doubt they want to, but do they have enough ships to do it with.”

“You mean are they willing to send that many of their people to die to do it,” Jenn corrected. “Their ships have Dinosaurs on them, right?”

“Yes. Usually they’re so big they don’t get destroyed, but we can kill them and they know it now. How important is destroying us to them really? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows for sure, but I can promise you the Archons are going to make it very hard for them to finish the job and we’ve got such a large empire it will take them more than a century to do it if they really want to. And they’ll be losing ships and ground troops all the way. If they try to do it with just their navy our planetary defenses will eat them alive. They have to use the same penetrate and spread strategy, and that takes time. A lot of time.”

“Time for us to keep moving?” Sarah said, seeing the Star Force strategy there. “Has this been planned all along?”

“I would assume so. The trailblazers knew the threat, and if some Commandos knew, then all the Archons did. This war has been in the planning since the beginning by us. It’s the V’kit’no’sat that are new to it, and I get the feeling they’re not used to dealing with this much resistance.”

“Did you find a job,” Jenn asked, “or did that guy just want to talk?”

“I got a job, and if you’re willing I can use both of you.”

“Anything,” Sarah said, totally bored of just training and sitting, despite their freedom of movement to other parts of Arrakis. Playing tourist got old quick enough, and both she and Jenn wanted something constructive to do.”

“A lot of people want additional weapons and hand to hand training, but the upper level maturias are overloaded. That Critel is part of a private organization looking to fill the gap for a pittance of credits. They’re looking to make a profit but they know better than to try and gut people when maturia training is free, and they’ve just given me command of another training unit they’re starting up. I get to choose a staff, and you’re my first two picks if you want.”

“Yes,” both of them said in unison.

“Good. When’s the last time you two ate?”

“A few hours ago,” Jenn said.

“Let’s swing by the cafeteria then we’ll get to work.”

“Today?”

“There’s high demand and the quicker we can get our unit set up the better.”

“How many people?”

“1800, and we need as many staff as necessary to handle that number. I’ve been given a 100 credit a day stipend for the staff to split up as I deem necessary. I’ve opted not to take any myself, but I want both of you to.”

“Wow,” Sarah said, wide eyed. “How many staff are you going to get for that?”

“Don’t know. We’ve got recruiting to do and a long list of volunteers to sort through.”

“I’ll bet,” Jenn said, knowing that other evacuees were just as bored and frustrated as them. “Thanks.”

Brad waved off the appreciation with a flick of his hand. “Save it. You two aren’t trained beyond the basic maturia, so you’re going to have to learn as I teach you and then make sure the rest of the staff carry out my orders exactly. This is going to be about repetition and skill, and you two I need to insure the repetition while I’m handling the instruction.”

“Repetition I’m well familiar with,” Jenn said with a nod.

“Need a receptionist?” Sarah floated. “I’ve got more experience with handling people than she does.”

“That’s what I was thinking, but it’s going to be about the same thing. You’re going to handle the non-Humans.”

“I can do that,” she said, having dealt with mostly Humans but also a lot of other races visiting Earth.

“Let’s go, we’ll talk over the details as we eat.”

Jenn and Sarah raised their arms up and fist bumped, glad to finally have something to do, then hopped up out of their chairs and followed Brad out of the tiny set of quarters where they’d be spending little time going forward other than sleeping. The need for training was exploding in Epsilon Eridani more than they even realized, and their Critel owners were interested in creating as intense a program as possible, knowing that their customers all had their basic training during their maturia years so there wouldn’t be a big issue with integration.

And even a tenth or a twentieth of a credit per day fee would add up to a lot when you ended up with thousands of training units spread across rented facilities throughout the system. Profit was always a motive, but gathering profit while doing something beneficial for the empire was a double win, for Star Force had the most economic opportunities in this region of the galaxy by far, with many races beyond their borders having established ties specifically to get access to the Star Force markets.

Over the following months more people kept coming in from Sol and other places along with delayed but detailed news reports on the conquest of Earth. Star Force was making them pay for every mile they took all the way up to the Antarctic pyramid, then they stopped their advance and began fanning out into adjacent areas and slowly destroying all the cities nearby without getting within weapons range.

They did make the mistake of getting within shield range, for even once that section of the planetary defense shields were down the pyramid threw up its own V’kit’no’sat designed shield over a large section of Antarctica at extremely low altitude, nearly touching building tops in some cases. That made it hard for the Pterodactyls and other fliers, along with the Zen’zat gunships and their own small fighter craft, to move about and made the mechs all the more dangerous to them for the flyers couldn’t gain altitude to escape, confined to flying along the ground else they hit and bounce off the underside of the flat shield wall.

However, Star Force aerial craft were being given gaps in the shield that they could race through almost at will. The temporary doorways allowed them to escape pursuit over top the very thin barrier as well as fly across enemy troop formation below and drop down behind them. As a result, huge concentrations of aerial craft had gathered over Antarctica and were assisting ground troops in a very hard fought defense even before the enemy got within weapons range of the pyramid.

It was a far higher concentration of troops than Brad had seen to date, and he thought that was probably due to the fact that the shield would protect them from any run in from the V’kit’no’sat warships in orbit…and maybe even their superweapon if they’d gotten it working again. If they had they hadn’t shown it, but then again he had no idea how strong the pyramid shield was, though by the actions of the Star Force military it seemed they had confidence in it.

Heavy fighting was the daily staple in the news reports and he made time to review them each day, but the ample time he had previously was gone now. Busy as he was organizing his training unit, he spent 12 hours a day with them and another 2 for his personal training, leaving him 10 hours for sleeping and everything else, though not straight. His 12 hours were broken up into pieces, leaving him a maximum of 6 hours straight for sleeping.

The actual day cycle of the planet was 28 hours, but since everyone was indoors they kept to the Earth standard 24 hour day. If the exterior of the planet had been habitable to the point where people actually went outside they would have adjusted to it, but between the cold and thinner than comfortable atmosphere, the desert was treated almost as if it was vacuum, meaning almost everything that mattered happened indoors where people never had to even taste the outside air for the length of their entire lives if they so wished.

Despite the hectic schedule Brad made sure to keep up with what was happening on Earth, and after a long, hard fight to close on the pyramid he saw something that completely baffled his mind. The Dinosaurs were big enough already, but special units began showing up that had them truly monstrous in size, some of which massed more than 20 times normal and towered over the standard Star Force mechs.

Most of what the news reports were identifying as ‘Ultras’ were long-necked Dinosaurs, but none were Brontosaurus. They looked similar, but were actually different races. Others ultras were races that were likewise large, quadruped, and could carry a lot of equipment. All of the ultras had on full body armor head to tail, but they had additional machinery on them making them look very different from the nimble ground troops that Star Force had grown accustomed to fighting by now.

What all that equipment ended up being were shield generators, and when the V’kit’no’sat finally moved within weapons range of the pyramid the ultras led the way in a mad charge across the ruined crater where the surprise attack on the V’kit’no’sat fleet had blown apart the cityscape on top of the pyramid. That slowed their approach, but they had so many Dinosaurs assembled into four different assault lines, one each for the sides of the pyramid, that even when the ultras’ extra shields fell prior to them reaching the green/black stone the columns of enemy troops could not be stopped.

Nearby mechs and aerial craft punished them, but they barely even bothered to shoot back for the greatest threat were the point defense weapons in the pyramid that the V’kit’no’sat themselves had designed and built long ago. They knew they were going to have to take losses just to get up to the pyramid, so they weren’t going to waste time being slowed down by the Star Force mechs…not even the bigger ones that tried to block their path and which the ultras simply bashed aside with huge telekinetic fields.

Some were actually lifted off their feet and torn apart by the invisible energy fields, making it abundantly clear that the tightly packed V’kit’no’sat formation was far more deadly than expected. Brad finally realized that they were also combining their telekinetic power and lifting/tearing the same targets simultaneously, meaning any mechs within range were getting squashed like tin cans…except for certain types that seemed impervious to the invisible assaults.

The ex-Commando hadn’t known the mechs had countermeasures like that, but it made sense. His old armor had carried the same, though the idea of a person being powerful enough to tear apart a mech was more than he ever expected…but then again, those ultras were so big that whatever part of their bodies produced the telekinetic fields had to be more massive as well, and where psionics were concerned size of tissue did matter.

The charge to the pyramid happened fast compared to the fighting that had preceded it, for if Star Force had been able to delay their approach then the pyramid defenses would have killed every single one of the Dinosaurs and he assumed they knew it too, for they were fully determined to get to the lowest of the visible stair step tiers, after which they were still not safe, but some weapons now could not target them due to the angle of attack.

Others could and the carnage up close was gruesome despite the shields and armor all the V’kit’no’sat wore as they attacked the weapons batteries themselves, trying to take them out rather than shooting the armor of the pyramid. Brad saw misses hit it and do no damage, simply being absorbed by the stone.

One by one the weapons in certain areas of the miles wide pyramid were eliminated and the surviving V’kit’no’sat now had blind spots to hide within. Most of the ultras made it into those areas, though heavily wounded. A few others weren’t so lucky, being killed and blown to bits by the nearly pointblank defensive fire that was so effective there was no chance of them being revived later.

But while there were blind spots on the perimeter so long as the V’kit’no’sat held close to the pyramid, the mechs outside could move around as much as they liked shooting the wounded V’kit’no’sat where they could and hammering the others as the enemy ranks continued to thin. Wave after wave of aircraft flew in through holes in the overhead shield while the V’kit’no’sat fliers had never come within range, knowing they would be shot down so fast over the pyramid as to be useless, so right now Star Force also had air superiority and were doing everything they could to kill the Dinosaurs that were holding in the best defensive formation they could and with the ultras’ shield generators that were still functioning recharging and dropping defensive walls all the way to the ground that the mechs were hard pressed to punch through on their own.

Brad couldn’t watch it all straight through, for there wasn’t time, so he kept checking in occasionally over the following days as a hole was bored through the super hard armor exterior that was cited as being the same material as used on the enemy’s giant Mach’nel warships. As soon as the breach was large enough, pods on some of the ultras and others opened up and the Zen’zat inside came out, diving through the hole and getting inside the pyramid before the cutting resumed in order to get the breach large enough for the bigger races to enter.

7

February 3, 3605

Epsilon Eridani System

Arrakis

“Brad,” Jenn said when he walked into her quarters, “it’s starting.”

He turned to look at the vid screen and listened for a moment while reading the substories, but it didn’t take long to get the gist of what she was referring to. Earth wasn’t even conquered yet, but the V’kit’no’sat were already moving out to hit other systems. Not in any full blown invasions, but enough to disrupt traffic and hunt down any unescorted ships, evacuation or otherwise, that chose to come out from the protected planets.

“It’s a blockade. They’re trying to isolate the nearby systems.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“If they try to come into this system they’re going to get their asses kicked, but some of the others don’t have large enough fleets to do the same. They’re going to try to force a naval fight beyond planetary defenses, and if we don’t take the bait they’re going to sit at the stars and poach incoming traffic. It means we fight them on their terms or the blockade shuts down commerce.”

“And the evacuation…”

“The trailblazers won’t let that happen.”

“What are they going to do? The V’kit’no’sat keep bringing in more ships.”

“So do we, and we’ll start moving in armed convoys if necessary. Their ships are faster than ours, so unless we get a big head start they’ll run us down, but if we travel with warships they’ll have to fight on the run and that gets tricky. I’m not a naval officer, but I know standing and slugging it out is how you do the most damage. If you keep making microjumps, you’re in and out of targeting range constantly. It’s a different type of game that I’m not familiar with.”

“This is a game to you?”

“Commando slang, don’t read into it.”

“Hard not to. What if we were on one of those evacuation ships in the ‘game’ you’re saying is about to be played?”

“The trailblazers are good at winning games,” he reminded Jenn. “They’re not going to send convoys with only a chance of getting through. I’d feel fairly safe.”

“You’re alone in that.”

“Where’s Sarah?”

“She left an hour ago, not sure where. Think she might have herself a boyfriend.”

“About time.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning you’ve got me and she doesn’t. Not in all aspects, anyway.”

“About that, are you…” she began, but his attention was caught by a news update…one stating that the pyramid on Earth had finally fell to the Dinosaurs and that the remaining Star Force troops were evacuating beyond its weapons range, though reports indicated that they’d sabotaged everything internally that they could, so they expected them to be able to run without getting shot in the back.

“Damn it,” Brad said, shaking his head. “They did well to hold out that long, but there goes our superweapon and the strongest battlefort in the empire.”

“Did you expect them to hold out?”

“That was our best chance of anywhere on Earth, now the rest of the fight is going to be constant delaying withdrawals trying to bleed as many V’kit’no’sat troops as they can. It needs done, but that’s not a fun way to fight. You know you’re going to lose and are just trying to hold everything together so you don’t lose super bad.”

“Glad you got out when you did?”

“Yes and no. I’m glad I’m not fighting there now, but a part of me disagrees with that and probably always will.”

“Once a Commando, always a Commando?”

“You don’t fight as many battles as I have and just turn it off. Those skills, instincts, and experiences are still a part of me. I can’t unlearn it, nor would I want to, but fighting these V’kit’no’sat has to be a whole lot harder than the lizards and I can only imagine what that’s like,” he said, visibly grimacing. “And getting your ass kicked isn’t a nice way to learn.”

“How long do you think Earth has left?”

“If it keeps going like it is, years, but if they bring in a lot more ground troops that number gets cut down considerably. Then there’s all the other planets in Sol. It’s not going to completely fall for a long time so long as they have naval support. If that dries up then everyone there is going to die, civilian and warrior alike.”

“It’s all about naval, isn’t it?”

“Didn’t they teach you that in the maturia?” Brad wondered, having been born long before she did and not knowing what might have changed over the years.

“Yes, but it never really sunk in until lately how bad they have us outmatched. If we run out of drones it becomes a slaughter?”

“A delayed slaughter for planets with heavy defenses, but without naval cover there’s no way to evacuate anyone and once the enemy sizes up your capabilities it’s just a matter of waiting for the necessary troop levels to arrive and overwhelm you. Without the ability to change your forces’ status, defensive positions get predictably whittled down.”

“Is there anything that we can do? I mean Star Force, not you and me.”

“Keep the game changing and not let them know what we have. Make them either come in with overwhelming numbers, the kind of which they haven’t shown in their reinforcement streams, or risk picking a fight with unknown foes that they might end up losing. If they have enough to do the former its game over. If they risk a closer margin of victory then we have a chance to rack up some more wins, but the attrition is going to eat away at both sides. We’ve got the Kiritak, Bsidd, and Paladin feeding us resources in an impressive way, but I can’t even imagine what industrial machine the V’kit’no’sat have operating back in their territory.”

“What’s a Paladin?”

“The blue lizards on our side.”

“Blue? I thought they were all green.”

“The ones we breed are blue, the ones that were captured are green. Beyond that I don’t know much, aside from the fact that they can churn out supplies almost as fast as the Kiritak.”

“If you say so. I never paid attention to the logistics of the empire.”

“I’m not an administrator either, but when it involves getting more weapons and ships a warrior likes to know where they’re coming from.”

“Do you think the lizards will start hitting us again? I mean, after the Dinosaurs weaken us.”

“Are we going to have to fight two wars? It’s possible, but we’re so beyond the lizards now that even weakened they wouldn’t be very effective and the border hasn’t seen any activity in a long time.”

“I heard a rumor a few days ago that the reason we didn’t chase the lizards further coreward was because we were afraid of finding the V’kit’no’sat. Do you think some ship went too far and gave us away?”

“That was the reason we didn’t push further in, but it’s not like we didn’t have plenty of lizard systems rimward to take. Even when we had an advantage that fighting was nasty. The jerks didn’t know the meaning of the word surrender. Rumor has it the trailblazers had to teach it to a mastermind before it finally saw the light in time to avoid getting killed.”

“What?”

“A lizard General, more or less, changed sides and brought his army over with him. That’s why we have lizards in Star Force now. All the rest this side of the border died fighting despite us offering them a surrender option each and every time we fought. I never once encountered or heard of one who accepted. They always fought to the death and I don’t expect the V’kit’no’sat to be any different…except that they’re the ones winning and we’re losing.”

“Is surrender an option for us?” she asked tenderly, then shrugged in apology. “Not that I’m suggesting it.”

“We don’t have permission to live according to their rules. We’re offspring of Zen’zat. Have you not figured out what that means yet?”

“You’re saying that even if we surrendered to them they’d still kill us? Every last one?”

“Yep.”

“That makes no sense. Why hold us accountable for what someone else did if we were willing to do whatever they wanted us to do now? Why fight and lose more of their ships if a surrender was offered? Are you sure they wouldn’t at least consider it?”

“As a ruse, maybe. But we have to die.”

“And our dying is more important than their troops living?”

“I don’t know how they think, but you’ve seen the images of what they did on the Ribbon?” he asked, referring to a giant space station orbiting Titan that was invaded during the first attack on the Solar System before they tried to go after Earth.

“Everyone saw that,” she said, referring to the dismemberments and other gruesome forms of assassination they used against the civilians they caught.

“Don’t expect any different treatment if you tried to surrender. They want us all dead.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Did they make any demands when they got here? Did they demand that we submit to them, turn over our weapons, yadda, yadda, yadda?”

“I didn’t hear about any of that on the news.”

“Because it didn’t happen. They’re here as exterminators and we are not their equals. We are illegitimate offspring that have to be exterminated. It isn’t very complicated. We simply aren’t allowed to exist and they’re here to remedy the error.”

Jenn put her head in her hands. “There has to be some way. Something more than this constant fighting and evacuation.”

“Dying.”

“You’re doing a wonderful job of cheering me up.”

“I wasn’t trying. You’re usually upbeat enough that you bounce back on your own whenever you get stressed out.”

“Do I? Doesn’t feel like it.”

“One of the things that attracted me to you,” he said, glancing back at the vid screen and seeing close ups of the various V’kit’no’sat races surrounding the pyramid with multiple smaller ships landed on the stair step tiers and flocks of Pterodactyls flying overhead almost as if they were gloating that they’d just taken it back.

“What’s the long term play here, Brad? We just keep running…you and I?”

“And Sarah,” he added.

“That’s not what I mean. Are we going to be evacuees forever?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Does Star Force still need younglings?”

Brad looked at her closely, trying to judge her emotions from subtle cues that he’d learn to pick up on long before she’d ever been born.

“You mean should we be creating more population when we’re having trouble evacuating everyone we have now. You want to start living rather than running.”

“Exactly. I don’t mind the small quarters and temporary structures, but are we here to move on again or are we here for keeps?”

“I don’t think anything is at ‘keeps’ stage right now, but I don’t think they’ll be coming here until they finish in Sol and that will take years.”

“So am I wrong to want to add another to the ranks or would that actually hurt Star Force, meaning someone would have to be left behind that otherwise could get out?”

“Have you asked?”

“Asked?” she said, frowning. “Asked who?”

“Star Force,” he said, walking over a couple steps and started to touch the vid screen, altering the settings into an interactive terminal. “They have active lists to request such things, and the state of reproduction is always one of them.”

“The what?”

“Hold on a sec and I’ll show you,” he said, sifting through the depth of the Star Force information net, but fortunately he knew what to look for. “Here we go. Epsilon Eridani reproduction quotas…and quotas for Arrakis.”

“There are quotas?” Jenn said, standing up and walking beside him so she could see for herself.

“Recommendations. If we’re overpopulated it’s to let people know to stop getting knocked up, and vice versa when we need more population. Right now we’re…wait, that can’t be right. It’s saying we’re level 5 green, both for the system and the planet.”

“Green meaning?”

“Green means more population desired, yellow means our trend is neutral, and red means we’re overpopulated and the babymakers need to take a chill pill,” he said, throwing a side glance at her. “Green 5 is as high as it goes, but that makes no sense with all the extra population being crowded in here.”

“What are you doing?”

“Checking population statistics,” he said, digging into other databases and finding what he expected. “Continued increase in population for the star system, now at 157% of pre-invasion levels. Damn that’s a lot of people,” he said, seeing the 2.7 trillion mark that also included the Hycre planet, but its population was estimated at only 4 billion.

“So why do we need more?”

“I don’t know, but this isn’t a mistake. They’re wanting as many infants as possible.”

“Do you think we’re going to be here at least another year?”

“I think that’s a safe bet, but I wouldn’t say for sure. The V’kit’no’sat are determining a lot by how many ships they decide to send.”

“All things considered, do you expect us to be here a year from now?”

“Yes.”

“Do you expect the V’kit’no’sat to be here a year from now?”

“No.”

“Then would you mind assisting me with this? My roommate is no help,” she said with a coy smile.

“How much help do you need?” he said, with his eyes tracing her outline from head to toe and back again.

“Let’s play it safe and make a week of it. Think you can handle that?”

“Once a day?”

“I’ve had some trouble in the past, and repetition seems to be the key.”

“As you wish,” he said, tugging her by the waist towards the exterior door, “but my place so Sarah doesn’t cut in. I don’t think I have enough stamina for both of you.”

Jenn lightly jabbed him in the abdomen, then he grabbed her by the hand and pulled her out of the tiny set of quarters and over to his where they started the process of adding another Human to the Star Force population.

8

November 7, 3605

Epsilon Eridani System

Arrakis

“Ugh, what’s taking her so long?” Sarah complained to Brad as they both sat outside the room where Jenn was giving birth.

“How long does it normally take?”

“For her, annoyingly quick. I’m the one that spent hours in labor.”

“Not doing that again?” Brad guessed.

“Twice was enough, thank you. My part in maintaining the population. Two per female is a neutral growth rate.”

“Is that why you did it?”

“Honestly, the first time was an accident…or to be honest more like carelessness. The second time was intentional, but neither had anything to do with the population. I’m just trying to make conversation so this goes faster.”

“We’re sitting here talking. Jenn’s the one that has all the difficulty.”

“Doesn’t feel like it. This is taking forev…” she said as the door suddenly opened and a medtech stepped out, waving a hand.

“All clear, you can come in now.”

“Finally!” Sarah half yelled, storming in faster than Brad and getting to Jenn’s side as soon as possible. She sat down on a stool next to the thin medtable on top of which Jenn was laying and put a hand on her shoulder, waking her up. “Hey, you ok?”

“I’ve been better. Stupid baby was huge, but I got him out. Commando genes I guess.”

“I’d apologize for that,” Brad said, grabbing another stool and perching next to Sarah as he looked across to the far side where there was a smooth pod in which the baby was now cradled with all manner of nurturing technology within, “but we don’t get any genetic alteration. Tired or sore?”

“Tired. They had to use a regenerator to fix some stretch damage he busted up on the way out, so there’s no more pain, but I’m tired as hell.”

“Number 7,” Sarah said, looking at the baby inside the clear bubble top as it squirmed around a bit. “Was it worth it?”

“Ask me tomorrow.”

“How long before you can leave?” Brad asked.

“I’m already cleaned up, but they said I can stay as long as I need to recover my strength. The little guy goes in an hour though, so if you want to have a chat with him…”

“There’s nothing I could say that he’d understand,” Brad said, standing up and walking over to the pod where the new Human was receiving a mix of atmospheric and patch nutrients to ease his transition into the galaxy now that he was off Jenn’s life support. “No hair?”

“Some do, some don’t. It’ll grow later,” she said with a yawn. “Hard to believe we started out this way, isn’t it?”

“My earliest memories are from age 4.”

“I don’t remember anything prior to 6.”

“I do,” Sarah differed. “I remember some of the first obstacle courses. The kind we get at 2.”

“You remember being 2?” Brad asked.

“Not much, but a little.”

“A question,” Brad said, looking in the direction of one of two medtechs across the large room sitting at a work station.

“Shoot,” she said, looking at him.

“Do you know why the reproduction quotas are green 5?”

“Because we’re emptying the maturias. All the older younglings are already evacuated and the staff that handles them are either being sent with them or soon will be. There are a couple of Galactica-class ships set up to operate as mobile maturias for the transit, so when they come in and pick up some of the infants we have more slots available. No reason not to use them as long as the system is secure, which is why there’s a population boom request posted. We’re expected to lose a lot of people in this war, so the more we can get started in the maturias now the better.”

“How long before he goes?” Brad said, pointing to his son.

“I don’t know. Priority is going to the older ones, but I think about 40% of the infants have already been taken, hence the open slots. As many people as we have here, they can’t keep up with the demand.”

“Are they trying?” Sarah wondered.

“Oh yeah. Birth rates have skyrocketed. We’re quite busy.”

“Just Humans or everyone else?”

“I don’t know about other systems, but we’re mostly Human here. Second highest are Bsidd, and they don’t reproduce.”

“What do you mean they don’t reproduce?” Jenn asked.

“They have queens that lay eggs. Most of the Bsidd you see can’t reproduce.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I did,” Sarah said, raising an eyebrow at Jenn.

“How many eggs?”

“They’re tiny, so thousands, even millions if they want to work at it. They develop outside their body for the most part, which is why they can reproduce so much faster than Humans.”

“So not fair,” Jenn said, leaning her head back against the pillow.

“Kiritas are similar, but with bigger eggs, except they don’t have queens. Their entire population can reproduce, which was a major problem before they joined Star Force. Most people don’t realize it, but overpopulation can kill civilizations. The quota recommendations are one tool to help control that.”

“Star Force rescued the Kiritas, didn’t they?” Sarah asked, trying to remember back to obscure maturia information given to them. All of it and more was available on the public databases, but one had to actively look for it there and she’d never had an interest in the subject matter before.

“The story goes that the Kiritas sought out Star Force and asked for their help in exchange for whatever they wanted. Their homeworld was dying of overpopulation, everyone was starving and whole sections of Kirit had broken down into anarchy. It was a very ugly situation that took a long time to remedy, because back then Star Force was tiny. Today we’d squash a problem like that in a year tops.”

“Brad, can I bother you for a lift back to my quarters. My legs are trash right now.”

“You can rest here as long as you like,” the medtech repeated.

“I know, but this little guy and me are heading different ways and there’s no reason to hold either of us up. Brad?”

“Happy to,” he said, getting close enough to her that she could wrap her arms around his neck, then he reached underneath her body and picked her up easily as she nearly melted in his grasp with her head resting against his neck. He could feel her fatigue and knew from personal experience that even the slightest regenerator use left one feeling drained if it wasn’t attached to a supply unit, for it would cannibalize tiny bits of tissue from the rest of your body to repair the damaged areas.

“If that’s what you want,” the medtech said, getting up and walking over to them. “Thanks for bringing him this far. We’ll see him on safely from here. Do you want him to…”

“No identification,” Jenn said, knowing what he was about to ask. “Keep it anonymous.”

“Very well. You’ll be able to change your mind over the next month if you wish and there will be an easy link to your comm profile. After that the birth record will autodelete.”

“Not my first time,” Jenn said sleepily. “Let’s go, Brad. I’m trusting you not to drop me.”

“Not a chance,” he said, nodding at the medtech as he carried her out of the room and intended to take her all the way back to their quarters in such a manner, despite that being better than a 30 minute journey as Sarah lagged behind a bit.

“How bad was it for her?” she asked after they were out of sight.

“Bad enough we almost had to intervene. A quarter of an inch less and we would have.”

“Do you know why the baby was so big?”

“For sure, no, but it was probably a laggy birth switch. There are a lot of parameters the body uses to determine the time, and if some of those are suppressed they have to have the pressure on them build up until the body can’t ignore them, and the longer the time goes on the bigger the baby gets.”

“What would you have done if it was bigger?”

The medtech cringed. “Cut it a bigger opening to get him out.”

Sarah bit her hand, not liking that idea one bit. “Ouch.”

“She wouldn’t have felt it, but that kind of thing is always rough on the body.”

“Ya think?” she said, walking away then belatedly turning her head back. “Thanks.”

“Make sure she eats plenty the next 24 hours.”

“I will.”

Four days later and Jenn still wasn’t back to normal, but the fatigue had diminished enough for her to do some light running…which then replaced it with another type of fatigue, but she knew that sitting on her ass for weeks would be a bad idea and the sooner she got to doing at least a little training the faster she would recover. The regenerator worked wonders, but it couldn’t give you fitness, only rebuild missing parts. It was up to her to strengthen those parts and get her mojo back, and while she expected to have plenty of time to work on that now that she’d temporarily quit her job for the latter stages of her pregnancy, fate conspired to throw another wrinkle into her life.

“What is this about?” she asked when Sarah showed her the comm message they’d both received.

“An evacuation ship is taking everyone from this city further away from the fighting…if we want to leave. If not we’ll be relocated to Corneria individually,” she said, referencing the most developed planet in the system. “I guess they want to clear out this area so they can house more people coming in from Earth.”

“Why not just use the ship to go get them?” she said, frowning as she read through the message.

“I…actually that’s a good question. Maybe it’s a ship they don’t want getting that close to the fighting?”

“Or maybe Epsilon Eridani is getting too full to take anyone else. If it was, they’d have to send people further away and that would mean ships couldn’t make as many trips.”

“Damn, you’re probably right. So they drop them off here because it’s closest, then…”

“Then they are expecting this system to fall eventually.”

“Do we go or stay?” Sarah asked.

“Is Brad on the list?”

“I assume so. It said the entire city.”

“If he is, then we go. If not, I’m staying with him.”

“And me with you. They don’t say where the ship is going though.”

“Does it matter? The further away from the damn Dinosaurs the better. How long before we have to decide?”

“9 hours and 43 minutes.”

“Shit. I’ve got to find Brad. Why the hell didn’t they give us more warning?” she said, running out their quarters’ door as her legs protested mildly, but Jenn ignored them as she hurried to get to the makeshift training center where she knew he’d be.

13 hours later the three of them were boarding a dropship with their standard one duffle each containing clothes and a few personal items, but this time they’d been instructed to take extra clothing. That had been odd, for Star Force always had enough to go around no matter what planet they were on and that little request worried Sarah more than it did Jenn.

When they got onboard the ship they suddenly realized why, seeing that the crew of the cargo ship were mostly Kiritas and the same prefab habitat buildings were set up in the massive bays like they’d ridden in to get here from Earth, but this trip was going to take far longer as they realized their destination was not a single system over. Rather, they were being taken all the way across Star Force territory to the Rim Region where Director Davis had been busy expanding the empire into newly acquired areas when the invasion began.

He hadn’t returned as far as Sarah knew, and Brad had said he probably wouldn’t. The highest ranking Monarch wasn’t one to go to the battlefront, but rather to call the shots from behind the scenes and keep producing as many warships and supplies as possible to supply the trailblazers, for they were the ones going to be leading this war. Davis might have been the one to create Star Force long ago, but he wasn’t the military mastermind that the Archons were.

But organizing evacuations was right in his sweetspot, so the fact that they were being hauled all the way out there reassured Sarah more than anything. Had they been moved to another system nearby it would have been an improvement, but it also would have suggested that they would have to keep getting bumped over and over again as the war progressed and the V’kit’no’sat hit more systems. That would put them in a growing disadvantage as the evacuation population grew and grew until they’d no longer have enough ships to move everyone out.

But if they started moving some of them all the way to the end of the line that would ease that burden, and after talking with a lot of other people onboard the cargo ship it was the mutual consensus that Davis, or whatever Monarch was calling the shots for their ship, was playing the long game here by getting them fully away from the fighting to where they could reintegrate into the empire rather than being perpetual guests.

It took weeks to get out of the Human Core Region and through Bsidd territory, then even more time to get to what was known as Grid Point Stargate. Sarah had seen pictures of it before, but when they actually arrived and saw it displayed in all its glory very few onboard the cargo ship could keep from being wide eyed.

The system they arrived at was empty save for a few defense stations and patrols, but the cargo ship had made a very slow jump away from it to a point nearby that had its own gravity field equivalent to that of a planet…but it wasn’t a planet. The cargo ship braked its momentum against the gravity field produced from the mass of the Grid Point itself, and that fact blew Sarah’s mind away.

It wasn’t a sphere, but rather a thick column that had two large discs on either end and pointed the same direction…away from the nearby star system and off into deep space.

And each of those discs were over 11,000 miles in diameter, with the entire construct measuring over 30,000 miles long.

“How did anyone ever build that?” Jenn asked as they watched a vid screen from inside their temporary quarters, for they wouldn’t be getting off here, merely passing through.

“A little each day for a very long time,” Brad said, marveling at it as well, “but this isn’t Star Force’s work. We acquired it from The Nexus.”

“I know, but how in the world did they build it?” she asked, referencing the much larger civilization rimward of Star Force territory whom they were loose allies with. Not enough for them to come help fight the V’kit’no’sat, but enough to have integrated a portion of their economies and travel lanes. In fact, some of the members of The Nexus had left and joined Star Force, which is what had given Davis the new Rim Region to begin with. That exchange had left relations a bit frosty, but apparently not too much because the Star Force Director had managed to negotiate the transfer of one of their Grid Points all the way out here to more fully link Star Force territory with The Nexus.

That was where this giant space station had come from, taken from a Nexus member race and transported out here the slow way, but now that it was set up and linked in it provided a rapid transit ‘highway’ out to Grid Point Annsa, which was now also Star Force property and had come with the annexation of the H’kar, whose territory marked the inner border of the new Star Force Rim Region.

Grid Point Annsa then linked to others, with the line traveling out of Star Force territory and into the huge network of magnetic drive slingshots that connected The Nexus civilization. Years of travel by gravity drive hopping from one system to another were reduced down to months or even weeks in some cases, binding the huge alliance together and now giving them access to Star Force territory, with the flow of commerce apparently not having been affected by the invasion of Earth, for the ‘smaller’ space stations surrounding the construct were cities in and of themselves, making this location essentially its own system with a population in the hundreds of billions.

Their cargo ship had to wait in line for more than a week before a carrier ship was available, then the 24 mile long cargo ship flew inside the 278 mile long carrier and docked along with many other vessels, all of whom had to pay hefty fees for the lift, but it was still more economical than traveling the slow way and generated a huge amount of revenue for the Grid Point, but since Star Force owned this particular carrier their ships got to ride for free, though they still had to be booked.

When the carrier was full of evacuation ships, a few civilian ones, and a pair of Albos warships, it moved over in front of one of the giant discs and aligned itself perfectly inside the massive magnetic field the construct produced even as another ship shot in to an insanely fast deceleration against the other disc, braking against its field the same way the outgoing carrier was about to propel itself using the magnetic drives the craft were built with.

Stars also produced magnetic fields, which offered far more pushing power than gravity fields, but stars had fields that were constantly in flux and should you try an interstellar jump on them you’d end up careening off course and being doomed to drift through the galaxy until you ran out of supplies or luck had it for you to come within proximity of another star and manage to snag hold of it. Given the vastness of space that probability was low, meaning that no one in their right mind would try a mag jump off a star, thus the technology wasn’t used.

But the Grid Point constructs created stable magnetic fields, allowing them to be used for jumps and why special carrier ships had to be built with the mag drives that allowed their outgoing carrier to accelerate so fast that the Grid Point disappeared in the blink of an eye…then they were coasting through space far faster than even most black hole gravity jumps would allow and heading across the vastness of Star Force territory towards the H’kar and the Rim Region, somewhere in which they’d be making a new home.

9

March 19, 3606

Uyit System (Rim Region)

Orrpwer (Tolsoi capitol)

Sarah and Jenn were in their shared quarters when a comm prompt sounded. It was a small tone that left a blinking light in the corner of the vid screen so they’d find it later if they weren’t there at the time. Sarah got up off her stool and touched the light, bringing up the text messages to read, for both she and Jenn had received what looked like duplicate notices from Star Force.

“What is it?”

“Moving again,” Sarah said with a frown, for they’d assumed this was the end of the line and had mentally started to adjust to living here with the planet full of monkeys…or at least that’s what the Tolsoi looked like to her. They were a more recent addition to Star Force and native to the Rim Region, having had a huge civilization of their own that had since been incorporated into the empire by their choice, unlike several others that had been misbehaving and got absorbed rather than annihilated when Star Force intervened and kicked their asses.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jenn said, bolting up out of her chair and over to the vid screen.

“Wait, it says this one is special. Undisclosed location.”

“Meaning what?”

“It says we’re welcome to stay on Tolsoi or we can join a select group of evacuees and travel to a planet off the Star Force maps. One the V’kit’no’sat also don’t know exists,” Sarah read with an eyebrow rising at the next caveat, “but it’ll be a one way trip, because they can’t have people coming back and spreading word about where it is.”

Jenn bit her lip as she and her sister locked eyes.

“That’s about as safe as we can get,” Sarah finally floated. “They can’t kill us if they can’t find us.”

“Yeah. That does sound pretty good, but if they’re worried about the V’kit’no’sat getting to us all the way out here that doesn’t given me a lot of confidence.”

“If we go it’ll probably open up more room here for other people from the warzone.”

“Makes sense. Does it say how many people can go?”

Sarah scanned through the short message again. “Nope.”

“I wonder if Brad got an invite.”

“We came in together, so probably. It says we have two months to decide, so no rush.”

“I wonder where this planet is. Probably further rimward. It’s gotta be built already or they wouldn’t be taking people, right?”

“I would think so. If it’s a work in progress they wouldn’t want us. They’d want construction people.”

“What do you think?” Jenn asked.

“If Brad’s going, then yeah. Let’s disappear and start over.”

“Even if it’s a little rough?”

“Star Force builds fast.”

“Yeah we do. But now I’m worried they won’t ask Brad to go.”

“Why?”

“If they’re getting people without combat skills out first.”

“Hmmn,” Sarah said, thinking that over. “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

“He’s probably training right now.”

“We can interrupt him for this.”

“You interrupt him, I’ll watch,” Jenn said, half joking.

“Ok I will,” she said, walking out of their quarters.

Jenn cringed, then reluctantly followed her. Brad had told her that Commandos really hated being interrupted during training.

They found him in one of the nearby gymnasiums, but rather than running or calisthenics drills, Brad was in a sparring match with a Tolsoi and both were using long swords held at the midsection. They didn’t have any cutting edges to them, just rounded sticks more or less, by the two were going at it at a speed Jenn had never seen Brad move before. The Tolsoi stood shorter than the Human, coming up to about his shoulders, but he was bouncing around so much it was hard to tell as they crossed swords and occasionally threw in a shoulder or knee ram, knocking each other around as the monkey-like race proved to have greater agility…and especially jumping power.

Several times the girls saw him somersault over top of Brad’s head, but after he’d done it several times the Human caught him midair with a sword strike that batted the Tolsoi down to the ground with a chest hit.

But Brad didn’t stop there, he immediately attacked him again as his opponent tried to roll away, but a couple more hits pinned him down enough for a heavy Human foot to land on his fury tail.

The Tolsoi shrieked, but couldn’t move from his pinned position as Brad’s rounded sword tip came down and hovered over his head…then he stepped off his tail and the two got some space, apparently with their sparring match concluded as many more Tolsoi were looking at the pair from around the ring.

Brad noticed the girls in the distance, for there were very few Humans in here, and waved them over. Jenn poked Sarah in the back of the ribs so she’d walk first, then followed half hiding behind her all the way up to the former Commando.

“Would you like a try at me?” he scoffed, looking at Sarah.

“Ah, no. That’s not a good idea.”

“How about two on one?” Brad said deadpan, though Jenn could tell he was actually joking.

“You mad?”

“No,” he told her, waving Jenn out from behind Sarah. “I just got finished instructed Vardolon on how he needs to keep his tail tucked when he’s on the ground. It helps them with balance on their feet, but if someone can get a hold of it they’re in a bad position, which is why their combat armor has the option of locking it down.”

“We lose agility that way,” the Tolsoi said with a peculiar accent, but still recognizable English that was the Star Force standard language that all races in the empire learned, save for the few that didn’t have the necessary vocal chords to speak it, though they had mechanical translation devices to overcome that disadvantage. “We need to move with our tails free.”

“Then you have to learn to protect them,” Brad insisted.

“So the Archons have told us, but there are few Humans out here to train with and no Tolsoi would grab another’s tail so callously. It hurts too much.”

“Better I lightly hurt you so you can learn before someone less caring really yanks on it.”

“Remind me to thank you after the pain subsides,” the monkey-like fighter said, with Brad’s hand lightly pushing him away with a brush of the shoulders.

“You’re welcome in advance. Now, before I find my next victim, what did you two need?”

“We got a message about another evacuation,” Sarah said plainly. “We wanted to know if you did.”

“Not that I’m aware. An evacuation to where? I thought this was the end of the line.”

“It just arrived by comm,” Jenn explained. “We both got it at the same time and it’s a request more than an order. It says we’ll be taken to an unmapped planet but won’t be able to come back.”

“A planet not on the Star Force maps,” Sarah corrected. “So the Dinosaurs won’t know where to look.”

“Interesting,” Brad said with a frown. “A one way trip?”

“Seems like it. We’ve got a couple months to decide, but we wanted to run it by you. If you’re not going we’re not.”

“You said the message just came in?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll check when I get back, but that’s pretty much a no brainer. If the Archons have a planet off the grid for evacuees to get to, that’s where you need to go.”

“We?” Jenn asked, not liking his wording there.

“Depends whether or not I got the invite.”

“We’re not going without you.”

“I’ll be back in two hours. Can we hold this discussion until then?”

“Yeah,” Sarah said with a casual wave of her hand. “Get back to your sparring. Jenn was impressed.”

Jenn gave her an annoyed look, but didn’t disagree.

“Alright, clear the ring. Who’s next?” Brad asked, turning his attention back to the Tolsoi.

The one he’d just been fighting with passed his sword to the next to go, then whispered the words, “Keep your tail tucked.”

Sarah and Jenn backed up enough to give them room, then watched for a few more minutes that ended up turning into the full two hours. They’d never seen Brad spar like this and were thoroughly intrigued all the way up until they finally finished, with him getting knocked down a few times at the end due to fatigue, but it was clear that he was far better suited to this than the Tolsoi.

“You’re drenched,” Jenn said, keeping a few feet away from his sweat soaked clothes.

“So I am. You impressed yet?” he asked Sarah, who smiled with a little blush showing.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Come on. I’ll get cleaned up and we can get something to eat, then we can discuss whatever this is going to be.”

An hour later they were sitting in the cafeteria on a 4-person table with one chair left empty as they talked. Brad had also received the invite, for which Jenn was very relieved. They speculated as to where they were going and who would be there, but ultimately they had no information nor did anyone else they discussed the matter with over the next two months. After that they had another 3 week wait until their ship arrived and was declared, with them realizing that they were going to be transported on one of the Galactica-class starships that could hold over 140 million people each.

There was only one in orbit and it had just arrived two days ago, with dropships heading up to it immediately as they began the long loading process a few dozen people at a time in most cases, though some larger transports were also being used that could take several hundred, but getting the ship full wasn’t something that would happen overnight. The fact that there wasn’t any unloading suggested that the last occupants had stayed at the mystery planet, possibly having been taken from elsewhere because this was the first time anyone had seen a Galactica in orbit as far as they could determine by talking with others and perusing the communal information boards.

The starship dwarfed everything else in orbit, even the giant Sentinel-class defense platforms that had caused the V’kit’no’sat so much damage when they’d attacked Sol…save for the fact that the Mach’nel’s superweapon had eventually destroyed most of them due to its greater range. If their regular ships showed up all the way out here the Sentinels were going to be hard for them take down, for they were just as big as the V’kit’no’sat ships, only without internal living space. They were drones as well, with no one onboard and controlled remotely, making them pound for pound more deadly and a major obstacle to be removed by any invading enemy…and Star Force had many out here, just none as powerful as the Dinosaurs.

When the trio got to the boarding area they had to wait for several hours before they got to check-in, which was a wide area with multiple terminals that led to the dropships a few hundred meters in the distance that were constantly landing, loading, and taking off again in rapid succession in order to fill the giant starship as fast as possible.

Sarah walked out a few steps ahead of Brad and Jenn and got to the desk-like terminal first, then gave the attendant there all their names as Brad slowed to a stop and let the girls get a step ahead of him.

“I’m sorry, I’ve only got the two of you listed,” the attendant said with a frown. “Jenn and Sarah Stuzi. There’s no Brad Minnen at all on our lists, regardless of birthdate.”

The two girls spun around and looked at him horrified as he set his duffle down on the ground and walked up to them, giving the attendant an apologetic look.

“That’s right, there’s not. I turned down the invite.”

“What the hell?” Jenn said angrily, glaring at him only slightly more harsh than Sarah was.

“You wouldn’t have gone without me.”

“I’m not going without you,” she said firmly, picking up her duffle but Brad grabbed it and held her in place.

“You are going. Both of you. Wherever this ship is headed you’ll be safe there because no one knows where it is and no one can come back to tell anyone about it. It’s where you need to be.”

“So do you,” Jenn said defiantly.

“Come over here, both of you,” he said, dragging Jenn and his duffle away from the attendant so she could process the next people in line.

“What in the galaxy are you thinking?” Jenn said, lowering her voice a bit, but anyone nearby could still hear and she didn’t care if they did. She just wanted to avoid outright yelling and was a hair away from that as it was.

“This is where we go our separate ways, Jenn. I didn’t tell you earlier because you might have stayed with me. If you did I would have looked out for you, but by getting on that dropship I’ll have succeeded in keeping you safe. You’ll be out of harm’s way and that’s what matters. Both of you,” he said, glancing at Sarah. “You’ve been family the past few years and I have no regrets, but your future lies on that mystery planet. Mine does not.”

“And why not?”

“Because if I go there I can’t come back, and when I heard that I realized I had never wanted to run. Part of me was always wanting to get in the fight, but I had you two to look after so that took priority. I’m accomplishing that mission here and now, and you can hate me for it if you want, but once you get on that dropship you’ll be safe…so you’re getting on, now.”

“That’s my decision,” Jenn said, a tear forming in her left eye.

“And it’s my decision what I do as well. I’m not staying in the Rim Region. I’m going back.”

Sarah covered her mouth in shock, but Jenn simply sagged and started crying. Part of her had always suspected, but she’d never really given it much thought.

“I love you,” he said sincerely, “but you won’t be seeing me again regardless of what happens. You two,” he said, looking at Sarah, “take care of each other and survive this. I don’t know what the future holds for Star Force, but I’m a warrior and I belong in the fight. I never really was a civilian. In retrospect I just needed a long vacation, the last bit of which you’ve made very rejuvenating. I thank you for that.”

“Our 5 years aren’t up,” she said, almost pleading.

“I’ll accept responsibility for that and sever the seal. There’s no reason for you to wait up on me. I won’t be coming to wherever you’re going, so I want you to get on that dropship and start thinking ahead while remembering us as a good few years and an important part of your life, because that’s what it is for me. It would have lasted longer except for the V’kit’no’sat, but such things we can’t control. I’m glad to have known you…both…but we have to part ways here and now and I’d like to do that without fighting. You’ve been good for me, Jenn, but I have to do this and where I’m going you can’t follow. So be safe, please, for yourself and Sarah, but also so I don’t have to worry about you.”

“Damn you,” she said in a whisper, lightly punching him in his tight chest. “Why do you have to be so…”

“Heroic,” Sarah finished for her.

“Yeah…that. She always told me you were too good for me.”

“Wrong,” Brad corrected. “I chose you for a reason.”

“And that reason doesn’t still exist?”

“The part of my life that you fit into is coming to an end. You are still worthy. Don’t let her or any other twit convince you otherwise.”

“Hey,” Sarah mildly objected.

“You really have to do this, don’t you?”

“It’s who I am, Jenn.”

“I know,” she said, leaning her forehead against his neck. “I know.”

Brad hugged her warmly, then looked down at her thin, flowing hair. “I’ll always love you, but don’t tie your heart to me. I’m letting you go so you will be safe and free to live. Let me go too and make this a beginning rather than an end.”

“But you’re so hot…” she said sadly, and in that moment he knew that she’d be alright.

“You’re not bad yourself,” he said, pulling her face up and kissing her one last time. “Stay in shape.”

“Count on it,” she said, summoning up the courage to let him go, because she knew there was no way to hold him here and he deserved better than to have her try. “Thanks for the memories.”

“I never told you this, but after the lizard war a part of me was tore up inside from all the gore. It never really healed until I found you. Now I’m whole again. Thank you for that and the memories.”

“She may hate me for this now, but she’ll get over it,” Sarah said, walking up to Brad. “I have to at least once.”

Sarah grabbed and kissed him long and hard, then backed away glad that he hadn’t stopped her.

“Grab your duffles and get going. Start your future in the next few steps with no regrets. Our time was temporary, but you two should always stick together. Don’t change that now or ever. I envy you that.”

“Survive,” Jenn told him as she and Sarah turned and walked back over to the attendant, with the people in line letting them cut back in.

Brad stood in place, watching them quickly get processed and cleared for departure, and to their credit they didn’t turn back. They did as he had asked, moving forward rather than clinging to the past, though he did just long enough to see them walk up the boarding ramp into the dropship and then waited for it to seal up and lift off. Only then did he let Jenn go in mind as well.

“I’ll try to survive,” he whispered where no one else could hear, “but that isn’t the top priority. Keeping you and everyone else like you alive is.”

Brad picked up his duffle and walked back the way he’d come, then headed off through the city, not back to his quarters, and after a few hours arrived at a Star Force recruitment station staffed primarily by Tolsoi, but that didn’t matter. They were all part of the same empire and this station functioned the same as all the rest no matter what planet they were on.

He walked up to another attendant with his duffle slung over his shoulder and looked down at the smaller monkey.

“Hello, Human. What can I do for you today?”

“My name is Brad Minnen, birthdate July, 3170,” he said as the attendant immediately started typing in his information to look up his file. “I’m a former Commando and I’m here to reenlist…”

10

February 9, 3607

Shangri-La System (Cygnus Arm)

Inner Zone

It had taken nearly a year to get here, but Sarah and Jenn had finally arrived at their destination system. They didn’t know where it was exactly, for all they were told was that it was out in the Cygnus Arm of the galaxy and on the far side of The Nexus. That meant they were near to the edge of the galaxy and off the maps of even the biggest races and alliances. No one knew for sure what was out here, and that meant they were effectively lost in the wilderness and virtually impossible to find by the V’kit’no’sat or others so long as no trail was left for them to follow.

Not telling even those coming into the system where they were was probably one of those safety protocols, though if they weren’t allowed to leave Jenn wondered why. Maybe a few people would travel back, but she knew that she and Sarah wouldn’t be on that short list. This was going to be their new home, and as the holographic map of the system manifested itself coming out of the arrival jump nearly everyone on the ship watching at various displays had their breath catch in their throats.

The girls were in a commons area along with a few hundred others watching a huge display that shifted from the single dot of the white star they had braked upon and expanded out into a full system map. The dot became slightly larger as the tracking lines from nearby stars disappeared and the planets popped up…all 306 of them, not counting moons.

Sarah’s jaw dropped. “What the hell…”

“Oh my,” Jenn said, starting to see all the little icons for cities, space stations, and ships. The planets weren’t full, not by a long shot, but there were cities sprinkled here and there across what looked like most of them, and with the moons included that put the count of ‘worlds’ at over 2,000 in this single system. “This is freaking huge. You could fit the entire population of Sol in here ten times over.”

“Getting them here is the problem,” a person standing next to Jenn added. “A few hundred million at a time doesn’t cut it.”

“At least we have a safe place to go,” Sarah pointed out. “All of us.”

The Human shook his head. “Not the entire Star Force population. The empire is too big.”

“The Humans though,” Jenn added.

“Do you really think the Dinosaurs will only go after the Humans?”

“Probably not,” she said with a frown as the ship’s route popped up on the map, indicating which planet they were heading to…which in this case was technically a moon of a gas giant, but it was slightly bigger than Earth and a third of it was covered in water. The name tag was highlighted, showing everyone what was apparently going to be their new home, or at least their departure point.

“Minbar,” Sarah said. “Sound familiar?”

“Nope.”

“Star Force has a habit of naming stuff off legends.”

“Really?” Jenn asked, glancing at her. “I never knew that.”

“Where did you think Corneria came from?”

“Corn I suppose.”

“No. Some guy told me it came from an old video game. Minbar probably comes from something else too.”

“Huh. Have to look that up when we get back to our quarters. I figure we’re going to be waiting on a dropship for weeks before we can get off.”

“Yeah, probably,” Sarah said as the ship made its way around stellar orbit to get to the jumpline for the gas giant that held Minbar in its orbit far away from the star. “I can’t believe there are so many planets. I wonder how long they had to look to find this place.”

“I’m surprised no one else found it. This is an empire in a single system.”

“You’re right. I wonder if there aren’t any neighboring races out here.”

“Good question. Someone could give us away if there were.”

“That’s a long way to send a message, but yeah, they could.”

“The Archons know what they’re doing,” someone else said as they passed by, with several other people filing away from the crowd to get on with other things.

“Even if they don’t,” another person added, “it’ll take the V’kit’no’sat forever to get out here, and they’ve got a lot of closer targets to worry about.”

“Yeah,” Jenn said, frowning. “And a lot of troops slowing them down.”

Sarah grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I miss him too.”

“Itching for another kiss?”

“You’re seriously never going to let that go, are you?” Sarah complained.

“Nope,” Jenn said, tugged Sarah a little closer to the giant map as people were leaving.

“It was just one kiss!”

“He was still mine.”

“Fine, do you want to kiss my boyfriend?”

“You don’t have one.”

“When I get one?”

“Only if he’s as hot as Brad.”

Sarah sighed. “So you’re never going to get off my back?”

“Hey, you got the kiss. This is the payment for it.”

“Still worth it,” Sarah admitted as they looked up from underneath the edge of the map at all the glowing little spheres sitting on tiny looping lines that indicated their orbits. “Do you think they’ll let us pick…later I mean?”

“Maybe. There’s a lot of options. You just wanna chill for a while or find a job?”

“Don’t know how many there will be here.”

“There will probably be Star Force jobs.”

Sarah wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like working for stipends.”

“Might not be a bad idea for a few years until this place fills up some more.”

“You think it will? That’s a long haul we just made.”

“Maybe more than a few years then. Those stipends are nice after you’ve earned them.”

“I’m not that patient, and I really want a bigger set of quarters again. Bigger than the Star Force upgrades,” she added, for when you worked for them you got an automatic upgrade while you were employed.

“Would you mind if I did?”

Sarah glanced at her. “Depends if I could float us both. But even if I did, we’re not going to be able to rebuild our wardrobe very fast.”

“I don’t think they’re going to be shipping in specialty items.”

“Damn, you’re right. We’re going to have to do some hunting. Someone here has to be making custom clothing.”

“It’ll be nice to settle down again. Hopefully somewhere with an atmosphere we can breathe. I’d like to go outside again and get some real sun.”

“Just go and get your skin tone changed. The medbays on the ship will do it.”

“That’s cheating.”

“Why you want to roast yourself and fight uneven tan lines I will never understand,” Sarah said, looking up at the planets again. “I’d rather spend my time on just relaxing. You can’t do that when you’re worried about light angles.”

“You got me there. Hey, we’re insystem now.”

“Yeah, so?”

“The database should be updating, right?”

“Yeah, it should be. We can access everything here.”

“Let’s go find how many clothing retailers there are and how much they’re charging.”

Sarah cringed. “Probably expensive as hell.”

“Time to find out what we’ve got to work with.”

“Yeah,” she said, glancing up at the map one more time. “We gotta start somewhere. Future and onward.”

“Future and onward,” Jenn repeated as the two turned and worked their way out of the crowd and back to their quarters so they could start getting acquainted with their new home system.

Two months later…

As it turned out, Minbar was a jewel of a world. The gravity was slightly higher than Earth’s, so when you went outdoors your body felt it a touch for a few steps then it all blurred together. The atmosphere also had more oxygen, so you felt invigorated when you went outside the standardized interior environment and that had spawned a lot of outside development.

Right now Sarah was off working a temporary job for Star Force that actually paid straight credits in lieu of the civilian economy that was almost nonexistent here, while Jenn was on an off day from her job in a startup company that some of the previous evacuees had created. It was a custom clothing company that she’d sought out to inquire about potential purchases and after talking with her for a few minutes she straight up got offered a job.

It was a lot of irregular work, but there was a very big market with people who had credits but little to spend them on. She had a chance to get very rich long term here, but right now her pay was nonexistent as company profits were being reinvested into more equipment to expand the business. Sarah wasn’t patient enough for that, which was why she’d decided to take a ‘credits now’ job while telling Jenn that she was relying on her to rake in the big numbers later.

They had acquired a decent-sized set of quarters, but it was taking almost all of what Sarah was making to cover the rent. Both of them agreed it was worth it as they got their normal lifestyle, absent now for years, back in line with what it had once been…and to be honest, this planet was actually a little better than Earth had been and a whole lot less crowded.

Right now Jenn was floating along the shore of one of planet’s oceans inside the protected perimeter that had energy shields allowing water to pass through but nothing harder, meaning she didn’t have to worry about critters biting her or floating off too far from shore in her personal inflatable panel that she was laying out on and soaking up the sun…which was a little less intense this far out compared to Earth.

That meant it took longer to tan, but as Sarah had suggested Jenn wasn’t caring at the moment. Just relaxing as the gentle wind rocked her with tiny waves that were very therapeutic after a long workload yesterday. Her body was holding up find, but it was her mind that needed relief and this ocean swim park was just what she needed.

Jenn was able to float wherever she wanted for more than a kilometer out into the shallow waters, with the one safety feature required being the bracelet that she wore. It functioned as an emergency transmitter, flotation device, and short term oxygen backup if needed, given that this was water and drowning was easy if you were taken off guard and knocked underneath the surface.

If her wristband registered a medical emergency nearby medtechs and rescue crews would be here within a minute, which was another reason she could just relax and enjoy the natural environment of the planet as her mind wandered in and out of oblivion. One thing that was on and off her mind was the date, for today was the last day of her seal with Brad that she’d never bothered to cancel. His offer to do so with full responsibility had come through on the evacuation ship but Jenn hadn’t accepted, choosing to let it expire on its own and holding onto him that last little bit so he didn’t have a bad mark on his record.

She doubted that he would be getting involved with someone again if he was going back to fight, but if he survived and someday ended up in a place where away from the war, even if just for a vacation, Jenn didn’t want his relationship with her to come back to haunt him in the least. Running out the seal was partly out of respect for him and for herself, for she’d committed to five years and she was going to honor that regardless of current circumstances.

Those 5 years ended while she was on the water, with her wristband set to alert her when the moment passed. She was half asleep in a sun-induced stupor when the chime sounded, but she still recognized it for what it was and said one final goodbye to Brad. From here on out he was no longer a part of her life, but she wished him well wherever he was, keeping her and everyone else safe along with the rest of the military.

Letting go such thoughts, for news coming from the rest of Star Force territory was few and far between making Shangri-La almost like an island insulated from the rest of the galaxy, Jenn fully embraced her new life here by letting go her connections to Brad, Earth, and everything else in her past. She didn’t want to forget them, but as such things were no longer relevant they were tucked back into a storage compartment in her mind just in case they became relevant later, much like her days in the maturia had been.

None of it was relevant now and Jenn was relieved to finally put the last bit behind her. She didn’t intend looking for a boyfriend anytime soon, but it was good to have her vision set firmly ahead in her life. Right now she was blissfully soaking up sun and contently happy, and both she and Sarah were building towards the future. Already this planet had become home with the journey out here felling like a distant memory, and as Jenn resettled into her drifting haze on the ocean she relished in the golden age that was Star Force, safely encapsulated here in the wilds of space while the war continued to escalate elsewhere.

When she eventually woke to a mild sunburn, Jenn rolled off the panel and dunked herself in the warm water, shaking herself fully away and choosing to swim back to shore rather than paddling. She felt alive, invigorated, and hopeful. She was single now and her future full of opportunity, with Jenn intent on running into it aggressively now that her moment of reflection and rest was over.

When she got to the shore she jogged up the soft ramp that kept her wet, naked body clear of the beach sand as she got back to her wall locker and retrieved her clothes, which she put back on after a quick stint underneath a drying array that wicked the water off her body with a series of energy shields.

Then she passed through a door back into the interior of the city with the normal oxygen content and mildly cool air as she headed to the nearest cafeteria to get something to eat before spending the rest of her day in an entertainment complex that helped to finish clearing her mind and recharging her creativity for the following day when she got back to work helping her new startup company get established. She was getting to design some of the clothing that would be setting fashion trends across Minbar and perhaps the entire star system for centuries to come as more and more people were evacuated out here and the local population continued to grow, and it wasn’t a task she was taking lightly.

Jenn wouldn’t be helping with that population growth, now fully committed to the huge opportunity before her and making it profitable enough to be able to support her and her sister, after which she was going to make sure to make a spot in the company for Sarah. They were a team and intended to stay that way forever, and being able to work together would make their lives just that much better as they both inched their way forward into an unknown and bright future.

On that same day back in the Solar System, Brad and his Commando unit were dropping down to the surface of Venus through the dense, toxic atmosphere to the cities beneath that were currently under V’kit’no’sat attack. Like on Earth, the enemy was pushing from region to region going for the shield generators so they could expose the planet to their warfleet in orbit, and the longer Star Force could hold them here the more time they’d have to evacuate the outer planets.

Brad wasn’t thinking about Jenn now, only his fellow Commandos and their mission. He was a warrior and now that his fitness level had returned to adequate levels this was his time to fight, and despite the fact that he might not live through this there wasn’t another place in the galaxy where he wanted to be.

The fight against the Dinosaurs was here and now, and he wasn’t going to sit on the sidelines and watch anymore.

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