1

February 22, 2465

Krichjan System (Protovic territory)

Star Force Warship Tassadar (Mid-jump)

Kip stood in front of his command chair watching the system holo as the Tassadar moved from its null orbit towards the 8th planet’s innermost moon. The jump itself was a tricky one, with the warship having to yank hard on the system’s gravity wells to get suitable momentum, given that it wasn’t camped out around any of them. Still, an insystem jump was far slower than an interstellar one, but it was something that the drone warships would have trouble making without the Tassadar giving them a lift.

Kip had ordered a slower than normal jump anyway, coordinating with the other 6 warships enroute across the system via timestamp orders that would take away the time lag. With their shipboard clocks synchronized, they could lay out a battle plan to the second even if their active communications didn’t cycle that fast across the billions of kilometers of distance that made up the Krichjan System.

Kip had wanted the slower transit so that the Tassadar would have time to unload a significant portion of its drone warships enroute, whose own gravity drives would then brake against the target gravity wells. Such braking was easy…it was the acceleration from beforehand that was not, thus the need to disperse them in transit. The other warships were not doing the same, leaving the potential catch to the Tassadar alone. Should one or all of the five Skarron ships get away, the others could chase them without having to gather up their drone fleets, as the Tassadar would need to do, putting the emphasis of this intercept squarely on the trailblazer’s flagship.

The larger drone warships Kip kept inside the jumpship’s hull, it was the smaller ones, the cutters, corvettes, and frigates that he dispersed, for they were the fastest and best suited to tracking the Skarrons if they did jump out, giving the rest of the fleet a beacon to follow. The trouble was, those ‘trackers’ would be on automatic pilot once they made the jump…at least until one of the control ships arrived within comm range.

But that wasn’t the only reason Kip was deploying them. One trick Star Force had learned about keeping an enemy ship in place was to block its jumpline with another. That was hard to do if the enemy had differential gravity drives and nearby moons to push off of, which they did in this case, but the closer he could position a blocking ship the greater the angle off the primary jumpline would be required for a clean escape.

And if the enemy wanted to ram his blockers…well, they were the smallest of his ships anyway, and he’d be willing to make the tradeoff.

Based off the intel from the warship that had detected the 5 Skarron vessels, which was still staying away so as not to spook them until the others arrived, Kip’s people had been able to match up the approximate classes with the information they’d brought with them, coupled with the data the Protovic had provided. There appeared to be two cruisers and three destroyers…with neither of the juggernauts being present. Why the Skarrons had split their fleet Kip didn’t know, but by isolating them it was going to be easier to destroy them…if they could contain them in their present positions.

The Tassadar was working off their last known location, having plotted a jumpline to intercept where they were expected to be given their orbital revolution…with a decent safety margin. Once the jump was ended they’d have to assess the situation and make adjustments, all the while hoping the Skarrons were a bit slow and off their guard, otherwise it would be almost impossible to keep them from jumping out, for all a prepped starship had to do was press a button and a moment later they were gone.

If the Skarrons didn’t know they were here, and weren’t overly concerned about the Protovic fleet coming after them, then they might be in ‘sleep mode’ and just holding orbit while waiting for further orders. Kip didn’t think they’d get that lucky, which meant they were going to have to disable them quickly once they arrived if they were given a window to do so.

Kip had the Tassadar slow down slightly after the 18 drone warships were away, allowing them to get to their braking points first. He needed them to get to blocking positions as soon as possible and the Tassadar’s mass was going to show up on the enemy’s sensors sooner than a corvette, so letting them get a head start should shave a smidge of time off the intercept.

As for the moment when the Star Force ships came out of their braking maneuver and stood face to face with the Skarrons…well, there weren’t many options available. Typically they would open fire and start slugging it out, or races with starfighters would deploy them into blocking positions. Star Force had attack drones for that, but they rarely used them anymore. They were so small opposing ships could just run over them, and their weaponry was equally insignificant against capital ships, leaving their usefulness in much more small scale engagements.

No, the only way to engage another fleet was if that fleet wanted to engage…or so conventional wisdom held within the Alliance. The trailblazers wouldn’t hold for that, especially since they and some of their Captains had successful captures/kills in the past, lucky as they were, but moreover because they had access to the V’kit’no’sat database…and they definitely knew a thing or two about naval engagements.

Most of their techniques involved technology that Star Force couldn’t yet build, but centered around creating a localized inertial dampening field over the target ship’s gravity drives, thus rendering them inert. An IDF nulled out acceleration factors by encasing all matter within it in a sort of latticework of an energy field that spread out external forces across each molecule evenly, such as gravity did during a free fall…it felt like there was no effect, but in truth gravity was still pulling, just without any resistance in one part of your body or another, or in this case, a ship’s hull.

Objects could still move around inside the field, or even pass through it unaffected, like a dropship entering or leaving a jumpship. The gravity drives had to be outside the IDF and push against the emitters…which then spread the effect out over the interior, which acted as a single mass. A gravity drive couldn’t function inside an IDF, given that gravitational effects didn’t penetrate the boundaries of the field. Because the entire IDF acted as a single mass, gravity pulled on it as one. The field was the mass, not the contents, meaning the external gravity didn’t reach the interior. With a gravity drive set inside an IDF, it would have nothing to push or pull against.

It was in this way that high gravity colonies nulled out the local gees with IDF, then created normal gravity through gravity plating inside the field. So if the V’kit’no’sat wanted to pin a starship in place, they just blanketed the target ship with an IDF and poof…their gravity drives were suddenly useless.

Trouble was, Star Force couldn’t produce an IDF without an emitter. Paul, Liam, and Roger had worked up a variety of ways to put one on an enemy’s hull, but if their shields were up there was little they could do except park it nearby outside…which the enemy could then shoot down with ease.

So they’d done the next best thing and modified some of the smaller drone warships with a super large IDF emitter, meaning that if a cutter could get close enough to the enemy ship it could ‘grapple’ the target with the field, allowing it to only maneuver on convention thrust…assuming the cutter didn’t get blown away in the process. Four cutters and two corvettes were so modified within the Tassadar’s onboard fleet and had been dispatched with the other blockers, but they wouldn’t be any use against the Skarron cruisers.

The term ‘cruiser’ or ‘cutter’ or ‘corvette’ weren’t terms with specific meanings, they were a way of categorizing ships, naval or aquatic, and really just a rule of thumb measurement. Star Force cruisers, matched up against the Skarron version, were only half as massive, making them similar in tonnage to Star Force battleships. The difference was in how they were used, and in general all Skarron starships were larger than their Star Force counterparts.

But larger didn’t necessarily mean stronger, thus Star Force had dubbed the Skarron fleet ships as ‘cruisers’ or ‘destroyers’ based on how they measured up. The smallest warship they had was dubbed a ‘destroyer,’ for they didn’t use the smaller classes, much like the Hycre, whose ships were considerably smaller, much more in line with Star Force classes.

Due to the Skarron cruisers’ size, the IDF fields on the Interdictor-class drone warships couldn’t lock down all the gravity drives, for like the lizards, they had multiple drives stretched along the length of their hulls, as opposed to Star Force designs that had them all in the rear. If the Star Force ships got close enough, one of them might be able to snag a destroyer, but it would more likely require two working together, for the Skarrons’ hulls were shaped like artistic, curved blades, with spirals coming out on many sides, each of which held a gravity drive, making it difficult to cover all of them with a single field.

But while Kip had deployed the interdictors, they weren’t his primary means of disabling the enemy warships. For that, he was going to rely on one of Roger’s contributions.

The system hologram suddenly zoomed in to the planet and the moons, with a countdown clock above indicating that the number of seconds remaining until arrival was at 21. A dot on the emblazoned jumpline indicated the Tassadar’s calculated position, with a cluster of dots appearing at the end where the ship’s telaris sensors were just beginning to pick up the Skarron ships.

“Captain. Target the nearest and clearest ship you get with the bloon launcher and don’t wait for my order to fire. Hit them quick. I want at least one kill out of this engagement.”

“Copy that,” the Captain said, with Kip leaving the details to him and the crew, who knew well what they were doing. The trailblazer remained standing in front of the hologram as the tiny dots just ahead of the Tassadar began their braking maneuvers, followed by the big ship a split second later.

As the relative speeds between them and their targets resolved back to manageable numbers, additional sensor data began pouring in and updating the hologram, showing the five enemy ships in greater detail as another Star Force warship jumped in from one of the moons, coming in at a different angle. Soon the others followed, but the Tassadar got off its first shot before the last of them arrived.

Mounted along the bow of the Warship-class jumpship, the ‘bloon launcher’ was a unique weapon created specifically for the warships, and needed their size to house the massive thing. Inside were IDF emitters that were saturating an energy matrix equivalent to goo that would be used to carry the field to the target. The V’kit’no’sat had many types of energy matrixes that held other energies contained, for the more damaging ones, like the mauler, repelled from themselves, meaning they had very short firing range before the energy mass disintegrated.

Star Force had recently been able to reverse engineer the most basic of the coagulant matrixes, and thanks to Roger’s genius had used it like they’d used paint to hold stun energy together until it could reach its target. The bloon launcher, which was a shortened version of ‘balloon,’ essentially threw water balloons at the target, carrying with them various forms of energy, similar to the perimeter defense weapon on the V’kit’no’sat pyramid, though much less potent.

The bloon launcher had various types of ammunition, but for interdiction duties the Star Force techs had worked out a way to saturate the pseudo-goo with IDF. It wouldn’t persist forever, lasting maybe 30 seconds after impact, but it gave the Tassadar and the other newly built warships the ability to temporarily disable the enemy’s gravity drives if they ‘painted’ the hull with enough bloon hits.

And the warship certainly wasn’t holding back. Already having formed and charged several coagulant bloons, it was chucking them out the forward launcher at a rate of 1 every 3 seconds and aiming at the cruiser on top of the Skarron formation as the Star Force ship continued to drift closer off its residual momentum coming out of the jump.

Soon the other seven warships were firing off bloons as well, making sure not to hit the Tassadar’s drone warships as they quickly got into blocking positions around the Skarrons, who didn’t so much as move until after they were surrounded, at which point they began repositioning and firing off showers of white plasma streaks from multiple cannons, similar to the weapon loadouts of their walkers.

Each cannon was low yield, but combined they amounted to a considerable offense. The small Star Force ships held their ground, covering the Skarrons with their IDF as much as possible as their own shields got hammered by the plasma…then one of the other cutters that was punching a small hole through one of the Skarron destroyers’ shields with its mauler got pelted with what looked like a rapid-fire splinter gun.

The first three deflected off the cutter’s shields, but the fourth cored it, with the back tip just showing at the entry point, for the rest of it had buried itself inside the well-armored hull.

“Rail gun,” Kip whispered to himself as he saw all but one plasma cannon on the cutter go dark. Two hits later and it went out as well, with the destroyer turning its attention to another of the ships as the Skarrons were quickly chewing apart his blockers, all the while getting plastered with bloons that were, ironically, sticking to the enemy’s shields where they couldn’t get to the hull.

That was another little piece of matrix technology Star Force had stolen from the V’kit’no’sat. Kip knew how they could defend against it…expand their shield matrix out then deactivate it altogether. The momentum would push the IDF goo away from the ship and they could reestablish shields again at a closer proximity…the question was, could the Skarrons do that with their shield matrix, and if they could, would they think of it in time?

The Tassadar continued to pound the cruiser with bloons, careful to continually adjust its heading to keep the cannon in line with the enemy, for the massive jumpship didn’t turn very fast and it had only the one cannon mount, which, like a rail gun, didn’t have much aiming ability off the ship’s axis. With the other jumpships doing the same, four of the Skarron warships were pinned in place, but one of the destroyers was able to destroy the interdictor corvette holding it and moved out to bully aside the frigate blocking the obvious jumpline away from the moon.

The much larger destroyer pounded the frigate with plasma and rail gun splinters, but the frigate held position and its shield strength up until the two ships collided when the Skarrons made a minuscule jump…just enough to punch the frigate aside, crushing the forward/port corner in and ripping apart one of the ‘blades’ on the Skarrons’ hull where the two met. After the impact pushed the Star Force ship aside the destroyer took a bloon hit, but its IDF didn’t cover all the gravity drives and the ship was able to limp away in a surge of momentum, taking it out of the engagement zone.

Kip tagged one of the other warships and ordered it to pursue, with the big ship hesitating as it worked out the jump calculations and reoriented itself, then it also disappeared in a slow surge, matching and slightly exceeding the Skarrons’ velocity as it tailed it within sensor range to wherever it was headed. The other six jumpships continued to pound the Skarrons with IDF as they and the Tassadar began launching their drone warships.

“Open a comm channel and tie in the translator,” Kip ordered. A moment later he got a hand signal from one of the crew, and Kip telekinetically tagged the ‘on’ button on his control chair behind him.

“Skarrons, this is the Star Force commander. You’re a few minutes away from being destroyed. I’m offering you a simple choice. Surrender and live, or ignore this communication and die. Respond if you want to live, and do so quickly.”

Kip hit the mute button with a thought, then raised an eyebrow at Captain Shannist. “Odds?”

The blue-haired man shook his head. “Not enough data to speculate, but my gut says no.”

“Concentrate fleet fire on one of the destroyers, continue to suppress all four with bloons. Maybe if one goes down the others will get wise.”

“And if they do surrender, what do we do with them?”

Kip sighed. “We’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it.”

A few moments later the first of the heavy cruisers shot out a cleansing beam at range and punched straight through the Skarrons’ shields…or so it looked, but on the computer analysis it showed that the weapon had indeed been blunted for 1.2 seconds before penetration. Still, it cut straight through a thin portion of the hull, gouging out a trench some 20 meters long that, if you looked close, you could see stars through. Secondary explosions cut that view out, as internal atmosphere and a host of liquid and solid debris filled the gap and spewed out along the breach point on both sides.

The significance of the Skarron shields not being instantaneously penetrated by the cleansing beam meant that they were hybrid shields…part physical, part energy. Lizard shields were totally physical shields, blocking plasma due to its mass. The cleansing beam was a pure energy weapon, something that physical shields couldn’t block, meaning that the Skarrons had a more complicated matrix…or two matrixes in play.

Kip glanced at the updating computer analysis, which indicated one shield barrier only, after plasma and mauler blasts began to rain down as the drone warships closed to medium and closer ranges. The Skarron destroyer fought back, with fire support from the others that weren’t too far away, but within a minute it was KIA from the multiple cleansing beams, leaving the other weapons to chew up the carcass.

Kip waited for a return communication, but none came, so he let the carnage continue, one ship at a time, until the last cruiser was overwhelmed and destroyed…which told him that the Protovic commander had been right. The Skarrons were hungry for conquest, and it didn’t look like losing was in their playbook.

2

February 25, 2465

Krichjan System (Protovic territory)

7th planetary orbit

“Beacon active,” Shannist confirmed upon Kip’s request as yet another Star Force warship jumped into planetary orbit and immediately began to disgorge its full complement of drone warships. As it did it reoriented its axis slightly, launching a bloon towards the leftmost of the two Skarron juggernauts that the Tassadar and its battle group had pinned down from range.

Another flash came from the other juggernaut as its shields continued to be painted by IDF saturated energy ‘goo’ as the enemy ship targeted Kip’s flagship with its long range weaponry. The powerful energy beam crossed the distance between the ships in the blink of an eye as the smaller ships in both fleets were continuing to creep closer towards each other over the gap.

Kip noticed the shield impact on his tactical hologram of the ship, which sat to his left beside the main hologram of the battlefield. When the battle had started his crew had analyzed the weaponsfire and confirmed that it was an extremely advanced version of heavy lachars…well beyond Star Force’s own capability to produce. The jumpship’s shields held up, being a hybrid matrix that could protect against both matter and energy, but with both juggernauts beginning to isolate their firepower on the Tassadar it was just a matter of time before Kip would have to jump his ship out of range and let the others continue the fight…at least until the shields recharged, then they’d come back in and relieve the others.

So long as there was one control ship on station it could handle all the drone warships in play, else the longer ranges would result in signal lag. Given the telaris comms they now used, that lag would be significantly reduced, but Kip didn’t want his gunners to have to try and work through even a split second’s worth as they remotely piloted the warships. Their firing accuracy would nosedive, and in an engagement like this, where they were not easily the strongest, every shot counted.

That said, he still expected to win this fight. The two juggernauts were massive, and would take a while to take down, but so long as they kept the bloons popping on them they weren’t running away, and the rest of the Skarron fleet, which had quickly come to their aid, seemed reluctant to leave them, making this more of a standard battle that was about to start heating up.

The Tassadar’s fleet had already been deployed, with the heavy cruisers tagging the juggernauts from range and penetrating their shields with each shot, but they were so massive that the damage being incurred was akin to small cuts. Had Kip had an internal schematic for the ships they could have been making surgical attacks against key systems, but since this was a largely unknown enemy they were reduced to targeting weapons batteries as they could see them and, largely, just poking holes in the big ships.

Right now they were acting like battle stations, and Kip knew from the Protovic intel that if they got much closer their other weaponry would come within operational range. That’s why Kip had his fleet screening for the Tassadar relatively close, but still intending to engage the incoming Skarrons at a distance from the jumpship. About half of their fleet was coming his way, with the other half going after the next closest jumpship, the Aiur.

Fortunately the juggernauts were so large that Star Force could hit them from this extreme range with the bloon launchers, and as soon as Kip got a few more jumpships involved he was going to order a change of ammunition, for the IDF laden ‘bloons’ weren’t all that they could fire.

Keeping the ships pinned was the primary objective, and they were so large that keeping all of their potential gravity drives, which they didn’t know exactly where they were inside the ships, was requiring a thorough blanketing of their shields. Some of the bluish/red goo was being blown off by plasma cannons, but enough was being kept in place to hold the pair of gigantic ships in place, though they were maneuvering slightly on conventional engines.

Just then the Skarrons’ smaller ships, which all outmassed their Star Force counterparts, opened up on the Tassadar’s drone warships and all hell broke loose. They didn’t stop their approach, intent, it seemed, to get to the jumpship and knock it out of commission even as more heavy lachar blasts crossed the distance and peppered its forward shields…which Kip saw dip as low as 18% after one combined salvo, then the recharging generators ticked it back up to 19% and continued to climb the numbers, which were then lowered again by incoming weaponsfire.

“Captain, let’s get a few shots off before we have to run. Switch to plasma bloons.”

“Already standing by.”

“Fire…and prepare calculations for a short range microjump out of their lachar range.”

On the front of the Tassadar the defense shields dropped momentarily, allowing the passage of the green plasma bloon out of the thick firing tube as it shot off at incredible speed towards the distant juggernaut. Unlike conventional plasma that dissipated over distance, the bloon’s energy matrix acted as a containment vessel, inside of which the plasma glowed fiery hot blue. The color combination of the matrix made the bloon appear green up until it smashed against the juggernaut’s shields, spilling an amount of plasma equivalent to a fourth the volume of a cutter against its already weakened shields.

From inside the green ‘skin’ of the bloon the blue plasma burst forth, washing over the shields and wicking away some bits of IDF goo as it overloaded and breached the shields, pouring a third of its plasma onto the hull, burning through the armor plates despite the fact that they, like their ground walkers, were made to be resistant to that type of weaponry.

A few second later a second bloon hit the approximate spot, taking out a chunk of shield matrix to the left and washing the overlapping target areas with unchecked plasma, which burnt through the armor and exposed the interior of the ship to space. Air vented out in explosive decompression as more IDF bloons hit the Skarron ship, coming from the other jumpships, and insuring it couldn’t run.

“Are we in mauler range?” Kip asked.

“Barely.”

“Send them one, then jump us out. Arrange to transfer drone control to the other warships prior to jump. Let’s not give the enemy an opening,” Kip said as the forward shields dropped to 7% as the heavy lachars continued to wear them down with repetitive hits. Thankfully Star Force’s shield technology had improved by leaps and bounds over the past century, and was due for even more upgrades according to the research staff reverse engineering a myriad of V’kit’no’sat designs…or rather, their obsolete designs whose blueprints were held in the pyramid database.

After the last green bloon launched, the Tassadar began powering up its gravity drives, intent on making a reverse jump out of planetary orbit, but before it did it launched one more bloon…this one was neither bluish/red nor green, but a fiery orange. It had the thickest bloon containment skin possible, which was necessary to hold the mauler energy in check. Once launched, the two fought an internal battle, with the mauler energy eating away at the bloon to the point of bursting, giving the weapon a more limited range than the plasma or IDF varieties.

The orange bloon spouted a tiny gush of blue energy out the side a split second before it slammed into the juggernaut, with most of the contained mauler energy making it to the target. The Tassadar’s gunners had done well to land it on the damaged and unshielded piece of juggernaut hull, and Kip had the satisfaction of seeing it literally melt through the Skarron armor and into the ship’s interior, completely disappearing as the sensor feed went wonky as the Tassadar jumped away from the planet.

That only lasted a few seconds before the jumpship’s binary drives started to pull against the gravity well it had just pushed off, stalling its momentum and bringing it to a stop far above the planet where it began to clearly pick up the Star Force comm signals again, although this time on a delay.

Kip brought up a diagnostic display and checked the gravity drives’ capacitor charge, seeing that it had barely drained them, despite the hard turnabout they’d just run. They’d be able to jump back in immediately if needed, but right now recharging the shields was the priority.

“We go back in at 50%,” Kip ordered so the bridge crew would be ready when that happened. In the meantime he continued to watch the battle on the tactical holo, with the Skarron ships that had been engaging the Tassadar’s fleet now breaking off and going after another of his jumpships, but it was going to take several minutes for them to reposition, during which time the drone warships would be hounding them.

Kip sent off an order telling the remote pilots on the other jumpships to leave several of them in place for when the Tassadar jumped back in, so that they’d have a screen, and tagged the appropriate ships, letting the others reposition, though they were now two less than they’d just been. A frigate and a corvette had been destroyed by the Skarrons since he’d last looked, with several others having had their shields go down, including a destroyer with a sizeable gash in its armor, but it was still firing away as it trailed a Skarron cruiser across the wide gap between jumpships.

Kip didn’t like losing ships, knowing that it would be a long time between replacing them, given how far away from Star Force territory they were, but it was all but unavoidable given the type of combat they were engaged in. They had to pin the juggernauts in place, and in doing so likewise pinned themselves down to a point, taking a lot of maneuvering options off the table.

“Thirty seconds,” the Captain eventually noted, with Kip tearing his eyes off the tactical holo for a moment.

“Jump when ready,” he ordered, then turned his attention back to the battle just as a slew of new contacts were picked up jumping in. It took the computers a moment to sort it out, then Protovic icons began popping up on the ships, with more than 100 of them coalescing around a generous jump point slightly higher up than the Tassadar had been.

“Looks like they got the message,” Kip commented as their own countdown was about to expire. “Open a comm after we make the jump.”

“We already have an incoming signal, Archon,” the comms officer reported.

Kip glanced at the countdown, which read :08.

“Put it through and continue with the jump. Resume IDF bombardment as soon as possible,” he said, sitting down on his command chair and seeing an image of his counterpart materialize before him.

“My apologies, hold for a moment while we reposition,” he said, raising a hand of apology just as the Tassadar jumped, screwing with the transmission that was already delayed, overly so because the Protovic didn’t have telaris comms and they were having to communicate through lightspeed transmission.

The jumpship reemerged only 8 kilometers off from its original position, further back along the jumpline, leaving the heavy cruisers and other escorts ahead of them as Captain Shannist goosed the engines and brought them back into a more favorable position as several cleansing beams shot out across the gap to the juggernaut and continued to rack up damage on the ship that was already showing multiple hull breaches. It was continuing to get pelted from the other jumpships, though they were showing signs of shield depletion as well, with one already absent, having had to jump out to avoid hull damage of its own.

“Sorry about that. Had to recharge our shields.”

“How are you holding them in position?” Tel’nash’gi asked.

“We’re temporarily disrupting their gravity drives, but we have to keep hitting them to maintain the effect. My fleet can take out the juggernauts from range, can you run interference with their other ships?”

The Protovic nodded his helmeted head. “Gladly.”

The transmission cut out and Kip returned to his feet, walking through the deck space where the Protovic’s hologram had just been and coming up on the tactical hologram again as the Tassadar resumed bombardment of the nearest juggernaut with IDF bloons. On the battlemap, he saw the Protovic’s hammerhead-shaped ships break up into multiple groups, deploying towards the clusters of Skarron capital ships that were still doing their best to chase off the Star Force jumpships, all the while engaging the drone warships, 12 of which had been lost already, with another 18 showing hull damage.

Tel’nash’gi hadn’t brought his entire fleet out, but the ships he did bring ranged in size from corvettes up to battleships and even a carrier, which immediately disgorged a flood of Valeries that zipped across the battlefield far faster than the capital ships, all of which had the same hammerhead design motif, but with an X-wing-like aft split that held cylindrical pylons. Kip knew they contained both gravity drives and weapons, all plasma-based, including their missiles.

The Protovic were solid across the board, with no major strengths or weaknesses in their fleet. Each of their ships had one primary weapon, located in the hammerhead, that was a plasma streamer. Secondary weapons across their hull were orb-style plasma cannons, anti-air plasma shredders, similar in design to lizard plasma shards, only more numerous and shorter ranged, and missile banks which were also located in the hammerhead. Their ships carried good armor and decent shields, built in binary, with a primary physical shield backed up by a secondary and weaker energy shield, giving them a comprehensive defense.

And their crews were experienced vets, which Kip noted approvingly as he saw them maneuver in amongst the Skarron ships with obvious coordination rather than a typical ‘free for all’ approach that many races employed. The Star Force warships adjusted firing lines to give the Protovic ships preferred attack angles, shifting from primary defense to a support roll, and soon the Skarrons saw the writing on the wall and began maneuver towards the edges of the melee, looking for jumplines out.

But the Protovic weren’t keen to let them go, and cut them off at every opportunity. The Skarron ships were bigger than theirs, mostly, but the Protovic’s were slightly stronger. Add in the fact that their battleships were in play, along with their fighters that zipped about targeting exposed weapons ports and dancing around the Skarron anti-air fire, which was considerable, and you quickly had an ongoing rout, with Star Force stepping in and blocking any advantage the Skarrons could get in ship to ship engagements. The cleansing beams, especially, caused the enemy considerable trouble, given the range at which they could be fired, and of the 8 Skarron ships that managed to break free, only six managed to jump out, for the other two were skewered by the CBs, knocking out their ability to jump before they got fully in the clear.

Meanwhile the jumpships continued their bombardment of the juggernauts, along with fire support from some of the heavy cruisers. They alternated between IDF and plasma bloons, with only the Tassadar getting close enough to chance firing the mauler versions. Her shields dropped down to 11% again before the bulk of the heavy lachar counter fire ceased as the CBs picked apart their batteries, after which it was a bloonfest, with both Skarron command ships being torn apart chunk by chunk until nothing salvageable remained.

The Protovic fleet then moved in and further trashed the ship debris as Kip reassembled his fleet and began recovery operations on his own debris, after which he brought his bloon-capable jumpships back to Eshwan where the older versions were holding position. Not all Warship-class jumpships had the new bloon launchers, and only a small percentage of Clan Protoss was currently equipped with them, and most of those he’d brought with him.

Unfortunately the weapon couldn’t be installed on the older models. It was just too damn big and required a different internal hull design. That said, the older models carried with them the most up to date drone warships Star Force had, making them still combat viable, but Kip preferred having his jumpships capable of adding to the battle rather than just sitting back and controlling the drone fleet.

When they returned to orbit, along with the Protovic, Tel’nash’gi informed him that they’d detected 6 outgoing jumps from the system’s star, meaning that the Skarrons had retreated, as well as indicating that their ships contained more powerful gravity drives than most, giving them the ability to jump between star systems individually rather than having to rely on jumpships to carry them.

That, or they’d been desperate enough to get away that they didn’t mind a long coast phase to the nearest star. Kip guessed the former was the case, given that they hadn’t seen any Skarron jumpships within the system, and the information the Protovic had given them on their new enemy hadn’t included any either.

That was one ability that he knew Paul wanted for their fleets, but as of now they were going to have to stick with jumpship transport. It seemed the Skarrons and Star Force were going to make for an interesting conflict, given that each had advantages over the other, which brought Kip to the main problem within the system…that being the supersized walkers the Skarrons had on the surface that the Protovic simply could not stop, and who were leading a path of widespread destruction across Eshwan.

Time for Kip to see if Star Force could do anything about it, aside from knocking off some of their smaller walkers and infantry.

3

February 25, 2465

Retari System (Alpha Region)

Atlantica

Paul watched on the bridge hologram as the Excalibur executed its braking maneuver against the planetary gravity well last in line, dropping out behind his fleet of 15 jumpships. Two were Mammoth-class cargo ships, each more than twice the size of the 13 Warship-class jumpships forming up alongside them. The Excalibur, now the 4th ship to bear that name as Paul took it with him from flagship to flagship, was neither. It was the 16th jumpship in the group, but of a new class entirely, something that Clan Saber and Clan Sangheili had been working together to produce, and as such they’d gotten the first few prototypes off their own shipyards, while the main fleet production centers back in Sol were only starting to produce the new Melee-class jumpships.

Back in the early days Paul had developed a ‘Command Ship’ that had never been quite agile enough for their purposes, and had been relegated to a giant chess pieces to be moved around from point to point that would allow them a mobile stronghold from which to remote control their fleets, but when jumpship technology had come around the Command Ship design had outlived its usefulness, with the Warship-class jumpship taking over the role of primary control center in addition to being a carrier for the drone warships.

That had been necessary at the time, but Paul had never liked abandoning the concept of a big, beefy warship to lead a fleet from. Other races had them, but Star Force hadn’t been able to make it work given their technology…until now.

The Excalibur was the first off the Clan Saber shipyards, measuring in at better than 15 miles wide, as well as being the first jumpship to abandon the elongated design with an armored nosecone. Shield and armor technology had advanced to the point where they didn’t need to worry about small debris during jumps damaging the ship, so the nosecone idea was no longer relevant, with the Melee-class jumpship going back to the donut shape of the original Command Ship, which leaned heavily on the Star Wars Trade Federation design.

Even more so now that Paul had made some additional upgrades. The entire jelly donut shape differed from the Star Wars design, because the interior wasn’t open to space. But like the original design, the Melee-class had a removable donut ‘hole’ that, once the armor plating covering it peeled back, could extrude itself and maneuver as a separate starship if needed…but whose primary purpose was to become a Battletech-esk, 2 mile wide dropship that could deposit a mass of ground troops to a planet within minutes as opposed to using an unending flow of tiny, conventional dropships.

That too Paul had stolen from Star Wars, for the Trade Federation ships could do the same, except that the Melee-class was much bigger. So big, in fact, it looked almost immobile, but it had the most advanced gravity drives Star Force could produce, and as such it was by far the fastest jumpship in the fleet…almost up to Hycre standards.

The rest of Paul’s fleet was much slower traveling between star systems, but once the drone warships deployed they could fly circles around the Excalibur, whose speed was in linear motion, not combat maneuvers. The ship was definitely in the same class as a Super Star Destroyer, meaning that it was a sit and slug it out ship, which Paul had always wanted to have available for some of the nastier fighting the Alliance was seeing, but he knew Star Force’s strength came from having a mobile, redundant fleet of smaller drones, and they weren’t going to abandon that philosophy now, only add to it with a few key pieces that could take the heat in the bigger engagements while the drones were free to do their thing and pick the enemy to pieces.

The 13 Warship-class jumpships accompanying him out from Namek, which was now so well fortified that he no longer needed to personally babysit the planet or system, which he’d left in the capable hands of Duke Monterrey, were all Mk. 16s or older, meaning they didn’t have the bloon launchers that the Mk. 17s did. Also, the drones they carried were 18% new models, with the rest being older versions that were quickly becoming obsolete.

Paul didn’t like recycling perfectly good starships, so he had been gathering them up from Alpha Region and intended to put them to use hunting lizards. Coupled with the Excalibur’s combat prowess, and the presence of some of the newer drone models, he planned on thinning down the lizard opposition in the region. Previously that had been the duty of others, but now with Namek being a stronghold rather than a liability, Paul could get back to combat…something he’d been aching to do for a long time.

The pair of Mammoth-class jumpships with him were purely for cargo. He didn’t even have any ground troops on the Excalibur at the moment, just a slightly better than skeleton crew of Clan Saber personnel, enough to fully fight the ship with, as well as take over remote control of the drone fleet if necessary, though the other jumpships had their full crews on board, leaving the Excalibur merely as backup in that capacity.

Paul’s fleet was stopping at Atlantica for a pair of reasons. First off, the Retari System had been severed from the comm grid over 2 months ago, and via courier ships he’d been informed that a lizard raid had destroyed the transmitter in null orbit around the star. It had been stealth plated, and shouldn’t have been easily visible to their sensors, but somehow they’d deduced its location and slagged it. Kyler was in the process of rebuilding it, along with a few others, and one of the Mammoth’s had a temporary standin to get them back on the grid while he worked out the kinks in how to properly place and defend the next ones.

The lizards had abandoned any attempts to reinforce the underwater war…which was now over. Kyler couldn’t rule out the possibility that they still had a handful of bases on the oceanic planet, but if they did they were doing a perfect job of playing dead, for there hadn’t been so much as a peep of activity in over a decade. That said, the lizards were still popping into the system occasionally, and now it seemed they’d found something they could shoot up easily without having to vie with the orbital defense fleet.

Atlantica wasn’t the only place in Star Force territory that the lizards were probing, and Paul knew they needed to keep beating them back in their own territory or they’d get bolder and bolder. He also knew that they needed to drain as much in the way of personnel and resources as they could on this front, for the lizards were pushing hard into Calavari territory, which on the map now had a huge bite out of it that was growing with every passing year. That’s where the thrust of the lizard offensive was going, and Paul wanted to hurt them here as much as he could to draw off resources from the Calavari front, or to take advantage of their weakness here and pluck a few systems from their possession.

If they really were weak. Paul had the sneaking suspicion that they weren’t and were just biding their time, but no major thrust had come into Alpha Region for some time, just probing skirmishes. Several systems were within a handful of lightyears from one another, meaning the two opposing factions were right on each other’s doorstep, but the lizards hadn’t managed to push Star Force back, and Paul had been resistant to push too far the other direction, for fear of weakening their supply and reinforcement potential. If he gave the lizards an opening he expected them to take it, which was why he had been devoting so much time on Namek to building the frontier defense line to his satisfaction.

It wasn’t complete, not by a long shot, but it was sturdy enough to thwart the level of attacks the lizards had thrown at them to date…but not against what they were unleashing against the Calavari. Duke Monterrey was carrying out Paul’s continuing building plans, with the trailblazer checking in via relay network occasionally to make adjustments, but his presence was no longer needed in the design room on a regular basis, and after considerable prodding by Sara and others, he acknowledged that his place for the foreseeable future was hitting the lizards in their weak points and chewing up their fleets as only he could.

Sara was actually out doing the same with her own fleet, as was Greg and Emily, who were hitting the usual targets with quick thrusts to wear down lizard positions without getting into any grand battles. They kept the lizards guessing, as well as making it hard for them to build along the frontier without repetitive setbacks, but Paul was looking for a bit more in wanton destruction, which was the primary reason he’d brought his fleet through the Retari System on his way to lizard territory.

After the Excalibur and her fleet settled into orbit a tiny dropship crossed from one of the defense sedas over to the Melee-class jumpship and deposited a single passenger, whom Paul met in the landing bay.

“Please tell me you found something sweet to hit?” he asked as soon as he saw the petite form with just a hint of swagger swinging her ponytail back and forth behind her head step down from the dropship’s boarding ramp.

“It took a while,” Kara admitted, “but I found quite a few interesting things, including a major construction project they’re trying to keep out of orbital surveillance in the Menversan System.”

“Define ‘major,’” Paul asked as he fell into step with her as the pair of Sabers left the hangar as the dropship took off to return to the seda.

“Big and new…at least nothing that I could match up,” she said, raising her Vorch’nas and mentally ordering it to produce a hologram above her left wrist of the site that she’d infiltrated on the ground. It showed a concealment canopy from the inside, like a giant football stadium dome, underneath which the construction was ongoing, but with little shape to give away its purpose.

“Did you ask?”

“I tried, but none of the lizards I crossed paths with knew what it was, just their individual assignments, and I couldn’t find an administrator or librarian. They were all standard variants.”

Paul frowned as he tried to puzzle out what they were building. The Menversan System was third line back from the border, as he thought of it anyway. Galactic geography was tricky, and 2 dimensional thinking just wasn’t adequate, but in his mind the first line was the nearest systems that Star Force made a habit of hitting on a regular basis. The second line was slightly more developed lizard systems that they hit occasionally, while the third line was far enough back and well-defended enough that they rarely ventured there…though that’s exactly where Paul intended to take his fleet. The question was where to hit.

“There are only two shield generators nearby, which I think we can take out easy enough with orbital bombardment,” Kara suggested as she shut the hologram down and the pair walked into the ship’s interior, enroute to the bridge, which was situated aft of the ‘donut hole.’ “But I think we should start off with either Kerriole or Verikab. Both have large fleets in play, but not large enough that we can’t chew them up. How are you situated for a bombardment campaign?”

“Got two Mammoths worth of ammo and supplies, skewed to the ammo side.”

“In that case there are a few other targets you might be interested in hitting.”

“Any of their big toys making their way forward?”

“A few battleships, and Verikab has a dreadnaught, but none of the BIG ones as yet.”

“You have any trouble?”

“Jumpship got the paint nicked a bit, but other than that it was just in and out as usual.”

“Any new memories cropping up?”

“There’s always something working its way out,” Kara said as they stepped into an elevator. “A week ago I had a dream about an Oso’lon tail kicking a Kret’net…sent the damn thing flying across the room. Those Ultras are far more agile than they have a right to be, given their size. They’re going to tear our mechs to pieces.”

“We’re working on it,” Paul promised. The Ultras weren’t a race of V’kit’no’sat, but upgraded versions of the other races. It seemed it wasn’t just Zen’zat that got strength and size enhancements, and when applied to dinosaurs that were already gigantic, the Ultras made Godzilla seem puny in comparison…even without their armor. “While you’ve been busy playing with the lizards, some of the others have been working on our second tier mechs. We’ve got some in the field already, but I haven’t gotten any battle reports back as yet.”

“Well that’s a start…a pathetic one, but a start,” Kara said irreverently, but Paul didn’t take offense. She out of all of them had a unique understanding of the V’kit’no’sat and how badly outmatched they were. “I do like the new ship though. I hope she’s as tough as she looks?”

“The cleansing beam alone should be to your liking,” Paul said with a smirk. “It’s the largest we’ve ever constructed, including stations and ground batteries.”

Kara frowned. “I thought the atmosphere interfered with the beam?”

“It does…or rather did. We’ve worked out most of that problem from the tech, but even with distortion, a heavy beam will get enough firepower through the atmosphere to be useful, and on airless worlds there’s no disadvantage.”

“Duh,” Kara said, mentally kicking herself. “How many does the ship have?”

“Just one, but it’s got multiple firing apertures. We can channel partial blasts out simultaneously, so we’ve got the potential for 12 beams.”

“Rail guns, I assume?”

Paul shook his head. “Nope, relying on the fleet for that. This baby’s too big to turn to aim well, and I didn’t like the volume loss of conical units. If we need to hit a planet, the cleansing beam will do the job.”

“Accuracy?”

“About the same. The beam is straight line, but we still haven’t gotten the V’kit’no’sat reticule orrery figured out. The nanotech is giving the techs trouble.”

“Unlimited ammo?” she asked sarcastically.

“I wish, but to answer your question, we’ll get far more shots out of it than a rail gun.”

“Downside?”

“Clouds, storms, and other atmospheric turbulence. Metallic rocks don’t care much, but the beam does.”

Kara nodded as they stepped off the elevator into a wide hall with a scattering of personnel moving about. “What else does this beast have?”

“The biggest bridge to date,” Paul said, crossing the hall and through a double set of doors. The outer ones opened to reveal a short hallway that Paul knew had defense turrets hidden within the walls, which the pair walked through without incident, then the interior ones opened up and Kara’s eyes went slightly wide.

“We could hold trials in here,” she said, looking out over the multi-leveled room that appeared more like an asteroid crater with catwalks crisscrossing the interior. Workstations were everywhere, along with multiple holographic generators…full size generators…popping up at regular intervals across the landscape and down over the slightly angled decline to the center of the ‘bowl.’

“I wanted all the drone pilots in one place,” Paul explained as he led her to the edge of one of the catwalks that would take them out onto the platforms suspended over the crater in the dead center of the room where the command staff were situated. “We’ve got more interior armor surrounding us than most warships have on the exterior.”

“Nice to know,” Kara said, raising her left hand and flying up off the floor to get a bird’s eye view.

Paul rolled his eyes, but in truth he wished he had one of the damn things so he could do the same.

Kara floated a few meters above him, hanging from her Vorch’nas, and followed him across the huge deck to the central command area, seeing dozens of levels higher up that made use of most of the open air, but giving people ample room to jump off and break bones and necks on landing. Curious design, but she liked it. It gave one a plethora of cover and movement options should combat ever break out here, which she was sure was one consideration Paul had when designing it.

When she eventually landed next to where Paul stopped, he telepathically pointed to an input terminal, where she walked over and touched her Vorch’nas, mentally telling it to download the intelligence data she’d accumulated on her scouting mission, which Star Force now had the technology to interpret via flash physical data transfer. The total time of contact lasted .73 seconds, then multiple holograms popped up amongst the command ‘pylon’ on which they stood.

Paul’s eyes were drawn to them immediately, with Kara jumping in at various points to narrate as the ship’s Admiral and others listened in. She’d picked up a lot of intel over the past 8 months, all of which was vital, given how widespread the lizard frontier was and how little they knew of their enemy.

By the end of what became a two hour report, Paul had a good feeling for how they were going to proceed, which mimicked most of Kara’s speculation as to which targets he would choose to hit, though one in particular did surprise her, given that it seemed to be on a world that was of low importance.

Then Paul showed her a tiny bit of information from the ship’s databanks in conjunction with her intel, drawing a raised eyebrow from the ranger. “Sneaky bastards.”

“Very,” Paul confirmed. “Time for us to be sneakier.”

4

February 28, 2465

Krichjan System (Protovic territory)

Eshwan

With the Tassadar back in planetary orbit, Kip stood in a briefing room along with three Clan Protoss mech-specialist Archons and two more from Clan Metal Gear. They’d been studying the ground situation in detail, with information coming in from their advance units as well as from the Protovic, but the bulk of the Star Force troops were still on their jumpship transports, waiting for the major pushback to come.

It was up to Kip to decide where to make it. The Skarrons had already begun aggressively engaging Clan Metal Gear, but the size of their walkers was making their ability to track down the newcomers difficult at best. The Metal Gears kept redeploying their lines, stretching out the Skarrons and picking them apart piecemeal up until a Type-3 walker came up to engage them…which they would respond to with an immediate pullback.

The Type-3s were easily twice as large as the Type-4s, with an extra set of legs bringing them up to 8 in total and standing some 7 times as tall as a Star Force neo. In additional to the plethora of plasma cannon ports covering the thing like zits, the Type-3 had a large anti-air cannon on top, the size of which could put a dent in heavily armored aircraft, such as gunships. It didn’t appear that the cannon could tip down to fire at ground level, which was odd considering its power. It was almost as if the Type-3s had been designed as anti-air units first, then added to with ground defenses second.

Around the cannon mount on the top of the double body, which had two spherical sections connected by a thick middle in which the cannon sat, taking it out of view of all but lateral ground targets, was a ring of anti-air pulse generators that would throw out a segmented ring of plasma to hit fast moving targets. Based on data from the Protovic, Kip had seen the things throw out 10 rings/spheres on multiple angles inside of 3.5 seconds, meaning these things could light up the local airspace if they wanted, making close-in air assaults very dicey…and the same was true of launching missiles on target, which the plasma rings would eat up if they came within a kilometer’s distance.

The Type-2s were even larger, outfitted with additional ground weapons while maintaining their anti-air potential, including long-range missiles that could hit orbiting starships if they came too close. This version also had the grapples Kip had been told about, and appeared to work by creating a localized gravity field around a portion of the target, cranking it up multiple, if not hundreds of times standard, and essentially pulling down a starship or transport and forcing it to crash into the ground.

The grapples were connected by a tether to the walker, which seemed to indicate that it fed the power to the localized generator, making the whole thing look like a ball and chain assembly. The things were too slow to hit skeets, but if he sent in a corvette for close plasma or mauler bombardment, his warship could be at risk of bumping into the ground…or at the least being held in place by multiple walkers as they chewed away at the shields and armor until they penetrated the hull.

The obvious escape maneuver would be to make a microjump and just overpower the grapples…which a starship could obviously do, but if you didn’t time it perfectly you’d find yourself leaving the confines of the gravity fields and traveling far faster than you wanted to…which would shred your ship on the atmosphere, meaning these walkers certainly did pose a threat to close-in starship bombardment.

The length of the grapples appeared to be several kilometers, with the ball assembly having antigrav to fly it to the targets. It was an ingenious design, and one that spoke of the Skarrons’ fear of aerial attack. Kip was curious as to what had sparked such fear to cause them to create anti-air heavy walkers when they had the technology to make the things so much more powerful against ground targets.

The Skarrons own aerial forces were on the heavy end, situated more for ground support than air to air combat, so maybe their weakness there, coupled with an aerial-strong enemy, had evolved this walker design. It was definitely something to look into, but at the moment Kip had to figure out how to take these things down, and the Type-1s were going to be the hardest nuts to crack.

They were beyond huge, to the point of them being the equivalent of a walking starship. The Skarrons had brought 52 of them to the planet, each fighting in its own region with other walker versions in support, and unfortunately the things were in heavily populated areas, meaning Kip couldn’t call down rail gun rounds against them. He was sure that would kill the targets, despite the circular bombardment shield they carried, equivalent to what would defend a small city.

One oddity of the Type-1s and 2s was that they didn’t have full shielding. Instead they had what amounted to deployable ‘plates’ of shield that they could manifest on any point around their perimeter like a Knight did with his physical shield. The armor on the things was so thick Kip guessed they weren’t overly concerned about lesser fire getting through so long as they could block the big guns. The Type-3s, 4s, and 5s had full shielding when they wanted, but with so many plasma ports they had to keep them partially down most of the time, not able to construct a matrix around each exit point, Kip guessed.

All of this was very odd. The Skarrons had advanced tech in many areas, then almost degenerate designs in others. He didn’t think they were stupid, so there must have been something else in play, something about the enemy he didn’t grasp yet, that caused them to build like this…but whatever the reason, they were kicking the crap out of the Protovic, and Star Force needed to find a way to take their big walkers out…which was going to start with the heavy cruiser he was sending down to the surface.

It was a bit larger than usual, but technically all starships with gravity drives could drop down and hover over a planet’s surface…at least until their fuel ran out. That wasn’t going to be an issue here, for while the ship was heavy, it wasn’t that heavy, and Star Force’s gravity drives were getting more advanced with each passing decade, allowing just this type of maneuvering.

Kip had it brought down far from the Skarron lines, then flown across the surface to within 20 kilometers of a Type-1 over the Protovic cities that had yet to fall in order to avoid the anti-air defenses of the rest of the Skarron walkers had they approached from the backside of the carnage region creeping its way across the planet. That distance should have been outside of grapple range, but it didn’t stop a slew of missiles from popping out of the Skarron Type-1s and 2s nearby, which tracked directly towards the heavy cruiser, which responded in kind by firing intercepts that raced out and met the larger missiles halfway, destroying them before they could get to the ship.

The Skarrons kept firing more, and Kip knew that the warship only had a limited amount of intercepts to use, after which it’d be down to anti-missile lachar batteries that were already starting to hit some of the wayward missiles. He wasn’t sure how many they’d be able to knock down once the intercepts ran out, for it was taking multiple lachar hits to match the destructive power of an intercept, but for this mission all he needed was a single test shot…though the trailblazer was hoping for a bit more.

With the rectangular brick of a warship leveling out to a stable hover, the internal mechanics that aimed the cleansing beam aligned with the distant, yet easily visible Type-1 and locked on to its forward bulge out of the seven that it sported. With the monstrous centipede targeted, the heavy cruiser fired its primary weapon, conscious to keep the line of attack at 0+ degrees so that it wouldn’t come down on Protovic buildings on the far side, meaning the warship was hovering meters over the rooftops as it fired.

The white beam leapt out in a mathematically straight line, a tiny line, burning across the gap between ship and walker, but as the atmosphere interfered with the transit the beam lost its coherency a bit, fanning out rather than keeping its surgical pinpoint as it would have done in space. That said, the now wider beam point burnt into the side of the walker and melted through meters of armor plating within a second, after which one of the walker’s rectangular shields materialized and stopped the cleansing beam for a moment, deflecting the energy as if it had suddenly put up a giant palm to block the attack.

But the beam punched through that palm almost as soon as it was raised, with the last bits of the cleansing beam adding to the hull damage and cutting a tiny, but nasty gash into the side as a rush of even more missiles poured out of the top and sped towards the heavy cruiser. Combined with more coming in from other walkers, some began to get through and detonate against the warship’s shields, draining them remarkably fast.

The heavy cruiser got in another cleansing beam shot, this one on a slightly different location, punching through the revitalized shield in less than a tenth of a second before coring through the armor and into the inner mechanisms. What was hit Kip didn’t know, but some of the external plasma fire raining down on the Protovic defenders ceased, as did its slow and ponderous walk forward.

“Pull it out,” Kip ordered via comm to the bridge crew, with the heavy cruiser beginning to rise up from the surface with minimal shields left. Once it gained a bit of altitude the ship tipped up on end and began to gain speed towards orbit, just as a blur of projectile flashed out from the Type-1 and broke through the heavy cruiser’s shields.

The rail gun splinter shattered against the ship’s armor, simultaneously breaking it and opening up a crater on the top side as missiles began to pound the ship in its wake. Within a handful of seconds dozens hit and one of the gravity drives was knocked out, diminishing its climbing ability.

The anti-air lachars continued to eat up as many missiles as they could, but there were so many coming up from the surface that the warship was swarmed as it wasn’t able to achieve maximum speed through the atmosphere due to the lack of shaped shields that normally gave it an aerodynamic slicing ‘blade’ while climbing.

“We’re going to lose it,” Carson-8332 said.

“Damn it,” Kip swore, opening up the comm again. “Make sure it comes down on the enemy and not over the intact city. Hit the Type-1 if you can.”

As he watched, the big warship tipped over, maneuvering on what engines it had left, including the thrust nubs situated at every corner, and arced its way back towards the Skarrons as it continued to get slammed with additional missiles, some of which looped around upon missing the first pass and hit it from behind.

Another gravity drive went out, with the ship starting to fall more than fly as it gained lateral speed heading back towards the Skarron super walker. Eyeballing it, Kip thought it might just make it there, realizing that it was going to land on the Protovic troops as well, but better where the enemy was than some random place in the city. There was no open countryside nearby to get to, and if they could take down the walker it would help others in the immediate future, so they might as well try.

The heavy cruiser dipped a bit more, making Kip think it was going to hit the ground prior to the walker and hopefully skid into it…but then three grapples shot out from the Type-1 and hit the underside of the Star Force ship as it came within 10 kilometers or so. A moment later the front end got yanked down hard by the gravity fields and plowed the crater-filled hull into the cityscape with an explosion of debris as it hit intact buildings with who knew how many Protovic inside.

Kip ground his teeth together in anger as he saw the mass slide another two kilometers before it stalled out, leaving the Type-1 intact, save for the pair of cleansing beam strikes that had got through.

“Alright,” he said slowly, watching the missile plumes cease and wondering just how many of them they had tucked away inside those massive hulls. “We know how to hurt them. The cleansing beams are the key, we just have to isolate the Type-1s before we engage…which means drawing off their support and taking them down the same way.”

Kip altered the battlemap, highlighting every Type-1 and Type-2.

“These are the targets, but in order to get them away we have to engage on the ground, which means fighting through the smaller types. This is going to take a while, but we can get to the big ones, and we have to if the Protovic are going to have a chance of stopping this army.”

“What if they don’t take the bait,” Shinton-10443 asked, “and stay grouped together where they can overlap missile fire?”

“Then we get creative,” Kip answered the Metal Gear Archon. “They don’t have an unlimited supply of missiles, so plan C is to drain them dry using naval attacks. Plan B is to start sweeping up their smaller ground troops until they decide to either pull them in or bring the big boys out to cover them.”

Shinton poked a finger into the hologram. “If they turn those missiles against our mechs, we’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

“Not if we reconfigure with anti-missile mods,” Carson differed. “That cruiser only had the standard load out. We can put more than that in play with two stars of madcats, properly equipped.”

“Do we have naval mods?” Shinton asked.

Kip shook his head. “Not for what we need here.”

Carson stared at Kip, who had an odd expression on his face. “What is it?”

“The shields went down too fast.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’m wondering if their missiles have shield-draining properties…and if that doesn’t have something to do with the reason their big walkers don’t have full shields.”

“You think they rely on armor?”

“Their navy was heavily outfitted, but their shield strength wasn’t lacking. If they’re used to going rounds with enemies that use shield penetrators, it could be that they’ve designed their ground forces with that in mind.”

Shinton tapped on the location of the downed warship at the end of the scrape mark now blazed across the cityscape. “Their warheads are good sized too. It’s hard to tell with so many hitting, but they might be designed specifically for anti-armor applications.”

“You can’t have both,” Carson said, then caught himself and glanced at Kip. “Can you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “I didn’t expect to lose that ship, at least not that fast. It looks like the Skarrons have put a lot of effort into anti-air tech, so let’s just assume it’s more badass than normal. We go in on the ground, thin out their Type-3s and smaller, and see if we can isolate or draw out a Type-2.”

“And if we can?”

“We take it down.”

“With what?” Shinton asked. “We can’t take it on the ground without a hell of a lot of mechs, unless you want to allow us to use rail gun bombardment?”

“We might,” Kip admitted, “if we can get them into a deserted part of the city. Bring down a dozen smaller ships and hover them over the target and pound it into pieces…but I think we’ll still lose a ship or two in the process, which I don’t want to risk right now. If their missiles are even partial shield penetrators, then we need to go with an armor solution ourselves.”

“Meaning hoths?” Carson asked.

Kip nodded. “We keep as many missiles off them as we can, and trust in their plating to hold up against the rest.”

“They have less than a warship,” Shinton pointed out. “A lot less.”

“True,” Kip admitted, “but I’m thinking these guys are saving their missiles for air threats, otherwise they’ll run out of them way too fast, and I haven’t seen them used against the Protovic ground troops in the data they sent us.”

“So we’re relying on them staying true to form?” Carson said, cringing.

“No,” Kip said, dismissing the notion. “We’re going to bring in our anti-air mech mods and air assets for distant support, keeping them out of pulse ring range. It’ll be tricky, but if we overlap all our assets, I think we can counter their missile barrages enough to cover the hoths. We’ll give ourselves an out, but even if we do get our butts kicked, we need battle data to study and learn from. Anyone have any better ideas how to get it?”

Jarvis-6291 cleared his throat. “Might I suggest we get proactive and have the Protovic evacuate a region ahead of the Skarron army that we can lay down rail gun fire on from orbit? High enough away that their missiles won’t be a problem.”

Kip raised an eyebrow. “A good idea in theory, but do you know how far those missiles can travel?”

“Not yet, but we might as well find out.”

The trailblazer smiled. “I like your thinking, but if the Protovic could evacuate that quickly they would have done so by now. It may take longer to enact than you’re thinking.”

“Still worth it,” Jarvis argued, “if the Protovic fleet can’t risk getting within plasma range. Maybe not something right up close to the front lines, but for something we can use a month or two into the future.”

Kip pointed a finger at him. “That’s more like it. Start working on probable locations.”

“Just a thought,” Carson added. “If we’re going to try to starve their missile supplies to death, we can’t afford to let them get any supply runs through. Even orbital drops could give them enough to hold out indefinitely.”

“Can’t make any promises there, which is why that’s not plan A.

“Just something to keep in mind as we’re looking ahead.”

“Alright people, let’s start here…here…and here,” Kip said, pointing to different points on the fringes of the current combat zones that had Protovic tanks going up against some of the smaller walkers. “Metal Gears will keep harassing them from behind while Protoss gets to poke the tiger.”

Carson looked over at Shinton. “Want to trade?”

5

March 2, 2465

Krichjan System (Protovic territory)

Eshwan

Kip landed in one of the large Protovic streets, now almost entirely abandoned, a safe distance inside friendly territory via dropship next to a spaceport that was already packed with landing transports. Most were Star Force dropships unloading cargo and taking on Protovic evacuees to carry off to less dangerous parts of the planet, but a few were larger than Dragon-class dropships.

Those transports were bringing down the larger mechs, each of which was bigger than a Hoth-class heavy walker, which could just fit inside a dragon dropship once its legs were collapsed, but its big brother, the hoth Mk. 2, had to have alternative transport, as did several other types of mechs that Star Force had upgraded to over past years.

Normally Kip would take a neo, which would suit the Protovic streets well enough, but given the size of the Skarron walkers he was going to take a voltron and hope to squeeze through the architecture. One good thing about the Protovic cityscape was it was nonstop for hundreds of miles and very irregular, meaning no long streets to fire down. That would make the smaller mechs almost invisible and force a closer type of fighting that suited Star Force well.

Trouble was, the Skarron walkers were so big that some of them were actually stepping over the smaller buildings. They could fire down on the mechs around them with ease, all the while making for easy targets themselves. Kip was tempted to try and nick them to death, but he knew he needed the heavier weapons the larger mechs afforded, so he was going to try the largest one they had built to date.

He’d chosen this section of this city to fight in because of the taller buildings, which would make it harder to maneuver for the Skarrons, as well as potentially hinder their tether launching capabilities, which appeared to be launched from the underside of the walkers. There were other sections of the planet which were more suitable to fighting, some of which had low buildings, some that had none, but the closest gap between cities was too far off and there were too many Protovic people and assets between here and there to concede the area to the enemy.

Kip intended to rip them apart from orbit if/when they tried to cross that gap later on, but right now they needed to stop the enemy where they were…and that was right in the middle of the heaviest infrastructure, sitting atop the cityscape while their ground troops perused the subsurface infrastructure where the Protovic were doing a better job of defending themselves.

That fight Kip was going to leave to them. They knew their own cities far better than Star Force did, and the trailblazer did not want to get his troops caught up in an underground war. The Skarrons couldn’t take their big walkers down there, so it was personnel and tank-sized craft only, which gave the Protovic an advantage…unless the ceiling came crashing down on top of you when one of the Skarron walkers stepped on the wrong spot.

No, Kip was going after the big walkers. They were the key to the Skarrons dominance on the ground and they had to be taken out…he just wasn’t going to start with a Type-1. There were several Type-4s escorting a trio of Type-3s about 20 miles ahead, with the Skarron fighters and the Star Force skeets and gunships going at it above the Star Force landing zone, along with a couple of Protovic Valeries. The enemy knew Star Force troops were incoming and was trying to poach the dropships and transports as they came down…but the Archon and Regular pilots were having none of it.

As Kip walked out onto the Protovic’s wide streets he wasn’t concerned about the ongoing, scattered aerial combat. His pilots and craft were proving superior, and he had no doubt everyone would get to ground intact, for they were coming down to surface further to the east and flying level to the ground to get to this position to avoid the Skarron anti-air, but so far, other than their fighters, there had been no aerial response, though Kip knew the Type-3s could probably shoot this far out with their lachar cannon if they had a decent line of sight.

“Commander,” a nearby Protovic said in the trade language as he approached.

Kip turned to face him as a handful of other Archons walked out of the dropship alongside him.

“Ren’san’do,” he greeted his assigned liaison.

“I’ve just received a report,” the Protovic said from behind his armored helmet as they pair walked towards the main landing zone where the mechs were being offloaded, “that indicates that several Skarron ground teams have broken through in the undercity and are headed for this location.”

“What size?”

“Uncertain, but they’ve secured a route of access to bring in as many as they wish.”

“Alright, I need your people to show mine where the access points are. We’ll set up a perimeter around the LZ and hold it ourselves. How deep do the structures go underneath us?”

“Several kilometers. It is virtually impossible to block off all access to such a large area.”

“Leave it to us, just get us guides for the undercity.”

“Consider it done.”

“And feel free to reroute your forward troops through here as a fallback position.”

Ren’san’do nodded gratefully, then with a tap of his hand on Kip’s armored shoulder he ran off.

Kip likewise accelerated up into a run, turning his green ranger armor into a little blur as he headed off into the landing zone and weaved his way around the unloading areas, not wanting to get stepped on, and eventually ran his way over to the area where the larger transports were set/setting down and found a portable control post set up nearby. It was similar to their firebases and constructed of transformable cargo cubes, but this one was tiny in comparison, consisting of only 9 blocks in a three by three grid.

There was no entry gate through the walls, just a staircase on the outside that he climbed up to the top level on, which held three octagonal platforms with gaps in between that showed the area below, accessible by ladders only, which he knew held extensive comm equipment, plus shield generators and a tiny barracks.

“Where’s my mech?” he asked the tech manning the control console, who had a pair of commandos flanking him in guard positions while another handful stood ready along the wall, keeping an eye out for enemy ground troops.

“There,” one of the commandos said, pointing at a grounded transport, “and there,” he finished, pointing up at another just landing.

Kip nodded. “Give it priority. I need to get out and scout the area while the rest are unpacked.”

“Understood, Archon,” the commando said, gesturing to the tech who was already logging the priority into the database. That cleared deck space in front of the transports, which eventually got around to unloading the gigantic, lumpy bricks of mech out of their holds via internal antigrav units bolstered by antigrav tugs that maneuvered the three pieces out into a star formation…or the top three segments anyway.

The other two came down in the next transport and were laid out at the bottom two points. Once they were stationary and the tugs were pulled back, the Clan Protoss commando in charge of the command post gave Kip a go.

The trailblazer jumped off the wall and landed in a crouch on the ground, then sprinted off towards the five huge blocks, running for the one at the top of the star. When he got there he climbed into an access door that was near ground level, then through a short crawlway before getting to the mech’s pilot compartment. He sealed the interior door, then telekinetically hit a switch that pulled armor plates together, removing the access way and giving him meters of protection around his pod.

Next he powered up the life support, which altered the gravity in the pod and sent his feet towards the wall/floor. At the moment the mech’s pod was laying on its back, resulting in the disorientation, but once the inertial dampener and artificial gravity kicked in the cockpit righted itself from Kip’s point of view and he immediately took his helmet off and began unlocking his armor. He stepped out of it and collapsed it down into packet form, then stashed it and his helmet into a bin attached to the back wall for just that purpose.

He took two steps and moved into the control sphere, where he stepped up onto the foot pads and began wrapping the control harness around his legs, getting a decent connective feel through his uniform as he snugged the straps. Other mechwarriors preferred to strip down to their underwear for a more direct connection, same way they did with going sockless in their running shoes, but Kip had never felt the need…and with the way this behemoth moved, he wasn’t going to be getting too creative with the mech’s movements anyway.

Once he got his chest, arms, and head locked in he used a redundant control panel in front of him, one placed there specifically for psionics-capable pilots, and synced the harness alignment with the mech’s…causing limbs to stretch out and go rigid, despite the fact that he was in a block of material rather than a mech.

But that was about to change. Using a combination of hand, eye, and psionic controls he triggered the block that he was in to transform its shape into a torso, then used the antigrav to lift it off the ground a couple of meters as the block to his right also went through a transformation…or rather a partial one, extruding a thick support pylon.

Kip’s center block, now in torso form, drifted over and pushed into the pylon, sucking it inside the right shoulder assembly and locking it in place before pulling it snug. After that he ‘landed’ back on the ground and let the antigrav capacitor recharge as the right block finished transforming into an arm, complete with a neo-esk, fully functional hand.

When it did Kip’s right hand in the harness lost its rigidity and he experimented with the fingers, seeing the mech’s operate in sync on the intricate holographic display that now surrounded him in the cockpit. With that arm locked in, he levitated both it and the torso up off the ground and moved over to the left block, accepted its pylon, and got his left arm operational.

He did the same thing with the leg blocks, accepting them one at a time, then finishing the transformation of those pieces on the ground and feeling all maneuvering capabilities loosen up in his control harness. Fully powering up the Voltron-class mech, he bent at his waist and sat the thing up slowly, throwing back an elbow and hand for leverage.

Once in sitting position he looked around, now visibly higher than the ‘small’ mechs roaming about. Seeing that the area around his was clear, he rolled the voltron over onto its right side, got its hands underneath the torso, then came up to a knee. From there he slowly stood the thing up to its full height, some four times taller than a neo and covered in so much armor he literally had more on his forearm than the little mechs carried on their entire frames.

Once Kip was standing he shuffled around a bit, refamiliarizing himself with the controls, for he hadn’t had a lot of training time in this type of mech, and most of what he did have was in simulators. Spinning the headless mech around once, he spotted a pair of hoths off to his west, both of which only came up to his mech’s armpits…but the Mk. 2 hoth further behind them stood more than half again as tall as his voltron. It was a beast of a walker, and definitely earned the ‘heavy’ moniker. Unlike the smaller Hoths, the Mk. 2 had the unique distinction of carrying the smallest cleansing beam ever built, and Kip intended to put that to good use, as he had brought down four of the beasts to this landing zone…or would have, once the rest of the transports arrived.

As big and heavily armored as they were, they weren’t meant for dancing, and were just narrow enough to fit into the Protovic streets. They’d be sitting ducks for counterattacks once they demonstrated their firepower, which was why Kip and the others had to get out ahead of them and engage the enemy, taking down their ‘smaller’ units.

But at the moment all he was doing was blocking the LZ, so he walked his mech off towards the edge of the clearing, making sure not to kick aside the smaller mechs, and made room for others to be unpacked or brought down from orbit.

Kip gingerly walked into one of the city streets, making extra care not to step on anyone below, though the area should have already been cleared of civilians, save for the designated evacuee routes. With so many mechs around it had been a necessity, and Kip was thankful that it appeared that the Protovic natives were adhering to the geographic restrictions.

Risking a little more speed he accelerated up into a brisk walk, then turned one of the angles in the street and began heading off west towards the distant Skarron lines. From his vantage point he could see over more than half of the Protovic buildings, while much taller versions sprouted up around him like trees, both for their height and their penchant for leaf-like landing pads clustered around the tops, which were well above his head, and even that of the Mk. 2 Hoth.

The battlemap superimposed over his view of the city, with him immediately seeing Protovic engagements taking place ahead…a few of which weren’t that far off. He triggered an auxiliary view, with him being able to see the plane of the city from above, and noted that there was a ground battle going on between Protovic tanks, infantry, and what looked like an upwelling of Skarron ground troops coming out of a region below…along with some type of armor that wasn’t their huge walkers.

“Kip, nice to see you in play,” Lonigan-839 said, transmitting from a Mk. 3 raven out on the perimeter of the LZ. “Do you mind if I swing a few boys out and help the Protovic put out some of these fires?”

“Just looking at one of them now. Permission granted, so long as you keep the LZ secure.”

“You know I will,” the mech specialist said, who, ironically, had a higher rating in that division than Kip did…by two levels.

“I’m going to take a stroll and see what’s up ahead, break trail for the heavies. Do you know anything about this small-scale armor I’m seeing?”

“Armor is right. I’ve been in contact with the Protovic field commanders ever since I set down. They say they’re exoskeletons that some of the Skarrons are wearing. Apparently these guys come in different sizes. I’d guess these are their version of Knights.”

“Well, step on a few, will ya? I’ve got bigger targets to worry about.”

“Copy that. Keep your fat ass mech behind the bigger buildings. If they knew who you were, I’d light you up with a missile barrage first thing.”

“I think they’re saving those for air assets, but point taken. There’s two Type-2s within moderate missile range, at least as far as we think they can fire. Still haven’t got firm numbers there.”

“I suggest you take a couple of madcats with you, just the same.”

“Thanks, but the Hoths need them more than me. They’re going to be priority one once they get their first shot off.”

“Take pictures,” Lonigan quipped, with Kip seeing his raven shoot up to a building top on its built-in jump jets…which in this case were antigrav, now that thrust-based maneuvering had been replaced with the more versatile tech.

“Watch yourself, not all of these buildings are uninhabited.”

“I know,” he said seriously, “but they built them sturdy. At least enough to support a light mech like mine.”

“Just keep an eye out. We don’t want to crush the people we’re trying to save.”

“Once the shooting starts, we might not be that lucky,” Lonigan said somberly.

“I know,” Kip echoed him. “Watch your step and firing lines…save who you can.”

“Ditto…and keep count. The big walkers earn painted tally marks.”

Kip smirked. “Agreed.”

6

Kip leaned his voltron forward, bent the right knee and kicked its left leg back, bringing the torso lower to the ground as he punched into the street, burying one of the armored Skarron infantry beneath his mech’s clenched fist. He pulled it back up and swept the fist side to side, knocking others around as they were annoyingly darting in and out of his feet firing tiny missiles at his escort mechs. A few dodged the giant hand but most got knocked aside, and splattered when he got the chance.

After he’d killed a few dozen he stood the mech back up and continued walking forward, leaving the rest for the smaller mechs. The voltron might not be the most agile of mechs, but it was still built with the neo’s design philosophy of hand to hand combat, meaning the enemy wasn’t going to be able to hide out underneath his feet, and it was time they realized that…for he wasn’t having much luck stepping on the things.

The Skarrons quickly got the message and pulled back from the immediate radius around his mech, taking cover around and in between the stalk-like Protovic buildings, ready to jump out and ambush the other mechs. Each of the Skarrons was a fourth the height of a Raven-class mech, and they could run and jump well enough for quadrupeds, with some of them ganging up and knocking the small mechs off their feet in what looked like an ugly football game…but they didn’t have the weaponry to destroy the mechs quickly, making the things more of an annoyance than a threat, but give them enough time to gather greater numbers and Kip knew that would change.

There were a pair of Starbright-class mechs preceding Kip on the road they were taking towards the first of the Type-4 walkers, bathing every target they came across in plasma, along with several neos spread out onto other streets forming a ring around the voltron, while a handful of ravens were keeping pace with the big mech to clean up infantry that might be getting in the way. Behind the big mech was a pair of madcats equipped as anti-missile platforms, standing ready should the voltron require cover fire against the big Skarron missiles.

The little ones coming from the infantry weren’t requiring any intercepts to be fired, with the lachars picking them off easy enough when given a moment to target, but some of the infantry was running up and firing them almost directly underneath the mechs, chipping away a little shield strength with every shot…something the ravens were trying to keep them from doing.

Kip’s mech group was running point, with 6 others coming up from behind him in a staggered line. Two of those were Mk. 2 hoths with a much larger escort, 3 were original hoths with escorts, and the last one was a rogue group of smaller mechs looking for whatever targets were available, especially the Skarron Type-5s that were likewise biped, the first of which Kip was about to come up to.

His neo escort got to it first and engaged it with probing attacks, finding that it had a primary plasma cannon set in the chest, while the rest of its armament seemed tooled towards anti-infantry operations. It was an extreme flanking escort for the Type-3 that was Kip’s eventual target, which was likewise surrounded by Type-4s, which then had escort rings of other Type-5s…which then had escorts of their primary infantry. So far Kip hadn’t seen any Hobbits, suggesting that skirmish duties probably didn’t mean going up against mechs, but it was still odd that they hadn’t spotted any as scouts.

Then again, if they were out there in the buildings they’d be almost impossible to spot. If they were smart they’d stay out of the mechs’ way, which the Skarrons themselves were not doing. They weren’t going to slow down his voltron with their little missiles, but given enough time they could wear down his escorts.

By the time Kip got up to the Type-5 it was already toast, lying on its back with the chest section torn out. He did notice an open flap between the legs that he thought was a cockpit entry, which suggested the pilot had fled after his ride had been damaged.

Kip checked the battlemap, looking for the next closest target and finding several Type-5s nearby, but he ignored them and set a waypoint for the closest Type-4 for his group of mechs to follow.

“Take out the 5s on your own,” he said into his group comm, “I’m heading for the 4. Lay off it until I can size up what it’ll take to take it down. I might be able to get it without backup.”

He got a host of acknowledgement signals in the form of tiny flashing lights next to the name icons for all the mechs, letting him know they’d heard him without vocally creating a mess of overlapping confirmations. Kip ignored them and goosed his walking speed a bit once he rounded the next bend. His escorts matched his new speed, keeping their spacing as they waded through yet more infantry, a lot of which were just shooting at them with pistols and rifles.

Even though it wasn’t doing much damage, it felt like they were walking through a gauntlet…and had they tried this approach with their own infantry they would have been in for a world of resistance. Thankfully the mechs gave them another option.

Kip saw another Type-5 icon on the battlemap go down off towards the north where his neos had swung out to get it, leaving only one in the direct path between him and the Type-4, which another pair of neos were racing towards, eager to take down another of the Skarron walkers. Meanwhile the other mech groups were making their way forward at a slightly slower pace, with the hoths having to take extra time maneuvering around corners…or stepping over them in the case of the Mk. 2s.

The Skarrons clearly knew they were coming, with the Type-4 repositioning into a low gap between two buildings and stepping onto/into the single-story structure occupying that spot, wedging itself into cover along the street and waiting for Kip to come to it…which was just fine by his reckoning. The hoths might not be able to shoot it with the buildings in the way, but that wasn’t going to be a problem for the voltron.

When he was 600 meters away he opened the plasma ports on each arm, exposing the big ass cannons he was carrying that made the voltron seem like a supersized version of the neo, except that it also had anti-air lachars on the shoulders and one rotating mauler that would pop up where the head would have been had the mech had one.

Kip kept that encased within the armor, not wanting to give the enemy a shot of knocking it out. The voltron had shields, but in order to fire each of its weapons the section of shield along the firing line had to be lowered, same as any other mech, so right now he was going to work with the plasma cannons and see how they took to the Skarrons’ shields and armor.

When Kip got within 200 meters he raised his arms up and pivoted the torso to the left, knowing that he was going to have to walk right in front of the Type-4 in order to target it. He glanced at his battlemap, confirming that his escorts were keeping back a respectful distance. While the Skarron walker didn’t have very strong plasma cannons, it had enough to wreck a neo if it got a good salvo in from the front…which was where he was having to approach from, unless he wanted to circle around and try it from the back side, which would mean stepping on buildings.

Maybe later, right now he needed to get a feel for how much of a beast this Type-4 was going to be. Prepping himself for an onslaught, he crept his mech out into the firing line.

Hundreds of tiny white plasma orbs washed over his mech in the next few seconds, eating into his shields as he pumped a much larger blue orb into the front of the thing…which was a head taller than his neo and had a huge amount of mass up high, making it look even scarier from Kip’s point of view. He squared off with it as it continued to rain plasma down on him like a horizontal thundershower, then the Archon pumped off more plasma shots with both arms at a range of only 120 meters.

He got through its shields on the fourth shot, then started eating into the thick armor after that, knocking out a few plasma cannons but doing little to stop the onslaught of plasma raining down on him. His shield indicators turned to light green over his chest area as the forward shields drained percentage points, but nowhere near as fast as it visually looked like they should be, given his mech’s considerable defenses.

Kip held his position and kept firing, knowing he needed to get a baseline for what it would take to bring one of these things down, so he kept pounding with only his two beefy plasma cannons until he tore a hull breach in the walker’s tapered nose. It tried to twist to the side, but being pinned between the buildings it didn’t have much maneuvering room. As it rotated in place, stepping up and back down again on its six insect-like legs, Kip walked to the side, keeping his firing line on the opening as long as he could and succeeded in knocking out the power to a third of the forward plasma cannons.

A whole slew of the pimple-like emplacements went dark, but the walker continued to rotate around, bringing more intact cannons into play. Kip abandoned the forward breach point as it rotated out of view and picked a new spot on the fat butt of the walker, punching through the shields there with two shots before chewing into the armor while keeping a close watch on his own shields.

He got about halfway through the armor before his own defenses dropped below 50%, at which point he walked off further to the right until the building eclipsed his view of the walker. He held position, letting the power from his mech’s core soak back into the shield matrixes for the better part of a minute until the edge of the Skarron walker lurched out into view and started firing at his side with a handful of cannons, which increased in number with each lurching step it took.

Kip rotated his voltron around and continued pounding the aft armor damage after repopping the walker’s weak shields, after which it was a race to see who got to who first. The Archon didn’t want to take any hull damage, and prepared for a quick retreat when his forward shields dropped near the zero point, knowing that his aft shields would have enough juice to cover his exit.

That didn’t turn out to be necessary, for he got through the armor and breached the interior hull as the walker was only halfway out into the street. Sensing the opportunity Kip walked out and put his mech in between its butt and the other side of the street, half stepping on a low building in order to get the positioning right. From there he stuck his right hand into the breach point and peeled back a bit more armor plating as he launched another plasma orb off his upper wrist and directly inside. A few more like that and the Skarrons’ plasma cannons dropped dead along with the rest of the war machine.

Kip extricated his mech from the tight spot and walked it to the side back the way he’d originally come from. The walker’s legs hadn’t collapsed, making it a smoking statue at the two breach points.

The voltron’s plasma ports retracted, protecting them from hits as Kip ran his mech forward and pushed with the hands against the side of the fat tick of a machine. It didn’t move much, but with no power to the legs they slowly buckled and tipped the heavy top section over onto its side.

Kip grabbed one of its legs with his mech’s left hand and stretched it out, then popped up his mauler cannon, giving the voltron a very low and flat head, and pumped a shot out into the leg, melting part of its armor away. He hit it again and again until the lower leg tore free, then he tossed it aside and retracted the mauler. If the walker wasn’t as dead as it appeared, it was at least going to stay put…else learn how to walk on 5 legs instead of 6.

“Did everyone take notes?” Kip asked sarcastically.

“Nice roadblock,” one of the starbrights commented, seeing the Skarron walker stretching across the street ahead of them.

“I don’t think I can move it,” Kip said, wondering if he could maybe budge it a bit. Its mass was so large he was surprised the damn thing could even walk around…and it was the baby compared to the others. “Just go over or squeeze through.”

“Copy that.”

Kip took his own advice and activated his mech’s jump jets. He bent the mech’s knees and jumped, floating the voltron up into the air as he watched the power gage. The antigrav wasn’t strong enough for flight, but with a capacitor boost it was enough for short hops.

Adding some horizontal push against the planet’s gravity well he sailed over top of the walker, then dialed back the jump jets and landed on the angled hull, trying to surf his way down the far side…but his footing didn’t work quite like he wanted to and he got his mech’s right foot caught on an angle, causing the voltron to do a face plant into the street…literally. The mech gouged out huge impact craters at the elbows and knees as it landed, popping its own shields into oblivion under the physical strain.

“Doh,” Kip said to himself as he worked the mech’s arms and legs around in preparation to stand back up as a trio of neos came over the Skarron walker and glided past him to more graceful landings.

“Were you trying to do that, boss?”

“Shut up, Parren.”

“I’m sorry, I thought my comm was off while I was laughing.”

The voltron crawled up into a kneeling position then stood up slowly as Kip turned it to face the little neo ahead of him. “Don’t make me dropkick you.”

“You going solo on the next one?”

Kip answered by raising his right arm and popping the plasma cannon mount up, then he fired the largest orb setting he had over top of the three neos, sending it well down the street and into a Type-5 that had poked around a distant corner.

The blast knocked the biped off its feet, as well as vaporizing several Skarron infantry nearby. Two more plasma orbs came in and finished off the smaller mech, with the quadrupeds scattering off the street and opening up their path ahead.

“If the next one corners itself again, yes. Otherwise feel free to add some precision fire to the target points I set. As for the Type-3, we’ll see when we get there. I may hold off until we get a hoth in range, but for now let’s just focus on cleaning up the 4s and 5s and stepping on as many cockroaches as we can.”

“Copy that.”

Kip walked his voltron forward down the more or less straight street, coming to a section of city that he was tall enough to look over the building tops of…at which point his proximity warning lit up as distant missile launches were detected heading his way.

“Madcats,” he said, popping up the anti-air lachars on his mech’s shoulders, “incoming missiles. Get high…now.”

Behind him two of the smaller mechs activated their jump jets and rocketed up into the sky, where they immediately began launching plumes of intercepts off into the distance towards the incoming missiles from the Type-2 that had launched them. More and more popped out of the missile boxes as the mechs descended and landed on top of the Protovic buildings, pausing slightly as they got their footing, then resuming as the lachars pods on the arms began firing off almost simultaneously with those on the voltron.

A cataclysmic collision happened kilometers away, visible by a growing plume of explosions and later smoke and dust as the first intercepts met their targets. Smaller explosions surrounded them as the lachars popped more of the Skarron missiles, with some not exploding at all and merely dropping out of the sky as their propulsion systems were knocked out.

The river-like swarm of big missiles fought its way forward, bringing the destructive cloud closer and closer towards the Star Force mechs until it washed over the voltron, covering Kip’s mech in explosions that ripped through his shields and into the outer layers of his armor…but no further. He checked the battlemap, which indicated that no more missiles were incoming at the moment, then walked the voltron ahead.

“You two ok?” he asked the madcats even as he checked their status remotely.

“They weren’t aiming at us.”

“No damage,” the other confirmed as the voltron pushed its way into clear air. Kip stopped there and raised the right hand, twisting the wrist around flat to the enemy and curling up the thumb and fingers, save for the middle one.

He held the one-fingered salute for the next few seconds, then lowered the arm as he waited to see if more missiles would be incoming…but they weren’t. Maybe the Skarrons didn’t understand sign language.

“Where you guys at on ammo?”

“34%.”

“38%.”

“Looks like we’re going to need more than 2,” Kip said, pulling up the command interface portion of the battlemap and requesting four more madcats with the same loadout to rendezvous at his position…along with a dropship standing by with new missile boxes for this pair once they arranged a temporary LZ, which he assigned the small mech group to creating and securing.

7

March 7, 2465

Alpha Region

Star Force Warship Excalibur (Mid-jump)

Paul pushed off the soft cube with his legs, summoning as much leverage as he could in the zero g training room, and launched himself towards Kara, who was clinging to a position on the ‘ceiling.’ He held his fists out in front of him and tried to maintain as straight a line as possible as his feet left the padded structure, turning himself in a ballistic missile that shot across the medium-sized chamber.

But as he zipped through the air he felt a telekinetic tug on his waist that pulled him off course, landing him some three meters to Kara’s left. Paul somersaulted over and landed on his feet, crumpling his legs to absorb as much of the momentum as he could as he reached for a handhold…only to get head-butted in his side as Kara rammed into him, knocking them both off the lumpy cubular wall and into midair where they proceeded to wrestle each other for leverage.

Paul recovered quickly and got his left hand against her throat, peeling her torso off him enough to raise a knee up between them before their mass bounced off the far wall, sending them both spinning. Kara wrapped an arm around Paul’s leg, making him unable to kick her off, so he created a telekinetic wall between his leg and her body, pushing it out half an inch and prying her grip off him enough to slip his leg free. With a shove to her shoulders he slipped free and went careening across the chamber until he impact the far wall, then he bounced off it to another where he finally got a handhold and steadied himself.

‘Below’ him Kara bounced from one wall nook to another, building momentum with each pushoff in preparation for a strafing run on him…with the ones she’d thrown previously each coming with a vicious kick. Paul may have outranked her by a handful of levels, but her agility had nosed above him, due in no small part, he figured, to her flight experience. She wasn’t using her Vorch’nas now, but she had definitely become more accustomed to maneuvering off the ground, making her more than an even match for him in zero g…while he had gotten back to kicking her butt in just about everything else.

Paul reset himself to another handhold, then clawed his way over to another not wanting to give Kara a stationary target to fling herself at. Then all of a sudden he got a wash of Fornax through his head, which he pushed back against and partially negated, focusing on his hand grips while pouring everything else into the mental tug of war…but he lost out and the Fornax escalated, causing his body to shiver and his head to wash in disorientation.

Which was when he realized it wasn’t the Fornax anymore.

Confirming his epiphany a moment later the small monitor circle attached to his forehead over his left eyebrow beeped three times in rapid succession.

Stop, Paul declared telepathically, not knowing where Kara was as his eyes didn’t want to focus on anything in particular. He heard a crunch beside him, then a blurry mass came over and a cool hand pressed against his forehead, twisting it to the side.

“There yellow,” Kara reported. “What are you feeling?”

“Did you hit me with a Fornax?”

“Yes.”

“It spiked off that. I can’t see much, and my head is spinning,” he said, feeling a strong grip latch onto his shoulder.

“I’ve got you, turtle up and see what you can do,” Kara said, keeping one hand on Paul and the other on the wall handhold.

Paul let go of his own handholds and floated free, letting his fellow Archon anchor him in place. He dismissed his physical senses, which were hit and miss as it was with his disorientation, and focused entirely on the inner turmoil, trying to channel the storm that seemed to be growing in strength with every second.

A hard point formed in his mind with the distinctive feel of Kara. It wasn’t reaching down and in to where he was, for the Ikrid blocks prevented it, but the point seemed to hover just above him, giving him a point of reference that he mentally reached up to and used to get his internal bearings…after which he started pushing aside the disruptions within and shielding a few key areas. With those bastions of calm he began reconstructing his mental armor that had just been washed away.

Paul knew the only way that could happen was from an extremely powerful external mind…but had that happened it wouldn’t have been instantaneous. This was sudden and unseen, meaning his armor had been taken down from the inside…and still was, though he was rebuilding it faster than it was going down.

The hard point in his mind sank lower and touched his consciousness as Kara repositioned her grip to his bare wrist and made flesh to flesh contact, allowing her to hack past the Ikrid blocks.

Do you need me?

I’ve got it. Just keep me grounded.

Another beep sounded from the monitoring device.

1 red…stay with it.

The storm in Paul’s mind continued to grow stronger, but he kept restricting it to certain areas and pushing it out of places it shouldn’t be, focusing the transformational flux where it was meant. If it got out of hand he’d have to squelch the disruption, essentially corking up the flow that he needed to unleash…but he couldn’t have it shredding his mind in the process.

2 red, Kara said, her mental voice imparting concern and elation at the same time.

Paul breathed hard, sucking in a very deep breath and feeling his body start to ache a little bit, though it was nothing compared to the pain starting to ring out through his head.

3 red! Go for it if you can!

Push me off…

Kara gave him a gentle nudge away from the wall and let go, but kept her mental presence within his mind to steady him as the hurricane within him was building even further. She’d yet to experience this herself, but a few of the other trailblazers had…hence the creation of the biomonitors, which they all now wore during training sessions just in case this happened so they could record the changes and hopefully the impetus triggering the transformations.

Kara telekinetically grabbed Paul’s body and steered him out into the middle of the chamber as the three little lights on the monitor went from solid red to flashing red, and she knew he was about to ascend. She could feel fireworks going on inside him, and they didn’t disappoint. Her Zen’zat memories told her what this was, but feeling it firsthand was something else entirely…and with Paul’s mental armor down, she was getting his full mental output, realizing for the first time how much psionically stronger than her he’d become.

Paul’s bodily ache increased along with the hurricane in his mind, then like the flashing lights on the biomonitors his body began to pulse with an internal light in a painful rhythm, with each cycle getting brighter, faster, and penetrating deeper inside his limbs and torso. For a moment he felt like Goku about to go Super Saiyan 3…but then a little explosion happened in his neck, like a crackle he felt inside, followed by another and another that spread out, each spawning into two or three others.

Paul started to convulse as the wave of miniature explosions traveled down his neck and into his body, spreading out quickly with little tendrils down his chest, arms, and legs all the way into his feet, then like a virus they spread out from all points, saturating his body as it underwent hyper cellular growth that had been prepping for several months with small incidents…and now the sudden payoff was finally here.

Paul clenched up his body, riding it out and keeping from screaming out loud, though Kara could clearly hear his mental version.

As the crackles exhausted themselves the mental hurricane continued, slowly decreasing in intensity as Paul floated, twitching in the center of the room as Kara telekinetically nulled out his movements. More than two minutes later Paul finally opened his eyes and released the clenching in his chest, forcing himself to breath normally even though every fiber of his body ached.

How you doing?

Is it supposed to be like that?

Yeah, it is. They wanted it to be quick.

How many lights?

1 yellow.

Paul blinked several times as he held his hands up in front of his face. His eyes still weren’t focusing correctly, but they were better than they had been. He did a mental inventory, still feeling his head scattered and unreliable, but couldn’t make out any new facets yet. He resigned himself to wait for the lights to transition back down through green and then shut off entirely, indicating that the flux was gone, then he should be able to sense a new ability…at least that’s what Aaron had told him.

His fellow trailblazer had gone through this already, earning him the second tier psionic ability known as Leechas, which was essentially a range upgrade to his Ikrid. He’d gone from being able to sense minds at 250-300 meters on up to better than 2 kilometers. Morgan had gone through this process twice, which Paul learned about well after the fact, given that she was still out on the Calavari front, and gained the Snu and Pren abilities, which were an immunity to Fornax and a power boost to Pefbar/Lachka, respectively.

The ‘immunity’ wasn’t quite as encompassing as the word sounded, but it effectively reduced Fornax interference by 90-95%, meaning it’d take 10-20 guys hitting you with Fornax blasts to equal the same effect as one previously…which was possible, but it meant that Zen’zat who’d upgraded to Snu would be difficult to take down, not to mention they could unleash Fornax fields amongst others with Snu and not affect them much, which would be a significant boon in high-numbered melee scenarios.

Pren added a power boost to Pefbar, which extended the size of the detection fields one could produce, as well as increasing the strength or range of Lachka. It was noted in Morgan’s log that she’d been able to telekinetically lift 5 times the mass after the upgrade, as well as being able to extend her range out to a factor of 3…though not both at the same time. The closer an object was the more lifting power you had, and vice versa.

Kerrie, Ryan, Vic, and Rex had also gone through upgrades, and after the first three the medtechs doing the ongoing research into the V’kit’no’sat database discovered that there were specific biological triggers set for each of the psionic abilities past the original 7. They hadn’t found a master list of abilities on the dinosaur side, just the Zen’zat list of all that had been discovered, some 18 in total…15 second tier and 3 Mvor abilities.

The database entry hadn’t even been listed with the psionics specifications, it had been buried in an Era’tran file detailing expectations regarding Zen’zat progression, which was somehow related to field assignments. The entry noted the biological triggers and explained the randomness was a Zen’zat myth, and that there were carefully constructed requirements built in to ensure only the most worthy garnered the upgrades without the need for testing or further genetic modification.

Training, it seemed, was the best avenue to unlocking the upgrades, but they weren’t meant to be trained for specifically. Instead, they were meant to be a reward for those who advanced themselves across the board, which would inevitably lead to stumbling across one or more of the triggers.

Knowing that there were specific triggers, the medtechs had worked long and hard trying to isolate what they were and after considerable failure concluded that the only realistic way they were going to be able to identify them was to monitor the transformation processes when they happened and try to backtrack, citing that pure genetic analysis was next to worthless at this point, considering the sheer complexity of the V’kit’no’sat’s genetic engineering capability.

Hopefully whatever Paul had just experienced on a cellular level would be recorded on the device attached to his head, as well as the status of his body just prior to the transformation. With enough data, the medtechs hoped to be able to isolate the triggers so they could tell the Archons what to specifically train for in order to draw them out earlier than randomness would allow. The trailblazers wholeheartedly agreed, and over the past years Paul, Kara, and the other 99 had worn the biomonitors during training in the hopes of catching more of the upgrades as they happened.

Three green, Kara noted as Paul continued to float and wait out the remainder of the process. Does it still hurt?

Oh yeah. You can withdraw now…and thanks.

Kara’s hard point within Paul’s mind disappeared, which felt like he was in a ship that just cut its mooring lines to shore and started to list about with the waves. That shook him for half a second, then he held his own mental bearings and kept his mental armor intact as the hurricane spun down to a mere thunderstorm.

The remnants faded rather quickly after that, leaving Paul’s mind suddenly clear and his vision restored…but the pain in his body was more persistent, leaving the Archon with dull, heavy ache that wasn’t fading.

Paul coughed, releasing his body’s tension along with that in his mind and trying to relax.

“Pull me over,” he said aloud, with Kara telekinetically obliging.

He put a hand on the wall, grabbing one of the recessed padded handles. “I think I’m done training for the day, my body is fried.”

“That didn’t happen to any of the others,” Kara noted, having been given access to the trailblazers’ logs so she could help them with all things Zen’zat. To date she’d been the only Archon allowed access to their private boards.

“What didn’t?”

“The bodily pain. Their upgrades were mental.”

“Which narrows it down to how many possibilities?”

“I don’t know, but odds are it’s something new,” she said as Paul glanced over at the exit and gently pushed off the wall towards it. Kara followed him but at a faster pace, floating past him and arriving first. She found a handhold and reached her right arm back for him to grab onto, then she shoved him towards the door a few meters further down.

His feet felt gravity half a meter out from it, cementing him to the ground in a jolt that ran the entire length of his body. “Ow.”

“What?”

“Gravity doesn’t agree with me,” he said, pushing the door open and walking out into the hallways as Kara came down behind him. “Where am I at?”

“One green.”

Paul stopped a few steps outside and closed his eyes…then shook his head. “I can’t find a new mental trigger.”

“If your body is hurting…” she suggested.

Paul rotated his arms around in sync, feeling the pain spike with the movement. He locked onto the sensation, mentally feeling out what was hurting, and looking for a link.

It was elusive at first, but once he found it and ‘flexed’ a few times the pathway broke free and he could feel the small reservoir of power within him…but it didn’t feel like the mental powers he’d gained before. This was emanating from what felt like every cell in his body.

“Anything?” Kara asked.

“Hold on,” Paul said, closing his eyes again and tilting his head ever so slightly to the left. Eventually he held up his right hand and pointed it towards Kara. “High five.”

She frowned, but put her hand up and clapped it against his, then jerked it back as she hit something weird…then realized she hadn’t felt skin. She’d felt energy.

Kara reached her index finger out and poked his hand again, this time impacting his palm.

“Sorry, couldn’t hold it,” Paul apologized, concentrating. “Try it now.”

Kara poked his hand again, with her finger stopping short as it hit a tiny energy shield…but one of a matrix she’d never encountered before, not in reality anyway, but she knew it from her memories.

“Bioshield,” she said with an unguarded grin, which Paul matched.

“Now that is cool,” he said, staring at the invisible energy covering his palm.

Kara glanced at the small circle on his head as the last green light disappeared. “Let’s hope that thing got some good data, because I really want those.”

“Phfff,” Paul scoffed.

“Hey, if this thing every runs out of juice…” she said, pointing to her clear Vorch’nas on her left arm.

“How often does that happen?”

“Depends how busy I am. I may look invincible, but this is just armor…plus a few other things. I’m going to need the extra psionics as much as you guys down the road.”

“That’s way more than just armor,” Paul corrected her. “Even the V’kit’no’sat don’t have that, right?”

“Oh sure…so I can just quit training, get fat…it’s all the same,” she said incredulously.

“Alright,” Paul said, getting her point…and starting to get sleepy. Apparently his available bio energy was limited. He wondered if it ate ambrosia the same way Morgan’s Jumat did, for the files hadn’t said. “I’m going to grab some food then hit the sack and try to sleep this off.”

“Good idea. I’d join you, but I’m not hungry yet. See you in 8 hours or so?”

“Maybe,” Paul said as they started to walk off towards the hallway intersection where they’d go their separate ways. “This might end up being a 12 hour deal. I’ll contact you when I’m over it, then you get to start throwing stuff at me.”

“Gladly,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder before jogging off ahead of him and making a right turn out of view.

Paul sighed, feeling a stress headache creeping up. He needed to get some rest in a hurry before it got any worse…but he was going to grab some ambrosia first, just in case that was what his body needed. And a few breadsticks.

8

March 8, 2465

Krichjan System (Protovic territory)

Eshwan

“Get him, Dina,” Kip said as he ran his voltron forward, putting divots in the street from the footfalls as he awkwardly pulled his right arm up and slipped his hand behind his head…save for the mech didn’t have a head.

Kip fought the imbalance with an extra arm swing on the left side as he telekinetically triggered the cargo release switch for the mech’s back, which raised a thick pylon up high enough for the hand to grab. He latched onto it and pulled it free, then swung the stubby ‘ping pong paddle’ forward over top of his head, with the mech swinging it higher than necessary to clear the headless shoulders…one tiny glitch in the control system they’d have to work on later.

“I’ll try,” Dina-1202 said as she worked her own voltron up another street parallel to Kip’s but more than a kilometer over as they both zigzagged their way through the annoyingly unstraight streets to try and intercept the half dozen Type-3s that were crawling their way forward with surprising speed, heading for the formation of hoths behind him that were even now digging into the side of a Type-1 in the distance. Along with them were hundreds of the smaller walkers, all of whom had come together in the same area of the city to strengthen their defenses after the hoths had killed an isolated Type-2 a couple of days ago.

Kip swung the ‘paddle’ forward in front of him, then tucked his arm back and started pumping it to even out his running gait just in time to make another turn without smacking into the side buildings. His mech’s feet dug in deep, leaving furrows as he bled off his momentum, but he successfully made the turn and angled left, running 18 more steps before a shallow right turn, all of which was bringing him closer to another Type-3 that was flanked and preceded by four Type-4s.

He ignored them and the plasma they tried to shower him with whenever they had a shot, but otherwise they ignored him as well, pushing forward to try and get to the Star Force heavy walkers, for the Skarrons had learned quickly they had no defense against the long range cleansing beams and continuous lachars. If they had let events continue, Kip’s mechs could have killed every single Skarron walker from range with their anti-missile cover, which had precipitated a change in the enemy’s tactics.

As dangerous as their walkers were on their own, they were considerably more lethal in packs, and they’d formed huge ones around all of the Type-1s…which Star Force was now trying to take on. The Skarrons fat walkers had proved to be more agile than they looked, with considerable straight line ground speed when they wanted it, and now that Kip’s hoths were within weapons range the Skarrons were charging forward, trying to close distance before they could take down the big one…or at least to destroy them after the fact. Either way, Kip had to keep them off the hoths, and he was relying on the smaller, conventional mechs spread out around him in the city to handle the Type-4s while he and Dina went straight for the Type-3s.

The furthest one forward was closer to Dina, meaning she would be engaging first. He wanted to double team it with her, but the others were pressing forward and would slip by if he didn’t hang to the right, so he kept moving forward, zigzagging towards the closest one as his twin voltron engaged the enemy.

Dina knew what she was doing, so Kip kept his focus ahead…though it wasn’t like he had much choice. A lot of buildings were blocking his line of sight, plus he had to keep his attention close to keep from running into buildings at the high speed he was moving his mech…not to mention slipping on all the Skarron infantry that he was stepping on. There were clusters of them everywhere, and they weren’t holding position…they were rushing forward, trying to get at the hoths themselves.

Clan Protoss’s assaults had inspired an almost desperate counterattack from the enemy, with every unit they had available now turning away from conquering more of the Protovic planet and heading for the newly arrived Humans. Good thing was, most of them were so far away they wouldn’t get to any Star Force positions for days, if not weeks, for they had no air transit that he was aware of.

Bad thing was, they were coming with a vengeance, and along with this one group, which centered on the Type-1 and had hundreds of walkers with it, there were 51 other such groups forming out there, plus a lot of smaller ones centered on Type-2s and down that could move with greater speed…and they were all coming for them.

Clan Metal Gear had their hands full already with the Skarron rear units, but this was by far the heaviest engagement Kip’s forces had seen…and it was only going to get worse. They no longer had the option of nipping at the edges of the Skarron lines, it was either kill them or turn tail and run…and Kip intended to fight the bastards.

He made another shallow turn, immediately taking fire from a Type-4 that was sitting in the street ahead of him blocking his route towards the Type-3 that was a half mile back, though Kip could clearly see its double humps over the ‘smaller’ walker. A few of its plasma cannons shot out and blanketed his voltron with what mechwarriors referred to as ‘spit,’ which was plasma that had outranged itself, cooling and pulling apart as it traveled through the atmosphere, leaving it only harmful to infantry and other unarmored units.

The plasma from the closer Type-4 was another matter, but Kip ignored it and sprinted ahead, finally getting a section of straight street to accelerate up on. His forward shields were bathed in white plasma, but it wasn’t going to take them down anytime soon, so he kept his running line and jumped when he was a dozen or so steps away from the Type-4, activating his jump jets simultaneously.

The biped mech leapt up into the air and glided over top of the Skarron walker, landing on its feet on the far side in a stationary crouch, then Kip pushed the mech back up to speed as the Type-4 fired at his rear and likewise came under fire from a trio of neos and a couple of madcats that had been following him…and behind them came more of the smaller mechs, running through the streets like packs of dogs or hopping over buildings like cats jumping from perch to perch.

Kip let them take the Type-4 as he steadied his mech’s right arm with the paddle still in its hand, then he triggered the activation command and the edges of the paddle began splintering apart and moving forward, interlocking with each other as the light corovon alloy plates assembled into a thin, long sword that Kip then rotated around in his mech’s hand, switching to a reverse grip…a maneuver that most mechwarriors couldn’t have hoped to have pulled off, but with so much personal sword training under his belt the maneuver felt so natural that he had no trouble pulling it off even with the mech’s clumsy metallic hand.

The plasma fire from the Type-3 was more than double what had been coming from the Type-4 and ate away at Kip’s shields, underneath which were the armor scar marks from the missile attack and a previous encounter with a Type-3. He’d held back for too long and took some damage as he’d been feeling out its capabilities a few days ago and wasn’t going to make that mistake this time.

It felt like he was running his mech into a waterfall of plasma, for the orbs were so tiny, yet so numerous, but he held his nerve and accelerated the mech up to as fast of a run as he could and jumped up at the last moment, goosing the jump jets a bit to get a better arc as he double-handed the sword in an overhead grip with the point to the ground.

He came down on the Skarron walker’s bulbous front, driving the blade in through the top with the corovon-laced metal cutting through the thick armor with little effort given the amount of mass Kip had dragging the sword down. The blade cut through then sank in deep, with the voltron’s arms catching the mech before its feet hit the ground. It hung off the front of the walker as the blade stuck firm, with the extra mass pulling the front end of the moving Type-3 down and compacting its legs underneath.

The Skarron machine came to a skidding halt with Kip releasing the sword handle and dropping to the ground, whereupon he popped up his mauler and arm-mounted plasma cannons and started blasting into the armor where the white plasma had stopped firing from. He took advantage of the sword damage and the small blind spot and tore a hole in the armor as the walker tried to stand back up, then Kip dug his hands inside the breach point and pried the armor apart, large enough to fit an arm inside.

He grabbed anything and everything he could and started tearing the components out and dumping them on the street. Apparently he hadn’t tore out enough, for as the walker stood back up suddenly Kip had difficulty reaching into the breach point, for with the legs fully extended the Skarron walker stood nearly twice his mech’s height.

He backed up the voltron and jumped again, landing on top where the sword was still imbedded and forcing the walker back to the ground through sheer weight. Kip grabbed the sword hilt as he slid off the edge and held on tight, yanking the Type-3 over onto its side and into the buildings. Before he could get trapped underneath he let go of the sword and slid down to the legs, where he grabbed one and pushed, completing the sideways flip of the machine and exposing its underbelly…where upon Kip faced a plasma shower as he punched and blasted away at the hull until most of the closest cannon mounts fell silent…though he was still taking fire on the flanks.

A quick look at his shield gage told him he was down to 32% on his torso shields, but he didn’t care. This son of a bitch was going down now, before it had a chance to hit any of the smaller mechs.

With the shields over his arms taken down so the punches would drain them, Kip crumpled and tore off the bottom of the hull, then pried a leg mount off and tossed it back into the street behind him. He dove back into the machine and put several mauler blasts into the delicate machinery, silencing more of the plasma cannons as he cleared the melted wreckage with his hands and tossed it out onto the street like confetti…some of which were Skarron bodies as he tore through the control center.

Eventually his hand hit something more solid, finding the end of his sword. He half climbed into the walker’s carcass and tore out the pieces around it, eventually freeing the handle and pulling it through by the blade. Kip stepped the voltron back out, twirled the blade around, and stabbed it into the guts of the opposite end once, twice, then a third time before pulling back and examining the walker to see if it was fully dead or not.

No weaponsfire came from it as he walked around to the far end, squeezing through the gap between walker and building. He wanted to tear it apart a bit more, just to be sure it wouldn’t ambush a smaller mech as it walked by with a salvo or two, but there wasn’t time. There were four more Type-3s in the area, assuming Dina had gotten hers.

He checked the battlemap, seeing that she was still engaging her opponent with a halo of support mechs. Her shields were still holding, and it looked like she was just taking more time at it than he was…which meant she was good, and he had to get after the next one before they got too close to the hoths.

As he turned the voltron around another of the white beams shot by not too far over his head, but higher than a Mk. 2 hoth should have sat. He glanced back the way it had come, but there were buildings in the way so he did a quick check of the battlemap and saw the four Mk. 2s standing up on their hind legs and bracing against buildings in front of them in order to raise the position of their heads up and over most of the Protovic cityscape in the way.

It looked awkward, but was strategically viable, especially since the buildings they were leaning on were providing them cover from the immediate front.

Kip started his mech walking further away from Dina towards another Type-3 that had slipped past their line of advancement as he scrolled the battlemap over to check on their target…seeing the big Type-1 continuing to walk their direction, stepping over buildings rather than following streets that it was too big to fit in anyway. Its steps crushed structure after structure, and the big behemoth looked to be in quite the hurry as it ponderously ground its way closer to the hoths, which were still kilometers away.

The cleansing beams were eating into its armor in multiple spots, puncturing through to the interior but apparently not having hit anything vital as of yet. The Type-2s flanking it hadn’t been hit yet, with the preceding one having gone down already and been left behind, with the hoths now focusing all of their firepower on the Type-1 as Kip had instructed, now that its blocker was out of the picture. If that thing got within range its plasma shower would be too much for the hoths or his voltron to handle, meaning the only way they could engage it was from range…which fortunately they had the weapons for.

Overhead a trio of Skarron fighters ducked down and fired their small plasma weapons into Kip’s mech, eating up a bit of shield strength before they zipped off elsewhere in the city. So far the Skarrons were maintaining air superiority, for their walkers made it all but impossible for Star Force to operate in the air. Kip had given strict no-go radiuses around the various walkers, but had given orders to pounce on anything that crept outside of them. So far they’d made a few kills, but the Skarron fighters were more interested in picking on the mechs than coming out to engage their aerial cousins.

The hoths had plenty of anti-air mechs protecting them, but this far out into the city was open season on the smaller mechs, though some of them were also anti-air equipped, making it more of an even fight rather than a turkey shoot.

Kip ignored his own anti-air lachars and kept running towards the next Type-3. If they wanted to strafe him go ahead, he had enough shields to hold them off and the more they shot him the less they would be shooting the other mechs. In about 30 seconds he was going to have another big one to deal with, and maybe a few Type-4s as well if his backup didn’t come with him.

Just then a ruby-red streak shot across the street ahead of him. Unlike normal weaponsfire it wasn’t a flash, but a continuous beam that continued for a good 8.2 seconds before the capacitor ran dry and it had to begin recharging. A few seconds later another beam shot out, coming from the second continuous heavy lachar and lasted an equal amount of time before disappearing.

When Kip got up to the next corner he turned it, seeing the bulk of a Type-4 with a hole burnt into the front of it. He raised his arms and fired a pair of plasma blasts, one of which hit the hole and passed inside, before he realized that the beams had already gutted the interior, leaving the walker as another dead statue blocking the road.

Instead of pushing his way through it he turned around and backtracked to the next side street, seeing in the far distance one of the Mk.1 hoths half hidden behind a low building. Normally their lachar tech wasn’t nearly as destructive as plasma, let alone a mauler or cleansing beam, but they’d upgraded their tech enough that they could now produce continuous lachars, allowing the technology a whole other level of badass that had replaced the electrolasers on the original model heavy walkers, which had two of the weapons on the front head.

Kip raised his left hand, throwing the distant walker a salute before turning left and tucking his sword back into a reverse grip as he headed around the local group of buildings in zigzaggy fashion heading for the next Type-3, with his shields recharging a bit more with every second that passed.

“Got him, Kip,” Dina’s voice broke through suddenly. “What next?”

“How bad you chewed up?”

“Just shield damage.”

Kip set a waypoint on the battlemap, attaching it to one of the Type-3s. It wasn’t the furthest ahead, but it was the closest to her, and he redirected his own course slightly to head towards it, temporarily ignoring the others.

“This one…we’ll take it together. We double up on the rest of these to save shield strength.”

“Copy that, on my way.”

Kip checked the battlemap again, seeing that he was going to get to it before she did, but there was a pair of Type-4s in the way, so he diverted onto a side street and moved over one section, intending to smoke one or both of them before meeting up with Dina and taking down the next Type-3.

9

Another cleansing beam shot out across more than 10 kilometers and dug into the front of the pot marked Type-1 as it continued to claw its way forward across the cityscape, occasionally having to make course corrections to avoid the buildings that were bigger than it. The thing’s body was 6 times the height of a voltron and it stood better than 10 times as high on its legs, allowing it to step over most of the Protovic structures. It wasn’t fast, but it was making good time and getting closer to the Star Force lines, which had been contracting as the ‘smaller’ walkers closed in on them in greater numbers than they could chew apart.

The Mk. 1 hoths were assisting there, leaving the big Skarron to the Mk.2s…which had already hit the thing with some 70+ cleansing beams. They didn’t know what they were shooting at, given they didn’t have a schematic of the interior, so they were poking holes in through the armor at different places, probing and hoping to hit something vital. Though they couldn’t see it in the walker’s movements, they’d already succeeded in taking out several power conduits, cutting juice to a chunk of its plasma cannons and the ‘plate’ shields on the port side.

Then the big walker took another cleansing beam to its ‘face,’ which was the front most bulbous section on the caterpillar-like design of 7 unique segments mashed together, and suddenly the four legs sprouting from that section locked up, plowing into the buildings ahead of the others that continued pushing forward, with the ‘head’ of the Type-1 dipping down and ramming a mid-level building that otherwise it would have cleared by 20 meters.

The building disintegrated under the pressure of the hit, but the walker didn’t move much beyond it as it struggled to get its footing back as another cleansing beam from the northernmost Mk. 2 hit it on the top of the front section that was now angled down. That beam cut into an anti-air cannon situated in a depression that had been shielding it from view. Next to it were the missile ports, which the cleansing beam nicked, detonating two that were still inside.

A plume of debris shot up into the air out of the ‘head’ of the Type-1 as the forward section went completely dead…pinning the walker in place unless it wanted to drag the unpowered legs behind it.

Which is exactly what it did. It took another poke from a cleansing beam as it turned around, swapping front for back, and began crawling its way forward again at considerable speed.

“Son of a bitch,” Kip whispered as he saw the ‘front’ section of the Type-1 half standing on its locked legs between half-crushed buildings as the other 6 segments moved off without it. Somehow the big thing was designed to release its individual segments.

On a hunch Kip got a closer look at the discarded piece via a rooftop raven acting as a spotter and feeding the rest of the Star Force troops battlemap info on the Type-1 and the remaining pair of Type-2s that were now well ahead of it. The trailblazer zoomed in on the section of the walker that had been bonded to the others, quickly seeing it was of a different color than the exterior, as well has having multiple interlocking components now exposed, and he assumed the opposite end of the Type-1 contained the same…both without armor plating covering them.

Kip placed a waypoint on the back side of the moving pieces of the walker and opened his all-troop comm frequency.

“The hoths just disabled the front piece of the Type-1, which then jettisoned that piece and is continuing forward on the other 6 segments. The backside of those segments is not, repeat, not armored. If anyone is in position to do some long range flanking attacks have at it.”

With that Kip ignored the oncoming Type-1, knowing the hoths were going to continue picking it apart as long as they could, but even now they were coming under attack from the ground. Thousands of the Skarron ground troops had flooded around their feet, hitting them with small arms fire, missiles, and whatever else they had available. There were so many of them they’d managed to bring down the defense shields on their legs and were starting to chew away at their armor…which would be a problem if they were allowed a few more hours to do so.

Dozens of ravens were darting in and out of the area, killing the Skarrons on the ground as much as they could, but if they ran up against too many all at once they could go down themselves, which two of them already had. The pilots had been rescued from their downed mechs before the ground troops could get at them, but Star Force had had to use the Starscream-class mechs to get to them in time…which was dangerous, because the flying mechs could have come under anti-air fire, but fortunately their mechwarriors kept them low to the city streets and out of the aerial firing radius of the Skarron walkers.

Trouble was, the starscreams were weak mechs, both in terms of armor and firepower, though with regular strength shields. They’d been at as much risk as the ravens when they’d gone in, coming up from the distant LZ, and had only got to the downed mechwarriors due to the support of a squadron of thors that had happened to be nearby.

Those mechs were doing better against the infantry hordes, even if they weren’t as fast and nimble as the ravens, because they were bigger, heavier biped mechs that resembled a giant Human in armor without the backwards-canted legs that the ravens and madcats had. The compact form also helped them navigate the city streets in formation, stomping on infantry for a third of their kills while lighting up the others with missiles from a shoulder launcher and multiple small plasma cannons located on the arms and chest, with a baby mauler slung under the left arm.

They’d learned quickly that they had to stay together to keep from getting overwhelmed by the infantry, who’s armored troops liked to get in close and latch onto the mech’s legs and try to trip them up with some kind of cord they were carrying so the others could pound them on the ground when their shields popped on impact.

The streets around the pair of Mk. 2s were clogged with gore, so much so that some of the mechs were having to make small jumps over the piles of Skarron bodies to avoid getting tripped up, all the while more of the enemy ground troops skittered across their fallen comrades, peppering the air with tiny plasma orbs and weak missiles, so much so that it occasionally looked like blowing snow.

Kip had been forced back to take out a pair of Type-4s that had gotten within firing range on one of the Mk. 1 hoths, which was in turn intercepting them before they could get to the Mk. 2s. The Mk. 1 had taken down the first of the Type-4s before its shields went down, then took some light armor damage from the second until Kip’s sword skewered it and dragged it behind a nearby building where he took the time to properly finish it off.

His own shields had failed multiple times, leaving him with a deep gash on his right upper arm and lesser damage across his mech’s torso and legs. His aft side was unscathed, but that was only because he’d been running towards the enemy most of the time, which he was even now as he headed towards the intersection point of two continuous heavy lachars. One faded out before the other, but not before Kip saw rivulets of armor running down the surface of the Type-2 they were attacking. It wasn’t within plasma range yet, but a few more minutes and that would change, which meant he had to do something to help, otherwise he was sure they were going to lose at least one of the Mk. 1s.

With most of the smaller mechs now pulled back to deal with the infantry that kept rising up from underground in too many points for Star Force to block, only the pair of voltrons was left for excursions out into the oncoming walkers, and they’d been focusing on the remaining Type-3s, given that most of the 4s and 5s had already been eliminated by the smaller mechs. The battlemap showed six smaller walkers around the southernmost Type-2, and they were holding their formation, making it virtually impossible to approach without getting annihilated with plasma, even for the voltrons.

That left him only one slightly insane approach…which was to flank the southern group and come in at the Type-2 from behind, either getting a clear shot at it or forcing the other walkers to turn around and move backwards to provide covering fire.

Kip was already on his way, with Dina following a few seconds behind him. They’d been doing well to double team the enemy walkers, but she was carrying armor damage too, meaning the longer this dragged on the less combat capable they were going to be. So far they each had 100% of their weaponry intact, but a few deep hits on the arms and they’d lose a plasma cannon, which was why they were taking as much time as they could afford to recharge their shields in between bouts.

Kip knew the two of them alone weren’t going to be enough, so he finally made the comm call he’d been hoping he wouldn’t have to make.

“Vyr, you there?”

“Been wondering how long it’d take you to come to your senses,” the Protoss Archon said with a touch of frustration.

“Tell me you can do something without flying into a massacre.”

“You’re heading for the southern Type-2?”

“Yes.”

“How much weaponry do they have underneath that thing?”

“A lot of plasma cannons. It’s not a safe spot to be.”

“Well nuts…there goes that plan. Don’t worry, we’ve got a few others worked up. We’ll pull some of the heat off you.”

“Don’t go crazy,” Kip warned. “Those pulse rings…”

“I know better than you do,” Vyr reminded him. “We’ll stay low. By the way, avoid these spots.”

Kip received 8 no-go zones on his battlemap, not making out what their significance was for a few seconds, then nodding appreciatively as he belatedly understood.

“Ok, get going.”

“Already am. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Dina and I are hitting it from the backside, if that matters.”

“Noted, but wait until we can give you a moment of opportunity. That thing has enough plasma cannons to slag a voltron without much trouble.”

“I know,” Kip said as Vyr dropped his skeet in altitude. The comm channel cut off, leaving both Archons to their individual tasks. Vyr-2051 had been standing by for days along with the rest of the Clan Protoss aerial forces that Kip had brought down to the planet, forbidden to go close to the Type-1s, 2s, 3s, and even the 4s, though Vyr thought they should have been able to take them, given they were only equipped with anti-air lachars, and Star Force knew well how they functioned.

He’d been assisting the Protoss with the Type-5s and infantry clusters where he could, as well as defending transports from the Skarrons’ own fighters, but most of them were sticking close to the walkers and picking at Star Force’s mechs as much as they could. That hadn’t ended well for them, for the anti-air madcats had plenty of aerial kills on the day, thanks to Vyr’s people running replacement ammo packets up to them at nearly street level elevation.

But now was the time to get fancy and show how good he and his people actually were, for the Skarron anti-air defense was by far the best Star Force had come up against to date, making the lizards look easy by comparison…but there were always holes to exploit, if you knew where to look for them, and the Skarrons’ anti-air defense seemed more concerned with things above them rather than things below or even on low laterals. While that did help shield their anti-air batteries from ground fire, thus preserving them to maintain their head cover, it did allow pilots to fly low and get under their firing lines.

Problem was, there was a lot of buildings in the way, and he was fairly sure that the walkers could tip to the side on their legs and change their anti-air batteries’ firing lines to hit low if they wanted to…though that was just a guess, because they hadn’t seen any do so to date.

“Starscream wing, you are green to go on points 1 and 2. Gunships, Type-4s are yours, watch your proximity to the 3s. Skeet commanders, stand by until I make a go through, then coordinate with our voltrons and make the most of their distraction. Don’t get sloppy or brave, and expect luck to be on the Skarrons’ side…but that said, they fear aerial for a reason. Let’s not disappoint,” Vyr said, switching over to his squadron’s frequency. “On me, let’s go.”

Vyr ducked his neon blue skeet down into a street and decelerated, playing flying tank as the other 9 members of his squadron did likewise, following him in single file. He eventually turned and headed southwest, with each of the other skeets breaking off at various points so that when he finally did turn fully to the west, he and the others were all traveling down individual paths, intending to spring up on their target from multiple angles in a crisscross and run for your life attack pattern.

Seeing the others slightly ahead of him Vyr increased speed, approximately catching back up with their predetermined timing and getting to his launch point half a second behind all the others, whereupon he pulled up and flew between two larger buildings before swinging around and staring down the flank of a Type-3.

As soon as he was in the air a huge ring of white plasma ‘snow’ pulsed out from the walker in a hemispherical halo…and all of which missed high by 80 or so meters. That first pulse was followed by more and more, filling the air around and above the walker with tiny bits of plasma that would be impossible to avoid, cutting off the airspace around the Type-3 and forcing Vyr’s squadron to stay extremely low to the ground.

Larger white orbs shot out from the conventional plasma cannons on the sides, but the pilot was able to fly a slightly evasive path and duck past the front of the walker as it continued to crawl forward, whereupon he released one of four objects slung underneath the skeet’s belly with a trigger pull as he sighted in on the underside box where the forward legs came together and connected to the huge body.

After that he went to ground and zipped underneath the walker, seeing the flash of a few belly plasma cannons in his peripheral vision as he shot through the gap between two buildings on the other side and took back to the street canyons as he moved off, leaving the engagement zone as he saw one of his squadron go down on the battlemap.

As he commed the downed aerofighter to confirm that the pilot was still alive, the mine he dropped floated forward on its own antigrav and came to a stop on the point on the battlemap that Vyr’s trigger pull had laid down a waypoint…along with 9 others that clustered together on the underside, then detonated like a chain of fireworks.

Kip saw the detonations via a spotter raven, then saw the damage estimate as the walker continued to move forward, seeing that the armor underneath had been torn apart with several breaches available for mechs to target the upper leg joints. He nodded, knowing that would help, then frowned as he saw one of the fighter icons go out as it passed under the walker and never rose back up, slamming into the side of a building. A few moments later a new icon popped up marking the distress beacon, which gave the position of the skeet’s armored ‘cradle’ that had preserved the pilot, even though it was now buried inside a Protovic structure.

Just then he heard a chorus of cheers over the comm, only to realize that the Mk. 2 hoths had just knocked out another section of the Type-1, stopping it in its tracks while it discarded the forward segment and began walking forward again…this time without an armored front, for both ends now had exposed segments.

Turning a corner in his voltron, he stepped on another cluster of infantry, nearly losing his traction as he did so, and continued to run on as he watched another blinding white streak pass through the sky overhead and saw it hit on his battlemap and do a corkscrew spiral, slicing into the front of the Type-1 with no resistance and gutting the inside of the thing.

Internal components began to spill out and the front end fell down on legs that no longer had any power. What was left of the Type-1 did a nose dive just as a tall Protovic building alongside the Type-2 Kip was headed for blew apart at the base.

The trailblazer switched his attention back there as he saw eighteen starscream mechs clinging to the back side of the building, with it blocking the walker’s firing lines on them, as they pushed with their antigrav engines like they were toppling a tree that had been cut at the base, and rode the tall cylinder-shaped building over with near perfect timing. The building landed on top of the Type-2 near the front as another red continuous lachar beam ended, hitting it between the first two of four body segments and pushing it to the ground with the legs splayed wide and most of its anti-air weaponry on top now covered with debris.

“Dina, that’s our opening. Push it,” he said, turning another corner that would lead to the street the walker had more or less been following. Kip got up to it just in time to see a white flash at a different angle, and checked his battlemap as a cleansing beam tore into the front of the pinned Type-2 along with the continuous lachars as the walker struggled to stand up and shake the debris off.

The other Mk. 2s hit the Type-1 again, which was not moving at all, telling Kip that they’d probably disabled it enough that it wasn’t going anywhere, and in just a few more minutes they should have the southern Type-2 out of commission as well, emboldening him to skip the roads and jump into the air with his jump jets driving him across the building tops, giving him a very good view of the battlefield as the other Skarron walkers continued forward, taking hits from a Mk. 1 hoth as well as hundreds of smaller weapons from a scattering of mechs poking out of cover here and there.

Then there were larger explosions from the skeet mines, and blossoming debris clouds from where the gunships were throwing missile after missile into their target walkers, all the while the enemy was showering the area with white plasma, both anti-air pulse rings as well as the hundreds of plasma cannons covering their hulls.

There was still a lot of work to do here, but Kip knew they had them…this group anyway. One of the 52 Type-1s was down, 51 remained. There was no way they were going to take down the others, not with the armor damage his mechs were racking up, but if they could get continually resupplied he knew they could take down all of them over time and save this planet…so long as there was enough of a Protovic army remaining to handle the Skarron infantry.

This war was going to take months, if not years, but as soon as this battle was over he was going to send a jumpship back to get as many mech spare parts as he could sent their way, along with ammo and any new models the rest of the Clans could spare…along with a request for more Clans to join the fight, for Eshwan wasn’t the only Protovic planet under assault, and it seemed that Star Force was their only hope to turn back the Skarrons once they fought their way to ground.

10

June 9, 2465

Rexxikar System (lizard territory)

Ajakaba

Paul knelt low behind a chunk of ice, his back nestled into a crevice as he waited for Kara’s telepathic signal…which he got a few second later, informing him where the lizard patrols were surrounding their outpost, one of which was almost to him, but still out of his own psionic range.

Trusting her, he left cover and ran down the small crack of a valley between what looked like small glaciers, knowing that somewhere up top on the rim was Kara playing spotter, but given her ability to fly she could have been anywhere up there, and there wasn’t much of the sky he could see from his point of view. There was plenty to see below though, with dozens of quadruped fur balls meandering through the rough passageway, causing him to move with care, jumping over or under the natives of the planet.

The lizard patrols were also moving through them, which cut off their major lines of sight and offered Paul movement options as he worked his way towards the subterranean base entrance that Kara had spotted the last time she was here doing recon. She hadn’t gone inside what looked like a primitive little outpost on the ice world at the time, having fallen for the ruse their enemy had laid out.

It was the only lizard presence on the planet, or in the system. A single outpost, containing no more than 500 lizards, and situated dead center in the middle of a herd of natives. The lizards weren’t harvesting them, so far as Star Force knew, nor were they killing them to get them out of the way. Instead they were simply ignoring them, for they couldn’t get inside their base, and the warm temperature-loving lizards didn’t go outside it save for regular patrols through the surrounding topography.

That had immediately tipped Paul off, but he already knew from some captured logistical charts that the lizards had been routing some jumpship traffic through the system…far more than this little outpost required. Then there was also the overly large landing pads on top of the outpost, three times the amount the lizards usually used, denoting a higher cargo transfer situation than this lonely little waste of a base rated.

Normally the lizards would have cleared out the indigenous populations, with the fact that there were thousands of the fur balls around their base and they were literally rubbing up against the walls suggesting that the lizards wanted them there…with the only reasonable conclusion being that they were a shield against Star Force bombardment. The two sides had been at war long enough to have gotten used to each other’s methods, and it had been obvious in the past that Star Force had orbital bombardment capability that could obliterate a base like this within half an hour…and the lizards also knew that Star Force fought to protect indigenous races, making this situation stand out to the trailblazer as an obvious living shield.

So no bombardment here, and with there being nothing worthwhile on the ice cube of a planet, and no major lizard infiltration, it was likely that Star Force would just skip over the planet and system, else send down a small ground team to take the facility…which he assumed the patrols were out here to detect and counter. His best guess was the lizards hoped the facility would go unnoticed all around, but Kara’s recon of the system had spotted it, though even she admitted it had been hard to find.

Paul ran up to a harsh right turn and slid underneath one of the white-furred creatures as it also rounded the rocky corner from the other direction…with the trailblazer psionically calming the thing before he could startle it into stomping on him.

He slid under its right front leg and out the far side, then got back on his feet and disappeared into the other masses of white following the creature that did a double take but otherwise ignored him and continued walking. Paul’s white armor blended in well, allowing him to almost disappear in the light snow that was falling, all the way up to the base entrance in the ice crevice where he sensed two more lizards standing guard before he came within sight.

Two Fornax blasts straight through the ice took them to the ground, then as he came around the outcropping he killed both with precise plasma shots to the chests, burning through their cold weather suits, offering more heat than they wanted. Disoriented, they went down without firing a shot in return or sounding an alarm, giving Paul access to the single door set into what looked like an ice wall, but was really the edge of the lizard outpost covered over in sheets of frozen precipitation that had built up over the years, leaving the entrance inset as it had been continually cleared off.

I’m here, Paul told Kara telepathically as he walked over to the corner of the small crevice outcropping and pressed his armored back against the wall, trying to blend in as much as he could while she caught up to him…which didn’t take long. Soon she was sliding off the top of the crevice and down in beside him, her armor white and somewhat shimmery in a way that reminded him of summer heat that caused mirages. Regardless, it made her hard to see, but he could clearly sense her presence where his eyes might have been caught off guard.

Door, he told her as he grabbed the closest of the bodies and hauled it over to the entrance, then kicking its skid tracks out of the snow as best he could with his feet, after which he used his Lachka to erase his tracks coming into the offshoot from the crevice, eventually backing all the way up to the door that Kara had already hacked her way into and gotten the first lizard through.

Paul grabbed the other while Kara telekinetically pulled its weapon through the air and into her hand as she stood in the doorway waiting for him. Once they got the bodies and weapons inside she closed the door, smoothing the last of the snow with her psionics even after it had closed.

What do you see?

Kara’s armor, which had already shifted back to its normal blood red color, scanned the interior of the base, getting several levels worth of blueprint-like schematics in a glance.

Central access shaft with two auxiliaries. Closest one is this way, she said, adding a waypoint to their paired battlemap that she’d taught her Dragon tech to mimic as she walked down the narrow corridor and took a right turn before a passing lizard got a chance to see either of them.

Paul followed her over the relatively short hike to the northern auxiliary shaft, seeing that it contained a circular lift that was currently several levels down and had a few crates stacked on top of it.

I don’t think the quiet route is going to work this time.

Time to kick the bee hive, she prompted, glancing at the helmet of his new striker armor. If you get in over your head, get out or ask for help.

I won’t need either and you know it, Paul telepathically answered, pulling a pair of plasma pistols off his back rack and jumping across the shaft to the other side before ducking into an open doorway and heading towards the nearest lizard minds.

A few seconds later Kara heard the firefight starting and she stepped off into the shaft, floating down it until she gently landed on the lift, sensing no one immediately nearby.

She knelt down next to one of the crates and popped her armor’s Dre’mo’don up on her right wrist, mentally configuring it to fire in a microscopic cutting beam discharge. Pointing her wrist down, she rotated it around cutting a crude circular plug out of the lift and telekinetically grabbing it as it fell through…or trying to, for it was too heavy for her to lift, so she slowed its fall and dove through the hole head first, flying down after it.

Kara got a hand on it and stopped its fall, then flew back up to the underside of the lift and stuck her free arm up through the hole and dragged one of the crates over top of it, using her Lachka to nudge its edge over the rim of the hole when her hand would no longer fit. Sensing that Paul was already racking up a good kill count above, she carried her metallic plug with her down the very deep shaft to the bottom, so far down that her sense of Paul’s position and the lizards above disappeared, leaving her only in comm contact with him if necessary, though how long that would last was questionable.

Paul shot two more lizards in the room to his right without even looking in the door as he passed, using his Pefbar to sight them through the wall, then pulling the trigger four times when the opening arrived, emptying the clip. He tucked his right arm back and reattached the empty pistol to his rack as another standard variety lizard popped out into the hallway in front of him some distance down. It was a stretch, but Paul got a telekinetic grip on his rifle and yanked it aside, sending the plasma blast into the ceiling as he fired his own blue streak towards it, nipping the lizard in the arm as two more popped out alongside.

As they fired Paul sprinted forward, taking a few inconsequential hits to his shields before he was on top of them, punching two into submission and gutting the third with a double blast to its abdomen.

One of the lizard rifles floated up off the ground and into Paul’s grip, which he used to kill the closest to him before kicking the other as it jumped up. Its claws scrapped against his leg armor before it was knocked back a meter into the wall, leaving tiny scratch marks in the white camouflage coating, revealing the black coloration underneath that was standard for striker armor.

Paul shot it with the rifle in his right hand as he reached back and stowed his Star Force pistol, saving the last few shots in it for later, then he knelt down and picked up another rifle, dual wielding the enemy weapons and finding them slightly heavy, knowing that was going to throw his aim off a touch, but not enough to constrict him to using only one.

He sensed a few more lizard minds heading his way, but they didn’t know exactly where he was, giving him a few seconds of anonymity that he used to cut around through another room and come up behind the foursome, gunning down two before they even realized he was behind them. A few more shots and they were down too, with the briefly returning green plasma impacting his chest shield dissipating like a snowball hitting a blast furnace.

The shields on the striker armor were stronger than what the adepts, acolytes, and rangers had. Their protective shield was standard, while their armor got progressively denser, allowing more protection to the higher ranked Archons who could handle the extra weight, and likewise Paul’s black striker armor was heavier than the others, but not any thicker. The material was denser, with a few flecks of corovon thrown in throughout the structure that gave it a much higher physical defense rating, while still melting under intense energy attacks.

The armor weighed almost as much as he did, but thanks to his enhanced strength he was able to manage decent combat agility…though unlike his previous armors, the striker version that he currently wore was a prototype incorporating a lot of new tech. He and Morgan were the only ones using it, as they were the only strikers at the moment. Paul was a level 1, Morgan a level 3, and each of them had a design technician assigned to shadow their assignments, learning from their training and battle experience and making upgrades to the armor as needed.

The shields and armor rating were impressive, but the biggest change came in the form of a telepathic interface and what it controlled. Consciously it had only one switch, which was off/on, but subconsciously it was having a much bigger effect…or it would when Paul finally decided to use it, and hunting these scattered lizards certainly wasn’t requiring it.

It wasn’t until he worked his way around to the main lift shaft when a car came up full of the little buggers that he mentally flipped the ‘on’ switch and felt the heaviness of his armor disappear.

Paul ran out of an access shaft as fast as if he hadn’t been wearing anything more than a T-shirt, shorts, and running shoes, plowing into the hoard and firing his captured lizard rifles at the first dozen or so, then tossing them aside and resigning himself to go hand to hand with the lizards, who were so densely packed together most of them couldn’t get out of his way if they wanted to.

He took a lot of plasma hits at first, but once he was in amongst them on the basketball court-sized lift most of them couldn’t shoot him without hitting their fellow soldiers, leaving him with an intimate cover that only continued so long as he stayed up close to them…while dropping the dead or injured ones behind as he moved through the mass.

His muscle movements were no longer moving the armor about alone, but were now being aided by mechanical propulsion…the kind of which he and the other trailblazers had strictly forbidden the techs from creating, due to the problems it posed. After Kara had got her Dre’mo’don that had changed, as they saw what powered armor was capable of, as well as seeing a technology that avoided the problems most ‘dumb’ suits posed…such as moving in a direction the person didn’t want and wrenching your arm out of socket, or worse.

Paul’s striker armor had pressure sensors covering the interior that sensed his movements and added strength to them, but the technology hadn’t been sufficient for it cut down on their reaction times. The delay was unavoidable, so the Archons had just kept with the traditional muscle power until the telepathic interface technology had advanced to the point where they could put it to use.

The system was still crude, from Paul’s point of view, but it was acceptable, using neural mapping sensors to monitor the control signals passing from his brain to his muscles to anticipate what his next move was going to be, calculate how the armor needed to move, and then wait for confirmation from the sensor grid inside the suit. In this way nothing moved unless Paul moved, but with the delay being greatly reduced. It wasn’t quite the same as moving without armor, for the feel was slightly off, but it was close enough that his speed increased across the board compared to what he had been able to do in his ranger armor…or even a set of adept armor that he’d experimented with, now that he was far stronger than necessary to fight in it.

This striker armor beat the adept armor in terms of agility and speed, no contest, when it was powered up…which was accomplished by several redundant power sources worked into the structure at thicker points, so that if one was damaged or destroyed the suit wouldn’t lose all power, but even if it did it would just revert back to ‘standard’ mode without locking up or otherwise hindering the wearer.

Paul was still waiting for something to go wrong, but he’d gotten comfortable enough with it to take it into combat, and right now, punching, kicking, twisting, turning, and jumping all seemed effortless as he tore through the lizards on the lift in a shockingly short amount of time. Once they were all down he pulled up a rifle from the mess and began finishing off those who weren’t already dead, reminding himself that despite their inability to hurt him at the moment they’d kill him without a second thought if they had the advantage…and he wasn’t in a position to be able to take prisoners.

“Ah, hell with it,” Paul said aloud after shooting five of them as they crawled across the ground. He dropped the plasma rifles and pulled a short cylinder off his rack, pressing a button on the handle that extended out a full length sword blade in interlocking segments.

Paul flicked on the stun sword and jumped around from spot to spot, jabbing the wounded unconscious after deciding that if they had survived this long against him they deserved a chance to live to fight another day. That, and he just didn’t like killing the helpless…which was what they were right now, given that they couldn’t hurt him.

Suddenly the lift started to descend, prompting Paul to run to the side and jump up, clinging to the rising edge of the wall and pulling himself up easily with the suit’s power on. Once he got back to his feet he mentally disengaged the power, returning its movements solely to his muscles. He knew that such a technology would greatly enhance the lower level Archons’ combat capabilities, but he also knew that he was able to carry the weight of the striker armor because he’d worked his way up through the lesser armors. If they gave the powered movement to the adepts, they’d never grow as strong as Paul had become, making this new technology a double-edged sword.

Until they worked out how to implement it without hindering Archon development, it was going to remain a striker-only technology, and they were going to keep the on/off switch, reserving the extra power for when they needed it, whereas a rookie would keep it on all the time. Moving about in the armor, whether it be in the sanctum or on the battlefield, was a workout that the powered armor would deny them. The trailblazers were wise enough to know not to use it often, but that couldn’t be said of the younger Archons, who just didn’t seem to get the concept of weighted training clothing, no matter how many Piccolo references he threw out.

“Paul, how you doing?” Kara’s voice asked over his comm.

“Peachy. What’d you find?”

“Pretty much like you said. They’ve got a huge industry base down here, but what you didn’t guess was they’re tunneling out to other locations. They’re planning on using this one base to build an unlimited network underground, shielding it from orbital bombardment and prying eyes, and they’re going down pretty deep, or plan to, based on the files I hacked.”

“How many are down there now?”

“A little under 10,000. They’re keeping the population low until they’ve got enough room to house and feed them. They don’t want too many cargo shipments coming and going to give away the ruse.”

“Too late.”

“Yeah. It’ll take some time, but we can handle these guys on our own. They’re all standard variant and not heavily armed.”

Paul laughed…then thought about it.

“Well?” Kara asked, knowing he was considering it.

“Do they have growth chambers?”

“Not yet. They’re all imports.”

“Alright, here’s the game plan. We know about their little project here, and we let them know we know. Start working up a priority list on the machinery they’ve got, we want to hurt their construction efforts, not bring the walls down. We leave life support and foodstuffs alone for whatever lizards don’t get in our way, then they can tell their buddies when they get here how bad the two of us kicked their asses. They’ll either fortify the base or abandon the effort…and I’m hoping the later.”

“Then I come back in a couple of years and check it out?”

“You or someone else.”

“Sounds good. You clear up top?”

“More or less. You may have to send a lift back up for me.”

“I’m on it,” Kara promised as Paul retracted his stun sword and put it away, picking up two of the lizards’ weapons. He didn’t know how long Kara’s Vorch’nas weaponry would last, but there was no way his Star Force ammo was going to hold out against the numbers below, meaning he was going to have to do a lot of battlefield scavenging for weapons…or just rack up a wicked hand to hand kill count.

Either way, it looked like his prototype armor was going to get a thorough field test.

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1

February 2, 2466

Ferinor System

Star Force Warship Blue Ranger (Null orbit)

Morgan ‘stood’ atop two cushioned blocks, her legs out wide to either side as she held a side splits over a disqualification pit some several meters down that had a number of turrets imbedded within it. Falling off would end the challenge immediately, but maintaining her balance wasn’t the issue here…maintaining her balance while blocking attacks was.

The chamber in the sanctum onboard her flagship was more or less a sphere, with two small blocks magnetically positioned as strong points in the middle of the chamber with nothing else around to hold on to. Each block was 10 inches cubed, and felt sturdy enough to have been physically attached to the walls via struts…but they weren’t. They were levitated into place, leaving all approaches open for the tiny little thuds the turrets would be firing Morgan’s way, which, if they hit certain exposed areas, would hurt like hell, adding another incentive not to fail.

The trailblazer wore her hair up and knotted into a nub on her head so that it wouldn’t fly around as she knocked down the incoming attacks. Other than that she wore a training bra and a skin tight pair of mini shorts, leaving the rest of her skin exposed. With the inside of her ankles dug into the semi-soft cubes and her posture held perfectly upright, she brought her hands together over her chest, pushing them palm against palm and reminding herself not to move them. In order to maintain her balance she needed to focus on throwing concussive energy, or Jumat, from her core rather than from her limbs.

Morgan gave herself a moment to relish the hanging stretch, then summoned up the goosebumps that accompanied her internal energy production, which she channeled into a holding aura that she’d learned to develop after getting information from the pyramid database. Part of the control mechanism for the Jumat included a close range containment ability. This allowed her to produce the energy within her body and hold it just outside, letting her bypass her clothes or armor, before throwing it off. Somehow the energy was in a different form internally before it became ‘concussive,’ which originally happened whenever it passed through her skin.

Now she could hold it in its original form for about half a meter out, though it took extra effort to do so. When she tried to push it further than that she lost her grip and the energy converted…blowing off randomly. Morgan had been working to extend that range and had been gaining centimeters over the years, allowing her to now pool the energy around her body to the point where she could experiment with it, allowing her to train for other applications, one of which was a concussive shield barrier…which was what this challenge would prod.

Morgan took a slow breath, letting it out as she filled the area surrounding her entire body, minus the underside of her ankles/feet, for several inches. More tingles followed, adding yet more energy as she focused to control it all as she transformed it into a hybrid form…then telekinetically hit the start button on the far wall.

A three count warning tone sounded, with the thuds flying the moment the third tone emitted. Five of the marble-sized projectiles shot out at her from different angles…too many for her to consciously track and stop individually, forcing her to use an area of effect defense. She could have done so telekinetically, but instead she used her Jumat, with the little thuds hitting her invisible energy and penetrating slightly…but their contact to the pent up energy caused the portion that it hit to fully transform, which pushed back on the projectile.

The more it penetrated the more energy was released, eventually sending it flying back out on a random trajectory for the light hits, and more precise reversals for the deeper ones. Morgan didn’t need to see the things coming, only refill the gaps in her aura that they made. That meant continuous waves of tingles forming within her body and being channeled out, transformed, and mashed in with the existing aura, which responded like goo, in that it didn’t refill quickly.

She had to keep pressure on it, pushing in the right places to get it to fill back in faster. As more of the thuds came in, hitting her Jumat field in different locations, she played a mental chess match, countering move for move as she struggled to hold everything together. There was a counter on the wall indicating shots fired and time elapsed, but she didn’t see it. Her eyes were closed and her Pefbar was off, but she could ‘see’ her Jumat in mind’s eye and that’s where she put her entire focus.

Well, save for the part that was required to maintain her balance. If she delved too deeply into her trance she’d fall off and lose by default. Because she needed to be able to attend to her Jumat aura during combat, she had to train where physical activity was also needed, forcing her to split her focus. Doing the splits wasn’t active in a running or jumping sort of way, but it did require continuous and precise movements…stuff so small it would normally get ignored in the numbness of the mental effort she was expending.

The harder she pushed, the more her sense of balance would fade, forcing Morgan to hold back enough to split her focus and stay on top of the problem. Sheer force was the enemy here. She had to remain cool, steady, and stable…even as the painful little pricks tried to pelt her. A few days ago she’d caught one directly from underneath, which had dropped her to the disqualification pit real fast. After that she’d found herself leery and over protective, but like anything that was out of balance in Morgan, she didn’t tolerate it and got back up on the floating cubes and forced herself to relax and push away the memory of awkward pain.

She continued to block the incoming thuds, refill her aura, and continue the process through several waves of 500…then the challenge increased the firing rate. It would eventually overwhelm her, with the point being to hold out as long as possible. As the minutes ticked by her aura couldn’t be replenished enough, so Morgan shrank its thickness, cannibalizing sections that were intact and forcing part of their energy into the compromised areas.

This challenge was meant to test her endurance, while another would have the thuds concentrate their attacks on specific areas, sending 20 or so to one location over three seconds, trying to breach through that specific point. That was an altogether different problem to tackle, with this one being ‘easy’ in comparison, but the duration challenge gave her a great deal more practice, like a 5 mile run compared to a sprint, which would force her body and mind to adapt, giving her even greater abilities down the road.

‘Grinding’ is what it was, and no matter what the training exercise entailed, grinding workouts always worked up a lot of sweat…which in this case wasn’t good, for it was making her feet slippery as Morgan made tiny adjustments to keep her balance.

Before she could fall off or the thuds penetrated her defenses a different tone sounded, causing her to open her eyes and almost lose her grip on her Jumat aura, which would have let all of the thuds through after it dissipated, but she caught her focus in time and held it intact, though she stopped replenishing it. With a telekinetic press of the wall controls she paused the challenge and opened the chamber’s mic and speakers to the incoming comm.

“What is it?” she asked, not letting herself get annoyed. If someone was interrupting her during training they’d have a good reason for it…otherwise they’d get an unpleasant lesson in proper protocol.

“Morgan, we’re about to come under attack,” Captain Wilkinson said calmly. “Nestafar warships are a few minutes out at best.”

“On my way,” Morgan said, rolling backwards and letting her legs go slack. She fell down through a reverse flip and landed in a crouch on the padding below, then jogged over to the staircase that led up to the control panel and door, switching off the comm and the challenge program telekinetically as she ran out into the sanctum’s corridors.

She headed for the exit and then straight up to the bridge, not bothering to stop for a uniform or shoes. If there was going to be a naval battle it wouldn’t matter much what she was wearing, unless the hull was badly breached or they were boarded, neither of which was likely, meaning the sooner she got to a tactical holo the better.

By the time she reached the bridge the Nestafar had already arrived, with the Blue Ranger’s fleet still deploying to counter them along with the 8 other Star Force warships she had with her. With them were some 103 Calavari starships, 16 of which were warships. As Morgan padded her way up to her command chair on sweaty feet she saw a group of newly arrived Calavari ships slightly ahead of the Nestafar, suggesting the reason for the attack.

“They were followed,” Wilkinson summed up as she stepped beside him.

“How do we stand?”

“Escorts are in good position, and should provide us adequate time to launch the rest of the fleet, but we don’t have firm numbers on the Nestafar yet. They still have ships incoming.”

“I’ll be in the nexus,” she said, running off to the side of the bridge to a concealed alcove. She came through a very short tunnel and turned right, entering the cylindrical room that held a command nexus terminal in the center. Morgan stepped up to it and placed her hands on the Ikrid sphere, mentally powering up the system and interlinking with the battlemap and system commands far faster than button presses would have allowed.

An image of the battlemap appeared in her mind as well as in holo around her, cutting off vision of the room and replacing it with a map of the empty star system. Aside from the yellow/orange star in the center there was nothing else here, no planets, asteroid fields, space stations…nada. It was completely empty and unclaimed, making for a good staging area for Morgan’s fleet as they rounded up Calavari survivors from surrounding systems.

The main group was located well out from the star, with the Calavari ships over-braking to arrive in the system this far out. With no gravity wells other than the star, ships passing through had to stay close to the single gravity well and use some conventional thrust or tricky navigation to maneuver around to an exiting jumpline, given that there weren’t any distant planets to push off against for maneuvering purposes. By allowing some entry drift towards the star you could drop into a failing orbit and get some lateral maneuvering options from the pushoff potential, but rising up to a higher orbit was a no go…because you’d have nothing to push on to come back.

Neither the Nestafar nor Calavari had binary drives, meaning the Calavari ships parked next to the Star Force ones were essentially stuck in the system, else they approach the star very slowly using conventional thrust. Morgan had convinced them to come here with the promise of modular gravity drives that could attach to their ships and help them maneuver around, much like the Hycre had, save Star Force’s version were tiny in comparison, rather than full jump cradles.

Morgan had seven such devices imbedded into drone corvettes that would nestle up against another ship and extend pylons out that contained IDF generators. Once the entire ship was blanketed, the small binary gravity drive would allow the Calavari ships to move where the Nestafar couldn’t go.

Trouble was, it was a slow process, and there was a backlog of Calavari ships waiting in near the star to be moved out to the holding area, where the Blue Ranger and the other warships were located, save for one that was with the Calavari fleet at the staging area. Morgan immediately recalled it with instructions to leave a few drones behind, just in case, but she knew the Nestafar couldn’t get out to them unless they over-braked on a jumpline near their position.

The Nestafar had over-braked, following the Calavari in to an elevation above the star about halfway between Morgan and the staging area, but well around the circumference of the star. That location would make it easier for the Star Force tugs to bring the Calavari over, but it was still a long haul. She assumed the Nestafar knew nothing about that and were merely matching the Calavari’s acceleration curve…which sorry for them left them stranded well out from the star, meaning they only had thrust-based acceleration to work with.

Which left them sitting ducks…but so were the Calavari at that position.

Morgan started issuing orders, with the drone warships that had already been deployed zipping off on microjumps within seconds of her commands going out to the remote pilots. She sent one of the jumpships on ahead with them, but had the rest continue deploying the smaller vessels to get them in play as soon as possible, then the Blue Ranger and other Warship-class jumpships followed suit and zipped over to the entry jump point using an ‘in and out’ course that brought them back closer to the star to get more lateral pull, then a short angular course correction followed by another push to bring them out to the incoming fleets.

Morgan began to get battlemap data before that, and even as her ship came into position she saw more and more Nestafar arriving, all of whom were using the navigational data being relayed back through the line to give them the desired drop out point so they wouldn’t risk ramming each other…and so they could stay hot on the heels of the Calavari.

And it wasn’t a small fleet, save for ship size. The largest registering was a Nestafar destroyer, with the bulk comprised of corvettes and frigates, but there were more than 100 of them already with more on the way…and Morgan soon realized why when she looked at the Calavari fleet that had just arrived.

She’d been expecting survivors from the Alatis System, where they’d fought a battle to secure the planet several months ago. They’d arranged rendezvous here for any surviving ships the Calavari in that system could scrounge up, for Star Force just didn’t have the transport capacity to move the Calavari en mass. Morgan had expected a scattering of ships to arrive at some point, but the Alatis Calavari had far surpassed her expectations with literally thousands of smaller ships, all of which were now packed so close together that they read like larger vessels on long range scans.

What they were doing was sharing shields, which was a Calavari tactic that she’d become familiar with long ago. As a race their warships sucked, so they made up for it a bit by configuring their shield matrixes to interconnect so they could pool their combined energy into a single shield that had less surface area than the individual ships combined would have had. That meant putting hulls right up against other hulls, but in the case of unarmed or lightly armed transports it could means minutes of battle longevity, which in this case could very well save their lives.

The fact that they had no gravity drive maneuvering options left them essentially adrift anyway, so clustering together made a world of sense…especially when they had Valeries to launch. Morgan saw hundreds tagged on the battlemap, maneuvering around on thrust engines and gravity drives where applicable when they could push against the star. The fighters were fairly fuel efficient, but Morgan knew they’d have to return to their carriers regularly during a prolonged fight, which made those ships high priority for protection…which Morgan quickly tagged on the battlemap.

Whether out of wisdom or a lack of ability to run, the Calavari refuge fleet organized itself well, allowing Morgan’s ships plenty of room to decelerate as they jumped in, then the drone warships became cats on the prowl, literally flying rings around the Nestafar warships who, at best, limped around in pathetic maneuvers, trying to gain some strategic alignment, but they never were able to coordinate, strung out in the long line that they were. The Calavari had had more than an hour to reposition their first ships, but the Nestafar had no such luxury.

Morgan didn’t offer up any surrender terms, giving orders to her fleet to take out the bastards. Star Force would pick up survivors, but she wasn’t cutting the Nestafar any slack. They’d come here to kill a mostly civilian fleet of people running away from the war zone, expecting easy targets. She knew they wouldn’t have offered surrender terms to the Calavari, for they were out for blood, and she was happy to turn the tables on them.

One after another the Nestafar ships were swarmed and destroyed by the Star Force fleet…which didn’t lose a single drone thanks to the careful battle plan employed by Morgan and the jumpship Captains. They were able to tackle each enemy destroyer with five or six of their own ships, while the rest of the Nestafar fleet looked on helpless from a distance, waiting for the Humans to work their way down the line to them.

When a drone lost shields, or was near to, it was pulled back and another inserted into its slot, with Morgan patiently overseeing the destruction of some 294 Nestafar warships when all was said and done…and not because of firepower, armor, or shielding. This battle had been won simply because Star Force had binary gravity drives and the Nestafar did not. She knew Paul would appreciate that irony, and was grateful for them having the advanced technology for a change. For most of her years in Calavari space, Star Force had always been the little guy poking at the big enemy’s flanks, and it felt good to finally lay out a smackdown of this magnitude.

She knew that Star Force was on the rise, technologically speaking, as they got more and more tech upgrades from the pyramid, but to date it hadn’t mattered much in the overall war. A 294/0 rout would certainly send a message that there was a new sheriff in town, and Morgan was going to deliver it via the survivors…if there were any to pull out of the mess Star Force had made of their fleet…which she’d drop off in a system the Nestafar controlled or contended on the way to pick up more Calavari.

Word would get back, she hoped, and give these bastards the message to stay clear of the local region of what had once been Calavari space that Star Force was now operating in, and what Morgan privately considered her turf in this gigantic free for all of a war.

2

October 1, 2466

Jasne System

Drema

The Blue Ranger decelerated against the Calavari planet’s gravity well first in a long line of ships in Morgan’s convoy, finding the planet as it should be…still in Alliance hands. She hadn’t been back here in nearly 3 years, having been shuffling Calavari away from the pickup points via other escorts, but this was the largest fleet of refugees collected to date and Morgan intended to see it through to completion…not to mention she needed to resupply, and bringing her fleet in was easier than running cargo ships out to them.

As the Blue Ranger got its sensors back into alignment a host of Star Force signals popped up on the battlemap, some of which belonged to Taryn’s fleet, which was a day from leaving, having just finished resupplying. In addition to them were a host of warships designated to help the Calavari protect the planet/system, as well as a huge number of cargo jumpships bringing supplies up the conduit and taking Calavari back to HTC.

Two new additions were Star Force defense platforms. Each was a remote-controlled space station, similar to the drone warships, but designed to sit in orbit and fire at anything that came close with both short and long range weaponry. Each platform had a cleansing beam and an insane number of missile racks, not to mention plasma and mauler cannons. Morgan immediately felt safer, knowing that Jenna was stacking the deck in terms of planetary defense, and saw several other new additions to orbit as well, first among them being a storage/repair yard.

The massive cube held the facilities to repair, refit, and replace her drone fleet, which had become extremely battered over the past 3 years. The original repair yard still floated in orbit, and was at the moment attending to a jumpship, with the much larger cube on a lower orbital track with dozens of Taryn’s jumpships sitting nearby. Morgan immediately queried the computer systems for an inventory count and was relieved to see that there were still replacement drone warships available, though far less than the entire station could hold.

There was enough to reequip her fleet, with more coming up the conduit by the month. At first the Calavari on Drema had been resistant to Star Force establishing a permanent presence, especially when they realized that Morgan’s people were taking Calavari refugees back to Star Force territory, but as the condition of the Calavari empire deteriorated their resistance slackened, and when it became clear that Drema could not take on any more refugees, the local government graciously facilitated their transfer out of the system, encouraging many who were skeptical to go with their Human allies.

The number of jumpships traversing the conduit had increased exponentially over the last three decades, so much so that there were ships coming in and going out almost daily, with those coming in sometimes containing Star Force Calavari. Equipped with warships and weapons that were a combination of the two races’ tech, they became the best recruitment tool of all, pulling experienced warriors off the battlefield and convincing them to go down the conduit to receive the same training, then come back and help the Star Force Calavari carve out a new empire in the rubble of the old.

To date they had, with the Humans’ help, secured two neighboring systems in addition to Jasne, and in all three they had established small colonies that were using the Calavari techs returning through the conduit to begin expanding their infrastructure in a typical Star Force manner. One stipulation was that no native Calavari would be welcome in the colonies until they’d gone through Star Force training, something that the ‘new’ Calavari were insistent on…which was something the others couldn’t understand until they saw the battle records from Nanten.

The system was far from Drema and the conduit, but it was the first place the Star Force Calavari had gone into battle on their own terms. The Star Force fleet had engaged the Nestafar occupation forces on a pair of planets, clearing them from orbit, with the mainline units ground landing on one to assist the natives with the destruction of the Nestafar troops while the Star Force Calavari got their own exclusive mission on the other planet with the same objective.

The documentation of that assault and successful retaking of a world from the Nestafar, small as it was, filtered out through the remains of the Calavari empire. After a few years Calavari ships started showing up at Drema looking for these converts and either offering their assistance in battling the Nestafar/lizards or wanting to join them. As it was, Drema’s high orbit was cluttered with abandoned Calavari ships that were either being refitted or recycled by Star Force, as their crews had already been shipped back through the conduit for training.

Some stayed in Star Force space, helping to grow the new Calavari empire on HTC, but many more returned, not wanting to abandon the original Calavari territory altogether. Three systems may not have been much, but word had spread of there being other holdouts, and the resistance gave the Calavari hope…and more importantly, an objective to fight for, rather than just rolling from one defeat to another and hoping to make the next transport so they wouldn’t be left behind.

But so many still were. As many planets as Star Force evacuated, there were hundreds more that had been caught between severed supply lines, Nestafar invasion, or simply deemed inconsequential, with their small defense fleets being pulled off to pool together to protect more valuable locations. It was a sad, depressing, and overly demoralizing combat theatre that had once been a great race, now reduced to a large population spread across disparate systems with no central controlling factor.

Star Force, the Protovic, and other benefactors were stepping in to fill part of that roll, but it was the Star Force Calavari that garnered the most response from the war torn planets…for they weren’t only revitalized and reequipped, they had naval assets on par with Star Force, whose fleet, while small in comparison to what the Calavari originally had, had always been superior. Naval was the Calavari’s weakest area, but these new Calavari touted it as their strength…something that seemed impossible within Calavari society.

With their empire effectively dead, many had given up hope and consoled themselves to holding out and trying to weather the storm until the day of their destruction finally arrived, but when word spread of the Star Force Calavari, along with recorded proof of their limited battle history, those who still had a spark of defiance left in them took up a new battle cry. That battle cry was to survive the enemy until they could get to Star Force, or Star Force could get to them, precipitating a mass exodus for those who had jumpship access…and long coast phases between star systems for those ships without.

Word had gotten around to the Nestafar as well, who’d come looking to squash the Star Force ‘hope’ that some of the Calavari worlds were rallying around, but on multiple times they’d been repulsed from Morgan’s turf, though often it was Taryn’s and Leif’s fleets doing the fighting while Morgan pressed further out into the war zone, picking up survivors and spreading the word.

And the word was Rebirth.

So it wasn’t altogether surprising how many Calavari ships Morgan saw parked in orbit around Drema, but it was still an impressive sight. Even more so were the number of Star Force jumpships, which to her meant more badly needed supplies flowing in, among which were foodstuff shipments for Drema and the Crecchon and Tarvis systems. It wasn’t much compared to the need, but it kept the Star Force Calavari supplied while they established their own bioharvest facilities, as well as adding to the limited foodstuffs that Drema had available for the swarm of refugees populating its surface.

The 3,412 Calavari ships that Morgan had brought with her began deceleration braking behind the Blue Ranger one and two at a time, with the bulk still being several days behind. Her other warships had stayed back with them, ensuring the Calavari didn’t get the jump on them at the previous system before all were away. The Calavari jumpships had been sent on ahead weeks earlier, leaving Morgan to shepherd the slow convoy at a snail’s pace, but after several months they’d finally arrived at their destination, safe and sound.

Give her ships a couple of weeks to resupply and they’d be heading back out to round up more Calavari, picking them up wherever they encountered them as they limped their way towards Drema. So far the Nestafar hadn’t hit it directly, but Morgan figured it was only a matter of time, which was why she’d left a considerable warship presence behind, which it seemed Jenna had been adding to nicely, based off the ID tags on the battlemap, which included several new models that the Ninja Monkey had apparently been holding out on Morgan.

They’d have a little chat about that later, but protecting Drema was Jenna’s primary mission, so Morgan wouldn’t hold it against her too much. That said, there were a lot of assets showing up in orbit, meaning the trailblazer was going to have to do some administrative work before she headed back out…and if Taryn was still insystem she wanted to discuss the situation with her personally.

A day later she met both Taryn and Jenna onboard the partially operational Calavari seda in low orbit that was still under construction, but in typical ‘death star’ fashion the pieces of it that had been built were habitable, with the rest of the building effort being held up for lack of supplies. Its weapon systems weren’t up and running yet, but the interior was large enough to accommodate well over 1,000 Calavari, who found it a great honor to have all three Archons, let alone two trailblazers, use it as a summit point.

“We’ve been seeing a lot of activity here,” Taryn said, pointing to the star map. “Nothing large, but a lot of Nestafar smaller ship traffic. No conflicts as yet, but they’re moving through the system, I think to around here,” she said, making a circle with her finger around a cluster of star systems. “I think they’ve got a resupply base or colony in there.”

“Damn,” Morgan whispered, chewing on the end of her finger.

Jenna raised an eyebrow. “You think they’re coming for us?”

“Not much Calavari left around here to target,” Taryn answered, “unless they’re trying to sweep up scraps, which I doubt. They may have more of their empire intact, but they’ve been hurt nearly as bad as the Calavari. They don’t have resources for auxiliary campaigns.”

“I agree,” Morgan said, nodding once. “There are a lot of small systems out there that they’ve passed over for annexation. They’re out to kill Calavari and are focusing on their major worlds. There’s a cluster here,” she said, pointing into the central region of Calavari space, which ran up and down on the 3d map further than it did side to side, “that they could be staging for a future campaign, but I’d put my credits on us.”

“How do you want to play it?” Jenna asked.

Morgan and Taryn exchanged glances, with the redhead answering.

“If we waste time or resources hunting this base down it means recovering less Calavari. That’s our primary mission, so we’ll let the Nestafar come to us.”

“That sounds like a…bad idea,” Jenna admitted. “If they’re setting up a stronghold, best to hit it before it gets too developed.”

“Normally I would agree,” Morgan said, a frustrated look on her face, “but when there are billions of Calavari out there needing to be saved, we can’t waste time on maybes. We’re not due to probe that far out anytime soon, and we’re not going to divert…no matter how much I want to.”

“If they are coming here, we need a battle plan,” Jenna noted. “More than I’ve got set up, anyway.”

“What have you got?” Taryn asked.

Jenna adjusted the hologram, pulling it out to a system-wide view.

“I’ve got sensor stations around all the planets, so if they poke in for a look we’ll know. Right now I’ve got 13 fully loaded warships stationed around J-19,” she said, pointing to the outermost planet in the system that had no name. “They don’t have binary drives, and that’s the most remote position that I can place them for easy recall. If the Nestafar are counting ships in orbit, these won’t show up. I’d planned on stationing more further out, as we get reinforced, but I don’t want to leave orbit naked.”

“How are you organizing the Calavari fleet?” Taryn asked.

“The abandoned ships are just parked in high orbit with a few drones guarding them. The Calavari refuge fleet I’m keeping within distance of the defense platforms, so they’ll have a place to run to if necessary. The Calavari warships we’ve accumulated are spread out in pairs guarding the orbiting infrastructure. They’re not a match for the Nestafar, but they can delay them long enough for help to arrive…or drive off a single ship trying to poach targets of opportunity.”

“Our Calavari,” Jenna continued, “have two fleets insystem. One is stationed here, guarding the seda until it’s operational, and the other is patrolling high orbit. If the Nestafar do jump in, they can come in behind them and cause trouble. Our mainline fleets are sprinkled around low orbit, ready to reposition as needed.”

“Valeries?” Morgan asked.

“We have a lot, actually, but most are atmospheric only. The starfighters have been mostly obliterated in naval combat, but their aero-only versions have been popping up regularly, a lot in handfuls scrounged from evac zones, but they’ve been accumulating. They’re standing ready in surface bases to try and intercept Nestafar dropships on the way down. If they get their walkers on the surface things will get real bad, real fast. The Calavari have a formidable army on station, but their hovertanks are crap against the walkers.”

“Believe me, I know,” Morgan said, staring at the locations of the surface bases, of which a few more had been added since her last visit. “How many mechs have we got?”

“On the surface, we’ve got two galaxies, all Calavari. All mainline mech units are still on their jumpships waiting to go out with you,” Jenna said, using the Battletech-inspired unit system, in which a ‘galaxy’ was 500.

“How many of the Calavari mechs are mauler-equipped?” Morgan asked.

“About a third.”

Taryn shook her head. “Mauler is the only weapon that works well against Nestafar armor. Have we given them any heavy walkers?”

“Not that I know of yet,” Jenna said, unsure of what was going on back in Alpha Region where the Calavari were being trained and equipped, with Jason and Jace making the decisions there. “All we’ve received are scale 1.”

“You’ll want to put together all-mauler stars to take on the bigger mechs,” Taryn said, speaking from experience. “Use plasma for the giraffes and missile heavies for support. Let the maulers strip the armor off and the others to finish them. Fastest way I know of,” she said, glancing at Morgan.

“I concur. Do we have any air assets on the ground?”

“Only Calavari, and they’re Star Force Valeries…with a few gunships thrown in, but the native Valeries far outnumber ours. How much you expecting the Nestafar to throw at us?”

“There’s no way of knowing,” Morgan said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Nor when. We just have to lay out as much defense as we can and work the problem when it happens.”

“That’s cheerful,” Jenna quipped.

“The only other option is to pull in one of our fleets,” Taryn explained, “which we are not going to do.”

“I know, I know. If we sit on our hands the Nestafar win by default. I just wish I had more ships to work with, but everything that comes through needs to go to you three, so I’m in a tough position not knowing what to prepare for.”

“You got any more of those defense platforms on the way?”

Jenna looked at the pair of trailblazers, then over to Morgan. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Who sent them.”

“No. Should I?”

“They were a little gift from Clan Saber, with three more on the way. Jason said he’s sending something a bit bigger, due in 5 months or so.”

Morgan frowned. “What are those two up to?”

“I don’t care,” Jenna said, “so long as they’re sending toys our way.”

“Don’t they have enough to worry about on the lizard front?” Taryn asked.

“Couple of no good schemers,” Morgan mumbled. “They’re still vying for IlClan.”

“IlClans,” Taryn corrected.

“What’s that?” Jenna asked.

“Something between trailblazers,” Taryn scoffed. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Now I want to know.”

“Just them doing their power twins routine…again,” Morgan half-explained. “One war front isn’t good enough, so now they’re playing in two.”

“And that’s bad?”

“No,” Morgan frowned, “it’s a good thing.”

“Which is what makes it so frustrating,” Taryn finished.

“Are we really caring about this right now,” Jenna asked, “with the Nestafar on the prowl?”

Taryn rolled her eyes. “Still a newb.”

“It’s called multitasking,” Morgan explained to her fellow Ninja Monkey. “When you get as good as we are you can deal with doomsday scenarios and compete with your fellow Archons at the same time.”

“I thought that only applied to sarcasm,” Jenna joked.

“’Multi’ means more than one,” Morgan reminded her. “I’m still kicking their ass in ranks.”

Jenna looked at Taryn. “Are you all like this?”

“Pretty much,” the trailblazer confirmed.

“You guys must have been nuts in basic training.”

“We still hold most of the records,” Morgan reminded her.

Jenna set her elbows on the holoprojector. “My point exactly.”

3

May 31, 2467

Ghanis System (Beta Region)

Ettiana

“Captain, we have a system-wide warning flag!” a Kiritas crewmember shouted excitedly on the bridge of the H132 jumpship in its high pitched voice.

Erica Sorvela looked up from the datapad in her hand and uncrossed her legs as she rapidly sat up. “Show me.”

One of the Human bridge crew brought up the holographic text in front of her command chair, along with the tags on the orbital map, indicating enemy warships on approach. She took a moment to read the brief message, then even longer to analyze the map, noting that the incoming Skarron ships were not on a jumpline near her ship, meaning she had a few minutes at least to work with.

“Hold all outgoing dropships and get the ones on the way up here inside as fast as possible. Navigator, get me three quick options out of planetary orbit, but avoid the star. If the Skarrons are incoming that’s where they’ll be coming from. Comms, inform the spaceport to stop sending additional ships, but that we’ll wait for those already enroute if able. And get me a close up on the incoming ships.”

A secondary hologram appeared on the right, detailing the Skarron fleet as it jumped into middle planetary orbit in the form of single ships, one popping up every couple of seconds as they came in on a stellar jumpline. Already there were 18, and they appeared to be holding up just off the jumpline…gathering their strength, probably, to begin the assault on the planetary defenses.

Sorvela used her command chair controls to search around the map until she found the defense fleet, which was likewise assembling from its varied patrols, but unlike the Skarrons it was coalescing into several pieces, the closest of which was a group of 12 drone warships moving out towards the Skarrons, probably to hit them before the rest of their fleet arrived…which begged the question just how many were coming.

Then all of a sudden a huge new contact jumped in, with the computer tagging it as a ‘Juggernaut.’

“Eta on the dropships?” Sorvela asked with a forced calm.

“14 minutes.”

She nodded, biting the inside of her cheek to stay focused as more and more Skarron ships poured in. The cargo ships and other vessels in orbits closer to the attackers, including some from other races who happened to be insystem, scattered like insects moving away from an incoming boot. 14 minutes should be a safe margin, she hoped, given that their updates on the Skarrons had only made their way to her ship months ago. Before then she’d only heard of them in rumors.

Who knew what they had in terms of technology, and that fact rattled her as she was forced to sit and wait…for she wasn’t abandoning the dropships. She could have, forcing them to return to the planet, but if she’d been onboard one with an enemy invasion incoming, she’d have wanted the ship to wait for her if at all possible.

So they were going to wait, then they were getting the hell out of here and let the military deal with the Skarrons…though the more ships that popped up into orbit gave her the feeling that this wasn’t some raid they were going to fend off. She knew never to underestimate Star Force’s military might, but by the time the third of the massive juggernauts appeared she was swearing up a storm in her mind, with one thought pounding through her consciousness as the last dropships were on approach to the hangar bays.

RUN.

Two days later…

“Here it comes,” Etito said to his fellow Kiritak as they waited in the shadow of a half-destroyed barrier wall that surrounded their barracks at the mining colony. It still stood half again over their one meter height, but had originally been twice as tall, with the top section of the concrete wall laying in chunks all over the inner courtyard from where an aircraft missile had hit the small defense turret on top.

“Just one?” Movo asked in a whisper as the six Kiritak guards were hunkered up against the wall in their dark green body armor.

An explosion elsewhere on the perimeter silenced Etito’s reply, with the small Kiritak putting its three fingered hand out where the others could see and counted down with each digit, pulling all three into a fist.

When he did the last Kiritak in line sprinted out, followed by the fifth, then the fourth and so on until Etito was the last to jump out of cover. When he did he saw a huge alien down the trail ahead of them. It stood three times as tall and many times wider, with four massive legs and four long arms coming out the top. It was beyond ugly, even without a head, but it did have a mouth that looked big enough to swallow one of them whole.

The next thing Etito saw was two small objects moving through the air towards the Skarron, who fired at the little Kiritak with two white plasma orbs from squarish guns on the end of its forward arms. Before it could fire again the two objects hit the thing’s tough yellow skin and bounced off, exploding a few inches out as the Kiritak who threw them triggered the remote mines.

Etito heard a huge roar from the alien, but it walked forward through the smoke and continued firing, now with a wound oozing dirty white blood. Two of his fellow guards got hit and knocked down by the blasts, but their shields held up to the shots and they got back to their feet as the others fired their plasma pistols and chucked two more Kiritas grenades.

They exchanged fire, white orbs for blue lances, for a few seconds, then with another explosion the big thing finally went down with a thud onto the dirt trail.

“Make sure it’s dead,” Etito said, shooting it three more times with his pistol, and the others joined in…save for Movo.

“You hit?” Etito asked, walk/hopping over to his fellow Kiritak.

“What’s it look like?” Movo said angrily, holding a tiny hand over a hole in his leg’s thin armor.

“How bad is it?” Reloni asked, seeing some blue blood seeping through his fingers…but not much.

“Surface burn,” Movo said as he stood up wincing. “It hurts like mojorni’s girdle, but I think I can walk.”

“Head back inside,” Etito said as another white orb flashed over their heads, followed by a splattering of smaller ones coming from the trail up ahead.

“Shit!” he said, firing back at one of the equally small aliens with a flat head that were coming through the brush ahead of another one of the big ones coming up the trail. “Fall back!” he said, firing as fast as he could pull the trigger, with most of his shots going wide in his haste.

“They’re everywhere!” Movo yelled, hopping as fast as he could with one leg to get back to the entrance in the wall. A warm spot on his tail told him he’d taken another hit, but fortunately this one didn’t burn all the way through his armor.

“Hurry up!” Etito yelled, seeing that Movo was falling behind. “Ahhh!”

Etito ducked down just before getting to the corner as a mass of red nearly ran into him. He ducked and the Archon jumped over his head, avoiding a collision, though the Kiritak felt a bit of liquid in his pants none the less.

“Kick their ass!” he yelled as he turned around at the wall and took cover, shooting at one of the little aliens as the Archon shot several others on approach, then jumped up into the air and came down on top of the Skarron between its four shoulder joints and stood up, firing directly down into the thing’s back with plasma blast after plasma blast as it tried to shake him off, to no avail.

The Skarron went down with another tremor felt as much as heard, then the Archon leapt off to Etito’s left and started shooting and kicking the little aliens into submission. The Kiritak stepped out of cover and threw one of his grenades at a trio of aliens well ahead to the right. It fell short, bouncing across the ground and ducking between the feet of the front one.

Etito pushed his hand trigger, blowing it up underneath and knocking all three down, the first of which landed in pieces. Blue lances from the other Kiritak clustered near the wall finished off the other two as they tried to limp off bloodied, then Movo took another hit by an errant plasma orb.

“Ah shit, not again!” he cried, rolling over on his tail as he jerked around, trying to rub away the heat in his chest that was burning through his clothes and scorching his skin.

“Behind you!” Reloni yelled, pivoting around and firing at a couple of the small aliens that were coming out of the barracks’ door across the courtyard.

“Ah, they’re inside!” Etito yelled as he turned around and fired. With the fire others they blanked the two Hobbits with blue streaks, two thirds of which missed, but the rest were enough to take them down, though Etito took a hit to his shields, with his helmet monitor informing him that its effective strength had been reduced to 13%. It would recharge slowly, but if he got hit again soon it would go straight to his armor and he’d end up like Movo, who was still on the ground, crying, but no longer thrashing about.

Etito pointed a middle finger towards the barrack’s door and one of the other Kiritak ran over to it and looked inside…taking a plasma orb to the face and getting knocked back onto his tail. He scrambled off to the side as the other Kiritak shot the next Hobbit to come out.

“Too many, too many…” the Kiritak said as he ran back to the others. “Where do we go? What do we do?”

“We shoot them,” Etito said, not knowing what else to do as another small alien came out, but before he could shoot it a single blue streak hit it in the chest, coming down from overhead. Etito turned and looked over his left shoulder, seeing the tall, red armored Archon standing behind him.

“You five, come with me,” he said in the typically low-toned voice of the Humans as he reached down and picked up Movo by the tail and slung him over his left shoulder. “Move!”

“Coming,” Etito said as he and the other four ran/hopped as fast as they could, following the Archon outside the barrier wall and to the left. He led them down the wall for 50 meters or so, then ducked into the forest, keeping off the trail and heading away from the barracks…and everything else.

“Where are…we going?” Etito asked after a few minutes.

“Away,” the Archon said, zigzagging between trees and purposely avoiding a straight line, it seemed to the Kiritak.

“But what about the other Kiritak? Why are you leaving them behind?”

“I’m not leaving anyone behind,” the Archon said over his shoulder as he continued to jog as fast as he thought the Kiritak could move. “The mining colony is lost. Everyone else is dead.”

“Already?” Etito asked in disbelief.

“There are a lot more troops on the ground than you can see…hold up.”

The Kiritak stopped behind him, grateful for the breather.

“Thank…the Randy,” Reloni said, huffing.

“Can you put me down now?” Movo asked meekly, clearly still in pain.

“Not just yet. Hang on,” the Archon said, looking to the sky through the trees. He couldn’t see much, but there were enough brakes here and there to get a partial image of a large ship passing overhead.

When he was sure it hadn’t spotted them he pulled Movo off his shoulder and gently set him down on the ground.

“Stay here,” he said, running a few steps and jumping up to grab a low tree branch as he started to climb.

The trees on Ettiana weren’t large, nor were they stiff, so every branch he climbed up gave a bit, but overall the plant was firm enough to support his weight up to the near top, where he stopped as he felt a bit too much give forming in the primary stem. He reached out and pushed aside several branches full of red and orange leaves the length of a banana, opening up his view back to the mining colony. In the near distance he could see the barracks where the workers lived, then further off was the much larger industrial facility…and smack between the two, over the forest that surrounded everything, was a huge, rectangular starship hovering in place.

But it wasn’t a perfect rectangle, and it was far longer than most, with hooks and arms all along the length, two thirds of which were empty. The ones that weren’t held small items in their grasp, of varying sizes, one of which was released on the far side. It dropped into view, landing on its six legs as it crashed down into the trees, then it slowly stood up to its full height as the starship moved off to the east, gaining altitude.

A rustle nearby caught the Archon’s attention as Etito climbed up the tree next to him, hopping from one branch to another and latching on with his small arms and tail, when necessary.

“What do you see?” the Kiritak asked.

“Trouble,” he said, pointing in the direction of the Skarron walker as it began to stomp off across the trees.

“It’s huge!”

“It’s a Type-4 Skarron walker, and nothing short of a mech will take it down.”

“You said everyone was dead…”

“So why drop it now? Good question. Maybe they’re expecting a counterattack, maybe they’re just fortifying their position. The battlemap relays are still active, for the moment, and I can’t see any troops nearby for that thing to fight, so I’m not sure what they’re up to. But we have to stay away from that thing or we’re as good as dead.”

“Where do we go? There’s no other colonies near here. Too far to walk. And we have no food.”

“No, it is too far. We wait here. Star Force isn’t going to let this invasion go unanswered, so our mission is to survive until help arrives.”

“How long?”

“Weeks at best, maybe months.”

“We starve before that.”

“No,” the Archon said, shaking his head. “The food’s down there. Unless they burn it. After things settle down I’ll sneak around and see what I can find. Until then, let’s see if we can’t find a hiding spot further away. They’re going to have their little buddies on patrol, no doubt, and their fighters might be able to spot us if we’re in a clearing.”

“How did they get here?”

“The Skarrons came with a large fleet, too much for our warships to fight off.”

“No,” Etito said, “I mean how did they get here.”

“Flying transports dropped their troops at various points around the perimeter after their fighters took out the defense turrets. They didn’t walk, if that’s what you mean.”

“Nothing we can steal?”

The Archon shook his head. “I wish, but no. They flew off after they made the drop off, just like the big ship that brought the walker.”

“Where did you come from?”

The Archon pointed across the forest to the southern side of the barracks.

“Way over there is what’s left of my skeet.”

“You’re a pilot?”

“Pilot without a ship.”

“How many did you kill?”

“Six…their fighters are slow, but they coordinate well in groups.”

“You alone?”

“The rest of squadron went down earlier. I flew off trying to find some smaller enemies to kill, and still bit off more than I could chew. Let’s head back down.”

“Ok,” Etito said, dropping from one branch to another and landing on each with a bird-like agility until he got to the ground…whereas the Archon simply dropped, grabbing a couple on the way to slow his fall until he landed on the hard ground in a crouch.

“Let’s move,” he said, walking over and picking up Movo again, but holding him in front of him for a moment to examine his wounds. “How you doing little guy?”

“Hurts…less,” he said between clenched teeth.

The Archon saw little bits of green gel soaking into his burn marks from the edges of the holes in his armor, which was a good sign, for it was an anti-infectious, medical gel built into the armor that also included a pain numbing component.

“Just stay alive until I can get you a proper med kit. Same goes for the rest of you,” he said, swinging Movo over his shoulder again as if he weighed almost nothing. “I’ll find us food, water, and whatever else we need in the colony later, after the Skarrons settle in. Until then we hide out here…or rather out there somewhere more to our liking. So let’s get going, and keep an eye out for the enemy or any good hiding spots you see on the way.”

4

June 4, 2467

Ghanis System (Beta Region)

Ettiana

In the dead of night Ben-161339 came up to the edge of the forest surrounding the Kiritak barracks, already having evaded a Hobbit patrol. There were several more at the barrier wall openings, which was why he was going over the wall itself, despite not knowing what was on the far side…other than the supplies he and the 6 Kiritak badly needed.

Watching the positions of the roaming sentries, Ben sprinted across the small clearing surrounding the wall and jumped up, grabbing the topside edge and pulling his helmeted head up enough to look over.

He dropped back down immediately and retreated to the woods, having seen a pair of Hobbits walking his way on the inside. The Archon kept a mental calculation going as he watched the sentries outside, then over a minute later he sprinted back across and jumped again, peeping over the edge.

When he did he saw that he had a short break, so he hauled his armored body up on top of the wall and slid over the far side, dropping to the ground as quietly as he could before running into the compound through a nearby door that had been blasted open by the attack. He hesitated at the entrance, glancing inside to make sure it was clear, then he ducked into the short hallways that were perfectly suited for the Hobbits…but were too small for the Skarrons to enter, luckily.

They were designed for the Kiritak, for they were the only ones who used this facility. Using his night vision, Ben went inside the low ceilinged dark hallways, seeing lights, doors, and just about anything not attached to the walls broken and burned, but with no sign of the Hobbits. Using that to his advantage, the Archon made his way through the somewhat familiar infrastructure to the cafeteria, quickly seeing the backside storage rooms had already been raided.

There were blue blood stains everywhere, with open packets of foodstuffs scattered over top of them…but no bodies, suggesting the Hobbits had already cleaned up a bit, which was a sign that they intended to stay and make use of the facility, otherwise they would have left them where they lay.

The cafeteria was deserted, so Ben tiptoed his way through the trash over to the storage rooms, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw a cluttered, but not empty mess of foodstuff containers.

That took care of item number 1, but he wasn’t going to collect any now. Not only did his armor not have any pockets, there were other things he needed to find, and the less he disturbed the less chance there was of him being discovered…plus, he’d be a lot less agile carrying around a box or two.

Before he could get out of the cafeteria he heard footsteps approach, so he hunkered up against the wall beside the doorway to an outside hall and waited, ready to jump whoever came through if they noticed him. After a few seconds in walked a Hobbit…who didn’t see him, let alone turn his head in his direction. All the lights were out, and the Hobbits weren’t wearing any head gear, so Ben didn’t know if they naturally could see in the dark or how they were navigating, but he took his good fortune and slipped out the door behind the little alien, then headed off through the dead facility enroute to the med bay.

It was likewise trashed, but like the cafeteria most of the contents were still here, making it look like the Hobbits had just wanted to mess stuff up, or either they were looking for something they hadn’t found. Granted the Kiritak were small, but they couldn’t hide in every cabinet, so maybe the enemy was just having fun trashing the place.

First off Ben retrieved a mobile med kid, which was a small, flat box that had a concealed strap that he pulled out and slung over his armored shoulder. Into the standardized box he added a few items from the other shelves that caught his attention, including a can of casting foam, and compressed the lot to get it all to fit inside so he could get the latch locked in place.

With Movo taken care of, the next thing he went for was the auxiliary storage areas, passing one lackadaisical patrol in the hallways on the way by crouched down in a nook and waiting for it to walk past. First thing inside storage that he went for was cargo sacks. They were designed for the smaller Kiritak inhabitants, but they effectively acted like small backpacks made of netting. Ben took four of them with him, then started hunting for random supplies they would need, filling two before he got to the weapons storage.

Inside the small armory had been turned inside out, with most of the weapons broken. From the debris he was able to salvage ammo clips for the Kiritak pistols and rifles, as well as a few of the weapons that had escaped damage. He pulled open a low cabinet and found several containers still inside and pulled them out, seeing the hockey puck grenade/mines that the Kiritak favored.

Filling the third sack with as many as he could get in along with the weapons and plasma clips, he held off on the fourth sack as long as he could, but eventually gave in as he came across some spare armored suits, which he disassembled and stuffed inside, realizing he’d have to get more cargo sacks for the foodstuffs and water on the way out, for the planet’s surface was fairly dry with few streams to pull from.

Not wanting to overstay his welcome, and hoping to come back and raid the place for more supplies later, he avoided the Hobbits roaming the hallways and took a different route back to the cafeteria. Before he got there he smelled smoke and other scents coming from a different area of the barracks, as well as a fair amount of noise.

He chanced a little exploration, just wanting a peek at where they were and what was burning, but when he came up to a fire-lit doorway and poked his helmet around to see what was inside his stomach sank down to a pit and his ire rose, causing him to clench his jaw to contain his emotions.

There was a fire, crudely built in the center of what had been a recreation area, on top of which there was a pair of carcasses cooking…Kiritak carcasses, with bits and pieces of several others looking to have already been devoured. The damn Hobbits were eating the dead while there were rooms full of foodstuffs just on the other side of the facility.

Ben saw a stack of bodies on the far side of the room, piled up haphazardly almost to the ceiling. Blood was everywhere, and it seemed the ‘cleaning’ effort throughout the rest of the barracks hadn’t been for tidiness sake after all.

Wanting to kill them all but knowing he shouldn’t betray his presence, Ben clamped down on his anger and turned away, heading back down the dark hallway and making his way around to the storage areas, grabbing another three cargo sacks, and returning to the cafeteria where he filled two with foodstuffs and the third with water containers…until he found a portable atmospheric condenser, which he made room for, along with a field power pack.

With all seven sacks and their chords making for a mess of his armor, he decided to hold them together by hand and toss them over his shoulder, med kit included, rather than try and wear them. He felt like Santa Claus, and looked like it too, after a fashion, given his red armor, and knew he’d be just as conspicuous on his way out, so he took his time and worked his way around the inside of the barracks, looking at multiple exits and picking what he thought was best after doing a few test runs out to the wall and back without his cargo.

He thought he had the Hobbits’ patrol patterns figured out, so pulling his 8 piece bundle over his left shoulder he decided to go for it and ran for the wall near where a turret had been destroyed. The blast had knocked the top section of wall off, making it low enough that he wouldn’t have to climb as high.

When Ben got up to it he tossed the bundle over first, then hopped over himself, spotting a sentry to his right that had its back turned to him some distance down. Apparently it hadn’t heard the noise, so the Archon picked up his stash and darted off into the forest, beginning the fairly long trek back to the Kiritak’s hiding spot, though even with the load he was moving faster than he had been with the six little guys in tow.

“Damn it to hell,” one of the Star Fox control room staff said loudly.

Sendra-4339 turned away from the star map she was studying and gave the tech a harsh glare. “What is it?”

“We have another distress call coming in. It’s Ghanis.”

“Son of a bitch,” Sendra bit out as she pounded a fist on the rim of the holoprojector in front of her. “Get a message out to Mensolon requesting their status. If the Skarrons are in Ghanis they might be there too. Hell, they may end up here before too long,” the acolyte said, thoroughly vexed. Randy had left her in charge of Iona after the first distress call had come in from Rotunna, with him leaving with most of the Star Fox fleet that had been in the system, along with calls to pull ships from the other Beta Region systems to assemble at Iona, which she was to bring out to Rotunna a few weeks later once they all arrived.

Then yesterday, after Randy had already left, they’d received a distress call through the relay network from Brenns…and now from Ghanis. All three systems were on the Calavari side of Beta Region and the closest to the Protovic/Skarron conflict where Kip was leading four Clans on a ‘save their ass’ campaign. It seemed the Skarrons hadn’t liked Star Force getting involved in the conflict and were now striking back at them…only it wasn’t an individual system, it was now three, with who knew how many more to follow.

She only had a handful of warships within the system, and those had to stay here to defend Iona. She might be able to peel off one to send along with the reinforcements from the other systems as they came in, but the numbers attached to the distress calls from Rotunna and Brenns had been staggering, and she doubted they would be any less impressive from Ghanis once their battle data got transmitted.

There was no way Clan Star Fox and the 32nd mainline fleet, which had been assigned to Beta Region, could handle this…not even with Kiritak and Kiritas support. Star Force was flat out getting overrun.

“Prep a message packet to Sol, with a copy to Epsilon Eridani,” she said, heading for a private chamber set off the control room. “Bump it to the front of the line. I’ll have it recorded within 10 minutes, then I want every ship within the system on full alert…and cancel all cargo shipments to Ghanis.”

Davis sat in his office in discussion with two other Star Force administrators later in the afternoon when his desk suddenly lit up with flashing emergency holographic icons appearing in midair, startling all three men.

The Star Force Director tapped a few keys and a pre-recorded message began to play.

“Davis,” Randy’s image said from his office on Kirit, “our Kiritak colony in Rotunna has come under Skarron attack. Information is limited at the moment, but it appears they’ve come with a fleet large enough to overwhelm out local defenses. Shortly I’m going to be heading out with a relief force from Iona, but I wanted to get this message sent as soon as possible.”

“I don’t have enough military resources to defeat the enemy fleet, but I’ll do my best to chew them up until reinforcements can arrive. I’m ordering additional ships from Beta Region to rendezvous in Iona, then to follow me in. Whether or not that will be enough to deal with this threat I don’t know. Their actual ship count we don’t know, but as of the last update from Rotunna there were over 200 warships, including a pair of juggernauts. See the information files about those.”

“I’m not going in and getting ourselves killed, so expect my fleet to be around when help arrives, though in what condition we’re in is anyone’s guess. We know the Skarrons don’t have binary drives, so we can evade them when necessary. I will need supplies eventually, but first and foremost I need you to send ships to reinforce my other systems. I’m shortchanging them to have a response fleet, leaving them very vulnerable. Time is of the essence, so get whatever you have available moving immediately and secure Iona first. It’s the key to Beta Region and we cannot afford to lose the Kiritas.”

“Sendra will keep you updated as more information comes in. I’m leaving the system within the next two hours, and expect to be engaging the enemy no sooner than a month and a half from now. It’s possible Brenns and Ghanis will have sent limited reinforcements on their own, but I have no way of knowing given the distances involved. Either way, they don’t have the ships needed to do more than annoy them.”

“You should get this message in 9 or 10 days, so I’ll still be enroute when you’re listening to this. Don’t skimp on the reinforcements. Better to send more and not need them than to have to wait months for more. I also don’t know the Skarrons’ aim here, but there have been rumors that they’re taking out a number of smaller races now that the Nestafar are more or less out of the picture. This could be an attack meant to bloody our nose and intimidate us from getting involved, or to punish us for involvement with the Protovic…or it could be the start of a full scale war.”

“I’m sending a separate message to Corneria and the other trailblazers, so you shouldn’t need to do anything yourself, I just wanted to make you aware of the situation and the need for as many reinforcements as possible. We’ve been holding back our fleets from the lizard and Calavari campaigns in case of an attack against our own systems, and now it’s happened. Don’t jeopardize Sol’s security, but give me what you can. According to Kip these guys can be beat, but it’s going to be like chopping wood, and I need more axes.”

“Also, keep in mind that our ability to send cargo shipments back home is going to be hindered, so start taking whatever economic measures necessary. I’ve left orders for Beta Region to continue as much production as possible, but I can no longer guarantee amounts.”

“And in case you’re wondering whether or not it was a good idea to help the Protovic, put that question aside. It was the right thing to do, and this fight has been a long time in coming. We’ve been staring at each other over the ‘fence’ for quite a while now, sizing each other up. This fight has been in the cards ever since I came to Beta Region, and if we don’t tear these bastards a new one they’re going to continue preying on the weaker races out there. The fact that they’re willing to hit the Protovic says they’re serious about this and have the military might to back it up.”

“We have to hit them back and hit them back hard…now, else I fear this will escalate out of control. Star Force’s days of sitting back and joining in the wars when and where we choose is over. We’ve been preparing for this, and now it’s time to act. Sorry it had to be on my turf, though. I’d hoped we’d have more time to prepare.”

Randy hesitated for a moment.

“I guess that’s it. I’m ticked and embarrassed, because it feels like I just got caught with my pants down. I know it couldn’t be helped, but I still hate being sucker-punched. I don’t have a clue where the Skarrons are basing out of, their territory is nowhere near us, so right now all we can do is face them on our own turf and play it by ear. If the relay in Rotunna is still intact when I arrive I’ll send an update, if not, you won’t be hearing from me for a while and neither will Beta Region. I thought about sending someone else with the fleet, but I have to be the one to go and make the most of whatever situation I find, and you and I both know that I can do that better than anyone else out here.”

“Time to do what you trained me for. Wish us luck.”

Davis stared at the message end symbol for a moment, with the two administrators across from him wide-eyed with concern. Almost theatrically slow, Davis reached out and deactivated the hologram, clearing the air above his desk.

“Who are the Skarrons?” the administrator on the right asked.

“We’ll get a data file out to all of Star Force tomorrow,” Davis said. “Until then hold your questions…and excuse me while I attend to this.”

“Of course,” the other administrator said as they both got up in tandem and hurried out of the Director’s office.

Once they were gone Davis flipped the button that activated his holoprojector pad, retracting a section of carpet to his right to expose the metallic circle. He stepped onto it and began contacting various logistical personnel within Atlantis and her sister cities on Earth, attending to the part of this problem that he could tackle, knowing that the military angle was something that the Archons would take care of promptly.

5

June 15, 2467

Solar System

Mordor

Dan-028 played back Randy’s message for a second time, knowing he’d heard everything correctly, but wanting to let it all thoroughly sink in. He’d expected the lizards to be the ones to hit them first, cutting past Paul’s defensive corridor around Namek and hitting the more vulnerable worlds in Alpha Region. Randy’s expansion in Beta Region he hadn’t expected, nor the Skarrons, but given the fact that Kip was fighting them in Protovic territory should have given him some warning, yet Randy’s message had caught him completely off guard.

Then again they each had their own areas of focus, with Dan’s being the expansion of Clan holdings in the Core Region and extending out into Delta Region, which was above the Core on the galactic plane. There were already Star Force systems in Delta, but since the Clans were mandated to operate independently, their own supply lines differed from those that Davis and his minions set up. While they did work together in many cases, their economies were completely separate, with the Clans having to establish their own trading and transportation networks, though the latter was optional.

Dan was focusing on expanding his own Clan, the Star Claws, as well as coordinating with 23 others that were interested in pushing up into Delta Region. Establishing independent supply lines meant securing territories in the current Star Force systems, which was doable and the Clans did regularly enough, but the trailblazers knew that the Clans needed to have other options, which meant Dan was overseeing the colonization of less attractive systems in the Core that many others used as transit points or avoided entirely.

A few were already inhabited with races that hadn’t yet achieved space travel, but many simply didn’t have habitable planets. That didn’t bother Star Force, who more often than not colonized airless worlds, but as gravity drive technology increased and the time delays between the stars diminished, they’d been searching for more preferable worlds rather than just colonizing everything within reach, much like they had in Sol.

Dan was going the other way and claiming the unwanted systems and establishing at least some presence in many of them, giving the Clans a chain of systems to connect up to Delta Region from, and while there didn’t have to be colonies in a system in order to pass through it, it was preferable in case of mechanical malfunction or damage, such as say hitting a small object during a jump. Better to have a safe harbor nearby to run to rather than be stuck in an empty system.

It also made sense to have ships and supply sources nearby, rather than having to send for them from multiple lightyears away, so creating connecting lines of Clan-inhabited systems up to Delta Region was useful in a forward thinking manner, though not necessary in the here and now, as Delta Region colonization was already underway.

Dan had gotten so enthralled in his own work that he hadn’t been paying enough attention to what the others were doing, or he would have realized the Skarrons were a threat…though, by Randy’s tone it seemed he was also surprised to have been hit, so maybe it wasn’t a lack of attention on Dan’s part, but a blind spot that Star Force had. Beta Region technically didn’t have an end, but beyond where Randy had established the current frontier systems little was known about who was out there. Some scouting had been done, but with thousands upon thousands of star systems in play, there was just no way that they could get to them all.

And the further one got out from the Core Region the wider the area became…up until you hit the galactic ‘ceiling’ and ‘floor,’ each of which were about 500 lightyears away and far beyond Star Force’s current reach, meaning the Core Region sat in a sea of systems, and the further away you got the more there were given the spherical expansion. Star Force had always been working in the blind, so to speak, but through diplomatic relations and scouting they’d acquired a decent idea of who was where in the nearby areas…but beyond Beta Region was still largely a mystery, due in part to how far Randy had pushed their borders.

The Skarrons operated out of that ‘dark’ area, and while the rumors they heard detailed a powerful race, that was nothing new compared to their allies in the Alliance. The previous reports he’d heard of them attacking the Protovic and others suggested that they were only taking the initiative because the Nestafar were diminishing, suggesting that the winged aliens were the stronger…but if the Skarrons were willing to pick a fight with just about everyone in the area, including the Protovic, Dan wondered just how strong they really were, given that they now were interested in coming after Star Force.

Before Dan could get around to issuing any orders he got an incoming message from Aaron, one of only two other trailblazers in Sol, but due to the distances involved they still weren’t close enough for real time communication.

“I assume you’ve already got Randy’s message. I’m taking the 19th, 22nd, and 41st fleets out of Sol within the day and heading straight to Rotunna. If this is a more widespread attack in progress, we also need to secure Iona, for that’s where Randy will have drawn most of his ships from. I’m assigning whatever Clan Nova Wolf assets are available within Sol to you or whoever else is going to assemble the Clans. I think you’ll agree we can’t suck Sol’s defenses dry, and the same goes for the surrounding systems, meaning we’re going to have to pull Clan resources…and probably Canderous too.”

“I’ll relieve Randy as soon as possible, but we have to hit the Skarrons with a wall of reinforcements, else we’ll risk playing whack-a-mole with the comm delays. By my last count Beta Region contained 13 Star Force systems, though Randy was planning to expand to a few more. I don’t know how far along he is, but let’s assume he’s got a least a couple more colonies up by now. That’s 15 systems and we need to reinforce them all, along with having a force that can poke back into Skarron territory, because there’s no way we’re tolerating this.”

“Pull whatever Clan ships from the surrounding systems as you can and get an armada to Iona ASAP. I’ll send word back through the relays or by courier once I get to Rotunna. Hopefully I can give you a heads up on enemy strength if Randy doesn’t first, but if I were the Skarrons, the first thing I’d do is cut the relays, so I’m assuming we’re going in blind. Better pack a few spares if there are any available in the system.”

“If you two are coming, make it snappy and make sure we have enough of a fleet to deal with this. If you’re not, make sure whoever is doesn’t come light. Even if this is an isolated attack on a single system, we need to send a message…and if it is a larger war forming, we need as much of a head start as we can get.”

The message ended, with a copy notice that it had been sent not just to him, but to Larissa-048 as well.

Dan hit the ‘replay to all’ button and stood up on his own holoprojector plate, staring out the vidscreen ‘viewport’ at the heavy grav surface of Mordor, which lay on the very edge of the Solar System, so far out that the sky appeared dark even in day.

“Aaron, good call on the immediate response. I’ll stay back and beat the bushes to get as many ships as possible out of the surrounding systems, then I’ll take what we get and head to Iona and work things from there. Larissa, if you want to head out quicker than that, take whatever Clan resources we’ve got in the system save for my flagship and get going. If not I’m sending them on ahead, then waiting around for the others at a rendezvous point and sending them in bunches.”

“I think we can survive 50% reduction in mainline units in Sol and the nearby systems. Do you concur?” Dan asked, leaving that as the end of the message. He hated the lag times, but even with telaris comms there was no getting around the billions of kilometers between planets.

He knew he needed to wait and respond as soon as he heard back, so the Archon planted himself in his office and pulled up a schematic of the Solar System, which was defaultly centered on Mordor.

It was a hellish world, given the volcanic activity, but that internal heat kept the surface fairly warm at around -10 degrees Celsius on average. The unstable regions were well defined, crisscrossing the planet’s surface with the cities spaced in between them. The world was larger than Earth, with a gravity of 152% that required inertial dampeners and artificial gravity within all the cities to make them livable, though some sections allowed for the natural gravity for training purposes.

The atmosphere was thin and comprised of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, but thick enough to allow for winged flight, and growing negligibly thicker as the volcanoes spewed out more gasses over the years. The Clans didn’t care about the environment, given that they were living indoors anyway, but overall it was more hospitable than Venus, as well as being completely off the Earth grid, which was the largest selling point.

Mordor was a Clan-only world, and unlike the other Clan worlds in Sol, Mordor was off limits to the public. The only ships that came to and from Mordor were Clan, and while Clan citizens could transit there, others couldn’t for the simple reason that the Star Force transportation grid didn’t link in. Only registered Clan citizens could purchase transit tickets, though becoming a Clan citizen was easy enough, so it wasn’t exactly a secure world.

But it was out of the public view, in so much that the planet maintained a very insular society that was comprised of all 100 Clans. The smallest ones had an embassy-level stake, much like they did in Antarctica, while the larger Clans on the world controlled huge tracks of land, Clan Star Claw among them. Whereas Earth was the industrial powerhouse for Star Force, Mordor was the heart of Clan industry, both on the planet and in orbit, not to mention housing well over 9 billion Clan citizens in total.

That was why Dan had remained here, despite the fact that he was on the extreme end of his growing system chain up into Delta Region. While other trailblazers overseeing Star Force and/or Clan expansion had moved out to more centralized hubs within their target areas, Dan knew that part of his success lay not in only establishing the Clans in Delta Region, but in growing his own Clan to a point where it could secure Delta Region, and a lot of those efforts were taking place on Mordor and elsewhere in the Solar System.

In overall power rankings Clan Star Claw sat in fifth, but Dan had been pressing it hard to expand and now had territories on a total of 19 worlds spread over 8 systems. While tiny compared to mainline Star Force, Star Claw was developing near to a level where they could start taking on new projects solo rather than having to co-op with other Clans to gain the necessary resources. Dan’s Clan wasn’t the only one with this mindset, but there were only a few putting as much effort and resources into expansion…which led Star Claw to have one of the smaller military fleets.

That said, none of its troops were currently engaged on the lizard or Calavari fronts, leaving them free to redeploy to Beta Region so long as there were still mainline units in the systems to cover for their defensive loss…which wasn’t going to be the case in all, meaning Dan was going to have to pick and choose what to pull off and what to leave behind. With the distances and comm delays involved, it was very easy to wait and monitor a system until its defenses left, then assault it shortly thereafter with the defenders unable to call for help.

That was the unfortunate reality in interstellar expansion, and while he didn’t know of any threats to the Core Region at present, he hadn’t expected the Skarrons to hit Beta either, so out of prudence he and the others couldn’t take every ship available and run off to help Randy.

On the up side, a lot of the Clans were in a similar position to Star Claw, being that they had military assets lying around defending systems that didn’t require them, given that mainline fleets were already on station, and a great deal of them were right here in Sol. Those would be easy to assemble, it was the other systems that would take time to rally, once again due to the comm delays. At present the interstellar relay system could send a signal crossing 6.8 lightyears in a day, faster than Star Force’s gravity drives, but that left signal lag at more than a day for even Epsilon Eridani to Earth, and vice versa.

As Dan was doing a head count of all other Clan warships and ground troops within Sol he got a response from Larissa, and brought up the holo, superimposed over the asset map.

“I concur with the 50% mark. I’ll remain here and shift mainline assets around as needed to maintain security in Sol, so take all the Clan assets you can with you. If they resist, pull rank. I’ll keep the system safe until you return and have already ordered all Clan Meteor troops loaded up onto jumpships, including every mech we’ve got in storage. You’re going to need them with those Skarron Walkers.”

Dan nodded agreeably as the message ended, seeing that they were of like minds. Even at 50% strength Sol would have a solid defense force. They didn’t need to hoard ships…unless they were hit, then that 50% number would see rather ridiculous, but to quote James T. Kirk, “risk is our business,” and there were no safe calls to make here, for the in the vastness of space you never knew who might be on the prowl.

But Dan was comfortable with 50%, and so was Larissa. A few minutes later and a message from Aaron would seal the deal, which spurred Dan to get moving. Contacting all of the Clan leadership within the system…all of whom were not trailblazers…he arranged for their combined fleets to load up and head towards the central star and drop into parking orbits. Dan joined them there once his own Clan assets on Mordor had been assembled, along with drawing in those from Triton and Ganymede.

Altogether he had 18 warships and 28 cargo/transport jumpships from Clan Star Claw with him, and he would pick up more as his message went out through the network to surrounding systems. Those between Sol and Beta Region would assemble over the following days and be picked up by the main armada as it passed through a specified series of systems. Those not on the Beta side were told to make best speed to Iona, with Dan knowing they’d arrive considerably later.

That couldn’t be helped, and holding up everyone to travel in one massive group wasn’t logical, which was why he sent along an option for those systems closer to Beta to send ships immediately if they were of a mind to. Piecemeal reinforcement wasn’t always a good idea, but in this case time was of the essence, and a few dozen ships arriving a couple of days early could make a big difference in the right circumstances.

The ‘pick up’ order was more about establishing a minimum departure date, underscoring the importance of the situation for those Archons in those systems that may or may not understand the gravity of the situation. There wasn’t a trailblazer in every system, and some of the deployments didn’t even have an acolyte in place where the locale was deemed to be remote and secure. What they did have were Regulars and the warships that they inhabited, with them needing to be whipped into transport mode sooner rather than later, for it took time to bring mechs up from a planet’s surface, not to mention supplies that would be needed for a long campaign.

Dan explained all of this in a very long, comprehensive message packet that he sent out to every system in Star Force territory, even the ones that he knew wouldn’t be sending reinforcements, such as Namek which was on the opposite side of the Core Region from Iona. Plus those fleets were in place to counter the lizards and couldn’t be withdrawn except under exceptional circumstances…which this didn’t qualify as, given that there were other fleets to respond with.

But Dan wanted everyone to know what was going on, and he didn’t want to waste time recording multiple smaller messages. Once he sent the message out he waited onboard his flagship, a Mk. 17 Warship-class jumpship that had been built in orbit of Mordor less than 5 years ago, and one that had yet to see real combat, which the same could be said of the bulk of the Clan fleet.

Four days later Dan jumped out of Sol enroute to the Merovingian System, the first stop on a chain of jumps to get them out to Iona, bringing with him the largest fleet Star Force had ever assembled, including a small contingent of Canderous warships whose design, as to date, had never been battle tested.

That didn’t stop them from immediately volunteering, for the military civilization considered themselves too sheltered as it was, with only a small presence on the lizard front. They were eager for righteous combat, and so too were the Clans.

6

July 14, 2467

Iona System

Horizon

Dan’s flagship, the Wolf’s Gaze, decelerated into orbit around the Clan Star Fox planet while the rest of his 2,473 jumpship fleet was coming into the system and parking around the gigantic white star. Dan had come through first and microjumped out to the fourth planet so as to avoid the time lag with communications, and pulled an immediate data uplink from the planet when he arrived, as well as contacting the ranking local Archon.

Enroute he’d picked up multiple updates from Beta Region as they passed from system to system through the relay network. Randy’s reinforcement of Rotunna had yet to arrive, given the extreme distance out to the system, but a few of the local defense fleet had survived and sent data back through the relays for a while, detailing their harassment of the Skarrons in orbit while the enemy maintained control of the surface, fighting with the few Star Force units that remained. They’d managed to keep their jumpships intact, forgoing one massive, costly battle, and were nipping away at the enemy ships and reducing their 531 count wherever they could as the Skarrons set about conquering the planet.

In addition to the warships, the Skarrons had also brought a fleet of jumpships carrying cargo and troops for the ground campaign. Those ships were considerably bigger than their warships, but their warships didn’t need jumpships to carry them around, meaning that even while Randy’s fleet would outnumber the Skarrons by a factor of two, each of his drones was considerably smaller than their counterparts in the Skarron fleet.

If push came to shove, Randy had said he thought he could neutralize the enemy fleet with his own, but even if he succeeded and they canceled each other out, he had no resources to mount a surface campaign, and according to sensor records the planet was already crawling with Skarron walkers.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Based on the reports coming in, Brenns had also been hit with 629 warships and Ghanis with 489. Last he knew that was as far as the Skarrons had gotten, both those three systems were not close to one another, spread out across more than 40 lightyears in an almost perfect triangle that was slightly lower on the galactic plane than Iona. That made them as far apart as the Core Region was wide, and they occupied one small corner of Beta Region. Given that the Skarrons were willing to hit systems so far apart, there was no guarantee that was the furthest they were going to hit, and Dan was relieved to see that Horizon still stood intact.

“I’m very glad to see you here,” Sendra said as her hologram popped up in front of Dan’s command chair. “And according to the sensor grid it looks like you brought friends.”

“Aaron is on a direct route to Rotunna with 3 mainline fleets, I’ve brought the Clans here with enough numbers to fight this war…or at least I hope so. I’ve been picking up bits and pieces on the way, have we lost more than three systems?”

“Two days ago we got a report from Iverie that they’d come under attack, and we’d already pulled most of their defenses and rerouted them to Rotunna before we understood the scale of the invasion…though it probably wouldn’t have mattered, given the numbers the Skarrons are arriving with.”

“I’m looking at those now,” Dan said as updated information began to come in and his bridge staff was sorting through it and relaying the key pieces to his holographic display. “Are the relays still functional?”

“As far as we know, yes. The Skarrons may not even know they’re there, and the surviving warships in all three systems are still feeding us intel. Nothing new from Iverie as of today.”

“I’m glad they’re not all destroyed,” Dan said, partially relieved. “How are our guys stacking up?”

“Plasma weapons are less effective, but if you can keep the enemy at range you’ll own them. The system commanders have been sending back data, and Randy sent an updated assessment of the Rotunna files with suggestions.”

“We’ve already uploaded all pertinent files, so I assume it was in the batch?” he asked, glancing at his Captain…who nodded in the affirmative. “Yes, we’ve got it.”

“How many ships can you leave me?” she asked bluntly.

“The bulk of the fleet stays here to secure the system and be in a position to send support out to the rest of Beta Region. I’m sending 200-300 warships out to each of the systems, meaning that will leave you with over 1000 to work with, plus cargo ships.”

“1000 warships or drone warships?” Sendra asked to clarify.

“1000 warships, each with 50-100 drones onboard. I brought all the Clan ships I could get my hands on, including some from Canderous.”

Sendra let out a loud sigh of relief. “If you were down here I’d kiss you. I’d recommend sending groups out to at least the nearer inhabited systems, maybe even the Kiritas colonies. I held off doing so with the reinforcements that have already came in in case Iona got hit. I don’t know if the others are going to be targeted or not, and I didn’t want to gamble. If the Skarrons do hit another system it’d be best if we didn’t let their walkers get to ground. I hope you brought some ground troops with your fleet?”

Dan nodded. “We did.”

“Then I’m happy to turn things over to you. I’ve been crossing my fingers and hoping the Skarrons didn’t get here before you did. I wasn’t sure if what we had plus the Kiritas fleet was going to cut it.”

“More ships are on the way, though how many for sure I don’t know. I couldn’t wait for all of them. Keep what you need here and reinforce where necessary.”

“Gladly.”

“What’s the traffic look like?” Dan asked, referring to the interracial commerce that routed through most of the Beta Region colonies, but especially Iona, which had the Babylon 2 diplomatic station.

“Very heavy. The Skarrons aren’t just hitting us, they’re hitting lots of people coreward from here. We’ve got ships hanging around that have nowhere else to go at the moment…and unfortunately most of them aren’t warships.”

“Any scuttlebutt on where the Skarron fleets are originating from?”

“Nothing solid, no. Are you planning to hit them back?”

“Secure our own worlds first, worry about payback later. But it’s on the tentative to-do list.”

“Good,” Sendra said, iron in her tone. “Sign me up.”

Ben crept up on the edge of the barracks again, noting that the sentry patrols had still not resumed. It’d been six weeks since the Skarrons had taken the place, and the planet, he feared, but they didn’t seem too keen on laying claim to this piece of infrastructure. The last time he’d snuck in for supplies it had been virtually deserted, with him only coming across a handful of Hobbits inside.

That had got him curious, and in all the copious spare time he had on his hands he’d made the trek through the forest over to the mining complex to see what was happening there, but making sure to stay well clear of the Type-4 walker that was still on guard. Even now he could see it from the barracks, standing in place like a statue between the two locations, just on the inside edge of the mining site. Ben had gone the long way around to avoid it, whereupon he’d discovered that the Hobbits from the barracks had repositioned to the mine…along with a lot of others.

There were plenty of Skarrons around, with the walking tanks acting as commanders for the legions of Hobbits and ‘Engineers’ as Ben thought of the others. What their actual name was he couldn’t remember, but the little aliens were all arms and legs, looking like a pint-sized version of Calavari…only without the bulk. They had four scrawny arms and a central body not much thicker, with a set of five tiny eyes in the center of their head with no discernible mouth…and it seemed they were the ones doing most of the technical work as the Skarrons took control of the mining facility and had begun converting it over to their own uses.

The Hobbits provided some of the manpower, but it was mostly the Engineers that were learning how to work the Star Force equipment while bringing in key pieces of their own to get the mine functioning again, and as of now they were churning out a steady, yet small stream of raw materials that regular dropship flights were coming to pick up.

Ben didn’t know where their ships were taking the materials, but it was clear the Skarrons hadn’t just come here to kill Kiritak and Humans. They wanted the planet, and were wasting no time in laying claim and getting to work.

The Engineers, Hobbits, and Skarrons were living out of the mining complex, so the Archon guessed they’d deemed the barracks too far away to bother using. Fortunately their trashing of the place had left most of the stuff he and the 6 Kiritak needed to survive still there, just strewn about with a lot of broken components. Still, he needed to be careful, for the last thing he wanted was to give the Skarrons a reason to take a second look at the place.

Studying the wall carefully, he ran up and jumped into position where he could look over the edge. Seeing no patrols inside the wall, he pulled up and slid over top, then hurried to the nearest entrance and quietly made his way inside.

The power was still out, with the main generator lines having been slagged by the Hobbits. It was possible, he thought, to get some power back after repairs, from the reserve batteries even, but he wasn’t ready to risk bringing the Kiritak back just yet. Living in the forest off sacks of supplies wasn’t fun, but they were still alive and that’s what mattered. If the little guys weren’t around he might have tried to take out a few of the enemy quietly here and there, but saving them was tops on his priority list, given how many of the loyal Kiritak had died when Star Force was unable to protect them.

That didn’t sit well with Ben, and he wanted to get these six through this if at all possible. Movo was still badly hurt, but at least he was no longer bleeding and had avoided infection. His pair of plasma burns had responded adequately well to the healing patches, but his skin wasn’t regrowing yet, which the Kiritak suggested wouldn’t happen until he could enter a proper sleep cycle…something that none of them were getting. The Archon hadn’t known it before, but apparently the Kiritas physiology had a Jedi-like healing trance to help them repair a myriad of injuries…but it left them with a slower than average healing ability the rest of the time.

Movo needed stable, quiet conditions with an abundance of heat, food, and water to slip into his willful coma, and despite trying several times hadn’t been able to do it out there. If the Hobbits were gone from the barracks, Ben was going to try to move them back inside. If they weren’t, then this was going to be another supply run with an eye on some equipment to fabricate some kind of tent or shelter that would let the Kiritak out of their armor, which they’d been living in ever since the attack.

The days on Ettiana were warm to hot this time of year, but with so little moisture in the atmosphere the nights were cloudless and got uncomfortably cold without dropping below freezing, in most cases. The planet had a slight incline to its axis, giving them mild seasons compared to Earth, and at the moment this geographic location was in winter. To top it off the Kiritas were warm weather freaks, more so than Humans anyway, and they reacted worse to the cold than expected.

Roughing it in the forest for so many weeks had taken its toll on them, even if all they had to do was stay put. To keep their strength up and to give them something to do, Ben had them go through a light workout every morning and afternoon during the 33 hour days, which consisted of running and calisthenics, but if he didn’t get them to better accommodations soon he wasn’t sure how much longer they’d last.

They still had some ambrosia left, scrounged from the barracks, but Ben had been out ever since that first day he’d spent with the Kiritak in the forest. The adjustment hadn’t been too unpleasant, but he was definitely feeling an energy drain…while at the same time he had more energy than normal, given how little in the way of workouts he was doing. He knew that was a temporary bleedover effect, and after the first three weeks he’d started to feel it wearing off and his body losing strength. How much he didn’t know, but sitting out here and waiting for help to arrive was driving him crazy, prompting more of these supply and intelligence runs.

He needed to do something, and if it wasn’t killing the enemy or training, it was going to be getting supplies or figuring out what the Skarrons were up to. In truth he’d expected Star Force to get reinforcements here by now, meaning they either didn’t know of their situation or the Skarrons were hitting them other places and they hadn’t been able to get any ships here, or at least not enough ships, to retake the planet.

Ben had also hoped some more survivors would have made contact, despite the distances involved. The mining colony was somewhat remote, with no land lines linking it to other facilities, but ever since he’d gotten shot down he hadn’t received any comms or battlemap updates. His transmission range was short, but he could still receive from other sources in orbit or anywhere above the horizon, and there hadn’t been so much as a peep of activity, making him wonder if he and the 6 Kiritak were the only survivors on the planet.

His logic circuits said no. Archons were incredibly resilient, and their technology was designed to amplify that fact…which was why he’d made it out of his skeet crash. The fighter had been mangled, but thanks to the armored cocoon and IDF technology he’d hit the ground without feeling so much as a bump, though a piece of shrapnel had partially punched through a few inches away from his head, which he counted himself lucky for missing.

He’d had to pry himself out of his cockpit, then with only the plasma rifle held in a compartment alongside his feet and a limited amount of ammo and foodstuffs, he’d taken off through the forest enroute to the closest location on his battlemap…which had been this barracks, after a very long run through the forest.

He hadn’t been back to the crash site, for he knew there was nothing of real value there to salvage, though he was curious to see if he could get the transmitter working. It was most likely junk with the rest of the ship, but sitting and waiting was torture for an Archon when they didn’t know how long it would be. Give them a timetable and it became a mission. Give them an uncertainty and it was a constant reassessment of what to do, round the clock.

Ben wanted to fight and evade, and was working himself up to do it and leave the Kiritak behind where the Skarrons couldn’t find them, but he knew that without him they wouldn’t make it, which was what was holding him back. Still, a few little commando missions over to the mining site might not be a problem. After all, if some of their Hobbits went missing they wouldn’t think to come look all the way over here, would they?

Once inside the barracks he looked around…and around…and around, but couldn’t find any of the Hobbits, nor sign that they’d been here recently, which he took as good news. Gathering up what he could into a heap of sacks, Ben spent the next two hours scrounging from the barracks and seeing not a single intact body remaining. Maybe the Hobbits had only stuck around long enough to eat, but Ben was glad the barracks was of a size to accommodate over 1000 of the Kiritak, meaning there were ample supplies for himself and his little rogue band.

He didn’t care for most of the Kiritak food, but a few items were edible by his tastes, and so far he hadn’t run out of them. He was badly missing his ambrosia, but that couldn’t be helped, and the Kiritak version wasn’t suited for his Human physiology, little of it that he’d found intact.

A thorough check of the storage areas yielded several valuable construction materials, enough anyway for him to tinker with once he got back to their hideout. If the barracks was still uninhabited on his next supply run he’d consider bringing the Kiritak back here, but if not he should have enough to build them a proper hideout rather than the dirt hole they’d dug into a hillside.

7

July 17, 2467

Ghanis System

Ettiana

It was just before dawn, with a shallow purple haze filling the bottom half of the eastern sky, as Ben was pulling another vial of water from the condenser. It wasn’t much, but the Archon pulled off his helmet and tipped the small container up and into his mouth, swallowing the pure water that the machine had slowly extracted from the atmosphere. With it down his throat he put his helmet back on and replaced the vial, letting the slow drip replenish its contents.

The Archon walked up and over the hill that the Kiritak were sleeping in, having burrowed out a sizeable chamber that was now lined with materials Ben had brought back from the barracks. The condenser sat outside and at a higher elevation to ensure a good air flow as it pulled the moisture from the relatively dry atmosphere. Most of the rest of their supplies were inside, out of view, just in case someone came looking for them, but to date no one had, nor had there been any flyovers. They were ghosts as far as the Skarrons were concerned, but they couldn’t go on like this forever.

The supplies in the barracks would eventually run out, meaning that eventually they were going to have to fight the Skarrons or starve to death, and Ben was seriously considering doing it now rather than later, while he still had some strength left in him, but every time he did his mind went back to the Kiritak and how they’d be worse off without him.

The Archon knelt down on the hilltop, looking at the growing light in the east through several gaps in the trees, aware that his mind wasn’t clear. He kept running through logic circles, but he always stopped himself short of doing something reckless, and today was no different. He just wished his mind would shut up for a while, but in truth he knew he just needed something to do.

A few minutes later that all changed as his helmet HUD registered a beacon far to the north. It was a battlemap signature, amplified to reach out as far as it could, and intended to make contact with other units or equipment. As he watched, the ID tag updated into a skeet on a very fast and high trajectory…the first sign of other Star Force personnel he’d had since rescuing the Kiritak.

Ben saw that the beacon was getting closer, but it wasn’t going to pass straight over him, rather, it looked like it was going to do a flyby of the mining facility, probably looking for survivors.

With a few quick commands via arm pad and eye line, Ben amped up his own battlemap transmitter to maximum, overriding the safety measures used to dampen the communication to the point that enemies were unlikely to be able to detect and hack into it. Such dampening shortened the range, but gave them a fairly secure, private network to utilize, but at the moment he just needed to let the skeet know that he was alive.

Shouting as loud as his helmet comm could, he set his own ID tag to ‘beacon’ mode, hoping that the skeet would pick it up. For 43 seconds the craft maintained a straight line, with three Skarron fighters attempting to intercept it, visible now to Ben thanks to the skeet’s shared sensor data. They weren’t going to catch it, given that the skeet was faster, though it had slowed considerably for this flyby. Still, he didn’t think the Skarrons were going to be able to catch it…

Then all of a sudden it turned, pulling a sharp spiral downward and dropping to the forest tops and out of sight, but Ben could still see it on his HUD…and the fact that it was moving towards him. He dialed back the intensity of his signal, returning to normal battlemap transmission protocols, and activated his comm.

“Skeet, confirm receipt of transmission,” he said stoically, not sure how far his helmet comm was going to reach.

“Transmission confirmed. I need a 20 second status report,” the pilot said, making a gradual circle around the area, including the distant barracks and mining site, but staying well away from the Skarron walker’s anti-air defenses…though that didn’t stop the thing from taking a few shots at him anyway with its lachars. The white streaks stabbed out across the sky, but none of them hit the low flying skeet as it bobbed about evasively, making its gradual loop around the infrastructure.

“7 survivors, 1 Archon, 6 Kiritak security guards. Mining site is under new ownership, barracks is all but deserted. We’ve got foodstuffs and water to last us a while, but we’re continually weakening, and one of the Kiritak has plasma burns, but is stable.”

“Copy that. Hold tight and we’ll get an evac team to your position as soon as we can.”

“Much appreciated,” Ben said, a flood of relief gushing out of his chest and infesting every fiber of his body as the skeet finished its long circle around the complex and climbed back to higher altitudes before zipping off and away from the slower Skarron fighters that couldn’t quite get within weapons range.

Ben watched it go, then hurried down the hillside and around to the entrance of their little hideout. He pulled off the door ‘hatch’ and crawled inside, finding the six Kiritak where he’d left them…all huddled up together in one corner outside of their armor and underneath blankets he’d recovered from the barracks, trying to conserve and share body heat.

“Wake up, guys. I’ve got good news,” he said, with his helmet’s external speakers registering loudly in the tiny space that had otherwise been near silent.

Etito pulled his head up from underneath one of the blankets and looked at the Archon wearily. “Not another run. Please. Just let us sleep.”

“It’s not daylight yet,” Ben told him, slightly amused by the Kiritak’s grumbling. “A skeet just did a flyby.”

The little alien’s eyes widened and he sat straight up. “Help?”

“I made contact. There’s going to be an extraction team coming to pick us up. Not sure when though. But they know we’re alive.”

Etito smiled and poked the body next to him underneath the blankets, resulting in a very rude hiss.

“Wake up, wake up! Rescue is coming!”

It took a while, but Etito finally roused the others, with Movo coming around last. His plasma burns had scabbed over, but they were causing him continuous pain. Ben had him running workouts anyway, figuring that if he was going to be in pain regardless he could at least get some benefit out of it.

“Really?” Movo asked, looking from Etito up at Ben.

“Really. We just have to stay alive long enough for them to pick us up, and be ready to go at all times. There’s still that Skarron walker nearby, so when they come they might not have much of a window. We might also have to move to another spot. Regardless, we’re going to get out of here.”

“You better not be lying, Archon,” Movo said, his eyes burning with doubt.

“I’m not. If you’d been wearing your armor you would have seen for yourself.”

Etito scrambled across the small chamber to where their armor was stashed and pulled his set out, putting on the helmet and accessing the battlemap. Ben sent him the replay, knowing that they’d turned their suits off and hadn’t received the beacon, allowing him to see for himself the skeet on approach and its loop around the mining complex.

“He’s not lying,” Etito said excitedly. “Skeet flew by. They know we’re here. We’re getting out of here!”

“Ben, copy?”

“I’m here,” the Archon said two days later as another skeet flew by, this time further to the west of the barracks and closer to their location.

“We need you to reposition, coordinates coming.”

A waypoint popped up on his battlemap…or more accurately an arrow on the side of it, indicating that he needed to scroll further west or zoom out. When he did he saw a position some 17 kilometers away.

“Coordinates confirmed. ETA?”

“Give me one,” the pilot prompted.

“10 hours.”

“We’ll be there.”

“Thanks, Hank.”

“Six made it, if you’re wondering.”

“Any chance of more?”

“We’ve had boots on the ground, so I doubt it.”

“See you in ten,” Ben said, ending the conversation and allowing the skeet to fly off. There were a myriad of lachar streaks stretching out across the sky, but he only saw one of them hit, or rather wing the skeet, but its shields held, and would for several more, he knew from experience.

He watched his fellow pilot gain altitude and fly off, then returned to their hideout to get the Kiritak moving.

“Armor on, guys. We’re heading out. LZ is 17 kilometers to the west. We can’t risk a dropship in this close to the walker, so we have to move. They’ll be there in 10 hours, so let’s not waste time.”

“Are we running?” Etito asked.

“Depends. Movo, how you doing?”

“If it means getting out of here, I can run. Don’t know how far.”

“Alright, we start out running the first kilometer, then walk from there and alternate as needed. I’ll carry a sack of weapons and foodstuffs, you guys just move yourselves. The rest of our gear stays here. Grab a snack and some water now, then we stay on the move until we get to the LZ.”

The Kiritak got armored up and gobbled down a few foodstuffs, with Ben eating as well, then the group headed out through the forest, using their battlemap memory to navigate by. The terrain was mostly flat, but it got rolly enough that keeping a straight line was difficult. Ben knew their 17 kilometers was going to end up being more than that as they zigzagged their way across the forest, so he kept the Kiritak moving and ahead of pace at all times.

As promised they ran, or in Ben’s case jogged, the first kilometer, then walked the second. From there on out they ran half a kilometer, walked a full, until they eventually came to their LZ, which was little more than a dry riverbed, but devoid of trees that would otherwise hamper a dropship landing.

They got there with an hour and a half to spare, then camped out under cover while Ben scouted the area. There shouldn’t have been any Skarron activity nearby, but his spidey senses were tingling…whether from a real threat or just anxiety he didn’t know.

Maintaining a perimeter around the Kiritak, he patrolled in a repetitive circle, spiraling out and then in to keep an irregular pattern, up until he got Star Force contacts on his battlemap. Two skeets at first, followed by a Falcon-class dropship, then four more skeets coming in at various angles that suggested they hadn’t been flying in formation, possibly having to fight off some Skarron fighters on the way here.

Didn’t matter at the moment, getting onboard was the only priority, then he could worry about the tactical situation in the air.

When he got back to the Kiritak they were already aware of the incoming ships via their own battlemaps, and were waiting anxiously where he’d left them. The seven of them stayed under cover until the dropship was nearly over them, then inched up to the edge of the riverbed as it set down and lowered its boarding ramp.

The little Kiritak ran forward eagerly, with Ben letting them go ahead of him as he watched the surrounding area, half expecting an ambush, but none came. He followed a ways behind, then caught up just as the last of them were getting onboard and accepted a handshake from an Archon acolyte waiting just inside the doors with a plasma rifle, also ready for trouble.

“Thanks for the lift,” Ben said, feeling better the moment he stepped off the dirt and onto the artificial floor.

“Thanks for still being around to pick up,” the acolyte differed. “We’re extremely shorthanded.”

“What’s the situation?” Ben asked as the boarding ramp raised and he walked through the fairly large dropship’s cargo bay and up towards the passenger area where the Kiritak were already headed at the behest of several techs, one of which was having Movo pull off his armor so she could examine and treat his plasma burns.

“We lost,” Fenson-45332 said bluntly. “Every Kiritak colony has either been destroyed or taken over by the Skarrons. The only thing we have left is the Alpha Site.”

Ben pulled off his helmet as a tech walked up to him with a box of cookies…and from the markings in the icing he could tell they were ambrosia doses. He pulled out two of the medium doses and took a bite, relishing the taste after having to eat Kiritak food for so many weeks.

“Alpha Site?” Ben asked in between bites, for he was unfamiliar with the term.

“Randy had Clan Star Fox build at least one hidden base on each Kiritak world without their knowledge, subterranean, to act as a fallback position in the case of attack. The Skarrons couldn’t find it, and we’ve been gathering up what survivors we can find and consolidating them there. We’ve got several enemy walkers patrolling in the area trying to pin down us down, so our approach is going to be awkward, but as of yet they haven’t been able to pinpoint the location. We’ve maintained air superiority, but the closer those walkers get…before long we won’t be able to cover our comings and goings and we’ll either have to turtle up or fight it out. And fighting it out isn’t a good matchup for us.”

“How are we fixed for supplies?” Ben asked, taking one more smaller dose cookie and dismissing the tech with a ‘thank you’ nod.

“We’re good for more than a year with what we had in the base, and we’ve managed to scrounge up some more from various locations. How fit are you?”

“Weak, but eager for some activity. I’ve had to babysit them, otherwise I would have worked on racking up a kill count. I couldn’t take the risk of leading the Skarrons back after they’d forgotten about us.”

“How soon until you’re ready for a firefight?”

“Now if necessary. Though I’d appreciate at least a shower first.”

“We’re running hunter/killer ops around the perimeter of their encampments. Unfortunately we don’t have anything capable of taking down their big walkers, but we can still kill their infantry if we can get to them. We’re having to set down at distance and hoof it to our targets, but we’re bleeding them of troops and we’ve got plenty of ammunition. The real question is if you’re up to that much running?”

“How long are these ops?”

“Shortest ones are 8 hours, longest 72.”

“Sign me up for a short one. I probably don’t have enough stamina now for the others, but a couple weeks of training should change that.”

Fenson nodded. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

“How many people do we have left?”

“174 Archons, 132 Regulars, 2 Knights and around 500 Kiritak, but most of them are techs.”

“Do we have any support personnel?”

“We have a skeleton base staff plus a handful of administrators, engineers, and medics that we pulled out of the combat zones…though to be more accurate they were slaughter ranges. How much did you see?”

“Enough…though most was from the air,” Ben said as the numbers sank in. The planet hadn’t been heavily defended, but there had been at least 2,000 Archons overseeing Kiritak security forces that numbered well over 200,000. After that, there were better than a billion of the little guys here as workers. “How many facilities have you managed to contact?”

“Most of them, unfortunately. Yours was one of the last few.”

“I saw the Hobbits eating the Kiritak corpses…”

Fenson was silent for a moment. “From what we’ve seen, they’re killing everything in sight and trashing our cities. There just aren’t very many survivors to rescue at this point, which was why we were glad we found you seven.”

“We’re glad to be found,” Ben said with a depressing tone. “Do we have any ships in orbit?”

“A few harassing the Skarron fleet that make contact occasionally. We’ve replied from auxiliary facilities so they know we’re still alive, but we can’t risk communication from the Alpha Site. I don’t know how well the Skarrons are monitoring transmissions, but we’re not going to give them a signal to follow back to us.”

“I thought help would have come by now.”

“So did we,” Fenson admitted. “Makes me wonder who else is getting hit out there. If they took Iona, we could be on our own for a very long time.”

“Relays?”

“I don’t know. If they are still up there we can’t risk trying to link in, and the starships haven’t passed on any information, one way or the other. I’m guessing the Skarrons toasted them along with the orbital defenses. I do know that several jumpships got out as the attack began.”

“Did we get a signal out?”

“The people who know the answer to that didn’t make it.”

Ben closed his eyes for a moment, realizing just how tired he was, which was surprising, considering he’d been sitting around on his ass most of the time.

“Come on,” Fenson said, nudging his armored elbow. “It’ll be a few hours before we get back to base. Sit down and catch a nap on the way, then we can get to work later.”

“Is it safe enough to go armor off?”

Fenson thought for a moment, then nodded. “Keep it handy, but I don’t expect to get shot down. Our pilot has gotten experienced at evading their patrols, and our escorts can kill just about anything that comes at us.”

“They come at you in packs and try to isolate you, I know. Learned that the hard way,” Ben said, stopping shy of the personnel section of the jumpship where everyone else was. “Don’t suppose you have any spare skeets left around?”

“No, but we rotate as needed. What’s your aerial rank?”

“72.”

“You’ll get your seat time then, I promise.”

Ben spotted an empty row of padded seats near the back and gestured to the spot as he set his helmet down and began to unfasten his armor around the neck.

“Think I’ll be camping out here.”

“Rest up, we’ll get the full debrief later.”

Ben nodded and continued to pull open his armor, eventually stepping out of the boot sections and laying down across the seats. It took less than a minute for him to settle in and nod off in the bliss of cushioned furniture.

8

Several hours later the dropship flew an evasive route around the Skarron army formations probing the area around the Alpha Site and headed off to one of 28 different entrances spread out over 150 square miles of untouched forest. 18 of those entrances were large enough to admit dropships, and though the Skarron fleet in orbit could monitor their position, the enemy had yet to realize how the Humans were disappearing.

One moment the dropship was flying across the treetops…the next moment it vanished, and with no fighter presence in the area, for the skeets were preventing that, there was no way for the Skarrons to laterally see the huge section of dirt and trees that had leveraged itself out of the ground and risen up on a thick platform, underneath which was a tunnel entrance.

The dropship flew inside at speed, then the piece of forest lowered back down into the ground, with the trees and rocks returning to much how they’d once been, with only a slight dirt line to show for the maneuver, and one that couldn’t be seen through the thick canopy from above where the walkers traveled. One would have to be on the ground, and as of yet none of their Hobbit troops had stumbled upon the little dirt lines.

How long that would last no one knew, but the dropship ducked into the tunnel that quickly descended down through the bedrock before leveling out, after which the craft ‘flew’ through the tight confines several miles before coming to the subsurface hangar bay with the claustrophobic tunnel spreading out into a large chamber that held multiple dropships and fighters, along with several mechs, some of which were still battle damaged from the initial invasion.

A handful of people were about, but otherwise the hangar was mostly deserted. Ben walked out with Fenson and the others onboard the dropship, with the Kiritak being led off to a different location by some of the on base little aliens while the Archons headed for the small sanctum that had been built into the base. Ben took a shower and got a fresh set of clothes, then Fenson started running him through a series of drills to reawaken his sluggish body, all the while assessing his current fitness.

Even with ambrosia back in his body Ben was constantly fatigued…the result of so much time off. When one’s biology adjusted to everything you did, or in this case didn’t do, getting back into the training flow was the equivalent of turning a gigantic boat around and heading the opposite direction. It was doable, but took some time and effort.

That said, all those years of training weren’t lost to him, his body had just gotten really rusty, so he went through a ‘derusting’ series of light workouts designed to give his body the taste of full workouts and to get it back on track before attempting anything near normal volume or intensity. Three hours later and he was feeling much better, but very drained and his muscles were hot with inefficient burn…but the light pain felt good, because it and the headache he had meant his body was readjusting. He didn’t have much experience is coming back from non-training spells, for Archons didn’t take time off, but he could feel changes happening already, which put an end to his mind’s limitless cycling.

Fenson left him after the first hour of workouts, satisfied that he wasn’t injured or overly weakened, so Ben hit the cafeteria afterwards alone, finding only two other people there. Normally Star Force cafeterias were busy round the clock, which underscored how few people had survived the Skarron invasion.

The Archon ate up…a lot. More so than normal, considering he wasn’t going to get a second training session in today. He was going get a good, long sleep in, so he left the cafeteria thoroughly stuffed, then headed up to the control room to get a quick sitrep before heading to the quarters he’d been assigned on the 7th level where the majority of the Archons were bunked.

By the time he got to his bed he knew the full extent of their defeat. There were still a few areas that the Alpha Site team thought might contain survivors, but the vast cities that had been churning out the resources Star Force needed to fight the lizards and Nestafar, and expand Beta Region’s infrastructure even further, now lay in rubble. Though they were far from finished, the Skarrons were knocking down every building that they didn’t feel like using, with them mowing down the tower fields that had housed the Kiritak workers with their larger walkers, steadily and painstakingly remaking the landscape into what, he didn’t know, but they were working, and working hard towards some goal.

Occasionally some survivors were located within those cities, and they’d been making regular dropship runs out to them so they could plant a few scouts to organize an extraction of personnel or leftover resources, or to look for more, but with every day that passed the odds of Star Force personnel surviving diminished, with most of the raids now being for equipment or to kill a few hundred of the enemy’s infantry.

Alpha Site might have been a hidden hole in the ground, but it was a hole that the Archons were striking out of, little as they could, but there was nothing they could do to counter the enemy walkers…at least not while the Skarrons controlled orbit.

“Captain, they’re on the move again.”

Leona Daverson looked up from her datapad and reached over to hit the comm switch near her bed, enabling the return mic. “What have we got this time?”

“Looks like another attempt to bait us out. Four destroyers and a cruiser bouncing from moon to moon on patrol around the 4th planet. Hercules says they’ve got an intercept fleet stationed in Ettiana orbit on a jumpline for the planet.”

“How do the numbers look?” she said, sitting up and putting her book aside.

“Good enough to poke a few holes.”

“I’m on my way up. Hold position until I get there.”

“Copy that.”

Leona pulled herself out of bed and slipped into her Captain’s uniform in under 30 seconds, then was out the door and enroute to the jumpship’s bridge. The Wildfire and Hercules were all that was left of the system’s defense fleet, with the other Warship-class jumpship having been severely damaged during the initial attack, with hull breaches compromising a third of the ship. Those areas had been sealed off and contained, as they were unable to make significant repairs without access to Star Force infrastructure…which had already been destroyed in orbit by the Skarron fleet.

The Wildfire hadn’t received any hull damage, but they had lost 2/3rds of their drones. Recalling others from the battle that had been permanently assigned to orbit, Leona had pulled out of the direct fire zone with 54% capacity, while the Hercules had none remaining. Currently that jumpship was stationed high over Ettiana operating as a scout, while Leona kept her warship elsewhere in the system, waiting for an opportunity to take out another of the enemy ships…but without losing any of her own, which was the tricky part.

Had she stayed in orbit until all of their drones were depleted, then her ship would have been next to useless when it jumped out of planetary orbit. The Wildfire was an older version warship, a Mk. 15, and while it had weapons, they were designed for defensive operations only, and if she tried to use the ship to attack even a handful of Skarrons they’d be all over her before she could do much damage. Jumpships just didn’t have the speed to chase down and kill other ships, but the drones did.

Ever since the initial battle, she’d been sniping at the Skarrons whenever and wherever possible, and had succeeded in killing two destroyers and heavily damaging a cruiser. Since then the Skarrons, unable to intercept the Star Force ships given that they had binary gravity drives that allowed them to travel on jumplines that the enemy couldn’t, had been deploying small groups of ships around the system, trying to draw them out. Leona had obliged several times, but had lost a frigate in the process…though in exchange for the damage done to the enemy cruiser.

After that she’d held back, knowing that with superior maneuverability she had to wait for opportunities to hit the enemy that didn’t involve losing any of her own ships. If they just traded off she’d run out well before the Skarron fleet did, meaning she had to get devious.

How many people were left alive on Ettiana she didn’t know, but it was her duty to cause the enemy as much trouble as possible until help arrived…and to be in a position to assist those on the surface if the opportunity arose. Her last communication with them, or rather to them, had been a handful of days ago detailing the reinforcements that had arrived to the Skarrons, which had been a pair of cargo ships and a destroyer in escort. She’d wished they had detected their arrival soon enough to intercept them, but the sensor grid they’d established in the system had been one of the Skarrons first targets…including the interstellar relay, though it had taken some time for them to get to it in null orbit twice again as far out from the star as Ettiana was.

The Wildfire was currently sitting in its own null orbit between the 3rd and 4th planets in the system, which were currently orbiting close to one another. It wasn’t on the jumpline between the two, and was probably visible to Skarron sensors, but only as a small blot, much as the Skarron ships were to them. The enemy could jump towards their position, but would never be able to slow down in time, effectively putting them out of reach, meaning the Skarrons had to lure them out.

And Leona was about to take the bait.

“Show me all tracks,” she said as she got to the bridge, with her crew throwing up the holographic routes from their present position into the 4th planet and its 5 moons, each of which had a significant gravity well to maneuver off of.

They’d already prepared several navigational options for her, and she picked the one she wanted within 10 seconds, ordering the ship in without delay. They had to hit fast before the ships could reposition, and given the sensor lag they were pretty much guessing where the Skarrons were going to be in order to jump in as close as possible…which in this case was to the innermost moon.

The jump took all of 34 seconds, at the end of which they got sensor images of the Skarron ships, which allowed them to make alterations to their course to keep from ramming them if necessary…but it wasn’t, for they were well off, orbiting around the moon with what looked to be a gravity drive assist, for it wasn’t a ballistic course anymore. They were repositioning for another microjump, with Leona’s jumpship considerably out of position for this type of intercept.

Fortunately the Skarrons were here to fight and settled into a stable orbit, but without chasing the Wildfire. Instead they let it come to them, burning up precious seconds while they sent a message to their waiting fleet.

“Take us directly in,” Leona ordered. “Let’s give them something else to shoot at. Deploy all enroute and begin calculating exit jumps.”

With the Star Force jumpship settling into its own augmented orbit, it raced around the curve of the moon spawning drone warships as it went. They drifted off and fell into formation with it momentarily, then zipped on ahead given their greater maneuverability and speed, but they didn’t go in alone, rather waiting to form 4-6 ship groups, the first of which went exclusively for one of the Skarron destroyers.

Weaponsfire exchanged early on, lachars against lachars, then plasma against plasma as the ships got close to one another. One of the Star Force frigates and two corvettes in the first group of 6 were equipped with maulers, so they closed to pointblank range as the single heavy cruiser that Leona had disengaged and targeted the Skarron ships from afar, letting the jumpship close while it stayed back and peppered the ships with cleansing beams.

The Star Force drones took heavy shield damage almost immediately, but before they could start losing armor they redeployed, breaking formation and pulling out of the battle almost as if they were on strings that someone was yanking away. One of the Skarron destroyers followed, diminishing their group strength as the Wildfire itself came into the battle. Fortunately it drew a considerable amount of fire while the smaller ships rotated around, with those with full shields going forward and the others dropping into firing support positions.

The Skarrons weren’t stupid, and continued firing on the damaged ships and repositioning when possible to make it more feasible, but they were both bigger and slower, allowing the smaller ships to get free if they wanted to, some of which came back in from their tiny jumps out, and the Skarron destroyer as well as it quickly realized it couldn’t keep pace with them.

But that too had been a ruse, an enticement to sweeten the pot, so to speak, and cause Star Force to move on the weaker ship group all the while the relief fleet jumped in to the moon’s orbit above them and began to deploy into blocking positions…or rather, as many as they could. Star Force could pretty much jump anywhere it wanted, but with dwindling fuel reserves the higher cost maneuvers were pretty much off the menu…something else the Skarrons had taken into account.

But Leona got what she wanted, damaging one of the Skarron destroyers, before she ordered her fleet out. Like little fleas the drones made microjumps of their own, very low powered ones, that curved around onto other jumplines that the Skarrons couldn’t follow, getting them out of the firing lines while expending small amounts of fuel.

The jumpship was another matter, and it was quickly being surrounded by the Skarron fleet, but Leona had timed it right and while its shields were getting hammered by long range lachar fire and some plasma from the first group of ships, it ducked down closer to the planet where the Skarrons weren’t and zipped off on a high powered maneuver, pushing against moons, planet, and star to get an acceleration line underneath the enemy fleet that put it clear of their blockers, after which it made a casual jump out away from the moon with 23% shield strength remaining.

Once they were away Leona breathed a sigh of relief, but knew it would take time to recover their scattered drone fleet, and if they weren’t careful the Skarrons could jump them in the process. To that end they organized a rendezvous circuit across planetary orbit, stopping here and there for the little ships to dock with the jumpship and eventually recollecting every one of them…all without hull damage.

Leona had expended a great deal of fuel, not to mention plasma, but in exchange they’d gutted one of the destroyers, which even now wasn’t maneuvering. Part of the Skarron fleet was surrounding it to discourage a return…but then their ships eventually peeled off one by one, yet another lure for her to take, but one that had the other Skarron warships still in planetary orbit and far closer than they had been the first time.

It was a question of how bold she was going to get, with the Skarrons clearly challenging her at the same time as they were denying her the easy kill, meaning they would be stationed here for some time, leaving Ettiana less guarded.

Unfortunately the fleet there was far larger, and any tactical significance of having drawn and temporarily pinned this group down here was lost. She’d managed to do some damage, without taking any of her own, but that’s all she could have hoped for…well, aside from fully killing the ship, which she’d hoped to do, but still, the damage was significant, and she’d given the Skarrons a lame duck to carry or abandon, and if they did the latter she would most definitely finish it off.

Successfully hitting and disabling the ship felt good, and it was enough to satisfy her for the moment. She might not be able to defeat this superior Skarron fleet, but she could keep them honest and expose any weaknesses they showed her. If they got sloppy she’d make them pay for it, being a gnat that they couldn’t find a way to swat. Her two jumpship fleet couldn’t protect Ettiana, but it was certainly going to avenge it…even if that meant tiny piecemeal engagements.

9

July 25, 2467

Ghanis System

Ettiana

Ben flew out of one of the Alpha Site’s underground tunnels, ducking under the chunk of forest lifted up above the entrance and shooting out across the tree tops in a green/brown Star Fox skeet third in line behind two others. A fourth followed him out, then as a group the quartet rose to altitude and engaged their super pursuit mode. With their altered shields elongating them into aerodynamic spikes, the fighters accelerated up to extremely high speed within the upper atmosphere, crossing the landscape with no worry about being intercepted by Skarron fighters…at least not until they wanted to, for this mission was designed specifically to hunt down and kill some of the enemy aircraft.

Trick was picking a spot where they didn’t have walker support, or drawing the fighters off from where they did. Today was going to be the later, and Ben’s formation flew across Ettiana’s surface towards one of the larger cities that the Skarrons had been in the process of demolishing. It had originally been built to house millions of Kiritak and the processing factories necessary for transforming the raw materials being harvested across the planet into transportable units, such as metallic ingots or crushed grain, to be shipped off planet with the minimum volume necessary by stripping out unwanted materials or dead airspace.

A part of the cityscape had also been using those resources to fabricate construction materials that were being used to expand the city and build others across the planet. Apparently none of that industry was to the Skarrons’ liking, for they were wrecking all of it and taking down the buildings like dominoes, one by one, section by section.

Ben didn’t know if they planned to build anything in its place, but the city was certainly in disarray when he and the other pilots arrived, making him wonder if they weren’t just trashing everything in sight as an insult to Star Force.

The Skarrons had seen the skeets coming from a ways off and had already redeployed their fighter patrols their way…along with launching more from surface sites nearby, which suggested the enemy had at least encampments set up, even if they weren’t building permanent structures just yet. The skeets were outnumbered 34 to 4, initially, with more fighters rising up on antigrav at a delayed pace, but that much they’d expected. This mission was a quick hit, engage, and run op, and they didn’t intend to stick around long enough for the sky to fill with their opposition.

Because they were going to engage the Skarrons at a distance from the city, the skeets slowed down early to draw them even further off and ensure the anti-air defenses on the walkers wouldn’t get involved. The Skarrons didn’t seem to mind the ploy, for they sent their fighters on out after them as fast as the thick craft could fly. Each one was the equivalent of an aerodynamic rock only slightly smaller than a Sparrow-class dropship and easily in excess of 10x the mass of a standard skeet.

The things were covered in their plasma dampening armor and good shields, but their maneuvering ability was slow and they relied on cluster fire to take down targets which they accomplished similar to the walkers…with multiple small plasma cannons scattered across their hulls, which also allowed them to fire in all directions, meaning you couldn’t drop in on one’s ‘tail’ and expect to be safe.

They also each had a lachar turret on top for anti-missile operations, though they did use them to target the skeets early in response to the Human’s own lachar attacks that they launched at maximum range on one target. The energy/particle cocktail didn’t do much damage, even though the skeets were using as concentrated a version as Star Force had produced, which literally lit up the sky in a very brief flash of green light, given that these skeets had been produced by Clan Star Fox, and nowadays the color of your lachars matched your paint job, at least as far as the aerial and mech divisions were concerned.

“Ben, since this is your first time just stay with us and try not to get lost,” Chev-34822 said from the front of their diamond line, which had them in single file but space out around their central axis on four points, giving each a clear firing line ahead. “Concentrate all firepower on a single target or it’ll take us forever to knock these things out.”

“I’ve already got my share of Skarron kills,” Ben told him, referencing the beginning of the planetary assault. “I know how tough they are.”

“Tougher now that they’ve gotten use to our craft and tendencies,” Chev added.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ben said as he crossed into outer plasma range and began squeezing off a few shots, most of which dissipated in the air, but a little bit reached out to the target fighter, which they’d nicknamed a ‘lightning bug’ for the way their entire hull seemed to glow when they began launching plasma…which the 10 or so bugs did a moment after Ben began the primary engagement.

The other three Archons joined him a moment later when their plasma range dipped into the moderate distance and they began eating away at their target’s shields more fiercely, even as their own craft began to take a few hits…but only a few, for their skeets had a very narrow forward profile, making them hard to target. Most of the hits they took were Skarron lachars, but none of the skeets had their shields go down on the first pass, nor even below 70%, but the lightning bug didn’t lose full shields either…though it had come close.

The four skeets flew through the other Skarron fighters and pulled back around through a long loop that each of them followed, maintaining their snake-like formation as they came back in at the same lightning bug into a snowstorm of white plasma orbs. Ben hit the target with his own blue plasma spheres, which were considerably larger than the enemy’s, though numerically they had more given the size of their craft and their multiple cannons. For every one Ben fired the lightning bug threw 10-15 back at him, but fortunately their accuracy wasn’t great and only a few hit.

As Ben’s skeet flashed by the bug he hit it with a mauler blast, with the cockpit computer indicating hull damage to the enemy craft as the Archon flew an evasive route through the other lightning bugs as his shields got bathed in plasma hits, along with a few more lachar strikes. He came out the other side, still maneuvering at high speed with the other three pilots, all of which had avoided hull damage, though Ben’s shield strength had dropped to 24%.

“One more fellas, spread formation. Let’s knock this guy out before he gets his shields back up. I’m going scorpion, so don’t wait up on me.”

“Copy that,” Ben said, drifting to the left and spreading out with the others, giving the enemy craft four points of attack to deal with this time while they more or less hovered in place waiting for the Humans to return. The Skarrons moved about, mixing their positions up, but overall their formation held together over the same bit of ground, figuring they had good odds against the stupid little skeets, especially as the Skarrons had a scattering of reinforcements heading their way and getting closer with every second, coming in ones and twos that would add to their numbers even if they lost a few fighters in the engagement.

But what else could they do? The Skarrons had decent linear speed, though still not as much as the skeets, and their agility outright sucked, so playing aerial turret was their best bet here and they were making the most of it, hitting Ben with a better placed wall of plasma just as he ducked down towards the treetops to avoid it. He knew the enemy craft could carry missiles, but either they were choosing not to use them or only had them for ground support missions…and right now his money was on the later.

He arced back up, with the fire hose of enemy plasma readjusting towards him with every maneuver he made. By the time he came up on the target lightning bug he only got a few plasma shots off, plus one mauler which added to the other two and blew out a chuck of the enemy fighter’s hull.

Chev didn’t fly past with the others, but braked hard, throwing off the enemy’s firing lines a bit, most of which were still on the other fighters, and came up right in front of the target, letting his altitude sink as he blasted away with is mauler cannon, getting several shots in that eventually dropped the Skarron craft out of the sky.

Chev dove beneath it, using it as a block, and rocketed out the far side just before it crashed into the trees. He weaved side to side as the Skarrons decided to chase him, then the other three skeets came around on a flanking run and hit one of the fighters, blindsiding it with a lot of damage given their slower attack speed that offered them more shots per pass.

Chev eventually broke free of the engagement and got some altitude and distance away from the others, coming away with 3% shield strength remaining…which was a victory. No hull damage and the enemy had lost one of theirs.

He flew an evasive course as some of the lachars tried to track him from afar, but for the occasional hit his shields recharged evenly while the other three skeets continued to gang up on one of the lightning bugs, but doing so in widely spaced runs, having to let their shields recharge more with each pass or risk hull damage.

By the time Chev got back to them they were throwing every formation and trick they had at the Skarrons to keep their focus split and their formation changing. At the end the four fighters were going at it solo, flying highly evasive routes through the enemy formation and getting some of them to shoot each other in the crossfire. The skeets managed to down four of the lightning bugs before the Skarrons regrouped and reorganized enough to make the Humans pay more for each attack run, after which the quartet flew off due east, seeing if the Skarrons were going to follow.

When they did their lines stretched out and the Archons used that weakness to circle around and pick on another of the lightning bugs and kill it before they enemy could resume its ‘bee swarm’ formation. After that the Skarrons didn’t follow when the skeets moved off again, which ended the engagement. Ben and the others would have tried to get another, but by now there were well over 100 enemy fighters in the air, half of which were still enroute to their position, making the environment too unfriendly to risk further attacks. Get too many plasma cannons in the air and even with badly aimed shots they’d rack up kills just through sheer numbers.

So the four skeets regained altitude and transitioned into super pursuit mode, heading back to the Alpha Site with five kills between them…a small victory that reminded the Skarrons they didn’t own the planet just yet, and that the Humans were going to be damn hard to fully exterminate. At least until they found their way into Alpha Site, and with a little luck that wouldn’t happen until Star Force got a relief fleet out to the system.

A week later Ben was inserted into a ground op at one of the smaller Skarron-infested sites. He and 9 others were dropped at distance by dropship then ran cross country to get to the mining outpost, this one smaller than the facility he’d been stranded at, but like the other it also had a Type-4 walker guarding it. The barracks was built into the main facility, which was located atop one central shaft going down several miles that would eventually branch out and make use of extra infrastructure up top once it was built later on.

The outpost was just a startup, but a useful one none the less, and that wasn’t lost on the Skarrons who were actively using the Star Force equipment to mine a plethora of minerals, of which they were interested in the Archons didn’t know, but Star Force had been extracting carbon-rich minerals, including diamonds, with loads of unrefined ore stored in cargo containers on the surface landing pads.

Those pads were now off limits to aerial insertion, given the Type-4 nearby, but Skarron transports had occasionally been coming to the outpost to pick up select containers. The others they either hadn’t gotten around to transporting or didn’t want, but unlike most other facilities there appeared to be no demolition occurring on the exterior. The Skarrons had simply moved in and set up shop.

As the Archons got near to the outpost they circled around so they could approach on the opposite side from the walker, putting the outpost between them and its cannons. As a group they sprinted out of the trees and scaled the low boundary wall, dropping over the far side with a pair of scouts being taken out by precision plasma rifle fire.

The shots didn’t go unnoticed, but within a few seconds the Archons were moving inside the building and fanning out, with Ben getting his own hallway and section of the facility to himself. He ran off and started mowing down every Hobbit and Engineer he came across, much as he’d wanted to do weeks ago, but couldn’t because of the risk of exposing the Kiritak.

Well, now there were no Kiritak, just Archons, and being exposed wasn’t a concern, so he ran down the hall, shooting those that came into view while checking every room that he passed. Those with enemies inside he cleared before moving on, but a lot were empty and ransacked as they’d been at the other mining site.

Running through ammo quickly, Ben slung his empty rifle onto his back rack and pulled out a rare shotgun, taking down a few more Hobbits before getting a room to himself. He stayed inside where he could still see the hall and make sure no one got past him, then began to reload his rifle using spare rounds in an ammo pack on the small of his back. He dumped the empty shells on the ground and filled the rifle up, then headed back out, saving the shotgun as his backup, for he didn’t have any replacement ammunition for it.

Ben worked his way through his assigned section before meeting up with two of the others in the vehicle garage. He wasn’t the first one there, evidenced by the firefight that he ran out into. There were Hobbits everywhere, of which he shot several before one of the huge Skarrons turned and fired at him with two of its arm guns. Ducking to the side he returned fire as he ran over to cover behind a half blasted crate, then instead of hunkering down he ran around behind it, out of view for a moment, and came across the bay from a different angle…seeing that the Skarrons had turned this larger room into their living quarters.

It looked more like a nest, but there were some 19 in here by his count, with two of them already dead. The other two Archons were elsewhere in the bay, shooting away at the big beasts while Ben tried to pick off the Hobbits and eliminate their small, but lethal plasma fire from the battlefield.

Soon another Archon joined them, then another. By dodging the Skarrons’ plasma fire the Humans bought time for them to rack up plasma shots on the larger creatures who couldn’t dodge theirs. Ben took one hit to his shields, nearly losing them entirely on his left leg before getting out of the line of fire and letting them momentarily recharge. Then, one by one, the Archons cut down the unarmored Skarrons, with two finally fleeing and running outside as all 10 of the Archon team were finally reunited and combining fire on the enemy.

Ben hesitated from going out the wide open doors after them, for he could feel the light thuds of Skarron walker feet nearby. He couldn’t see where it was, but all of a sudden a flurry of white plasma orbs far larger than what the Hobbits, or even the Skarrons, had been firing flooded the bay doors and blasted into the concrete just inside. All the Archons pulled back immediately, with some getting a considerable wash over their shields from the ricochets of plasma and rubble…then the roof started to come down as the walker decided to target the facility itself.

“Fall back!” the team leader yelled as he put a waypoint on a different exit from where they entered…one opposite from where the walker now was.

Ben and the others ran back through the hallways as the plasma torrent tore through the vehicle bay, then started to penetrate other portions of the facility. For a while Ben thought they were out of it, for the upper levels near the center were shielding them from direct fire and it would take quite a while for the walker to burn through, but as they were getting to the far side he heard a wicked screech of twisting metal, then a few seconds later he was knocked off his feet by a tremor that was quickly followed by a wave of debris.

“Anyone down?” the team leader asked.

Ben was covered in tiny bits of debris, his shields gone, but his arms, legs, and torso were still free so he didn’t respond and picked himself up as he continued towards the exit point.

“I am,” a voice said over the comm. “I could use some help.”

Ben saw the ID marker in his HUD and redirected back a hallway and crossed over to a collapsed section of the building, under which Viken-98320 was buried. He got to him a step behind another set of red armor and together they pulled a piece of bulkhead up half a foot, exposing a lean-to sort of mess of improvised tunnel underneath.

“Hold that,” the team leader said, diving under it in his silver armor.

Another adept came up and added his strength to the pair’s, setting his back underneath and using his legs to reinforce what they were holding with their arms as Ben heard repetitive plasma blasts from underneath, then eventually the silver boots returned, dragging a broken set of red armor out.

“Clear.”

Ben held his leverage until the adept underneath extricated himself, then he and the other let the beam down…only then did he turn around to see the broken legs of the pinned adept. But to his dismay the man stood up on them, with the armor crunching and flaking off in spots.

“Can you walk?” he heard the team leader ask over the teamcomm.

“I got a little pinched, but my armor took the pressure. So long as it doesn’t lock up on me I can run out.”

“How are we on the wall?”

“The walker is repositioning…we need to go now,” an Archon outside in scout position said.

“Move people!”

Ben ran out, letting the team leader deal with Viken, and quickly got himself to the wall and over top of it, hearing the thud, thud, thud of the walker on the other side of the outpost. He ran up and into the tree line, then turned around behind cover and looked back…only to see the entire central tower section of the outpost had been toppled over onto the facility.

A few large plasma orbs shot across the top of the rubble into the trees, causing Ben to flinch, but most of the walker was still behind the edge of the outpost, with only a few topside cannons visible as Viken got over the wall with some help, but was visibly limping as he dropped to ground on the near side. He jogged forward, with the team leader staying a step behind him the entire way, then the group of Archons was reunited and they all disappeared off into the forest where the plasma couldn’t follow.

10

August 18, 2467

Ghanis System

Ettiana

Ben woke up in his bunk to an alarm, sitting up underneath his covers as his mind instantly realized that it wasn’t his chrono talking to him, but a base-wide alarm. Whether it was just for the pilots or not he didn’t know, but in recent days he’d been getting more flying time in as the Skarrons inched their way closer to Alpha Site, though as yet they hadn’t stumbled upon any of the entrances.

His armor was standing beside his bed in the tiny quarters he’d been assigned, and after slipping on a pair of casual shoes nearby he stepped into the boots and began securing himself inside, finishing off with his helmet. It clicked into the neck latches and secured the atmospheric seal, though the small cage over his nose and mouth was still exposed to the outside air and would only lock up when necessary to prevent decompression or toxins from getting inside.

Ben flicked the power switch and immediately his HUD lit up with a battlemap warning, calling him to the hangar for immediate flight duty.

He didn’t bother using the comm, but left his quarters and went straight to his assigned skeet, seeing that most of them were alright maneuvering out of the hangar into the short tunnel that led to the ring around the base, into which all the large tunnel entrances connected.

“What’s going on?” he asked a nearby tech, belatedly realizing that the mechs were missing from the bay.

“We caught a Type-4 by itself and are taking it down, but the Skarrons are sending aerial support. Knock them down before they get to the mechs.”

“Happy to,” Ben said, climbing into the skeet and pulling as quick of a startup as he could, knowing that he could finish the rest enroute. With the antigrav enabled he ‘drove’ across the bay and out into the tunnel spur, accessing the battlemap for navigational instructions. The engagement was occurring only 73 miles away, with the walker in question having strayed off from the others. Normally the mechs couldn’t fight them in the forest, for while the Skarrons could walk over the treetops the same couldn’t be said of the shorter mechs, but this walker had ventured out into a clearing…making it open for target practice.

Ben got himself into the tunnel assigned for departure, which was coordinated by the command center to bring him up away from the other walkers searching the area around Alpha Site, and accelerated up to speed as much as he dared in the close confines as he brought the rest of his skeet’s systems up to standby readiness, including weapons and shields.

The trip out to the exit took several minutes, then he shot up into the sky underneath the forest camouflaged tunnel cap and activated his comm. “Talk to me guys.”

“Nice of you to join the party,” Ken-39111 said from his skeet, miles away. “Double up with Amber and see if you can break up their incoming lines. Delay them as much as possible, the mechs have their hands full at the moment.”

“Where’s their dropship?”

“Safely away. It’ll come back for them when the air is clear…which is up to us.”

“Copy that,” Ben said, finding Amber-49288’s ID tag and seeing that she was only slightly ahead of him, heading towards a stretched out formation of Skarron fighters, some 43 strong, that were heading towards the mechs. Judging from the distances involved he could easily get to them first, but if they didn’t want to play tag there was no way they were going to be able to stop them from getting to their walker in time…and with their mobility and firepower they’d eat up the mechs without trouble.

“Am, I’m following you in. Don’t wait up, and see if you can draw some of them off. I’ll link up as soon as I can.”

“Hurry,” she prompted. “The mechs weren’t expecting fighters this close.”

“Where’d they come from?”

“Someplace in the forest that we didn’t know about. Probably a makeshift airfield to keep them closer to Alpha Site.”

“Don’t suppose they’d turn around if we started to blow it up?”

“I wish, but it’s too far off anyway. They’ll be at the mechs before we could get to it. Something to put on the to-do list though.”

“What’s your game plan?” Ben asked, transitioning to super pursuit mode, in lower speeds given that he was still in the thicker atmosphere. There was no time to climb to thinner air, so he got what he could out of the craft skimming above the treetops.

“Last first. If they others want to turn around and help they’ll have to slow down. If not, we pick them off one at a time moving up the line.”

“I’m down with that,” Ben said, seeing that a dozen or so other skeets were already buzzing around the enemy walker at low altitude, trying to give supporting fire without getting lit up by its topside lachar, but a few of them were already moving off to intercept the incoming fighters, and he assumed the rest would be soon. If they could kill the walker before the lightning bugs got to them the mechs would be in a much better defensive position, which was why they weren’t all moving out to intercept the fighters.

Ben watched as Amber got to rear end of the Skarron line and crisscrossed over the last fighter, drawing flashes of plasma from the five ahead of it. He watched the battlemap closely, wondering if they were going to redeploy, but they didn’t…meaning that the two skeets were going to have easy pickings so long as the opening remained.

“They’re not taking the bait,” Amber reported. “They must want the mechs pretty bad.”

“Watch your shield strength,” Ben reminded her. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

“I’m not that reckless,” she joked, but didn’t take much time off between attack runs as she looped in multiple times before Ben caught up with her, having the honor of finishing the Skarron fighter off on his first strike, gutting the thing with three slow approach mauler blasts that dropped it out of the air to crash into the forest below.

“One down,” Amber said, already hitting the second and taking a scattering of plasma fire from it and the ones ahead, but none of them turned around or grouped together…they were all making top speed for the small grassy plain ahead that the mechs were fighting in.

Ben couldn’t watch, busy as he was with the fighters, but there were 6 mechs in two trios, each flanking the Type-4 walker and staying out of its forward prime firing zone. Already its shields were down and its armor pot marked, but it was still spraying plasma quite well, and was far from dead. One of the braver skeet pilots flew in at grass level and shot it from the left flank, passing between a neo and a raven and hitting one of its legs with plasma and a mauler round, expanding on damage already done to it as the skeet turned hard left to avoid hitting the legs.

It flew so fast that only one of the plasma orbs hit it, and that was more by luck than skill. It arced back up into the air before it hit the tree line nearby that the Skarron was walking towards, knowing that the mechs couldn’t follow.

The mechs knew it too and kept hammering on that leg, eventually melting it off at the elbow joint and reducing the walker down to 5 functioning legs. It fell over when the leg broke, pinning it in place as it continued to flood the mechs with plasma, but each trio kept rotating in and out and blocking for each other to share the shield load, though 4 of the six mechs had already lost shields and were taking armor impacts.

They could have moved off, being far faster than the Type-4, but they had to stop it from getting out of the grass and into the trees…and they also knew the fighters were coming. They’d been lucky enough to catch it in the open in the first place, and now they had to press their advantage before it evaporated.

In truth the Archons were so pissed that they wanted the kill, even if they were being a bit reckless given the circumstances…but they were all of the same temperament, and they were going to make this happen no matter what.

Ben and Amber were no different, pushing their diminishing shields near the breaking point as they took slower and slower attack runs, allowing them to pour more firepower into the Skarron fighters and down them faster, but with the speed the lightning bugs were moving they had to get even closer, for the atmosphere was interfering with the plasma and flaring it out more than normal, as well as moving it off target when they fired from a lateral trajectory.

The pair of skeets kept swinging back and forth, going wide to avoid the Skarrons’ return fire when their shields dipped low, and staying directly being them in line when they weren’t, getting into mauler range more often than not, and working their way up the line. They killed 7 of the fighters before the trees underneath them transitioned over to grass, leaving them 20 seconds out from the walker and mechs.

By that time all the skeets were in the air harassing the fighters, and their line of transit suddenly broke up into a more traditional fur ball…with Ben realizing that the mechs had succeeded in disabling the walker. It was still shooting out waves of tiny white plasma orbs, but it was on the ground and not moving, with the mechs having dispersed into more distant firing positions, recharging their shields when they could and turning to fight the enemy aircraft, knowing that they could come back to the walker later.

With the mechs turning their weapons up to the air they coordinated with the fighters, as they’d practiced many times in simulators, and used the largely immobile mechs as a hard point to maneuver the Skarron fighters around, setting up attacks from the skeets. When the Skarrons adjusted and pursued the skeets, they set up passes that brought the fighters around to prime firing positions of the mechs.

Neither approach worked quickly, for the Skarrons weren’t stupid enough to let the mechs get them with their heavy weapons, so the entire engagement began a game of movement, with the six mechs taking the majority of the beating. But as the engagement progressed the skeets increased their kill count, losing only one of their own in the process as the Skarron walker threw a lucky swath of plasma up into its path.

Amber went down hard into the forest, shredding the skeet in the process, but her cockpit armor held and she activated her beacon for pickup, indicating that she’d survived the crash…but Ben couldn’t dwell on that, for while the lightning bugs were thinning they were still peppering the mechs, who by now had lost their shields and a lot of their armor. They had, as a group, run off down the length of the plain to where the walker’s plasma was turning into spit, and with that tactical maneuver the mechs became more aggressive in their anti-air efforts.

They began grouping together and thickening their firing lines, which the skeets drove the Skarrons to as often as possible. One of the lightning bugs got caught by a plasma orb from a neo, which shattered its armor and left a smoking hole in the left side as it veered off from the others and headed off across the plain on its own. Ben went after it and swung around to target the damaged side, running up close to it enough that he nearly rammed the thing to deliver a mauler blast that matched the hole with 95% overlap.

He spun off, doing a skeet slide, and visually followed the lightning bug down to the ground where it plowed out a short trench before it came to a smoking halt. Confident that it was out of the fight, Ben accelerated to catch back up with the others…then suddenly his comm activated on the all-Star Force channel.

There was no voice, just music…but it was absolutely the best sound he had ever heard. An unrestrainable grin crept over his face as he picked one of the few Skarron fighters remaining and headed for it as he listened to the repetitive ‘Imperial March’ playing nonstop on the comm, which a quick glance at the battlemap confirmed was being transmitted from orbit.

“All drones are free.”

“Heavy cruisers concentrate fire on the juggernauts,” Tim-410 said as his flagship sat on the upper edge of low orbit along with 14 other Star Force jumpships, all of which were deploying warships that the Skarron fleet was maneuvering to intercept…but as they did more jumpships came in, microjumping from the star directly into planetary orbit and arriving on precise points fed to them by Tim’s command crew.

Each of the jumpships spewed warships, with the count escalating gradually but consistently, with the Skarrons not knowing how many were incoming.

But Tim did, crossing over to the command nexus after seeing the enemy fleet’s layout. Tweaking his own fleet’s positioning he brought in more jumpships on blocking routes, having them disperse their drones into clouds of armed debris that gradually encircled the Skarrons. By the time the enemy realized what was happening, and that the Humans had brought far more ships than they could handle, they were contained within a hemispherical bowl, leaving them few maneuvering options.

Inside that bowl was a great deal of carnage occurring on both sides, but all the Star Force crews were safely onboard their jumpships outside the perimeter, with more incoming as the battle progressed, thickening the bowl and forcing the Skarrons down towards the atmosphere as they tried to flee in the final stages of the battle, but they couldn’t get away from the smaller drones. They swarmed the larger ships, using the few IDF equipped interdictors to slow them down long enough to penetrate their shields and force them into desperate microjumps.

Those jumps ended in collisions with the Star Force ships, which ended in the Skarrons’ vessels disabling themselves in the impacts and falling prey to the drone swarm…but they had no other options, for there were no available jumplines, and the Skarron ships wouldn’t have fared any better going down to the atmosphere, which would have boxed them in even further.

Tim’s fleet destroyed the bulk of the Skarron assault fleet before all of his 312 Warship-class jumpships arrived, with the remaining enemy patrols ships in the system fleeing with the knowledge of how many reinforcements the Humans had sent, for they stayed around to observe the battle and the full arrival of the relief fleet, including the mass of troop jumpships and their unloading of scores of dropships delivering mechs and aerial craft to the planet to begin countering the Skarron units on the ground that the warships weren’t targeting with orbital bombardment.

Satisfied that they had the intel they’d been previously ordered to gather, the Skarron ships left their individual assignments across the system and high orbit around Ettiana, each jumping out from the star individually and taking their scouting reports back across the jumplanes over the following weeks until they reached Skarron territory. There they combined their data with those that had returned from Rotunna, and eventually Brenns and Iverie, giving the Skarron leadership their first substantive look at the true strength of Star Force…after which they began formulating their invasion plans for the larger war yet to come.

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1

August 15, 2467

Rotunna System (Beta Region)

Inner Zone

Aaron-010 watched from the bridge of the WS113 Warship-class jumpship that he was commanding the 19th fleet from as the system-wide battlemap began to update as the ship finished its braking maneuver against the larger of two gravity wells that were the Rotunna System’s binary stars, one orange, one yellow. Aaron had brought the first of his three fleets in against the larger yellow star, using the differential function of the gravity drives to ignore the presence of the other so it wouldn’t push them off jumpline as they arrived, with his ship being 13th in line out of the 100 warships in the 19th fleet.

The 22nd and 41st fleets also had 100 warships each, as every one of the mainline fleets was tasked to maintain. Their ground, aerial, and aquatics units traveled separately in cargo jumpships, which were trailing the warships. Each mech unit had 5 galaxies, each aerial unit 250 squadrons of 10, split between skeets and gunships. Commandos numbered 100,000 and were comprised of a mix of Regulars, Knights, and Archons, while aquatics operated on a minimalistic fleet lineup, given that their larger ships were hard to transport between planetoids.

The 19th fleet/army had been assigned to Sol along with many others, of which Aaron had taken three full units. They’d been partially packed up prior to his departure order being given, so that they could respond to any incursion within Star Force’s home system, while other units had been dedicated to certain planetoids. The 19th had several mech and commando units on Mars that it had to retrieve, but given their extensive training they’d been able to recall all their puzzle pieces into their waiting jumpship transports within hours, then they’d set off for the 2+ month journey from Sol out to Rotunna to reinforce Randy’s smaller fleet that had gone to aid the first of the Star Force systems to be invaded by the Skarrons.

Rotunna was the most distant Beta Region colony, and as such it was well away from the others, making supplying it difficult, but of all the systems scouted by Star Force in Beta Region it was by far the most valuable, which is what had prompted Randy to snatch it up sooner rather than later.

The system contained 7 habitable planets and 2 habitable moons…which was exceedingly rare. Finding a single planetoid within a system that was habitable per your race’s biological requirements was quite a find, but to have 9 was nearly unheard of. Sol only had one, being Earth, so securing and colonizing Rotunna had been a priority for Randy, despite the fact that it was a considerable distance away from Iona, his regional headquarters.

Rotunna was one of the newer colonization efforts, but it had been given more resources than the others, including an army of Kiritak and Star Force engineers to get to work setting up shop in the system, and they’d done a good job of it, with the first exports of foodstuffs coming out of the system within 3 years of their arrival.

With Star Force’s presence in the system came the attention of other races, and like the other Kiritak colonies in Beta Region, Rotunna had become a way station for the nearby races as they passed through enroute to other locations. A trading market had been established in orbit with a decently-sized defense fleet stationed there to make sure that everyone was clear that the system belonged to Star Force and no one else was going to be able to stake out any territory for their own.

That defense fleet had been steadily growing over the years, but the Skarrons had come with too many ships and overwhelmed them, though the actual number was still unknown given the fact that the relays had been cut. All information from Rotunna had ceased transmitting after that point, meaning Aaron didn’t know what the full situation would be when he arrived, but the smaller insystem relay satellites spaced around the system had not been destroyed…at least not all of them, and they linked in with his warships the moment they came out of their jump, updating them to the current positions of all Star Force assets.

As Aaron watched, the map of what was supposed to be there tallied up losses of orbital stations by the dozens…but not all of the icons went out. In fact, there were two planets that appeared not to have been hit, in orbit at least, which Aaron found both reassuring and odd. As more information updated a preprogrammed message came through alerting all Star Force reinforcements to travel to Othalla, the 7th planet in the system, and one of the two that appeared to still be in Star Force hands.

“Admiral, pass the word down the line. All incoming ships transition by groups to Othalla. Then take us in.”

“Aye,” Admiral Nellis confirmed the order, then set about organizing his fleet into deployments. In a few minutes time the WS113 made a microjump out to the planet in question, then linked up by direct comms to the small defense fleet already in orbit.

“Wakey, wakey, anybody home?” Aaron said over a private channel to the ship tagged with Randy’s command icon.

There was a considerable delay, then an image of an Archon appeared, though it wasn’t Randy.

“Apologies, Aaron, but Randy is currently off on a mission,” Kraven-602 said with a loose smile on his face. “Though I do hope you’ll stick around anyway. It’s very lonely out here nowadays,” the Archon said dryly.

Aaron nodded, understanding what he meant. “Where is he?”

“Pulling a ground op on Ida. We’ve managed to neutralize most of the Skarron warships…or at least scare them off for the time being, but they’re pressing their ground campaigns and we’re having hell dealing with their walkers. The only saving grace is we’ve maintained air superiority and they’re having to land the things far out from our colonies, but once they get in close they’re killing everything in sight. We’ve lost more Kiritak than I can count, with even more fleeing to the wilderness when their habitats are destroyed. We’re evacuating as many as we can, but the Skarron fleet is intercepting our transports whenever possible and we’re having to play games just to get them into position, both in orbit and in air.”

“How many ships have the Skarrons got left?”

“That we know of, 32 warships of varying sizes. Randy kicked the crap out of their original fleet once he arrived. Might want to watch a replay, he really took them to school over the course of three weeks. Othalla wasn’t the Skarrons original target, and I think they didn’t know we’d colonized multiple planet’s beforehand, because they seemed unwilling to put down anywhere but Ida at first. That was the first planet we colonized, so their information appears to have been out of date.”

“They’ve got smaller incursions on three other planets, but Ida is the real war zone and we’re getting our asses kicked. I hope you’ve brought some toys, because when their walkers get inside city limits we can’t kill them from orbit.”

“I’ve got 3 full mainline fleets with me,” Aaron said, bringing a smile to the other Archon’s face. “What exactly is Randy up to?”

“Um, well, he’s trying to take down some of their smaller walkers.”

Aaron’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

“Remember Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Aaron said loudly, part dismay, part jealousy. “Has he got any yet?”

“Reports say two Type-4s.”

Aaron shook his head as if to clear it. “He always was a reckless mother fucker. What’s the standing orders? We got a recall order as soon as we arrived in system.”

“The Skarron fleet has gone dark. They’re learning from us and vice versa. He didn’t want anyone to get ambushed on the way in, though we weren’t concerned about a fleet of your size.”

“Any objections to my getting to work?”

“Please do. We’ve been stuck in guard position so long we’re going stir crazy, so if you don’t mind, replace our ships here and let us get in on the action.”

“You’ve earned that much,” Aaron said, gesturing to the Fleet Admiral who began setting up the transfer orders so Othalla orbit wouldn’t be left unguarded. “As soon as the rest of the 19th gets here we’ll move on Ida. Have your ships ready to jump.”

“We will be,” Kraven said, eager for some payback.

A little green blur of motion sprinted through the jungle, concealed beneath the thick green canopy as it raced to catch up with a Type-4 Skarron walker that was breaking trail for three Type-5s. The spider-legged mechanical tick was dragging its belly low and knock or bending trees over that the shorter biped walkers were then stomping down as they made their way towards a small, independent bioharvest facility that was located in the middle of Ida’s globe-spanning jungle. No access roads or clearings were available around it, with the only way in or out being by air transport.

Star Force had skeets in the area keeping enemy transports at bay, so the Skarrons were making the long hike in to the facility by foot, and cutting out their own crude pathways through the jungle on the way. From higher altitude you could see the Skarron roads crisscrossing the planet and expanding out like a thin spider web, with this tendril reaching out into previously untouched territory.

The little blur of Archon ranger armor was alone, having been deposited via skeet some kilometers back and left to approach on foot. Irregular as his path was, he was making better time than the walkers, though at a cost of considerable strength, for he’d been running for the past half hour and putting most of his effort into making the catch. He wasn’t low on ambrosia yet, but at the speed he was moving it wouldn’t be much longer until he felt the first effects of his body’s saturated supply diminishing.

But Randy wasn’t concerned about that, for he had already made the catch. That was the hardest part, for he needed to get to the walkers when they had their shields down, and he could only do that when they were far from the combat.

The trailblazer paced the last of the three Type-5s, matching its speed but running some 120 meters to the west on the same heading as he got a ‘feel’ for the situation with his Pefbar, extending it out into a spotlight-like pylon that reached through the trees and touched the walker that his eyes couldn’t see. It was stomping what was left of the vegetation that the first three had yet to knock down, leaving a mess of timber in its wake that would be difficult for Randy to maintain even half speed running over.

“Ok,” the Archon said to himself, off comm, “we’ll try a different approach this time.”

Accelerating up into another continuous sprint…or at least that’s what it felt like with the constant adjustments he had to keep making for trees and debris, Randy pushed his way up to the second Type-5 and turned hard right, crossing the safety gap between him and the Skarrons in a handful of seconds, finally stopping short and jumping up into an intact tree that had been spared from the walkers’ passing.

The trailblazer climbed fast, then walked out on a thick branch halfway up the tree that got him an approach to clean air and waited for the third biped walker to come up. It had two very thick legs that supported a short torso with a large golf ball-like sphere top that contained the pimple pattern of plasma cannons across its surface, much like the larger Skarron walkers had. The thing had no arms, making it look like a fat Lego man, and it walked about the same. Apparently the quadruped species wasn’t all that keen on biped movement, which raised the question why they had built biped machines in the first place.

Randy had only a few seconds to wait, then he took his chance and ran a few steps along the length of the branch, pushing through smaller sprouts and crunching his way towards the end where he jumped with all his strength and flew out into the clean air and fell down into the broken tree mess below. He landed 15 meters shy of the walker, but managed to get a good left foot plant against an angled tree trunk and caught himself before he could slide down further into the mess of branches. Using that point of grip he ran up the broken trunk two steps and jumped to another one nearby.

Two more short hops and he leapt up against the side of the walker’s left leg…where he stuck onto the side, thanks to the boxing glove-like add-ons to his armor. He wore no pack, no weapons rack, nothing at all aside from his basic ranger armor with the thick grip gloves attached over top his normal armored digits.

Randy hung in place for a split second pulling a Garfield, then disengaged the right gripping device and one armed himself higher up on the leg. Reattaching it he released the other and climbed, with little help from his legs, up above the mess of jungle debris washing by him and threatening to peel him off. Once he got to the knee joint he was free of most of that concern, and focused on getting past the moving parts, which required some delicate timing and one armed hanging swings to get to the upper leg.

Randy was glad no one had shot him as he’d gotten to the walker, meaning that hopefully they hadn’t seen him and wouldn’t see him in this close, but there were no guarantees. Two days ago when he’d tried this he’d been spotted and took half a cannon blast to his shields before he’d dropped off like a dead flea. He’d hit the ground hard, then ran off in his melty armor with a kink in his left arm where the material had resolidified and interfered with the normally smooth movement of the elbow joint.

But that was the chance he had to take to get in this close, and even now that he was clinging to the side of the Type-5 he wasn’t safe, for if the walker turned on its shields he’d been pinned in place as if an invisible wall manifested itself with the Archon inside it. His own shields would keep it from being a hard lock, but if a body part was bigger on the inside then there was no way it could fit through the hole in the Skarron shield and he’d be truly stuck, but he’d learned that the Skarron shields weren’t directly on their armor, but rode several inches above it, meaning that most of his body would hopefully be inside the perimeter, though even if a hand was outside it’d get burnt off by enemy plasma…which was why up until this point he’d only tried taking down single walkers that couldn’t shoot him if he got pinned in place.

So with that threat in mind he climbed as fast as he could, transitioning up to the torso and around to the back side where the 2nd Type-5 couldn’t see or shoot him. Randy felt inside the machine for the mind of the pilot, finding it to be further up top than the center of the sphere, so he continued to climb up the ball with his body and feet hanging off as he had to maneuver up the underside.

The grip gloves held firm though, as they’d been designed to do. Another useful bit of tech recovered from the pyramid database.

Randy climbed up the curve and eventually got his legs back on the hull. He diverted his line of ascent twice to move around plasma cannon ports that were the size of a trash can, and eventually made his way three quarters up the curve until he was the closest to the Skarron pilot as he could get. He’d have liked to have attempted this from farther away, but his mind wasn’t nearly that powerful…at least not for the precision control that he was going to need.

Setting the grip gloves to lock into position, Randy trusted the technology to hold him in place then disengaged his mind from the majority of his senses and let his psionics link him with the mind of the single Skarron pilot inside. What he found was violent, as the others had been, but more large in scope than powerful. Using his psionics he linked to the mind and asserted control over it. Pulling the override required a lot of skill and power, hence the need to get as close as possible, but thanks to the practice Randy already had he locked down the pilot and kept him away from his own bodily functions, essentially blacking him out while jumping inside the thing’s body.

That was the creepy part…having four arms and four legs, no head, etc. Randy had to do it this way in order to get the precision movements he needed, else he could have just enslaved the Skarron’s mind and made it do what he wanted while allowing it to be partially conscious. Even now the thing struggled to wake up, but a consistent mental pressure kept it down and Randy used what was left of his psionic power to operate its limbs, see through its eyes, and interface with the pilot controls. The Type-5’s was a bit different from the Type-4s he’d messed with earlier, and it took him a few minutes to figure them out as the mech continued to walk forward under computer control, with Randy only having to make micro steering adjustments as he got situated.

When all was said and done he activated the walker’s shields, pinning his body in place with part of his back and butt showing through the shield barrier, but the rest of him was underneath it. That didn’t matter, because he was hanging off the back and the other walkers were in front, and with all the trees around them it was going to be difficult for them to flank him.

Ok, here goes, Randy thought as he activated the walker’s weapon systems, ignoring the anti-air cannon up top and focusing on the dozens of small plasma cannons on the walker’s surface. He linked them to group fire to track a single target, then powered up the primary plasma cannon that sat on the front side of the golf ball in the thing’s chest.

Picking a spot in the back of the right knee of the duplicate walker ahead of him, Randy fired the primary cannon, then triggered the smaller ones to attack the same spot, pouring as much firepower as he could into the walker before it could realize what was happening and get its shields up.

2

The joint’s armor was lighter than the rest, but it didn’t give on the first hit. Rather it took three blasts from the main cannon and a torrent of the smaller white plasma blasts to melt through and get at the internal structure. The fourth blast hit shields, delaying the walker’s collapse, but Randy kept hammering the same spot as the Type-5 ahead of him tried to turn around, getting tripped up by the tree debris that was everywhere.

Before it could swing around and bring its main cannon into play the anti-personnel cannons on the back side fired on Randy’s appropriated walker, splashing off his own shields as they traded fire. A few more direct hits from his main cannon and the shielding over the knee went down and Randy delivered the fatal blow, melting the inner mechanics from the heat of the plasma. The liquid slag cooled quickly, causing the joint to seize up. That stuck the walker in place, lest it fall over, and gave Randy a blocking silhouette against the other two walkers that were already turning around as they tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

The trailblazer knew the internal comm system was pinging the Skarron pilot, but he wasn’t answering, so with one of their own shooting at them they did was anyone would do…they shot back.

Randy kept close to his target in the downed tree trench and poured fire into the center of the walker’s spherical top, chewing through the shields and then working on the armor as the Type-4 ahead of them rose up to its full height and fired down on Randy’s Type-5, getting a sliver of a firing angle. The Archon held firm, knowing that he needed to kill the smaller walker before jumping ship, and chewed through the thick Skarron armor until he had a breach point. After that his plasma slipped in and soon the bottom hatch of the walker opened up and the pilot dropped to the ground between the machine’s legs and tried to run off before it could get roasted inside, though it had a difficult time navigating the mess of tree debris.

Randy would have shot it, but it wisely headed off on an angle that had its walker blocking the Human’s firing line, so the Archon continued slagging the inner workings of the Type-5 up until he was thoroughly convinced that it was dead. After that he turned the walker to the left and walked it through the trash, making sure to take small steps and mash down as much of it as possible as his shields took a torrent of plasma from both of the other walkers.

He approached at an angle to keep his body from coming into the firing line, and headed into the forest in the direction of the other two that had also veered off to the left to circle around towards him. As soon as his walker was in the trees the incoming plasma reduced greatly, leaving him to pushing his way through, laying over one tree stalk after another as he slowly created his own path forward.

With that cover in place the Type-5 was shielded from its twin, but the Type-4 was still firing down on the top of his walker, now penetrating the shields and beginning to tear into the armor. Randy shoved his way through the trees as fast as he could without tipping the giant machine over, intent on getting to the other one before he had to jump clear.

He did…barely. The front of his walker had a gaping hole in the armor that was nearing the pilot’s compartment as he pushed through the last of the trees and ran head on into the other Type-5. Both walkers fired at each other at point blank range, with Randy’s taking the worst damage, for the other’s shields were still up.

That was alright, for he wanted the walker he was riding to go down…one less for the enemy to use, but he wanted to take the other with it, so he pushed ahead with as much torque as he could get out of the legs and rammed sphere against sphere. Like a slow motion monster wrestling match, the two locked up and tipped over, with his landing on top of the other’s legs and pinning it in place as the plasma from the Type-4 continued to fall down.

Randy disengaged his psionic link before the walker fell and got his hand grips released halfway down, allowing him to knee-slide off the back and land in the tree mash between its legs as the plasma fell down on the sphere where he’d just been. He let himself hit bottom, sliding between tree trunks and down into the mass of twigs and leaves, all of which helped to hide his green armor from the Type-4.

He imagined a heated conversation taking place as the Skarron he’d been controlling woke up, but the plasma continued to fall regardless as Randy snuck around underneath the small pile of trees, gradually working his way to the edge and into the clear forest, seeing one of the Type-4’s slender legs punch down through the canopy ahead of him as the big walker moved in for a closer look at the others as it continued to fire on the traitor.

Randy ran towards the leg, knowing that its shields would be up and any attempt to climb it would be fruitless, but he needed to get close and chanced running up underneath it, now that its belly was riding above the canopy instead of crashing through it. Its other five legs repositioned, knocking over trees or snapping off branches, making Randy stay alert and mobile. He wasn’t sure what its next move would be, but if he was going to have a chance of taking it down he had to stay close.

Eventually the plasma bombardment ceased, with the Type-5 moving overtop the others. At first Randy thought it was going to try to push the dead walker off the other, then he saw a compartment on the underside open up and a projectile shot out, landing a claw on the walker. Two more followed, and then the connecting lines pulled taught and a loud ground sounded as the Type-5 he’d appropriated began to rise up off the other.

The one underneath pushed its way out, kicking its thick legs to break loose, for it appeared the Type-4 didn’t have the strength to pull the dead weight all the way off.

Randy knew the shields had to be down, at least around the exit points for the tethers. He was half tempted to try and climb one up into the walker, but if the cannons on the belly saw him he’d be toast, so he scratched that plan quick enough.

Next idea he had sent a piece of wood the size of his thumb telekinetically up through the canopy above him. He watched it with his Pefbar as he sent it to impact the underside of the walker, paying close attention to the impact point…and seeing that the thing’s shields were in fact down all over the walker.

That was his opening, so he ran towards the nearest leg and began to climb up on the underside to keep from being painfully visible. If he stayed directly under the angled leg, he’d come up to the box-like connective point where the legs intersected with the body where there were no cannons. There would be cannons all around that point, but if he could get to the hull he could climb up around them, for they didn’t have the ability to tip to the side far enough to bother him.

Randy had made it up to the elbow joint on the leg, just beginning to transition to his ‘hands only’ grip on the underside of the walker’s leg, which left his own dangling beneath him as he monkey climbed up when he felt a gigantic surge of motion.

The walker below and to his left dropped back to the ground as the tethers went slack, but the Type-4 also stepped to the side, running Randy up into some thin branches that he was fortunate not to have been knocked off by. Just as soon as he got his legs up into a crunch position and had his feet planted above his head against the walker’s leg did the whole thing drop down towards the ground.

The leg bent heavily, undoing the angle and turning Randy’s handhold into more of a ceiling hold. Only when the walker steadied itself and the sound of a disengaging panel crackle/whined its way out of the belly armor did the trailblazer notice the mind of a Skarron on the forest floor below. It was the one that had jumped ship when Randy had toasted the first walker, and now it was coming up underneath the big one.

With his eye line set on the underside of the walker’s leg, Randy used his Pefbar to look behind him and underneath the machine as a type of boarding ramp extended out of the hull between armor segments that had peeled off. It telescoped the rest of the way down to the forest, and Randy could sense the Skarron heading for it.

“Haha,” the trailblazer lightly laughed as he suddenly had a far easier option present itself. He reached out with his Ikrid and got a feel for the three Skarron minds inside the Type-4 and began to send waves of Fornax blasts toward them as he released his grip from the leg and dropped down to the ground.

With his focus on the psionic workload, Randy’s balance was less than adequate, tossing him to the right suddenly as his feet hit a curved trunk. He banged his head good on impact, but sent out more Fornax blasts immediately to keep the cannons from firing or the ramp raising if they saw him. He got to his feet and sent a fourth Fornax blast into the one heading for the ramp, causing it to trip and fall over its own legs as they suddenly ceased to work.

Randy ran after it, hopping over tree debris while throwing more Fornax up into the walker’s hull. He kept all four Skarrons subdued while he jumped up onto the back of the closest one and leapt off it up onto the ramp and climbed the ladder-like catwalk up into the walker.

Inside there was a cramped chamber…by Skarron standards anyway. It contained a central corridor with six pods spaced around the stalk, each of which was huge for Randy’s physique. He walked into the corridor and found it was also like a catwalk, but with round holes in the structure rather than slats.

Making sure not to trip on any, or to let his foot slip through, he reached out to the three minds inside and placed them, numbing one as it reached up a weapon and aimed at him. Randy didn’t move, but kept it in check while trying to do the same to the other two. He didn’t move its gun arm, nor any other body parts, for he couldn’t do that without focusing exclusively on one of them and he had three to hold at bay.

Which quickly became four as the one at the base of the ramp camp up and poked its ugly front end inside. He stretched out his Ikrid and nulled it too, essentially freezing it in place by not allowing it to make any additional movements, but while maintaining its current posture.

“Out,” he said, pointing towards the one at the ramp. It didn’t understand English, nor the trade language for that matter, but Randy got the telepathic impetus through, along with a heavy dose of influence. He couldn’t take control of its body, but he could tell it to.

Slowly the Skarron backed out of the entrance and headed down the ramp, seeming to crawl backwards as easy as it did forwards…with its foot claws digging into the holes in the metal for extra grip. Randy kept his Ikrid link to it strong, despite the meters of distance it was putting between them, then he pointed to the other three and thumbed backwards over his shoulder.

“Everybody off the bus,” he said, taking a step to the side as the big quadrupeds climbed out of their pods. Randy put a hand on the curved wall for support as his mental effort had to increase greatly as the fourth one got to ground. He switched over to nulling it, which saved a little mental expenditure, but influencing the other three to do what he wanted was pushing his Ikrid to the limits.

The first one went by, not bothering to look at him, then headed front first down the steep ramp, gripping it with its feet claws that emanated from the underside rather than the front where toe nails would have been. The second one did the same, but the third stopped at the edge and just stood there, and Randy could feel his grip on its will slipping. It was on the verge of questioning what it was doing, at which point the ruse would end. He had to keep it distracted, and too much thought in any direction would break the hold.

To that end he released the furthest of the Skarrons. With the lesser load Randy increased his mental pressure on the last one, remembering what Obi-wan had said about the Force having a strong influence on the weak minded…and this Skarron was stronger than the others.

“Run!” he yelled, with is mind imparting the same message. “Run, run, run!” he repeated so fast that the Skarron didn’t have time to think. It charged down the ramp, knocking the one in front of it off before ramming the one that Randy had released as it came back up. With that tangled mess breaking his hold on the pair he released all three and send a Fornax wave in their direction and held the production until he got to the ramp controls, already having gleaned their location from one of their minds.

Randy held the Fornax as the ramp pulled back into itself, then leveraged up into the underside of the hull, with the last steps being the peeled back armor plates to seal over it…leaving Randy alone inside.

Almost immediately his captured walker came under fire from the lone Type-5 remaining, thanks to the Skarrons and their personal communicators.

“Ok, what now?” Randy said, running and looking around. Some of the controls were familiar, but a lot weren’t, and this was his first time inside one of the Type-4s…in person anyway. When he was linked to a Skarron’s mind everything had context, but now it was just him and what he could remember.

He jumped back and forth between two pods until he found the shield controls and powered them up as a portion of the front hull began to lose armor, along with a plasma cannon mount, he thought, based on one of the display panels. After that he looked around, playing with various controls, most of which he had to use his fist/elbow to toggle, given how large they were. Eventually he determined that one of the pods was a restroom, then climbed up into the highest one and found the weapon controls, still trying to clear the smell from his nostrils. His armor might not have deemed it toxic, but his biology certainly did.

As the walker got pounded on the outside Randy got the weapons controls working…only to discover that they were for the anti-air weaponry. Abandoning that pod he tried another, eventually getting to the plasma cannon controls in what seemed to be a multitasking format. Maybe one of the other pods controlled them directly, but what he had functioned well enough, with him targeting the Type-5 outside that had already broken through his shields and was busy melting off armor with its primary cannon.

Fortunately it had a decently long cycle in between shots, so Randy wasn’t in immediate trouble. He aligned all of his own plasma cannons within the appropriate firing arc for the other walker and synced them to one targeting reticule and placed it on the enemy…then he couldn’t find the firing trigger.

He looked around, belatedly remembering that it was on the floor. He couldn’t reach it and the aiming controls at the same time, so he stared at the control knobs for a long couple of seconds then dropped down to the floor of the pod and stomped on the button.

It didn’t fire, nor did it depress all the way, so Randy tried again, jumping with both feet, and this time it went all the way into the ground.

Outside every plasma cannon in range fired once, then fell silent.

“Crap,” Randy said, jumping on it again, then climbing up halfway to get his head within view of the readouts. Telekinetically he moved the controls, realigning his targeting reticule to a more favorable spot, then jumped back down on the firing button, pounding it into the ground multiple times like a child throwing a tantrum before climbing back up again to see what he’d hit.

The Type-5 had moved, but only partially, with his plasma still landing on the spherical ‘head.’ Randy readjusted his firing line and went back down to the ground, repeating the awkward attack function over and over again until the Type-5 was damaged enough that it tried to flee.

“Oh no you don’t…bastard,” Randy said, running over to another pod and getting the walker walking, albeit slowly. He set it on autopilot, meaning it just went in a straight line, knocking down trees and hoping they didn’t trip it up, then ran back over to the weapons pod and got another salvo of shots in on the other walker.

That process repeated itself for over an hour as the two walkers played tag, with Randy running himself silly trying to operate the controls that were designed for an elephant until the Type-5 finally went down, literally, and Randy pounded it further with plasma until it was a smoking mess of melted metal.

“Oh, god I don’t want to do that again,” he said, sitting down and leaning back against the curved wall at the bottom of the central shaft as he activated his helmet comm. “Anybody out there hear this?”

“I’ve got you, Randy, but faint,” the dropship pilot who’d brought him to the walkers replied.

“Come pick me up. The three Type-5s are junk, and I’m inside the Type-4, so don’t worry about it shooting back. What firearms do you have onboard?”

“A couple of pistols, one plasma, one stinger. Why?”

“There are Skarrons loose on the ground. We need to clean them up, and I don’t think the skeets will get a clean shot. Comm for a ground team and mark this location.”

“Copy that, I’m on my way in.”

Randy cut the comm and sighed, taking a moment to rest before heading over to the ramp controls and opening the damaged mech up. With the shields down and the armor already damaged, the skeets would have an easy time finishing it off, so his work here was done, so long as he didn’t let any of the Skarrons back inside, and given how far the machine had walked he had no idea how close they were now.

When the dropship arrived he triggered the ramp closing mechanism and jumped out, sliding/falling down the angled metal as it closed up, then dropping to the ground after bouncing off a couple of intact branches that the Type-5 hadn’t hit on the way through. Randy took the fall well then ran out into the opening created by the downed trees and signaled to the dropship to come down and get him.

Once onboard he called for the skeets and waited until they were on station and blowing the crap out of the walker before he let the pilot leave.

3

August 17, 2467

Rotunna System (Beta Region)

Ida

“Ships are in bombardment position,” Admiral Nellis said for Aaron’s benefit as the 19th fleet stood broken up and holding various positions in low orbit.

“We’ve still got two red flags, Admiral. Commence firing on all other targets,” Aaron ordered, watching the bridge tactical holo. A few moments later metallic rain began falling down through the atmosphere and targeting the Skarron walkers that were away from population centers. The two ‘red flags’ were inside cities where the inhabitants weren’t all clear yet, and each of those held a Type-1, making them primary targets that needed to be eliminated from orbit, lest there be a much larger fight on the ground.

Ida had 29 tier 1 colonies under construction, which when fully completed would be self-sufficient entities of their own on the planet’s surface spanning hundreds of square miles. Other auxiliary facilities dotted the landscape as well, but overall Ida’s population was spread out with a ‘work in progress’ feel to the planet, despite the fact that it already held some 2 billion Kiritak and several hundred thousand Humans.

A lot of those were dead, but many had been able to flee from one city to another given the slow speed of the Skarron armies. Air superiority was being split between the two factions, with the handful of conquered cities remaining in Skarron control while Star Force still held sway over the others. Not wanting to wreck their own cities with orbital bombardment, even the empty ones, Star Force had been engaging the Skarrons via mech drops and trying to draw them out into the open…which in the case of Ida meant the regions of forest that had been cut down to facilitate further expansion or to create roads from site to site.

The Skarrons had taken the bait, mostly, and the mechs had dragged their forces out away from the cities, even if only a few hundred meters beyond the perimeter on the dirt plains preceding new construction.

On those plains and roadways the Skarrons fell prey to the rail gun slugs coming down from orbit. Star Force had already pulled its armies back, drawing the Skarrons out further or causing them to give up the chase. The aiming of the metallic shards wasn’t precise at a range of 110 miles, plus the thick atmosphere of Ida would play havoc with the descent as well, but over the centuries Star Force had gotten good in containing the randomness of the bombardment and concentrating it to select areas, carpeting the ground with so many impacts that through statistical probability the Skarron walkers were going to get hit.

As soon as the rain began to come down every Type-1 and Type-2 within range started popping missiles that shot up towards orbit, intent on taking down the warships dropping the ordinance. The few walkers that got hit initially remained intact, protected underneath large circular defense shields that stopped the falling metal in superheated splashes, sucking vast amounts of energy out of the protective barriers…energy that they could not replace fast enough, meaning that if the walkers didn’t take out the warships they were going to succumb to the attack in short order.

But that’s what the Skarron anti-air defenses had been designed to thwart, and the missile plumes rising up towards the drone warships were thick and fast moving, not to mention carrying very strong warheads. Those plumes diminished as they passed out of the upper atmosphere as addition elements of the 19th fleet, stationed around the edges of the rail gun-equipped formation, began pouring lachars and launching intercepts at the coming swarms that continued to rise up unceasingly from the walkers.

The collision between ordinances was heavy, but nothing was going to stop the rail gun slugs from falling. Some of them took out missiles on their way down, but there were so many coming up that a lot got through the maelstrom of destruction in between the ships and atmosphere that was ballooning out in an ever growing debris cloud.

Anti-missile lachars on the bombarding ships opened fire in the last moments, picking off a few more as the leading missiles hit shields, with each explosion firing multiple weapon systems within the warhead, one of which was designed to suck energy out of the shields above and beyond the kinetic impact. Another element was a shrapnel component that threw out small chunks of material that effectively sandblasted the shields over a wide area rather than a pinpoint attack that the primary blast afforded. The smaller impacts drained the physical component of the Star Force shields, as well as diminishing the energy pools around the center of impact.

Those energy pools, in some shield designs, could be redeployed to adjacent areas to quickly cover weak spots rather than waiting on more energy to come through the emitters. By diminishing this amount in the same missile detonation, each attack blasted a wider divot in the shields and set up a longer-lived weakness for the next missile to exploit.

Star Force shields had gotten progressively stronger over the years, now on par in strength to all others in the Alliance save for the Kvash, so they didn’t go down quickly, but the swarming effect of the missiles didn’t give them time to recharge, so after 15-20 seconds of nonstop pounding the shields on smaller drones went down, opening up the hull armor to the attacks.

It looked like all the missiles were getting through to Aaron, but he knew better. The other ships were knocking down more than half of what was coming up, but there were so many the bombardment ships were visibly being clouded by the detonations. Never the less they continued firing until their weapon systems went offline, including their plasma and maulers, which they were using to take out missiles at point blank range by simply pointing and firing them into the swarm.

The first drone went offline at 43 seconds into the engagement, with many more following. Aaron kept an eye on the walkers, seeing several of the Type-3s and 4s being scrapped, with some of the 2s starting to get hit as their shields failed, but the Type-1s were still untouched and continuing to pump out missiles…far more than it looked like they should have been able to carry, but from intelligence gained from Kip’s ongoing war in Protovic space he knew that the things were literally walking armories.

Then again, if Star Force had a walker that big and slow Aaron would have been concerned about it being taken out from orbit too, and he had to admit the missile plumes were a significant deterrent, though the walkers weren’t going to be able to rearm, so once they ran out they were out, but to get them to that point Star Force was going to have to lose ships.

Aaron hadn’t expected that initially, given the number of ships at his disposal. He’d expected to spam low orbit and knock down all missiles coming his way, but the sheer number of walkers deposited on the surface in overlapping firing ranges shocked him. Still, he could have pooled his ships into one place and took out the walkers with near impunity a handful at a time, but neutralizing them quickly was more important, and he was only going to be able to lure them away from the ground infrastructure once, so he had to spread out his ships and attack them all simultaneously.

As his interceptor-laden warships began to run out of ordinance before the Skarrons did they moved off, making room for others to close in and take their place up next to the bombardment fleet. Meanwhile a host of cutters and corvettes dove into the atmosphere on attack runs, staying clear of the bombardment corridors, but heading down to engage the walkers at close range and making the Skarrons choose who to shoot at.

Altogether Aaron had 8,372 drones in play, that being the full complement of the 19th fleet spread out around planetary orbit. The 22nd and 41st fleets were split up on multiple missions throughout the rest of the star system, with the trailblazer intent on hitting the Skarrons as hard and as fast as possible on all fronts, for he knew the longer he took to engage the enemy the more Star Force personnel they’d kill, and he’d rather lose some unmanned ships than fail to come to his people’s aid fast enough.

A small flashing light updated one of the red flags with a green icon, indicating that the Star Force personnel in the area had been withdrawn around a Type-1 and its escorts within one of the cities. It hadn’t been drawn outside the boundaries, for it hadn’t been a skirmisher. Others had moved out to engage the Star Force mechs miles away, but the Type-1 sat within the city, pumping out missiles at other targets while the fleet designated to take it out sat waiting overhead.

Aaron really didn’t want to bust up their own city, and hoped no one had slipped through the cracks in the evacuation, but now that he had a green from the ground commander he acted on it.

“Admiral, point 14 is clear. Bring the rain.”

Nellis nodded, inputting the command into his control board. “This is going to get messy.”

77 drone warships, ranging from cruisers down to frigates, began launching rail gun slugs with impunity on the Type-1 and four Type-3s ringing it at various points on the Star Force city streets. Fiery streaks came down in straight lines, burning from the friction with the atmosphere, and slammed into city buildings, shattering their structures and blowing out plumes of debris.

The defense shield over the Type-1 activated, with its missiles diverting around the edges of the circle, flying horizontal a short distance before angling up to continue firing on the nearby attack group rather than the one Aaron had just ordered to engage it. That was wise, for spreading out their anti-orbital firepower would allow Star Force to shoot down more missiles before they could make it to target, but it also left this Type-1 vulnerable, essentially giving the Humans a free shot.

Streak after streak came down atop the shield, while many more hit around the edges, blasting apart buildings and every now and then coming down near one of the Type-3s that were creeping their way off from the Type-1 and spreading out the targeting area. With 30 or so rounds hitting per second, the attack wasn’t light, but neither was it heavy, given that not all of them hit the Type-1. It was the consistent and unrelenting nature of the attack that gradually wore down its shields, eventually letting some of the rounds through to hit the armor and buildings that the shield had been protecting.

More infrastructure than enemy was hit, but that was unavoidable. The slugs that hit the thick armor didn’t deflect, nor did they explode, instead they stuck inside it like a pin cushion being hit by lava, for the impacts sites glowed orange as the rounds deformed partially from the sudden deceleration. It wasn’t a sudden as a shield impact, but the torsion literally tore the rounds apart as they dug through the heavy armor.

The long, caterpillar-like chain of seven body segments took damage irregularly, but the missile swarm continued to flow out of each body segment until a round slipped into the launching port on the third segment and eviscerated the inside. Those missiles stopped launching after a large internal explosion marked the airspace above the walker with a mushroom-shaped cloud.

Around it one of the Type-3s got hit by a smaller slug from one of the frigates. Its shields held up, but the impact knocked the walker over, twisting its end around and tangling up the legs, causing it to list to the left and ram into a building, after which it dropped halfway to the ground before the legs supported its weight. Some shield matrixes were standalone, others were hard linked to the emitters, meaning that a physical impact to them would move the emitter and whatever was attached to it, and in this case the Skarrons had the hard links on the Type-3s. That might not have seemed the best tech choice to make seeing as how the impact had knocked it down, but had it been a standalone the point blank deceleration stress probably would have penetrated the shield.

The more technologically advanced a race became the more shield options one had, but in this case none would have saved the Skarrons, for the Star Force fleet had full magazines and jumpships standing by to resupply them if/when they ran out. The rain continued to fall, obliterating both buildings and enemy walkers, and punching a circular wound into the city, visible from orbit after the smoke and dust eventually cleared.

Randy observed the Type-1 go down from miles away, him having been the ground commander clearing this section of the city. Originally that task had been slated for another Archon, but Randy’s last mission had ended early so he’d come over to personally oversee the evacuation.

Standing atop one of the tallest buildings on the other side of the city he watched Aaron’s fleet do its work and take out the walker that would have been extremely hard for their ground troops to take down. The sight of the vicious bombardment reminded him how naval superiority ruled all, and how much infrastructure he was going to have to throw together to defend against something like this.

Bigger shield generators, anti-orbital weapons batteries, etc…but if an enemy had time to plan and assemble what was necessary, there was virtually no surface target that couldn’t be taken down from orbit, and that fact chilled him to the bone even as he felt an enormous amount of relief seeing the Type-1 and its minions go down under the continuous rain.

Others would have been concerned, being so close to the bombardment, but Randy wasn’t, knowing full well the accuracy their weapons had. Four miles away was sufficient, as well as giving him a good view while additional evacuations were taking place beneath him. The Kiritak they’d just pulled out of the other half of the city were being funneled into an underground rail line…one that was still intact…that led to another secure city, via a transition at a mining outpost.

The train cars had been removed and the tunnel opened up for hover traffic, with all manner of vehicles pouring down into the well-guarded opening. Randy had two stars of mechs covering it, with several more around the perimeter hunting down Skarron infantry as they made their way across the city. He’d had to abandon many of their previously held positions in order to clear the bombardment zone, putting distance between them and the Skarron lines, but some of the ambitious bastards had followed them out and now had to be killed, with Randy’s troops on constant alert not to let even a single one of their Hobbits get through, for almost all of the Kiritak waiting for evacuation were unarmed.

Randy watched the Skarron missiles shoot off on a slight angle up into the sky, along with plumes from three Type-2s elsewhere on the horizon but outside the city. The sheer amount of firepower they were throwing up at the orbiting warships was impressive, but the rain continued to fall and Randy watched it all from the rooftop, with each stream of missiles eventually cutting off. The Type-1 continued firing up until each of its seven segments took hits, making Randy wonder how much more ordinance they had inside.

He glanced at the battlemap in his helmet, seeing that one of the Type-3s was still active, so the bombardment continued up until it was killed, then suddenly the sound of the impacts ceased and the smoke was let to drift into transparency, revealing a battered and shattered cityscape more akin to a sandbox than anything structural.

Randy uplinked to the fleet and declared the bombardment site a black flag, indicating that it was done and making sure that no more rain would fall without checking with him first. With that status logged, he ordered his mechs to begin sweeping the city out from their current positions and identify remaining Skarron infantry locations for the Archons to clean up.

Taking one final visual look around the city, both of the intact sections and the damaged zone, Randy spotted a glint of armor moving in one of the streets off to the south. He called in a nearby dropship to pick him up, after which he had it drop him near the Skarron armored infantry, knowing that they were tricky to take down with anything short of a mech…or a ranger.

4

September 12, 2467

Rotunna System (Beta Region)

Ida

Randy sat crosslegged on top of a table with his eyes closed as Aaron walked in the door behind him, seeing the large containment field separating his fellow trailblazer from the Skarron prisoner on the far side. The elephant-sized quadruped was pacing back and forth, only able to walk a few meters in either direction, but its pent up energy was manifesting itself in obvious contrast to Randy’s static pose.

Aaron walked over to the table, hopping up on top of it to sit next to Randy as he stretched out his Ikrid to take a brief assessment of its mind, which to him seemed a chaotic mess. The Skarron didn’t like being imprisoned, and was not one to take the matter lying down.

With the arrival of the second Human the Skarron lashed out with two of its arms and punched the containment field, though Randy didn’t react. Aaron flinched microscopically, but the shield held firm and the Skarron returned to its lumbering pacing.

“Nice to see you too,” Aaron said, knowing that it wouldn’t understand. So far they hadn’t established a common language…any language…with the Skarrons, which was making the prisoner interrogations exceedingly difficult.

“Any luck with the engineers?” Randy asked, his eyes still closed.

“Not really. All I can get are a few visuals and emotions. I’m not very good at reading nonHuman minds. That’s your specialty.”

“Just takes practice, but this bastard is giving me trouble. I could use some help.”

“How so?”

“Processing power…use me for context,” Randy said before Aaron could ask the question.

“Alright,” the Ikrid specialist said, linking to both the Skarron and Randy, though for the latter he had to grab the other man’s wrist. When he did he followed a mental prompt to the vector Randy was using to access the Skarron’s mind and immediately saw that it was, as he had inferred, underpowered.

That was to be expected, for Randy hadn’t spent nearly as much time developing his Ikrid as Aaron had, though his own training had been focused on communication and combat applications with other Humans. Delving into the path that Randy’s mind had already ‘cleared’ through the Skarron’s mental geography, Aaron expanded on it, though the pieces he was accessing he couldn’t understand, so he fed the information to Randy, and once they got in sync with one another the pair’s abilities acted as one.

With Aaron’s greater strength of ‘signal’ and Randy’s familiarities with the quirks of alien minds, the two began making steady progress sorting through the Skarron’s memories and emotions. None of the language would transfer over, however, but there were ways around that, Randy knew, and slowly, bit by bit, the two trailblazers started to glean information on their enemy.

Tracking back from where this one had gone, there was a Skarron-inhabited world being used as a way station. This one had been picked up there, then shipped out over a considerable distance for the assault on Rotunna. There was no way of knowing how many lightyears they’d crossed or jumps they’d made, but the overall impression was that the Skarrons had traveled a considerable distance to get here.

That wasn’t surprising, for if they had worlds near to Beta Region Star Force most likely would have known about it, whether through their own scouting expeditions or from the other races in the region whom they conversed with regularly. Even now some of those races’ ships were coming in to Rotunna, unaware that there had been an attack. Some had left immediately, others had stayed behind to conduct business or gather information that they’d spread on their journeys. It was through this commercial transit that most information flowed, slow as it was, but if the Skarrons had been nearby someone would have noticed, just as they were now, and spreading the word.

There were glimpses of ships and troops, all in large number, but the trailblazers couldn’t isolate anything in particular. This Skarron was infantry, tasked with leading a Hobbit unit on skirmishing missions. It wasn’t the lowest ranking position, but it had zero strategic knowledge of the war aside from what was common knowledge amongst their troops.

That common knowledge was where Aaron and Randy got their most useful information, spread over several hours of interrogation. This particular Skarron had been born far from here, deeper into the core, but still on one of their outlying, mid-level worlds. It was highly urbanized, with grassy plains covering the remainder of the dry planet. The Skarron structures were oblong shaped, with internal corridors more akin to blood vessels than hallways. The architecture had a very biological feel to it, though it was definitely technological.

This Skarron had departed from that world long ago, having been moved around their frontier worlds fighting in a number of small wars, all of which were routs. This attack had been deemed of higher priority, linked in to the major expansion underway against another race that both Aaron and Randy agreed was the Protovic, though the name didn’t translate. What this Skarron knew was that a large power in the region had gutted itself in a war against another, allowing an opening for the Skarron empire to expand into the surrounding region, with the Protovic being the strongest power there, on which they were going to base their annexation force.

It seemed the Skarrons only sent as many troops as they deemed necessary, while having more in reserve should they be needed. That was a red flag for the trailblazers, but it only got worse the more deeply they delved into the alien’s memories. The Protovic regional expansion on the part of the Skarrons was, as far as this one was concerned, a minor affair given the total military efforts of their empire, which was expanding on multiple fronts. This rimward expansion was deemed useful, but the major action was occurring elsewhere.

Fighting against opponents that could at least partially defend themselves had spurred this one to great hopes, both of advancing within the Skarron hierarchy and finally being able to test its skills, something its former opponents had been ill-equipped to manage. At the moment it was cursing its luck and their intelligence, for they hadn’t expected such a large orbital bombardment capability. Normally that was a means of attack closed off to their opponents, and intentionally so, for they knew well the dangers of it. Someone had badly anticipated the Human response, else they would have had more walkers on the ground to counter the threat of the starships.

It seemed the Skarrons also weren’t used to other races using rail guns, though they themselves had them. Plasma was by far the most typical weapon they encountered, with missiles making up the orbital bombardment threat in most cases, along with the occasional kamikaze run.

Aaron and Randy sorted through a lot of the Skarron’s assessments, most of which came in the form of remembered emotions. What had happened on Ida had been a surprise, given the Skarrons’ normal domination over the rimward races. They hadn’t expected to get beaten, bringing with them what they thought had been sufficient to take and hold the planet as reinforcements drifted in through the jumplanes.

The Protovic worlds already taken were considered ‘secure’ despite the ongoing fighting, with Star Force’s ability to take out some of their walkers being a concern. That small danger was what had prompted this attack far ahead of schedule. In fact, the Skarrons probably wouldn’t have come this far out in the near future, having a great deal of territory to digest from their recent conquests.

With that revelation came the Skarron’s memories of what their race typically did with conquered worlds. Those of value they’d keep, those that weren’t they’d ransack and destroy. Ida was somewhere in between, deemed unsuitable for colonization but useful as far as natural resources. The Skarrons were going to keep it as a staging base after exterminating the local ‘infestations’ as they considered the Kiritak and Humans to be.

The same thing was happening over hundreds of star systems between Beta Region and the Skarron’s coreward territory. Some races they ignored, mostly those without space travel, but anything even resembling strength had to be dealt with. The Skarrons, like nearly every other race Star Force had come across, didn’t possess every star system within their borders, but they did make sure none of the unwanted systems could harm them, and regularly patrolled the ‘dead’ regions to make sure that none arose or slipped in uninvited.

That pacification was what was occurring in the area past Beta Region, with the bulk of this expansion army heading for the Protovic. Once they secured that area they’d backfill, hitting other regions around the thin tendril of conquered systems they’d carved out from their core territory, some of which would bring them into conflict with what remained of the Nestafar, but at the moment the Skarrons weren’t concerned with that. The Protovic were the main priority. The others could wait, so long as they didn’t poke the tiger.

Which is what Star Force had done by coming to their allies’ aid. The Skarrons didn’t want to encourage that sort of thinking, intending to intimidate the Humans by metaphorically bloodying their nose…only it hadn’t happened the way they thought it would.

This Skarron assumed the Star Force victory here would draw more armies and fleets out to avenge the loss, though it knew that would not occur in time for it to be rescued. It was scared, because it didn’t know what they were going to do to it, and was wishing for a way it could die fighting, fearing it might be tortured or experimented upon.

That Aaron and Randy could sympathize with, wanting to go down fighting, but neither this Skarron nor any of the other handful of prisoners they’d taken from the three Skarron races were going to be killed. Star Force engineers had been putting together a prison facility to match the larger race’s physiology, meaning that this Skarron and his buddies were going to be their guests indefinitely…and when they finally cracked the language barrier they were going to be having lots of Ikrid chats.

Randy knew that the language issue would probably be solved by obtaining a translation from one of the races who already had contact with the Skarrons, and he’d put out word long ago that Star Force was interested in linguistic databases from any race they’d yet to collect, and would be willing to pay a hefty sum for it. That had brought a considerable amount of data to him, along with spreading the word that Star Force would pay for information, which spurred many entrepreneurs to pass through one of their systems offering up whatever they thought might interest the Humans, hoping to make some quick profit by sharing knowledge they already possessed.

But to date not much had come back to them about the Skarrons, and now Randy was beginning to understand why. It took a long time to get a feel for how this alien thought, but eventually he and Aaron were able to get a scale map of their territory, as this one remembered it. At first they thought they were interpreting it wrong, but with several different memory corroborations they were forced to admit that the Skarrons were a much larger threat than anyone knew.

Their territory was spread out through the local region of the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy. Earth, Star Force territory, and the territory of the entire Alliance and lizards combined only made up a tiny piece of the Orion arm, which was outside the Sagittarius arm and separated by a thinner region of star systems which was often thought of as a gap, though that wasn’t technically true.

This Skarron thought of it that way, noting that there were few useful systems there and that their empire usually skipped across it to their Orion Arm colonies. That was where this one had been born, but most of the Skarron empire was in Sagittarius spanning 10,000 lightyears in width and some 6-8 thousand in reach coming out from the barrier towards the core.

That barrier was where the Skarrons wouldn’t expand. It was a no-go region with a powerful enemy lurking on the other side. The Skarrons wanted to keep a buffer region between it and them, for as vast and powerful as their empire was, they were completely outmatched by those in the core. Fortunately, they’d learned if they kept their distance they’d be left alone, so the Skarrons’ territorial expansions were focused along the length of the Sagittarius Arm and out into Orion.

Both revelations floored Aaron and Randy. Star Force’s territory, reaching from Alpha Region to Beta, was around 200 lightyears in width. The thickness of the galaxy was around 1,000 and Star Force’s mapping expeditions hadn’t even come close to either the upper or lower boundary. The sheer volume of the region the Skarrons apparently held was mild boggling, making the lizards’ territory look inconsequential in comparison.

The trailblazers knew there was no way the Skarrons controlled even 1/100th of the systems in that area, given the density of the Sagittarius arm, which this Skarron’s memories confirmed, but it left them as the big dogs over a very wide expanse…whom Star Force had just attracted the attention of, first by aiding the Protovic, and now by rebuffing their first strike.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The Skarrons didn’t matter, as ridiculous as that sounded, and after several confirmations were made Aaron slid off the table, breaking his Ikrid link with both the Skarron and Randy, and hurried out into the hallway.

Randy followed him out, seeing his friend leaning his head against the wall and taking some long breaths. He, on the other hand, was still numb inside, but Aaron’s obvious emotion was eating away at his constraints. Slowly the dread filled him, along with a wave of helplessness that he immediately clamped down on as he punched the wall in frustration.

“So much for them being dead,” Aaron commented.

“We knew they weren’t,” Randy said, turning and leaning his back against the wall as he looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “It feels like day 1 all over again.”

“When Davis told us?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too,” Aaron agreed. “Now that we’ve got some context to work with, I don’t think I fully understood how screwed we are.”

“If they find us,” Randy countered. “But yeah, I know.”

“What are we going to do?”

“About the Skarrons or the V’kit’no’sat?”

“Both.”

“I don’t know…play for time.”

“We’re fighting on three fronts now,” Aaron reminded him. “And we don’t have the ships to do much more unless we strip the Core Region.”

“I know. The Kiritak resource base was the first piece in the puzzle, but who knows how much that’s been damaged. Even when we rebuild, who knows when and where the Skarrons are going to hit us next.”

“We need a game plan,” Aaron insisted. “Our current playbook just became outdated.”

“How much attention do you think this has earned us?”

“If Dan follows up and boots the Skarrons out of the rest of our systems, I doubt they’ll ignore it. Question is how many fleets they’re willing to devote to this frontier campaign. Long term, I think they’ll come for us. I got the feeling from that one that the Skarrons don’t take well to losing.”

“Who does?”

“They’re coming,” Aaron insisted. “Just a matter of when, where, and how many of them.”

“Still feel like hitting them back?”

“No…yes.”

“Well that helps, though I’m feeling the same way.”

“No, I mean we need time to build. Hitting them back, even if we could find one of their worlds, would just spur a quicker reaction.”

“Agreed.”

“But we do know where they are now, and with the relief fleet we’ve got way more ships here than we’ll need to defend the system…I hope.”

“Happy hunting,” Randy said, a bit envious.

Aaron looked at him. “You’re ok with this?”

“If we’re going to survive we need allies. The Protovic fleet can’t handle their walkers once they get to ground, but we can. We save them they help us, if by only remaining another target for the Skarrons to go after. And it offers us some payback.”

“Tell me how many ships you need, and don’t skimp. I’ll take what’s left and head out tomorrow.”

Randy nodded in full agreement, then pushed off from the wall and headed down the hallway. “Let’s start running the numbers.”

5

September 27, 2467

Prolio System

HTC

When Jason returned to his quarters onboard the seda orbiting the Star Force Calavari planet post workout, he checked the comm grid to see what had come through the relay system over the past 9 hours. There were several message packets from Sol and Epsilon Eridani, as was usual, for they pumped out status updates through the grid multiple times per day, but a few others had come in from other systems, including a priority update on the trailblazer-only boards. The title of which read:

V’KIT’NO’SAT LOCATED

Jason opened it immediately and poured through the update from Randy concerning what information he and Aaron had gotten from a Skarron prisoner.

He took a moment to sit quietly and think upon finishing the reading, something Jason rarely did. Normally his mind was working multiple threads simultaneously, with him flipping back and forth between them like he was changing channels on a vid screen. Right now there was no changing, nor planning, nor reacting. He just soaked it in, letting the truth of the extremely limited intel reawaken old memories with a new light to shine on them.

For over 400 years Star Force had been building towards a defense against an enemy they’d never encountered, nor heard of from any source other than the pyramid…and the dragon, whose knowledge predated Earth’s abandonment.

He’d never doubted they were still out there, nor had any of the others, but they’d been working on old intel, making guesses and essentially fighting against a ghost. But now it was all becoming very real, even with this whisper of their existence. Randy had said the Skarrons didn’t know them by name, but that he knew there was no other possibility. The V’kit’no’sat were there, their empire shrunken, but right where it was supposed to be.

And they were not weak. As scary as the revelations of the Skarrons’ true nature were, the fact that they wouldn’t touch the coreward side of their territory spoke volumes. The V’kit’no’sat were there, unaware of Earth’s existence, and given the amount of territory between here and there they were unlikely to find them anytime soon, but if word reached back to them of their existence he had no doubt they’d show up on their doorstep in the blink of an eye.

Randy’s report had included several questions about what to do in the future, both about the Skarrons and their true enemy. Questions like this were common, being posted to their private board and floated around for months, if not years, with them chiming in for a very lengthy back and forth as the updates were transmitted across the comm grid, but none had been more pointed than this latest one.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, and if we make too much noise the dinos take notice. What the hell do we do now?

Jason wasn’t the first to see the post, for six other trailblazers had already responded, with mixed ideas of how to work the problem, but it was the most recent post from Dakota-041 that was a moment of epiphany for Jason.

When we get hit our natural reaction is to hit back, but in this case we need to assess our goals, the first of which is not to attract the attention of the V’kit’no’sat until we’re ready to face them, which will be far into the future, if ever. We know we can kick the crap out of the Skarrons, lizards, and anyone else given enough time to unlock the tech in the pyramid, so time is on our side with them and we need to maximize it. Even as fast as the lizards are expanding, the key to beating them is our own advancement, and that’s where we need to put our focus.

In order to get the numbers we need to fight any and all of our growing list of enemies, we need to expand to new systems. We can turtle up in the Core Region and make use of less optimal sites or we can continue like we are and look for more prime worlds to colonize. Those worlds cannot bring us closer to the V’kit’no’sat, which means we need to establish a coreward line with the Beta Region colonies and go no further. Maybe even no more scouting expeditions in that direction.

Like the Dragon told us, the Rim is where the V’kit’no’sat cannot go, and that is where I think we have to build our powerbase. Earth is on the very edge of their own maps, and planets like Namek are already off their grid. That’s the direction we should be heading with our expansion, but we need to go further. Much further. Hit the highways and get out of the Orion Arm out to the real Rim, stretch our territory out from a sphere into a tendril, leaving the lizards and the Skarrons behind.

We don’t like to run, and I’m not advocating abandoning any of the systems we currently have, but if we’re going to put down firm roots we need to do it in a place of our own choosing, and that needs to be as far from the V’kit’no’sat as we can get. And if they do come looking for us, they can steal our maps from our allies, or even our own tech. We need a sleeper expansion plan, with a new map formed that won’t, can’t fall into enemy hands. Several actually, if you want to get bold.

I’m not sure when our gravity drive technology will get to the point where we can move that far out, but we need to find the highways before then and stake them out. Like Sara said that first day we were all together when Davis asked us what we could do…our only play is to run, and if we’re going to run we have to run far. Earth may be our home, but it will also be our grave if we keep thinking of it as our center. Forget the Skarrons. Defend Beta Region against them but don’t entertain the notion that we’re going to take them out down the road. To do that brings us too close to the V’kit’no’sat, and the effort might catch their attention by rumor alone.

We are Zen’zat. If word gets around we’re dead. If the V’kit’no’sat start branching out to colonize again we’re dead. The Rim is our only hope against them, so I say we keep that first and foremost in our planning as we fight this and every new enemy that pops up in the coming centuries.

I want to bust up the Skarrons too, and same goes for anyone that hits us, but we have to be smart about this and not slip into StarCraft mode, with us just throwing drone warships at them in a counterpunch mentality. We play to win or we don’t play, and we can’t beat the Skarrons because of their proximity to the V’kit’no’sat, so we have to play another game.

Same can be said for the lizards. Defending ourselves is one thing, but to take them out entirely, as much as we would like to one day, would bring too much attention to us. I suggest we start drawing lines and developing a defensive mentality, protecting our own and establishing a sanctuary region for our allies to flee into. We all know the Alliance will fail, the lizards have their number, but we can survive if we play it smart, and in this case I think less is more. Pick our spots and hold them while the lizards run wild elsewhere. We can’t contain them at our current strength level anyway, so we should stop thinking about it.

I want to kick the crap out of the bad guys as much as you, but we’re not operating out of a position of strength. We like to think that way, but Earth is a liability, and we need to start minimizing that sooner rather than later.

Dakota’s words were a gut check for Randy, but he couldn’t argue the logic. His natural reaction was to go after the Skarrons, but if that revealed their existence to the V’kit’no’sat it would be game over. They’d lived under that threat for so long Jason had started to get numb to it, and that was a mistake…one that Dakota was fortunately pointing out.

As large as Star Force’s territory was, spread over some 200 lightyears, it was a drop in the galactic bucket, which meant that it was possible to hide in plain sight if they didn’t push out any further and just became, as Dakota suggested, a safe haven against the lizards, Skarrons, and others rather than actively pushing back against them.

Paul had already developed that mentality with Namek and establishing a border with the lizards to keep them at bay. He was hitting them across that border to weaken them, but not to take systems. Their original plan had always been to cut into the heart of lizard territory when they were ready and break the back of their enemy, but maybe Dakota was right, and turtling up was the better call. The lizards would continue to expand, and the only way to stop them would be to wipe them out entirely, which was virtually impossible given their ability to ‘grow’ new colonies from a very small technological seed, much as they’d tried to do on Corneria all those years ago.

This was going to require a lot of careful thought, so Jason posted a few thoughts then composed a private message to Paul with a more lengthy exposition. They had a slightly different dialog between them than they shared with the others, and Jason wanted to get on the same page with him before making any suggestions to the rest of them.

Aaron and his fleet of 198 Warship-class jumpships arrived in Protovic territory, not in the Krichjan System, which Kip had already helped their allies retake, but in another of the Skarron-invaded systems, one in which the enemy had completely conquered a Protovic planet, overrunning and eradicating their army even as the naval battles continued above.

The Star Force fleet entered into orbit around Aranpria, one of two inhabited Protovic worlds in the system, and the one that they still possessed. The other was Vivak, now under full Skarron control. Both races had large fleets insystem, but thus far neither had been able to break through to their other’s holdings, creating an active stalemate.

The Protovic had been recalling more of their fleets from Calavari space to halt the advance of the Skarrons across more of their systems, but the Skarrons were coming in force, with reinforcements regularly arriving, making Protovic territory a hotbed of activity. The Skarrons wanted it badly, but the Protovic weren’t pushovers, and with their sizeable fleet keeping the Skarrons from landing on any new planets, the invasion had run into a standstill, which was to the enemy’s advantage as it gave them time to digest their holdings.

Star Force’s ability to slowly overcome their walkers had allowed the retaking of one system, but beyond that there was little hope of reclaiming the others. The Protovic were in damage control mode, unwilling to completely abandon their Calavari wards as they were still engaging Nestafar fleets coming their way.

The warship count around Aranpria was impossible to determine given that Aaron’s fleet was coming in on a single vector, but even with the back side blind to them, the Star Force sensors tagged in excess of 12,000 Protovic warships, along with twice that number of support or civilian vessels in orbit. How many more were elsewhere in the system was unknown, but the Protovic presence was a considerable one, especially given that this was one of their smaller systems.

Aaron’s sensors were picking up Skarron warships, but not in planetary orbit. They were clustered above Vivak in such numbers that they were visible even from interplanetary range.

“Incoming comm,” one of the bridge crew called out.

“Put it through here,” Aaron said from his bridge command chair.

“If you’re here to fight,” the holographic Protovic said as soon as it appeared, “then you’ve come to the right place.”

“That we have,” Aaron said in the trade language. “The Skarrons hit our territory as well, and we’re looking for some additional payback. Figured we’d start with the ones on your doorstep.”

“You repelled them?”

“Eventually, but we lost a lot of people waiting for reinforcements to arrive.”

“As have we. The Skarrons caught us off guard. Until they invaded we knew little about them, but they were well prepared for us. My fleet outmatches theirs, ship for ship, but I don’t have enough numbers to rid Vivak of their presence and secure this world. Are you aware of the situation?”

“Somewhat. We’re here to help however we can. I have warships and ground troops ready to deploy where applicable.”

“How many ships?” the Protovic asked, seeing the Star Force jumpships still dribbling into planetary orbit.

“Nearly 200 jumpships, each carrying a small fleet of their own. Our ships are smaller than the Skarrons, but I’ve got enough with me to hurt them. How many do they have at present?”

“They have a little over 6,000 line ships, but 232 juggernauts. I assume you’re familiar with the design?”

“We are.”

“Those numbers continue to fluctuate, with both incoming and outgoing ships, but they’ve maintained a fleet strong enough to decimate whatever I can throw at them while they secure their surface bases. Frankly, they’re digging in, and the longer they stay there the less likely we’ll be able to retake the planet. They’ve got surface missile batteries that will engage any warship in low orbit, similar to their larger walkers, and they’re building them in great numbers.”

“Does their fleet ever leave low orbit?”

“Only when they’ve tried to hit us here. We both make occasional raids against one another, but the bulk of their fleet stays where it can receive ground battery support.”

“What’s the condition of your people on the surface?”

“Most are dead by now. We have contact with a few holdouts, but every attempt to evacuate them has failed.”

“Missiles?”

“Yes. When clustered together they make for a potent anti-orbital defense.”

“What about something smaller?”

“They have starfighters on standby to intercept anything we send down fast enough to evade the missiles. They can’t catch our Valeries, but our transports are another matter.”

“Have you picked up anyone with the Valeries?”

“A handful, but the Skarrons adjusted their patrols to keep starfighters close at hand so they could intercept us when we try to land. As of now, we’re completely locked out of the surface of Vivak. I know you have formidable ground troops, in so far as your ability to take down their walkers, but I don’t see how you could get them to the surface intact.”

“Have they landed anything on Aranpria?”

“They tried before I got here, but the system defense fleet shot them down. They got a single walker deployed, but it was taken down after some effort. As of now Aranpria is fully Protovic.”

“And your shipyards?”

The commander sighed. “The bulk of those facilities were in orbit of Vivak. They’ve been destroyed, despite our efforts to hold them. As of now we have only three battle stations in high orbit around the planet that remain ours, and what they guard is not shipyards. The Skarrons haven’t seen fit to attack them yet.”

“What are they guarding?”

“Habitats and warehouses. The stations are largely missile boats to accommodate a defensive perimeter around the civilian apparatus. They’ll kill quite a few Skarron ships if they want to take them down, which is why I think they haven’t bothered.”

“Have the civilian stations been evacuated?”

“Yes, early on.”

“Then if you don’t mind, I think we’ll take up position there.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“Cause them trouble.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“I need time to study the situation, and if they’re reluctant to leave low orbit we’ll provide a bit of a distraction. If they come out to us they won’t have surface support. If they go after you here we can hit the planet.”

“How do you plan to get past their surface missiles?”

“We have orbital bombardment capability, recently tested against Skarron walkers.”

“What type of weapons?”

“Kinetic.”

“Any damage you can do to the enemy will be greatly appreciated, but I would prefer if you consulted with me before launching any assault so that we can make the most of any subsidiary opportunities that arise.”

Aaron nodded. “This is still your turf, we’re just here to help where we can.”

“For that you have my, and our, thanks. Is the rumor true that a portion of the Calavari have joined with you?”

“A small part, but yes.”

“Then we find ourselves in similar circumstances. None of our other allies have responded to our requests for support, and most have abandoned the Calavari as well. We’ve begun to question whether or not the Alliance continues to exist.”

“In this region, perhaps not, but in other areas of Calavari territory the Kvash and others are shielding some Calavari worlds, and I know there’s an Alliance fleet at their capitol, last I heard.”

“Our connection to the relay network has been severed, so news is slow in coming to us.”

“Several relays to the far side have been cut, but we still have a least one connection all the way through to the Bsidd. Though for how long that will last I do not know. I’ll pass along all Alliance updates my ships have onboard. And if you’ll return the gesture, I’d like to see what the Skarrons are up to across your territory.”

“Agreed. I wish I could answer that question myself, but their overall strategy is perplexing. They are continually sending small reinforcements to bolster their fleets and resupply their armies. We have not, to my knowledge, discovered their point of origin, but given the distances involved, large blocks of reinforcements would seem to make more logistical sense. Neither I nor our analysts can ascertain a feel for the enemy, making their future actions unpredictable.”

Aaron blew out a slow breath. “I may be able to help a bit in that regard, but you’re not going to like what I have to tell you.”

6

November 3, 2467

Zanor System (Protovic territory)

Erentia

Kip ran through the undercity, crossing from section to section unsure of where he was going aside from a general heading on his battlemap. He was the first Star Force member into this region, thus his helmet sensors were making the battlemap as he went and transmitting it out to any close enough to receive, though how much it would transmit down in the undercity was anyone’s guess.

His green armor clashed with the clean silver and neon yellows that predominated the subsurface architecture, but then again the dull grey armor worn by the Protovic soldiers following him was equally misplaced, but not so much as the Skarron infantry that had invaded the city.

Kip locked onto the mind of one ahead in an offshoot of the hallway and signaled to his right with an outstretched arm as he approached, throwing a Fornax blast its way and crumpling the Hobbit to the ground. He passed it by, but the Protovic following him turned the corner and took it out with a handful of plasma blasts, then ran to catch up to the Archon.

Kip continued forward, getting directional advice from Ren’san’do, who followed a couple of steps behind him. The Protovic had been his liaison ever since Eshwan, and had traveled with the Human across the planet and now to this Protovic system, having become a trusted friend, who in this case was keeping the trailblazer from getting lost in the claustrophobic, twisting undercity.

Up on the surface a few kilometers from this location Star Force mechs and Protovic tanks were taking down the remaining ‘smaller’ Skarron walkers after having taken down a Type-2 inside the city. Kip had been in a voltron for that, but he trusted his fellow Archons to handle the rest of the mechs while he and a lot of the higher ranking Clan leaders had taken to the city streets in conjunction with Protovic units.

It was a tactic they’d developed during the latter days on Eshwan, coupling the psionic capability of a single Archon with the tactical unit savvy of the Protovic’s special forces. While their regular infantry was spread out across both the surface and undercity engaging/defending against the Skarrons, the Archon lead teams were punching holes in the strongest infantry defenses, with Kip’s rifle spending most of its time on his back rack. He was acting as spotter and disabler, letting the Protovic lay down the firepower…a combination that worked well, if you had an Archon powerful enough to sustain the effort.

There were all of four rangers in Protovic territory, meaning that acolytes had to be relied upon to lead most of these special teams. Already the Protovic had noticed a clear difference between the two, with the most elite alien commandos being assigned to Kip, not only to assist him with tearing through the Skarrons, but to protect their allied commander, who unlike the Protovic commanders preferred to be on the front lines rather than leading from midfield.

Ren’san’do had been adamant about keeping Kip safe, which was why he’d suggested going through the undercity where the enemy couldn’t use its walkers against him. The Protovic didn’t doubt the Human’s skills, which he grew more envious of by the month, but rather he knew that for the sake of his own people he needed to keep Kip alive because of his skills, which were irreplaceable.

That and he was also a friend, which was why Ren’san’do had insisted that he travel with Kip’s team, even though his own combat skills were nowhere near special forces level. He was acting as Kip’s guide and comm officer for when he needed to converse with the Protovic army, a relationship that they’d long ago polished to an efficient combination.

The Protovic stood a few inches taller than Kip, but otherwise they appeared identical…in their armor anyway. Outside it they appeared very different, with Ren’san’do being the equivalent of a walking glow lamp. His eyes especially set them apart, with the Protovic’s neon purple orbs giving him a Thrawn-esk aura.

But inside their armor he and the others appeared Human, though on average they were faster and stronger…but not as agile. They were strong and thin, but didn’t reverse direction very well, making them good in straight line attacks but ill-equipped for mixing it up at close range. Give them an opening and they’d run right over you, for their military philosophy had been predicated on maximizing their strengths, which meant that if Kip could disrupt the enemy infantry, even slightly, the Protovic behind him would finish the job in one lightning fast strike…and that kept the unit almost always on the run.

Kip didn’t have to slow down much for them to keep pace, though he did have to make sure Ren’san’do had enough breath to be able to give him directions. Their target destination was a primary power station for the city that the Skarrons had taken, but not destroyed, which was odd, for they usually ransacked everything. They had restricted the power flow to certain areas, all of which they already controlled. Kip’s unit had transitioned out of the dark areas and into the lit regions of the undercity a while ago, which coincided with them running into their defensive lines.

Or expansion teams. It was hard to tell the difference with the Skarrons, for they always seemed to be on the move. The up side of that was they weren’t in the habit of establishing strongpoints…the downside was they always seemed to have units nearby to reposition and flood troops against incursions.

And Kip was the psionic arrowhead that was going to get the Protovic through that mess of enemy infantry.

“Down left, then sharp right,” Ren’san’do said through his comm link with Kip, then he followed the Archon down a steep ramp and around a corner into a curvy hall, seeing a hand signal from the Human that caused him and the other Protovic to slow up. There was a thick enemy group ahead and Kip was going to use his area of effect attack, meaning they had to let him get far enough ahead or their presence would limit his range.

Kip disappeared around a curve, then Ren’san’do let the other Protovic ease in front of him just before they ran into a mess of the Skarrons’ smaller infantry…all lying on the floor, along with their weapons, which most of them had dropped as Kip ran through them and across the reception area to a set of wide doors that he was disappearing into.

The Protovic special forces made short work of the 30+ Hobbits, with Ren’san’do never having to stop running, though he did have to hop over a couple of bodies on the way to the doors that Kip had gone out. When he got to them his comm activated, causing him to slow his pace again.

“Large infestation with Skarrons. Move to flank on entry,” the Human said.

Ren’san’do steadied himself, grasping his plasma rifle tightly as he fell to the back of the formation that included 26 Protovic. On the other side of the doors lay a ‘parking garage’ for the undercity streets, meaning a wide open area large enough for the enemy’s prime infantry. He didn’t know what he was going to see on the other side, but once he moved through the short hallway connection and the armored suits in front of him split to either side, his eye line was opened to a mass of Skarrons below them several meters and spread out across one of their nesting sites.

Blue plasma orbs flashed into the middle from the edges as larger white orbs in lesser number shot back out, with a single line of blue coming from Kip’s Star Force plasma rifle…which was nearly dead center in the middle of the Skarron formation. All around him Skarrons were down on the ground, twitching and kicking and temporarily out of the fight, with the Human shooting them while dancing around avoiding most of the shots of the others outside his psionic range.

Ren’san’do fired his own rifle over a railing as he dropped to a knee for cover behind it, shooting at one of the innermost Skarrons focusing on Kip as the other Protovic worked from the outside in. His friend was drawing a lot of attention his way, but Ren’san’do worried if it was too much, for several direct hits were absorbed by his shields. They were a bit more resilient than the ones that the Protovic suits had, but the Skarrons’ rifles were much larger as well, with each hit landing the equivalent of a small cannon’s worth of plasma on the target.

He needn’t have worried, for the Human used the bodies of the Skarrons he’d just killed as cover, giving his shields time to recharge in between hits, all the while the Protovic were massing fire on the unarmored and unshielded Skarrons. After several intense minutes the fighting was over, with Ren’san’do following Kip across to the far side and directing him to the next junction as they did a quick injury count.

They hadn’t lost anyone, but two Protovic had lost shields and gotten toasted inside their armor, which now had shiny, smooth patches where it had melted upon contact with the plasma. One of them was still fit to fight, but the other one was sent back the way they’d come, unable to keep up with the group due to painful burns beneath the affected material.

Kip didn’t wait around more than a few seconds, letting the Protovic worry about organizing themselves. Ren’san’do followed him out with the other 24 Protovic dropping into a 2x2 formation and following the Archon forward as he lead them further into enemy held territory.

“How’s it look?” Kip asked Ren’san’do several hours later once they were inside the power station’s control room.

“They’re siphoning off power, to where I can’t say, but the breach is occurring here,” he said, pointing to a diagnostics map of the facility that ran both above and below ground like a giant carrot growing in the dirt.

“Do we have any intel on what’s over there?”

“None that I’ve been given, but whatever they’re drawing power for is going lights out in a few seconds.”

“Good.”

Ren’san’do hesitated a moment, looking down at the control board, then turned to look at Kip on his left. “Movement on the perimeter.”

“On it,” Kip said as he ran off to join the rest of the Protovic in the defense of the control room.

Ren’san’do let him go and focused on the power controls, selecting certain regions of the surrounding city to black out in order to deny the Skarrons the power they’d been stealing. While there was a redundancy in the systems, the drain was occurring on a main conduit from this station, and even if power flowed in from other generators to the blackout areas, this power tap should be eliminated…in theory. Ren’san’do wasn’t a Protovic tech, so his understanding of their infrastructure was limited to what the control board was telling him.

Working the problem as well as he could, he cut off power to the Skarron tap along with the chunks of the city also being fed by that line, then observed the results…seeing that several small areas didn’t receive transfer power.

Those areas would have emergency backups for minimal lighting and life support, if they weren’t exhausted already, by he had no way of knowing how many people were still in those areas. No Protovic, he hoped, but there was no way of knowing. If the power was completely gone from those areas, which was a very low possibility, then they’d be blacked out with the air going stale, though with the open passageways it shouldn’t lose all oxygen.

To the Protovic the dark wasn’t a problem, given that they produced their own light, but it would make them obvious targets to the Skarrons, creating major problems if they didn’t have armor or an envirosuit on. He hated not knowing who he was affecting, but disrupting the enemy seemed to be the smart play, so he left the power off to deny the Skarrons their tap…for whatever it was they were doing over there.

The next day Kip returned to orbit and boarded the Tassadar for some badly needed sleep and workouts, but when he got out of the atmosphere and got around to taking a look at what was in orbit he saw new contacts on the battlemap…Star Force contacts, in the form of a fleet of jumpships. He contacted Captain Shannist on his way up and got a quick rundown on the reinforcements Aaron had sent his way, along with the notification that he’d opened up a second Star Force front in Protovic territory against the Skarrons…along with the news that they’d invaded Star Force territory and had been repulsed, but at a cost.

That shocked Kip, who had no way of being notified other than by courier ship now that he was off the Star Force comm grid. He asked a few basic questions from the dropship, then waited until he got onboard so he could run through the data personally. He headed straight to his quarters, having the Captain shunt it there, intent on grabbing a badly needed shower and hitting the sack after doing some reading.

The jumpships weren’t warships, but troop carriers. Aaron’s message said that their fight against the Skarrons involved naval engagement and that even if they managed to whittle down the Skarron fleet to the point the Protovic could take them out, there was estimated to be very few Protovic remaining alive on the Skarron-captured world of Vivak. It was full of Skarron walkers and anti-orbital batteries, most of which Aaron assumed they’d be assaulting with orbital bombardment, so he’d sent Kip half of his ground troops so they could be put to better use than sitting on their ships training in simulators.

The number of ships Aaron had sent him nearly matched the force he already had on planet, underscoring just how serious the Skarron invasion had been, for the ships had come directly from Rotunna, excluding those left behind to secure the system. They would be a huge boon to the efforts here and he intended to put them to use immediately, which he sent a text note to Shannist via the comm terminal in his quarters regarding the initial deployment orders. Kip would get to the specifics in the morning after he’d crashed, ending his 8 day run of catnaps between ground ops.

Tired as he was, and with his recent warm shower pushing him even further into sleepiness, his adrenaline spike him back into full combat readiness when he read the intel report passed along from Aaron and Randy regarding the Skarrons’ knowledge of the V’kit’no’sat’s current location…not to mention the little side detail about the true size of the Skarron empire.

“Damn it,” he whisper swore, reading through the rest of the sketchy intel from the Skarron prisoner and then the two trailblazers’ input on the strategic situation. Kip had been fighting the Skarrons more than any other Human, and he had a good sense of their strength, which was superior to Star Force in a number of areas, namely the size of their walkers and warships…and everything else.

But Star Force had a weapons tech advantage, and with care could beat the Skarrons 2 to 1, maybe 3 to 1 on the naval front without any fancy strategy, just basic hit and withdrawal to range forcing a mostly long ranged engagement that would put Skarron lachars, which were stronger than the Star Force version, by far, against Star Force lachars and cleansing beams. The cleansing beams were the superior weapon, hands down, and that advantage alone gave them naval superiority.

Plasma versus maulers was also a Star Force advantage, but Skarron naval missiles beat anything Star Force current fielded…though their interceptors could shoot down the missiles with great efficiency so long as they had enough of them. Gravity drives were also a Star Force advantage, for their binary nature, though intel from the Protovic had suggested the Skarrons’ movement speed between star systems was superior to anything they possessed, and based on the numbers Kip agreed it was better than theirs as well, but insystem that largely didn’t matter, for all jumps were microjumps, and being able to jump by pulling against a gravity well in addition to pushing was a major tactical advantage.

The Protovic had some advantages over the Skarrons as well, primary in infantry engagements, but also in naval, though their superiority edge wasn’t as great. They had numbers, in terms of warships, that Star Force couldn’t hope to match, which meant the Skarrons were having to engage them with forces far larger than they’d hit Rotunna with, but now that he had a glimmer of the size of the Skarron empire he knew that eventually they’d send enough ships to overwhelm the Protovic…unless this theatre didn’t rate high enough on their priority chain, and the fact that the Skarrons were pushing hard to expand suggested otherwise.

Meaning that this theatre was the shark bump…the test to see how much resistance the Protovic could put up. So far they were holding the Skarrons at bay, though they’d already taken several systems. Eventually the Skarrons would bring in more ships, if they had them nearby, and according to Aaron and Randy’s report they were using the galactic ‘highways’ to travel at great speed throughout their own territory, including a jumpline that brought them out towards Beta Region, though they didn’t know the exact location.

Those ‘highways’ were black hole to black hole jumps over great distance. If you could find such a route that was clear of debris you could achieve insane speeds, even with the most basic of gravity drives, given that their pushing power was based off both the strength of their engines and the strength of the gravity well…with black holes massing far more than any star.

There were no available black hole lines within Star Force territory…not that they knew of, though it was possible that there could be one passing through from one side to the other, for such jumps usually covered hundreds if not thousands of lightyears. If the Skarrons had access to several of these, it would allow them to pull troops and ships from across a wide area, and that meant that if they wanted to hammer the Protovic, or Star Force, they could summon them up far quicker than standard star to star jumps would allow.

That meant they were both in trouble, and Kip’s crashing session in his bunk was delayed for several hours as he worked through the strategic situation, unable to put his mind to rest before he weighed their options…which resulted in him sending out a courier ship with a message for the rest of the trailblazers, which was then deposited into the nearest Star Force relay the ship came across.

7

November 18, 2467

Lonigan System (Epsilon Region)

Outreach

Yori-007 eyes widened as he heard the pithy news update. “Where are they?” he demanded icily.

“Inner edge of the Sagittarius Arm,” Steve-004 told him across the holo comm.

“Gives us some breathing room,” Yori told his old team leader. “And explains why they haven’t discovered us to date.”

“There’s more,” Steve prefaced. “Get your butt groundside and I’ll fill you in.”

“On my way,” Yori said, cutting the comm and standing up from his bridge command chair. “Captain, find us a nice parking spot. I’m heading to ground. Suck some fuel and supplies and I’ll get back to you on the crew rotations.”

“Who are the Ve’kat’no’set?” Emberle asked.

Yori stopped a few steps from his chair and glanced back over his shoulder at her. “Scary monsters that hopefully you will never need to worry about. Archon stuff.”

The Captain nodded, understanding what he meant by that last bit. There were a lot of things the Archons knew that others weren’t privileged to, and they had a habit of talking freely in front of the bridge crew, which meant some things she’d just have to squelch her curiosity on. That said, she never knew what was restricted information or not, and Yori had never minded her asking.

The Archon waved lazily as he turned and walked off the bridge at a good clip, heading straight for his warship’s hangar bay. He left the Goldeneye and his 5 jumpship mapping fleet in Emberle’s care and flew down to the planet’s surface via dropship, passing through the thick cloud layer to arrive in the clear lower atmosphere where Steve was building up Star Force’s stronghold in Epsilon Region, and from the look of things he’d been quite busy over the past 4 years that Yori had been off charting new jumplanes past where the V’kit’no’sat maps ended.

The small city Yori had left was now spread out to the horizon in all directions around the spaceport, though the truly massive buildings were still under construction, giving Outreach’s capitol a significant footprint, if not yet a high density. It was odd that Steve was taking that approach, but they were both 0s and he knew him well, which was why he pushed aside his curiosity until he saw the full blueprints, for his fellow trailblazer was always thinking long term when he built, which was why he’d taken on this mission.

While Yori had been scouting out new systems, Steve had been taking a chunk of supplies from the Kiritak colonies and using them to construct Outreach, the first of 6 planets in this system slated to be colonized. They were located some 98 lightyears from Sol, putting them well out in the middle of nowhere, which Steve was supposed to turn into ‘somewhere.’ Outreach was meant to be the focal point for opening up the entire region, with the other 5 planets insystem reserved for Clan expansion once Steve spearheaded the effort with a functioning mainline colony and defense fleet.

Epsilon Region had been well scouted out previously, with a lot of less than friendly races present, but none of the size or strength to worry about…at least not on a scale comparable to the lizards or the founding members of the Alliance. The strongest in the area were the Zenarks, who mostly kept to themselves, though their approximated size was half that of the original Calavari.

Their technology was limited, however, and they existed primary as an economic entity, with trade relations established with over a hundred local races. Star Force had established contact with them in that regard, making themselves known, but as of yet they hadn’t conducted any business with them. A conglomeration of smaller races in association with the Zenarks formed a unified defensive force that kept a lot of the nasty races at bay, stabilizing the lower portion of Epsilon, for the rest of it was highly lawless and if one wasn’t careful would end up a victim to the predatory races and pirate coalitions that roamed the area.

That was why Star Force needed a strongpoint to begin colonization, in addition to just common sense, and Steve had half the 8th fleet in the system guarding it while the local shipyards got established and began churning out drones that could be controlled from the surface. Normally those construction slips would be orbital, but as far as drone construction was concerned Steve had taken the unusual approach of having them constructed in surface yards that fell under the protection of the city defense shield…assuming he’d gotten one set up by now.

Yori studied the infrastructure from above as the dropship descended, curious as to what had been added since he was last here, but most of his thoughts lent themselves towards the V’kit’no’sat. For centuries the Archons had considered how to fight their ancient nemesis, and he was glad that they’d finally located them rather than the reverse being true, which would have quickly ended in their defeat and eradication.

When the trailblazer landed in the spaceport he took a mongoose through the city streets over to the command building, then hit an elevator up to Steve’s hideaway in the single ‘tall’ building on the planet, rising more than 2 miles up. The Outreach command center wasn’t at the top, but midway up in the thick of the narrowing tower that was capped with its own cleansing beam defense turret. In fact, the entire building had no windows, but was coated with armor plating, making it more of a military structure than a habitat.

Yori found Steve leaning over a planning table with a host of small holographic icons moving about an inch or two above the surface, and like normal, he was the only one in the private chamber, preferring to think things through in isolation rather than having a tech or administrative team around him.

“What’s the other stuff?” Yori asked, closing the door as he came in.

Steve stood up from his slight bend and turned around, sitting on the table and ‘squashing’ several holographic icons.

“Did you check the boards on the way down?”

Yori shook his head. “Not even the news updates.”

“Skarrons invaded the Protovic, Kip went in to help them with their oversized walkers. Skarrons didn’t like this and invaded four of our systems. Rotunna partially held up until reinforcements arrived, but Iverie, Ghanis, and Brenns all fell, with nearly total casualties. We’ve taken them back, but some 9 billion Kiritak are dead, and we lost 4822 Archons…not to mention Regulars and others.”

“Shit,” Yori said, his jaw dropping.

“That’s not the worst of it. Aaron took three fleets from Sol and went directly to Rotunna to back up Randy, while Dan gathered the Clans and everyone else he could and went to Iona, then branched out and retook the other three systems. Randy and Aaron took a few Skarron prisoners and did the replicator ‘hand in the head’ deal and found out their territory is massive…like huge. They occupy a good chunk of the Sagittarius arm and are expanding spinward, anti-spinward, and rimward into the Orion Arm. Guess which way they’re not going?”

“That’s how you know where they are?”

“Yeah. The Skarrons didn’t mention them by name, and we haven’t worked out a translation program yet anyway, but there’s a force so powerful they won’t mess with it and keep a buffer zone between them and it at all times. Randy said it was the V’kit’no’sat and I’m not inclined to argue.”

“What’s the talk going around?”

“Skarrons are a big problem, but if we go super saiyan on them and kick their ass over the next millennia…”

“…it could draw the wrong attention.”

“Bingo. Plus we’ve still got the ‘small’ lizard problem rimward. Dakota has suggested that we start planning to run out to the rim and ignore the Skarrons beyond a battle line. The V’kit’no’sat are the real threat, and beating the Skarrons will mean nothing if we wake up the dinos in the process. What’s your take on that?”

Yori tapped his teeth with his fingernail as he thought. “Have you downloaded the map files yet?”

“I haven’t checked,” Steve said, sliding off the table and turning around to access the holographic controls. He dove into the city/planet’s database and checked the logs, seeing that they had in fact gotten a data transfer from Yori’s fleet. From there he went to the master galactic map, popping it up in holo between the two trailblazers as they bracketed the work table.

“I got pretty far out this time, thanks to a Leggal map I picked up enroute. There’s a black hole 329 lightyears out that links to three others, two of which go low on the galactic plane. The other slides high, but is more or less a straight shot out past lizard space. I wasn’t sure how accurate we could make the jump, but the probe we sent returned so I risked it. Smoothest jump I’ve ever made. The gravitational base width of the well considerably extends our line control. We only had to make a tweak enroute, and the destination gravity well was three times stronger.”

“How far?”

Yori highlighted the lengthy jumpline on the map, a straight shot through territory that otherwise would have meant dozens, if not over 100 ‘normal’ jumps. “946 lightyears.”

“Well that’s definitely a record.”

“For us. We passed upwards of 10000 ships on the way out, and they weren’t holding to the right side of the road rule either.”

“Any close calls?”

“A few until we drifted well off the jumpline. We did get passed by several, and at considerable speed.”

“Busy jumpline then,” Steve said, looking at the map and the region of new system data at the far end of the black hole link. “How long did it take?”

“Point to point was a little over 2 and a half months.”

“Faster than our relay network.”

“There’s room to expand out there, but if we’re really considering heading to the rim we’ll have to go a lot farther I’d imagine.”

“There’s been some debate surrounding that point, and it seems like if we are going to do this we’re going to do it in secret. No point in running from the V’kit’no’sat if they can steal a city and download our maps and find out where we’ve run to.”

“Good point,” Yori agreed.

“So some have suggested a handoff system with jumpships dedicated to a specific region so none will have the full map available. Another idea is keeping the rim maps exclusive to the ship Captains on a datachip so they won’t fall into enemy hands.”

“With a dead man self-destruct, I assume?”

“Yes. We’d also have to keep our allies in the dark.”

“Allies or allies?”

“We’d take Kiritak with us, for sure, but the others wouldn’t know where they went, and I don’t see a reason to take the Calavari, though in the extreme long term it might be useful.”

“So we’re doing this or just throwing ideas around?”

“Ideas for the moment, but if you know another option for staying clear of the V’kit’no’sat feel free to chime in…otherwise, we could use your thoughts on how difficult it will be to set up a chain of systems out to at least the next galactic arm.”

“Very difficult, but possible if we have enough time and no one with a bad attitude notices us. How’s our anti-bad guy technology progressing?”

“Still waiting on the Erruvium, but they’re getting closer,” Steve said, referencing the element that they would have to synthesize in order to produce a slew of next level technology, and developing the equipment to synthesize the ‘Arc’ elements was a milestone achievement that Star Force hadn’t yet gotten to yet, though the techs said they were getting close.

The elements in question contained corovon, but they weren’t C-type elements. They had the same number of protons as standard and C-type, but their subatomic configuration was altered away from a clump of particles into a ring or sphere with an empty inner section. This alignment allowed the somewhat unstable elements to access a slew of properties that produced exotic energies and accessed smaller constituent particles down into tier 3 and tier 4…with protons, neutrons, and corovon occupying tier 1, which contained the largest subatomic particles.

Yori shook his head. “Without the badass tech we’re not going to be able to get anywhere near the rim and keep our territory linked. Best we could do is a splinter colony…which I do not like.”

“I agree, we need to stay in touch. Don’t want us spending millennia in between visits,” Steve half joked.

“I can see us securing territory out to the black hole link, or maybe another if we can locate one, but that barely scratches the surface with the speeds the V’kit’no’sat can manage. This might be a good idea in the long run, but right now it just isn’t feasible.”

“A few others echoed your sentiments, but most want to get started sooner rather than later, even if it is just baby steps.”

“And you?”

“Not sure yet. Either way we’re going to have to build up in Epsilon and that’s where my focus is right now.”

“Only to abandon it later?”

“That’s not clear yet. I see no reason to abandon systems because the V’kit’no’sat might find them, but I’d really hate not to have a backdoor to run out of if and when they show up.”

“Then you might want to start your own secure network of bases off the regular map out here. Sometimes hiding in plain sight is the best bet.”

Steve stared at him. “Now that’s something that hasn’t come up yet, and I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. Canderous especially.”

That suggestion spurred another thought in Yori, which was how trailblazer to trailblazer conversations usually went down.

“Public map system, with secure networks overlapped, maybe even in the same systems…outer edge sedas?”

“Damn, why didn’t one of us come up with this sooner,” Steve said, lightly thumping a fist on the table and passing it through several thousand holographic stars. “It’d keep the V’kit’no’sat, Skarrons, and anyone else in the dark as to where we had our infrastructure. We’re pretty sure they knew where our Kiritak colonies were because that’s public knowledge. They haven’t done any scouting as far as we know.”

“Pretty hard to rule that out.”

“They hit us across a wide region, so they knew where to go. And given the short timespan between our involvement with the Protovic and when they hit us…”

“Point taken.”

“The mainline fleets would be more useful if they didn’t have to guard all our systems, and up until now we’ve been working off an upfront policy.”

“Keep it secret, keep it safe?” Yori asked, quoting ‘The Lord of the Rings.’

“Exactly. Why have we been so stupid?”

“Because it’s not easy to hide a planet. If some cargo ship comes through and sees you’re there word will spread.”

“So we go Rebel Alliance and build underground or in out of the way locations?”

“Canderous can easy enough, but we’ll have to choose worlds that are less than appealing.”

“We have before, we’ve just gotten picky as of late.”

“It’s those choice worlds that are of the most value,” Yori reminded him. “And if we have any large populations, how are we going to hide the jumpship traffic?”

“Back to self-sufficient rules?”

“When we need to build as fast as possible, not so sure that’s a good idea.”

Steve nodded. “You’re right. Still, there are a lot of permutations to go through. Let’s write this up and get it out on the grid and see what the others come up with. You sticking around for a while or heading back out?”

“I was going to head back out, but given the current circumstances I want to stay in contact for a while. Stars can be mapped later, and I need to change out crews anyway. They need some planetside gravity.”

“Good,” Steve said, opening up a writing prompt on the table. “I could use someone to spar with that can keep up with me, more or less,” he said, throwing the trailblazer a sarcastic grin.

Yori returned it. “Challenge accepted.”

8

December 25, 2467

Hammer System (Core Region)

Ironhold

Cora-005 aimed the arms of her Morpheus-class mech using the harness control system in the cockpit and triggered two low powered laser shots that hit the moving target sled that stood twice as high as her mech. The sled hovered over the ground with only a few meters of clearance and returned fire with its own lasers, shooting up the chest of the morpheus and causing her to twist to the right and bring the vulnerable area out of the firing line.

That didn’t keep her from getting another shot off as she accelerated up into a run that took her parallel to the sled and around the narrower back end, but several of the sled’s turrets were continuing to track and rack up simulated damage on her prototype mech.

“Hurry it up, Kenny,” she said to the other Archon behind her in the oversized cockpit. “I can’t keep us in play for long.”

Even as she said the words she hit and knocked out one of the turrets on the sled…which drew even more attention towards them as the five mechs in her star assaulted the moving target.

“Working on it,” Kenny-927 said as he sat in a stationary control chair about two feet behind her harnessed, moving body. It was a tight arrangement, but still gave the pilot full range of motion without fearing hitting the coordinator in his/her seat. Using an unusual control board the secondary Archon was remotely controlling the other four mechs in the star, two of which were brawlers, along with a starfire and boxer.

The other mechs were also prototypes, designed without cockpits and working like the drone warships the navy used. The increased internal space allowed more armor and weapons to be carried, as well as opening up new tactics given that there wasn’t a living pilot inside to jeopardize. The downside was, in this arrangement, that you only had to take out one mech, the morpheus, in order to disable the other four…more or less.

They could be programmed for autonomous battle, say by linking them to a target like the sled and telling them to attack until it was no longer returning fire or showing movement. If there were other units in the area they could take over control of them, but in this exercise there was only the one control mech, meaning that Cora had to keep them moving and intact while Kenny coordinated the rest of the star.

“Work faster,” the trailblazer said, reversing direction and ducking behind one of the brawlers, though the top of the mech still showed above the standard height mauler. Because the morpheus was more valuable, as well as carrying two personnel, it had been built oversized with a heap of armor…but not enough to make it a walking turret. That was the goal that Cora had set when Clan Scorpion had begun developing the mech, and now she had the responsibility of making it work on the practice field, else they’d have to do a third redesign, which was something she was hoping to avoid.

The sled was programmed to attack the highest threat profiles, so it wasn’t going strictly for the Morpheus, but in order to beat it the five mechs had to rotate their attacks and recharge their shields, meaning that Cora had to bring the morpheus in and mix it up with the sled rather than standing back and coordinating…something she wasn’t going to do anyway. The purpose of the morpheus was to fight while carrying the coordinator rather than being the coordinator, which ran a fine line between combatant and VIP.

Cora let the brawler in front of her block several of the shots coming in at her flank and torso while raising the mech’s arms up high enough to shoot over the shorter mech. Her weapons were simulated plasma streamers set to pulse for .7 seconds with each trigger pull while suffering through a 2.4 second recharge period, with the optional setting of switching to orb fire and plastering targets with an unlimited stream of plasma shots.

The brawler was tagged with maulers, which gave it its name, for all of its weaponry was short range and its armor and shields matched. It was designed to take a pounding and dish it back out in close combat, which was why Cora didn’t mind taking cover behind it. Thought it was a smaller mech, its shields were slightly stronger than the morpheus’s, not to mention it carried thicker armor plates, given that it didn’t have a cockpit to accommodate in the design.

“Got a breach forming, port side,” Kenny said, with Cora running around to the other side of the sled as it continued to glide across the grassy plain that was one of the practice fields that Clan Scorpion had on the planet. Ironhold had a varied climate, much like Earth’s, and it gave her Clan a wide variety of landscapes to practice its specialty mechwarrior skills on, along with developing new tactics and technology, to which Cora devoted most of her time in addition to training younger mechwarriors from the mainline units, Clans, Canderous, Calavari, and even a few Australians.

Ironhold was the place to go to learn the art of mech combat, and Cora reigned supreme as the Queen of Mechs, despite some fierce competition in that department as far as individual skill levels went, but no one had such a comprehensive agenda as she and her Clan did, making her stand out above and beyond the others with more than 40 prototypes in the works at present, including an aquatics variant that she’d been trying to work out for more than a century, but had never quite got it to her liking.

The morpheus was progressing better, and she knew the twin cockpit idea would work, but it wasn’t going to be a one size fits all tactic, due to the fact that it could be directly targeted. When and where to make use of it was going to be a judgement call, but like all things it was best to have options to work with, and this was one that Star Force needed badly, especially when engaging the Skarron walkers, who to date had made a mess of any mech units that dared to venture too close.

Heavy walkers were of less interest to her, and she allowed other mech specialist trailblazers to tinker with them. She was interested in the bipeds only, and was really liking the drone mechs for the compact power they carried. They were like disposable chess pieces that she could position around her, or hide behind, without having to worry about their ultimate fate. Something she’d never do with a living pilot.

Mark was doing the same thing with the aerial fighters, all the way out on Daka, but according to her information they were going to have to evacuate that planet soon, for the lizards were on the way and there was no way they were going to be able to hold out. Where Mark would end up she didn’t know, but most of the design aspects of the aerial division, if not industrial production, had been coming from Daka and the work Mark had been doing there, along with many alien influences. Losing that communal pilot training facility was a big hit to the Alliance, and it was just such an environment that Cora was trying to develop on Ironhold for the mech division, save her facilities were Star Force only.

“I see it,” Cora said, laying two plasma streamers onto the position her HUD tagged as armor damage on the sled. The starfire came around from the opposite direction and pointed four continuous lachars at the same spot and held their beams on target as if they were never ending Star Trek phasers. Both mechs received a lot of return fire, with the morpheus’s shields going down again, but Cora didn’t back off, instead she came in closer, walking two of the sled’s cannons out of alignment so they couldn’t track her mech.

The sled then pivoted, swinging itself around 180 degrees and Cora had to dance the morpheus back so as not to get knocked over. She dove the mech forward so an impact wouldn’t occur, coming down on the left elbow and running her feet around in a third of a circle to get her balance again. She tucked her knee up near the elbow and leveraged the tall mech back up, feeling its top heavy weight pull more than she liked…but then again anything heavier than a neo she didn’t like, and with the larger cockpit the morpheus was never going to meet up to those expectations.

As the sled spun around it opened itself up to the boxer, which unleashed a pointblank torrent of missiles from the four boxes on its shoulders that gave it its name, in addition to two plasma cannons in the tiny arms. 80 tiny simulated, self-guiding projectiles leapt out together, in perfect synchronicity, and rammed into the armor breach.

Two seconds later the computer tagged the sled as dead, even though in real life it continued to hover above the ground unaffected.

“Challenge completed,” Kenny said in case Cora didn’t see the readouts, busy as she was running the mech around, literally.

“How’d we do?”

“Yellow on brawler 2 and us,” he said, referencing the level of armor penetration. “All others showing green.”

“Crap,” Cora said, bringing the morpheus to a standstill. “I was hoping we’d kept one in the blue.”

“Negative.”

“Set it up again, we have to do better,” she said, with ‘blue’ meaning no armor damage. The key to winning most battles was unit longevity, and the point of the coordinator controlling the star was to overlap strengths and defend weaknesses, taking down the sled in this case without any hull damage. Shields didn’t matter, for they could be regenerated, but armor couldn’t be replaced outside of a mobile field base or mech bay.

“Resetting,” Kenny said. “Any suggestions?”

“Try having the boxers and starfire lead the brawlers up, then keep them hammering at the door. I’ll work us in.”

“Worth a shot,” Kenny agreed. “Return to start point,” he told her as he remotely sent the sled back as well.

The pair of Archons kept at it for another 3 hours, eventually ending up with two blue as their best result. Their exercise data would be analyzed by teams of techs and mechwarriors over the coming days, and more often than not they’d come up with suggestions for new tactics or equipment upgrades. Such was the work of developing prototypes, as Cora had learned long ago back in Atlantis when they’d just been trying to get a machine to walk and pivot around a corner without falling over. They’d come a long way since then, but the process for making further advancements was remarkably the same.

After getting in two hours of physical training Cora hit the cafeteria and filled up before heading back to her quarters and checking the message boards before bed, intent on getting an early start working with another prototype in the morning, this one a shield mech tagged as Umbrella-class, but when she saw the most recent message posting from Kip her thoughts about tomorrow disappeared while reading her fellow trailblazer’s bold suggestion.

Bold, but incredibly insightful. Some of the others had added suggestions and Cora did the same, throwing out the possibility of including the remote mech technology if/when she got it working to her satisfaction, then sending it off through the comm grid for the others to chew on. She’d check again tomorrow and every day that came, with the responses from the others coming in gradually as they were shifted back and forth across dozens of lightyears. It was a bit of a chaotic and nonlinear method of discussing things as a group, but it worked.

On top of that, they usually knew what each other were thinking anyway, thus there wasn’t much clarification required when someone posted a suggestion, just amendments that made it better as the various proposals were passed around, with Kip’s being the same.

Greg was resupplying his fleet at Namek when he got the message updates all at once, having been out of relay range for several months hunting lizards and messing up their nearby systems as much as possible to keep them from encroaching on Star Force’s territory. The more they let them build the worse the situation would get, so Greg, Sara, Paul, and others were going out regularly to cause as much trouble as they could.

The location of the V’kit’no’sat was a shock, but something that had been a long time in coming. The plan floating around to eventually head for the Rim seemed like nonsense at first glance to Greg, but the more he read through the various rationales and permutations he realized that they weren’t planning on abandoning Earth and everything they’d built up to date, only adding to it so in the case that it fell they’d have somewhere to pull back to…but the Rim was far from here and the idea of stretching a tendril of their territory all the way out to even the nearest part of it was, well, ambitious to say the least.

The more immediate suggestion laid down by Kip and amended by others involved giving technology to the Protovic in order to strengthen them against the Skarrons. Normally that was something that Star Force wouldn’t do, for unless they were a part of the ‘family’ they weren’t going to trust other races, not even their allies, to the point of giving them weapons they could turn around and use against them later on. However, in this case they were going to get destroyed by the Skarrons anyway, and the idea of strengthening them really didn’t have a foreseeable downside, given the revelations about how large Skarron territory really was.

One of the additions to that idea involved the Hycre, and Greg agreed that they needed them to be as strong as possible against the lizards, and giving them cleansing beams would be a significant boon against their enemy, as well as the idea Cora posted about giving them remotely controlled mechs so they could actually engage in ground campaigns…or at least give them enough so they could learn to build them themselves. A low flying naval ship could act as the controller, and suddenly they’d have a means to strike at the lizards in a way they’d never been able to before.

Greg didn’t know if they’d want it, for they hadn’t developed any technology in that regard as far as he knew, but then again when the Hycre didn’t have legs or anything even remotely like them, the idea of them building walkers was a bit absurd, so maybe it was just a psychological blind spot. The idea definitely had merit, and Greg gave it his blessing with a note to Cora ‘if she ever got them working.’

He didn’t doubt that she would, but he wanted to take the opportunity to annoy her a bit, for she’d been promising working units for some time now and hadn’t been able to deliver quite as fast as she’d expected.

It was the suggestion of a secure network of colonies that caught Greg’s eye the most, and he immediately volunteered his Clan Firestorm to begin setting up a network of outposts in Alpha Region, seeing that several other trailblazers had done likewise in other Regions or in general. Setting up full-fledged colonies was over the top, given their current expansion projects already under way, but setting up small test bases and seeing if they could successfully stay ‘off the grid’ was worthwhile. If successful they could gradually enlarge those outposts into whatever facilities they needed, and the gradual construction timeline wouldn’t draw the attention that a massive construction project normally would.

Greg brought up a map of Alpha Region and immediately began picking systems to scout out, knowing that the others would take care of the batch of suggestions afloat. If/when the lizards came at them hard in Alpha, they might need a secondary route from the Core out to Namek, and by secondary Greg meant none of the existing and well established cargo routes that saw regular Star Force jumpship traffic.

No, he’d need to set up inefficient ones that would have his people travelling extra lightyears to stay off the ‘beaten path.’ The trick would be to work out a system for resupply that wouldn’t lead others directly to your secret base, and he immediately thought of a deep system rendezvous. They had binary drives, so they could jump into a system then microjump out to the edge and pull back against the star to come to a point that wasn’t located on a gravity well.

He could put a seda or other station there, or rather just leave it a set of coordinates for drops or transfers…though drops would be kind of risky, but doable if it was cargo only. Other ships within the system would meet at the rendezvous point and take the cargo back to their base sites while the delivering jumpship never contacted the base in question.

Yes, that was workable…if the transfer ships were sensor stealthed. Reduce the range of enemy or even allied detection and you could dance your way around any snoopers enroute to hidden locations, on planet or not. And if one of your allies chose to backstab you like the Nestafar had, they wouldn’t know the location of every world you possessed.

The more Greg thought about this the more he liked the idea and was kicking himself for not thinking of it sooner. He wrote out a lengthy suggestion and sent it off to the other trailblazers, then began writing out orders for Clan Firestorm so they could begin assembling resources and research teams towards developing the equipment they’d need to sneak around. They’d share their findings with the others, and vice versa, but even if no one else wanted to pursue this Clan Firestorm would, because Greg saw an immense value in this strategy, even above and beyond the implications noted by the others.

9

March 22, 2468

Epsilon Eridani System

Babylon 1 Station

“Hello,” Dakota-041 said as he walked into the Hycre embassy, seeing one of several floating gasbags on the other side of a very thick transparent wall in their natural environment…extremely hot and loaded with sulfur dioxide. The translation software built into the room picked up his greeting and translated it into the Hycre’s language on the other side, prompting one of them to drift over in his direction using internal atriums as air jets for propulsion.

The Hycre reached out one of its six tentacles and tapped the ‘glass’ in greeting.

GOOD MORNING ARCHON, the computerized translation spoke back in a synthesized tone.

“I have a matter of great importance to discuss,” Dakota said, crossing his arms behind his back.

PROCEED.

“Have the lizards taken any of your worlds to date?”

THEY HAVE NOT, THOUGH THEY CONTINUALLY TRY.

“What is stopping them?”

THEY CAN DESTROY OUR DEFENSIVE FLEETS IF THEY COME IN SUFFICIENT NUMBERS. THEY CANNOT REACH US IN OUR WORLDS. THEIR PLASMA CANNOT PENETRATE THE ATMOSPHERE. WHEN THEY ATTEMPT TO ENTER WITH THEIR SHIPS THEY ARE EASILY DESTROYED. THEY ARE NOT ACCUSTOMED TO SUCH COMBAT.

“Are they improving?”

THEY ARE ALWAYS IMPROVING.

“Yes they are. How is the rest of the Alliance faring?”

DO YOU NOT RECEIVE THE SAME UPDATES WE DO?

“Yes, but we don’t have assets in the other regions. Your territory is spread far and thin. I assumed you know things that we do not.”

TO BE DEPRESSINGLY CANDID WE ARE LOSING. THE HYCRE CANNOT STOP THE LIZARD ADVANCE. THE ALLIANCE CANNOT STOP THE LIZARD ADVANCE. IN TIME YOUR WORLDS WILL FALL PREY TO THEM AS WELL. IT APPEARS UNAVOIDABLE AS THEY GAIN STRENGTH AND THE ALLIANCE WEAKENS. THE NESTAFAR BETRAYAL DOOMED US ALL.

Dakota raised an eyebrow. “That’s more candor than I anticipated, but we agree with your assessment of the Alliance. We do not agree on our fate. As you know our technology is advancing at a considerable rate. We believe that in time we will have enough of an edge to hold the lizards at bay.”

YOUR PROGRESSION IS REMARKABLE. BUT DO NOT ASSUME FUTURE ADVANCEMENTS. RESEARCH IS UNPREDICTABLE. YOU ALSO UNDERESTIMATE THE LIZARDS’ ADVANCEMENT RATE.

“No I don’t. We are well aware of how innovative they are, but we’re confident that we’ll outpace them technologically. What we do not have are their numbers, nor do we expect to be able to compete with them on that level. We had once hoped to be able to defeat the lizards, and had planned an assault on their core systems, but that now appears untenable given how far they’ve spread and how long it will be until we’re strong enough to attempt doing so.”

“We know they have additional technology that they haven’t revealed to us yet, as we shared with you previously, so how we match up with it is still a question mark, but overall we have already surpassed the lizards in several areas. We intend to stake out borders that we will defend, but not push beyond, creating a sanctuary for the Alliance and any other friendly race caught up by the lizard aggression. We are going to fortify this region as a fallback position for the Hycre and any others, but we are not ready yet.”

AMBITIOUS. I FEAR YOU ARE OVERESTIMATING YOUR ABILITIES AND UNDERESTIMATING THE ENEMY’S.

“As it stands now, I would agree, but we are building and building fast. Currently we’re holding the lizards at bay along our rimward border, but we both know they’re only playing with us. They’re holding back their main force for later. Even what they’re destroying the Calavari with isn’t their true strength.”

WE CONCUR.

“Most of your systems do not fall within the proposed sanctuary borders. Do I assume you will continue to defend them all, or do you already have contingency plans?”

WE WILL DEFEND. IF THERE IS A GRAND BATTLE PLAN, I HAVE NOT BEEN INFORMED OF IT.

“As I said, we need time to build and fortify this region, and we think you are the key to buying us that time.”

YOU HAVE A PROPOSAL?

“No, I have a gift,” Dakota said, holding up a data chip, then inserting it into a slot on the table behind him and transmitting it across the divide to the Hycre databanks. “These are the technical specifications to several items of advanced technology that we think will be of use to you. We are also offering tech support to help you convert the designs to your own technology, including the construction of prototypes. The stronger we can make you, the longer you will delay the lizard advance.”

EXPLAIN.

“We are giving you cleansing beam and mauler tech, two weapon systems that have proven effective against the lizards. They are both power hogs, but worth it when used correctly. The cleansing beam is a long range energy weapon. The mauler is a very destructive short range energy weapon that will also disrupt physical shield matrixes.”

I AM FAMILIAR WITH YOUR DESIGNS. THE LIZARDS NO LONGER EMPLOY PHYSICAL SHIELDS. THEY HAVE UPGRADED TO A HYBRID DESIGN.

“Yes, I know. But the cleansing beam will penetrate them with ease. Your military will confirm that from past joint operations.”

YOU BELIEVE THESE WEAPONS ARE SUPERIOR TO WHAT THE HYCRE CURRENTLY POSSESS?

“In their respective fields, yes. We are also including several new shield matrixes and armor variants. We believe that when this technology is incorporated with your own, your naval fleet will be far superior to the lizards. We are building ships as fast as we can, but we don’t have a tenth of your industrial output. You can put it to more immediate use than we can.”

“We are also offering you an option to use a prototype remotely controlled mech force. We’re still working out the basics, but in theory you could control an army of the machines from a nearby warship in orbit or the atmosphere, which would give you the ability to strike at lizard targets that you previously have been unable to. This project will take longer to implement, and would be a joint venture, given that we’re still developing it for our own uses.”

IS THIS GENEROSITY OR DESPERATION? YOU OFFER MUCH.

“It is a strategic decision on our part.”

WHAT DO YOU SEEK IN RETURN?

“You not dying as soon,” Dakota said bluntly.

OUR CONTINUED SURVIVAL IS YOUR GAIN.

“That and your expertise in naval combat. We’ve learned a lot from you and are interested in seeing how you put these new weapons to use. There is also the matter of the Skarrons, who are a far larger threat than the lizards, crazy as that sounds. Have you read the report we filed?”

I HAVE. IT IS LIKELY THAT THE PRISONER WAS EXAGGERATING.

Dakota shook his head. “No, he wasn’t.”

YOU CANNOT BE SURE OF THAT.

“I can’t, but the ones who interrogated him are, and I trust their judgement. They confirmed the intelligence.”

DO YOU HAVE A STAR CHART?

“No.”

THEN HOW HAVE YOU CONFIRMED THE ASSERTED SIZE OF THEIR TERRITORY?

“We’re willing to share technology with you, but some secrets we will keep.”

UNTIL WE SEE SUCH CONFIRMATION OUR SKEPTICISM WILL REMAIN.

“Understandable, but know that we are convinced and are being forced regardless to fight a war on two opposite fronts, and if you count the Nestafar/Calavari theatre that’s three. We need you to be as strong of a deterrent to lizard expansion along the rim of our territory as possible while we strengthen both the rim and coreward fronts.”

OTHER THAN BUILDING MORE SHIPS, HOW DO YOU DEFINE ‘STRENGTHENING?’

Dakota smirked. “We have quite a few projects in the works. Given enough time, it will become very difficult for the lizards to evict us from a system we’ve set up in, and they’ll burn through fleets of ships trying.”

3 months later…

“It’s here,” Kip said, clapping his friend on the shoulder as he walked up behind Ren’san’do in a Protovic command center in one of the contested cities on Erentia.

“What is?” the Protovic asked, with a few others glancing over at the Archon through their faceplates.

“A gift…I would have talked to you about it sooner, but I needed to get approval from the others first, and it came in along with a jumpship full of equipment and techs.”

“What do you mean?” the senior ranking Protovic in the room asked, walking over to the pair.

“Though it won’t make a difference immediately, Star Force is going to give you some tech upgrades to help you fight the Skarrons.”

The Protovic’s head tilted back slightly, but that was the only reaction Kip could see…though he could feel a sense of shock rippling through the commander and the rest of the aliens in the room, including Ren’san’do.

“It will take some time to alter our designs into tech compatible with your ships, which was why I’ve asked for techs to help you with the crossover. They’ve got equipment with them for you to study and are standing by to teach you everything you need to know to add our cleansing beams, maulers, and binary gravity drives to your fleet, along with some shield and armor options, though you’re pretty solid there already. That should give you a tactical advantage over the Skarron fleet, once you’re able to incorporate the weapon systems into your ships…but be warned, they’re power hogs.”

“What is it you’re asking in return?” the Protovic commander wondered.

“Kick the Skarrons’ collective ass,” Kip said, throwing a glance at Ren’san’do.

“You’re serious?” his friend asked.

“Yes,” Kip said, taking his helmet off. He put it on a nearby table and pointed at his nose. “See, this is my serious face.”

“Races don’t just give away tech freely,” the commander said, still in disbelief.

“Our race isn’t led by representatives, civilians, pacifists, or egotists,” Kip explained. “It’s led by warriors. Warriors that know the dangers of sharing weapons tech with others and the threat they could pose if turned around and used against us. We’re not worried about that happening with you. Our relationship is a new one, but it’s been forged in battle, and that has a tendency to cut through the crap and get straight to the truth.”

“We know we have to work together to push the Skarrons back from your territory and establish a firm boundary to defend,” Kip continued, doing a little mental digging to find the Protovic’s doubts and allay them. “To do that we need your larger fleet to be as strong as possible, and we figure if we give you the tools you’ll make good use of them…though I would recommend constructing cleansing beam towers in your cities to keep enemy walkers at bay, along with several other ground applications.”

“That…would be very useful,” Ren’san’do said, immensely grateful. “We hadn’t expected that sort of assistance…from anyone, let alone a lesser race. No offense.”

“Some taken,” Kip kidded with his friend as the other Protovic looked on with a mix of emotions, primary among which was eagerness…for most of them had seen the Star Force weapons in use and knew of their effectiveness. They were the only reason the Protovic were slowly taking planets back from the Skarrons, with Erentia being the second in a short list. The Protovic had returned from Calavari space in time to stop the invasion from rolling from system to system, but where their enemy had gotten to ground they’d dug in deep and the Humans were the only ones proven successful in getting them out, though they had to be paired with Protovic units to be effective, given their small numbers.

The commander took a couple of steps closer to Kip and removed his helmet as well, cracking the faceplate off and retracting the headpiece down into the neck, revealing a tattoo-like pattern of glowing patches on his face bracketed by nearly black scales over his head that formed a light exoskeleton that traveled down across his back, arms, and legs, though those weren’t visible through his suit.

He stared at Kip with his deep, radiant purple eyes, with the Archon staring back unflinchingly.

“You’re truly willing to give us your most advanced weapons, asking nothing in return aside from battling our common foe? Something we would do anyway out of self-preservation.”

“Yes I am. The strategic logic is favorable…to both of us.”

“You have said you are one of Star Force’s leaders. How high of rank do I have the privilege of addressing?”

“I am one of 100 senior commanders, all of whom share equal position. The others agreed with my suggestion and sent the jumpship back.”

“You are a Lord of your race, and yet you engage in the deepest of battles? Why do your subordinates let you take such a reckless risk?”

“In all our battles not one of us has been lost, so it’s not as great of a risk as you might think. That and if anyone tried to stop us we’d kick their ass. We’re the leaders because we’re the strongest.”

“And the oldest,” Ren’san’do added.

“The two go hand in hand for Archons, in most cases,” Kip explained. “And we belong where our skills will do the most good. We dislike sending weaker personnel in first as cannon fodder. We dislike it greatly.”

“And now you seek to strengthen us?”

“A warrior who does not seek greater strength is not a warrior,” Kip quoted.

“Forgive me,” the commander apologized, “but our opinion of your race has been small since our first encounter at the Alliance summit. You have been regarded as inconsequential until you came to our aid when the rest of the Alliance would not or could not. Now I am beginning to feel we are still underestimating you, perhaps because of your smaller population. I must ask, what are these special skills that some of you possess and have been aiding my special forces with?”

“Something that is not well known, even to all of my people,” Kip confided. “But on the battlefield such secrets are irrelevant. We call them psionics, and only our most advanced Archons possess them. As I and my brothers and sisters are the strongest, we possess the most, which is why it is essential that I assign myself to the integrated teams. No other Archon in this system matches my strength.”

“What are these psionics?”

“Biological energy weapons, more or less, the dynamics of which we are going to keep a secret.”

The commander nodded. “I do not begrudge you that, though I envy the rumors I’ve heard of their effectiveness.”

“I will admit,” Kip said, pointing to his nearby helmet and floating it slowly through the air and into his hands, “they are cool.”

“A biological tractor beam?” the Protovic said, amazed.

“More or less. We like to keep our full capabilities known to only us, but Ren’san’do has seen more of their use than any other Protovic, I’d wager,” he said, tapping his friend on his armored chest. “Most of the time I’m using the equivalent of mental white noise to temporarily disable enemy units. It’s quite effective when you have a Protovic team behind you to make the most of the opportunity. Your units are well organized and efficient. It’s a pity they’re not backed up by better mechanized forces. I hope our tech upgrades will help to counter than deficiency?”

“The Skarrons have imposed on us the need for such. I give you my word we will not squander your gift, nor the assistance you have provided us here.”

“The sooner our techs get to work the better,” Kip said, accepting his promise with a nod. “Where is your primary development facility?”

“Achion, at fleet headquarters.”

“With your permission I’ll send the jumpship there directly, though an escort or emissary would be appreciated.”

“Of course,” the commander said, “though we don’t have a jumpship available at the moment. If you’d be willing to travel at a slower speed I’m sure we can arrange for a ship from the defense fleet to accompany you.”

“With time being critical, it’s best not to waste even a few days. If you can have an emissary travel onboard, either in person or in a small vessel that my jumpship will carry, that will be sufficient. I just don’t want it to show up insystem unannounced, and I can’t go myself because I’m needed here.”

“I’ll go,” Ren’san’do volunteered.

“No, I need you here with me,” Kip insisted.

“I will arrange a small transport with representatives that will clear your jumpship through capitol protocols,” the commander promised, turning around and gesturing to one of the control room staff. “Get me a comm to the Sarnor.”

“They’re equipped with provisions to stay insystem as long as necessary to get your people up to speed,” Kip explained. “You’ll have to handle all production yourself. We’re offering the knowledge, not our own fabricated weapons.”

“We understand,” Ren’san’do said slowly, “and thank you, my friend.”

“You can thank us by killing Skarron ships. Right now, we’ve got more of their walkers to deal with. How are your people set up at the Gamma target?” Kip asked, getting back to the business at hand.

The Protovic were slower to make the transition, literally giddy with the news of the promised technology, but the trailblazer slowly pulled their focus back to the city and the ongoing ground war, getting them set up for an attack run on another Type-1.

10

July 8, 2468

Trantiss System (Lizard territory)

Ollsonat

Paul watched from the bridge of the Excalibur as the ship’s cleansing beam severed the last remaining lizard battleship along its midsection, hitting it almost squarely in the middle flank of its 2 kilometer long mass as it tried to flee, plagued by IDF-laden goo sticking to its shieldless hull. The tiny white beam virtually disappeared by the time it hit the ship, so distant as it was from the 15 mile wide behemoth of the command ship, but that didn’t matter when the concentrated nature of the beam could melt apart material on contact. Even a beam a millimeter wide would be sufficient in cutting a ship in half, and given that strength of the cleansing beam technology, that’s exactly what the Excalibur’s gunners had been trying for.

The remaining cruisers were already fleeing, or trying to. Some were caught up in IDF tug of wars with corvettes pinning them in place while the command ship blasted them apart, but most of the 320 ship defensive fleet around the lizard colony on Ollsonat had already been destroyed. Paul had brought the Excalibur in first, leaving his handful of Warship-class jumpships out in high orbit around the planet until he wanted them, knowing they’d make for too easy of targets in the beginning stages of the slugging match that was going to take place, and he wanted the command ship to take the full brunt of the lizard defensive effort.

As he’d learned months ago, the lizards’ standard fleet of cruisers was wholly unable to take on the might of his command ship, even when supported by lizard battleships. He had expected their new ship to be hard to kill, but its efficiency against the lizards surprised him. They literally couldn’t touch it without devoting insane numbers of ships…so long as the helmsman kept the giant donut moving around orbit to avoid lizard kamikaze jump attempts from below. Those they had tried early on, but Paul had seen them coming and kept the ship moving out of alignment, making it very difficult for them to set up a ramming trajectory at jump speed.

They’d then proceeded to try ramming collisions at slower speeds that did not require jump alignment. Those couldn’t be avoided, most of the time, but proactive weaponsfire took out most of the ships appearing to be setting up at enough distance to try for a ram…and those that just did so at the spur of the moment at close range couldn’t generate enough kinetic momentum to punch through the impressive array of shields the command ship could throw up.

The ship not only had multiple shields, but each shield had multiple matrix options, meaning it could tailor its defense against the weaponsfire hitting it. There were six stations on the bridge dedicated to shield control, meaning that while the rest of the warship battled the lizard fleets, those officers would be adjusting the defensive barriers to create strong points, alter the matrixes, cannibalize energy from intact matrixes and shunt it over to others, spot flood weak points with incoming energy while denying it to others, etc.

That gave the new Command Ship design far more defensive options than any other vessel in the Star Force fleet. Being a 15 mile wide mass gave one plenty of volume to put ‘extra’ tech into, and Paul and Jason hadn’t skimped on anything. In particular, the shield matrix that was designed specifically to defend against plasma weapons was proving to be the lizards’ bane, for virtually all their weaponry relied upon it, and thanks to Star Force having access to old lizard blueprints and tech, they knew the intricacies of the lizard plasma weapons, from which they’d developed a shield setting specifically to combat them.

Switching from one matrix to another took a lot of time, for it was essentially having to create an entirely new shield without going through the full recharge process. Typically a mass of energy was held within the shield emitters, ready to be deployed into the matrix rather than having to charge them from the power core directly. That was how ships could ‘raise shields’ in a split second, because that energy was already stored up and at least partially transformed into the necessary type for their shield matrixes to utilize.

Some matrixes used similar energies, so they could be morphed from one to another without total loss, reducing the time between transfers, but battling the lizards only didn’t require a switch, so to date that feature hadn’t been battle tested. The physical-only shield had been tested, when the lizards decided to ram the ship at close range. Given a heads up, the shield officers had deployed one of the multiple shields in the direction the ship was coming from instead of putting it around the entire ship.

Doing so gave them the opportunity to layer the shield, essentially taking the pieces from the entire hull and stacking them up like dominoes over the approach area of the kamikaze. That ship then ran into each of them in sequence, with each hit and breach slowing it until it hit the actual hull…which had only happened twice, leaving two beauty marks on the blue ship, scraping off the paint and showing the grey beneath with little real damage, given the thickness of the exterior plates.

That wouldn’t be enough to stop a jumping ship, but it could reduce the damage greatly if they could set up the matrixes in time. It was a tactic the V’kit’no’sat used, though with other tech that was currently beyond Star Force, but the principle was sound. Liam had dubbed it the ‘pillow effect,’ whereas the energy equivalent Paul had tagged as ‘reflect’ after the Final Fantasy power that sent magical attacks back onto the sender.

In this case there was a shield matrix that attempted to do the same thing, bouncing it off rather than cancelling it out. They’d gotten it to work on lasers, but anything more powerful was overloading the matrix and causing it to breach, which when it did it went down completely, like shattering a mirror. None the less, Paul and Jason had included it in the shield options. Other than turning the ship into a giant carnival mirror, which was cool, it wasn’t of much use as yet, but you never knew when an odd situation would arise, so better to have it in the mix than not.

The shield package the Command Ship carried had been enough to thwart the lizards on several occasions as Paul probed their third line of border systems, prompting the trailblazer to reassess their harassment missions. With the updates coming in from the Skarron front, the progress with the Calavari, arming of the Hycre and Protovic with Star Force tech, and the other ongoing projects the trailblazers, as a group, were conducting, Paul was relieved to be able to rely on them to take care of the laundry list of items while he focused on only those in the far end of Alpha Region.

He’d agreed with Jason’s assessments about the ‘run for the rim’ option floating around, being that they had to hold their ground and move to the rim simultaneously, preserving the option to fake their death if it came down to a V’kit’no’sat return by setting up separate ‘kingdoms’ within Star Force territory and expanding out to others. Paul doubted they could fool the V’kit’no’sat that easily, but it was worth a shot. The galaxy was vast, and hiding was definitely an option…their only option, really, impressed upon him and the others now that they had a glimmer of where their true enemy was, deeper into the core and currently oblivious to their whereabouts.

The dragon had fled to the rim, and it alone could have destroyed Star Force’s entire fleet. Paul wondered if that had changed by now, though he doubted it. Still, he would really like to see the tactical specs on the dragon’s armor and how much damage it could actually dish out…and take. Kara’s had been pretty well mapped by this point and he had his guesses as to what the dragon’s version could do, though the naval ramming capability mentioned in the reports from Daka still gave him waking nightmares. Star Force had no sensor data on that, but firsthand accounts by the Canderians in the system made clear that the Nestafar were sitting ducks, and he doubted Star Force shields and armor would fare much different.

So when the time came Star Force would run, but right now they couldn’t go far, and therein lay the problem. They needed the systems they currently possessed to grow stronger, which meant standing their ground and fighting off the enemies gathering around them. First the lizards, then the Nestafar, and now the Skarrons, which appeared far greater than anything they’d come across at this point, though Paul had a sneaking suspicion that the lizards were the more dangerous, based off the combat reports from Beta Region. The Skarrons’ territory might be huge, but the lizards were cunning, and that was an attribute that should never be underestimated.

Which was why he’d half expected the lizards to throw up some new attack against the Excalibur as he invaded this system, but they hadn’t. It had been standard tactics with a few hasty attempts at creativity, but nothing that worked. He and Jason had created a monster of a ship, second only to the Kvash starbases, each of which was more than 50 miles wide. They varied in size and shape, as each one was unique, making them more like small moons than ships or stations.

But as far as warships went, nothing else bested the Command Ship…that Paul knew of. Both the Hycre and the Bsidd had larger jumpships, but they didn’t carry the armament that the Excalibur did, and now that Paul had a big bad ship to work with, he was appreciating the unique combat applications that it afforded.

He agreed with the others that Star Force needed to establish a firm territory block and defend it as their enemies closed in on them rather than trying to defeat those enemies. Star Force was playing for time as it continued to unlock, or more accurately, understand the knowledge in the pyramid, so winning the war was more about surviving than hitting back, even as the lizards’ territory grew by leaps and bounds.

Even if they garnered the full power of the pyramid Star Force, as some of the others had wisely pointed out, would never be able to utilize it in killing the Skarrons or forcing them to submit, for it would bring them too close to the V’kit’no’sat. Even if they managed to do the same with the lizards, which was ambitious enough, word could and would travel about what they had done, and Paul was leery even that might filter back to the V’kit’no’sat when certain pieces of tech were mentioned, or what the Humans looked like, or more importantly, the psionics they wielded.

Hell, that information might already be spreading back their way. There was no way to avoid it, meaning that Earth was going to be compromised sooner or later…the big question was when. It was all about time, and the trailblazers had to give Davis’s people as much as they could. If they succeeded in protecting Star Force from all its enemies and keeping it dark to the V’kit’no’sat long enough, then Paul was confident that they would be able to engage and withdrawal from their nemesis, no matter what advancements they’d made over the past 100 millennia.

He entertained no serious notions of ever defeating them, but right now if they came back it wouldn’t even be a fight. The V’kit’no’sat could own them with a single ship, and they wouldn’t even be able to take down its shields. No, the victory they were striving for was survival, and to do that they needed the full power of the pyramid. That would at least put them in the same league as the V’kit’no’sat, and if they were even slightly on par with them, Paul knew that he and the other trailblazers could make up some of the gap through sheer determination and cunning, despite the V’kit’no’sat’s reputation for the same.

At his core Paul knew they had to be better, and that they would be better in time, if the technology evened out. The idea of someone out-training the trailblazers was ridiculous, even with all the breaks they took to work on other projects or go into combat. Someone might match or exceed them for a day, a week, a month…maybe even a year. But no one was going to beat them over the centuries, and eventually millennia for one simple reason.

They craved advancement, and even if there wasn’t a super strong enemy out there that they were racing to catch up with, they’d still work their asses off just for the fun of it. They lived for challenge, and that was the core of their being. While that facet might not be unique to Humans, nor a race in particular, Paul knew the V’kit’no’sat were lazy in comparison. Not in the conventional sense, but the more information he read coming out of the pyramid the more he understood that they didn’t operate out of a need or quest for challenge, but out of ego.

The two were often overlapping, with the V’kit’no’sat responding to a need or a threat with equal zeal as he and the other Archons, but it was in the quiet times, the peaceful times, that their drive would wane. They were too good to abandon their training or actually get lazy, but they wouldn’t push as hard in those times whereas Paul would, and he knew the other trailblazers and a lot of the other Archons would as well.

That was where they could gain ground on the individuals who’d had thousands of years’ head start on them, though it was still going to take forever to catch up to individuals like Ironnsey and their dinosaur counterparts, but the fact that they had a window, that it was actually possible, was all they needed. Given enough time they would get there.

Time, it was all about time, so Star Force’s strategy had to play towards that, even if it meant restraining themselves from going out and kicking the bad guys’ asses as much as they’d like. They had to turtle up and play the waiting game, which at his core Paul didn’t like, but when viewing the big picture it made sense, and as long as he kept that in mind there was no internal conflict. They were playing to win, and this was the game plan they needed to pursue.

But from experience with the lizards he knew that holding a strict boundary was suicidal. They operated off a creep mentality, and holding a line with them meant a constant push and pull between the two. Hold your ground and they’d push harder and harder until you moved an inch, then that would be the new boundary until they got you to move again, and again, and again.

No, in order to hold the lizard engagement line Paul had to make gains against them, and the Excalibur was his solution to the problem, for the time being, as he was launching their first assault against a lizard system with the intent of taking it away from them and making it their own. Doing so would push the lizard lines back a touch, providing more distance from the Ninkari that Canderous was still guarding in the ‘open.’

It would also send the message that they weren’t marks for the lizards to eventually take down. That often was an invitation, when someone only defended instead of counterattacking, to greater invasion because it gave the impression of weakness. That was something he’d learned playing StarCraft long ago, and ironically it held true in real warfare.

So in order to keep his piece of Star Force territory locked down, he had to expand it. Not a lot, just a touch here and there to keep the lizards at bay. It seemed counterintuitive, but give the lizards a fixed point to work on and sooner or later they’d figure out a way to beat it. Paul had to dictate the course of the conflict at least part of the time, otherwise they’d swarm over his worlds and make his defensive effort twice as difficult.

The attacker got the choice of time, place, and numbers…the defender had to work with what they had, and more often than not it wasn’t an advantageous arrangement, else the attacker wouldn’t have been launching the assault in the first place.

So here Paul was, kicking the crap out of a sizeable lizard fleet and ‘holding’ his border against the lizards by expanding it. In the past Ollsonat had been hit twice by Sara and once by Greg, each time doing major damage to the lizard infrastructure from orbital bombardment, but the lizards always rebuilt, and would keep rebuilding until you either eradicated them or gave up and abandoned the effort…in which case they’d win by default.

Today was different, and as the last few lizard ships that hadn’t been able to flee were destroyed by the Excalibur’s weapons and the drones surrounding them reformed into patrol groups to scour the debris and eventually move to orbital bombardment locations, Paul nodded satisfactorily and looked to Captain Evinson.

“How’s the weather?”

“Adequate. The cleansing beams should hit ground with 85% cohesion at minimum.”

“Good. Move us into position and prepare to disengage the landing core. I want it touching down nearby while we’re still assaulting the target to minimize their army response times. I expect them to flee the city when we start hitting them anyway, and the less that get away the less we’ll have to track down and kill later.”

“Should we wait for the drones?”

“No. Let them handle the auxiliary targets after they confirm orbit is clear. We’ll take the primary ourself.”

Evinson nodded and began implementing Paul’s orders as the trailblazer began to slowly pace around the bridge, eventually seeing the holographic status display update as the Command Ship began to retract the armor segments around its core in a slow ripple, revealing the true nature of the giant donut.

Paul suppressed a smile, imagining an image of Homer Simpson giving him an approving ‘thumbs up’ on the design.

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1

May 2, 2470

Pagalis System

Varasiss (Calavari Capitol)

Kamalat sat at a gunnery station onboard the Calavari cruiser firing his plasma cannon at the sea of Cajdital ships nearby, picking a spot his bridge weapons officer tagged for his battery to hit and firing large golden plasma orbs into the enemy’s yellow/tan hulls as fast as the weapon would cycle. He couldn’t see what was happening elsewhere, nor how his own ship was faring…only his narrow view from the gunnery station, but he could tell that the Cajdital fleet wasn’t returning fire on the other Calavari ships nearby.

The ship he was firing on was throwing plasma ahead of it, nearly hitting the other Cajdital cruisers stacked in together so tight he felt like he was looking at a school of fish in a green river…a river that led to the Kvash starbase guarding the Calavari planet. Though Kamalat couldn’t see it, none of the Cajdital ships were shooting at the other Kvash vessels, nor the Calavari, or the Hycre, or the Bsidd, or the Scionate, or the Nabboni, or any of the other Alliance races with ships present to defend the system.

The Cajdital were ignoring them all and heading straight for the massive starbase and hammering it with the combined plasma from over 2,000 cruisers as more were continuing to enter planetary orbit and flood towards the massive warship/station. The rest of the Alliance fleet, like Kamalat’s cruiser, were getting free shots on the Cajdital and tearing them up, with his cannon finally finding hull after the shields went down. The enemy ship moved off somewhat as it outpaced the Calavari vessel, but his plasma hit the target multiple times, ripping into the hull plates along with other batteries, but his ship was the only one firing on that enemy vessel, for there were so many in play that the other Allied ships all had their own chosen targets with plenty to spare.

More and more cruisers kept coming in, all of which headed for the starbase and continued to pound on its shields, with many not even making it within firing range before being destroyed. Those that did were taken down by the Kvash’s own impressive array of weapons, with their plasma streamers literally melting through the Cajdital cruisers and taking them out remarkably fast…but still they wouldn’t flee or target any other vessel. They just kept pounding the starbase until its shields eventually went down after some 800 Cajdital ships were turned into rubble.

Neither Kamalat nor the rest of the system defenders could see it, but once the starbase’s shields were down special Cajdital cruisers began jumping in from the mass of contacts manifesting around the system’s central stars. The cruisers were identical to the others on the exterior, but they’d been refitted internally specifically for this invasion and the targeting of the starbase, which had such a high mass that even as its external weapon systems were being targeted and eliminated the ship itself was in little danger of being destroyed.

The huge ship would survive to the end of the battle, and if it didn’t escape it’d have to be picked to death by the Cajdital, whose plasma cannons were pathetic compared to the size of their target. They knew that going into the engagement, but thousands of pathetic weapons could add up to sufficient power…enough at least to take the shields down.

Kamalat saw explosions ripping across the starbase’s hull, but from the distance he was at they were tiny distortions compared to the huge mass that filled most of his screen whenever the Calavari cruiser had its right flank towards the allied ship/station. As he continued to fire on the ships designated by the weapons officer he noticed larger explosions beginning to hit the starbase, enough to wonder what was going on, for they were larger than the Calavari ships, though in comparison they were still small against the starbase’s silhouette.

He would never know what happened, but some of the Cajdital ships, the ones specially modified, were ramming the Kvash starbase loaded up with explosives. The physical impact alone was usually enough to damage, if not penetrate the hull, then the detonation would rip apart the interior, exposing it to the continual weaponsfire as it blasted out more sections of armored hull with it like a flower petal opening up.

Still the massive ship didn’t die, for only the outer layers were affected with the approaches to the hangars being blocked by other Kvash ships, making the Cajdital take the hard way in…and so they did. Over the hours that followed the Cajdital pounded the starbase with thousands of cruisers, regular and modified, literally throwing them away against the Alliance fleet in order to do damage to the behemoth.

When they’d finally crippled the starbase, with large chunks of it detaching from internal explosions, the few Cajdital ships remaining suddenly withdrew. Kamalat hit several on the way out without his weapons officer’s permission, deciding to take advantage of the fact that there were so many of them in his area and just firing into the swarm until they’d passed.

Seeming content with the damage they’d done, the Cajdital disappeared from planetary orbit, making microjumps away, either to the other planets or back to the stars where the fleet of Cajdital jumpships was still arriving and unloading more ships, now blind to the Calavari since they’d hunted down and destroyed the nearby sensor stations.

What was left was a growing blob of vessels as seen from their more distant sensors coming in along a single jumpline. As Varasiss was the only inhabited planet in the system the Alliance fleet waited there, protecting the orbital installations and hanging close to the missile platforms littering low orbit and making for a significant deterrent to attack. It was the largest fleet in Calavari space, not even counting all the non-Calavari ships, which outnumbered the locals 8 to 1. The original defense fleet had been much larger, but over time those ships had been moved out to other battlefields, lessening the capitol’s defenses in order to supplement others.

Now that there was little left but the capitol in the central region that had once been the heart of Calavari territory. Their warships had been returning to the one strongpoint they had left in the tattered remains of their once massive empire, adding to its defense as well as taking refuge along with the Alliance fleet, given that Calavari naval power was severely outclassed against the Cajdital.

Their weaponry was still effective, which Kamalat was putting to good use. After the starbase was destroyed there were several hours of inactivity during which the alliance fleet redeployed, with his cruiser moving out to a position around the third of six moons, four of which were habitable. The Calavari had significantly colonized two of them, with smaller installations on the other four. All provided jump points, and as such they could reposition their ships in short order to elsewhere in planetary orbit to reinforce various positions in the blink of an eye…as well as denying the moons to the enemy.

Kamalat didn’t know what the plan was, he was just a gunner, but he got a good view of the green moon of Radamal beneath him as he waited for the next attack, forgoing a shift change so he could stay on station longer. He stuck it out long enough for his body to start urging him to get some sleep, then when he was just about to call it quits and let the relief gunner take his position Cajdital ships began jumping into the moon’s orbit.

This time they shot back, and a pitched battle broke out in orbit between the Calavari fleet, supplemented by two Kvash cruisers on station with them, and another wave of Cajdital cruisers. Kamalat’s ship was so busy dealing with the enemy around them that its bridge crew failed to notice the much larger ship that entered elsewhere in planetary orbit a few minutes later.

The Cajdital ship was massive, and unlike the yellow/tan hulls of the cruisers the invoker was colored dark black, so much so that it was almost lost against the star field aside from the pinpricks of light that it blocked out, forming an ominous silhouette with long, gangly arms that dove straight toward the densest portion of the Alliance fleet…thousands of warships with the large Kvash battleships as centerpieces.

No Cajdital cruisers or other ships accompanied it. They were jumping into the moons and engaging in battle there, sweeping the defenders away or at least keeping them busy as their monstrous chess piece jumped into the planet’s orbit and eased directly into the Alliance lines, eliciting multi-colored energy ripples from its numerous pylons. The energy seemed to defy shape and more or less arced from one point to another on the arms, but pushing out like a solar prominence in large loops.

Those loops moved, but not in any tactical fashion, seeming to have a mind of their own as they extended out around the ship more than tripling its spherical radius. The Alliance ships that had closed within range were hit by the energy arcs, with the smaller hulls virtually vaporizing on contact.

The larger ships interfered with the energy flows, creating distortions and gaps when they were hit and subsequently destroyed by the lightning storm of discharges that resulted from whenever an object hit the field, including Alliance missiles fired at the invoker. Some got through to hit the shielded hull, but those that ran into the energy likewise sent little lightning discharges out looking for something to touch. Some hit other missiles, some hit ships, but most arced off to pieces of debris, further pulverizing them in a massive display of destruction.

The invoker kept moving, albeit slowly, pushing further into the Alliance fleet as their combined firepower fell on it…or at least as much as the Alliance could mount without firing into their own ships. The oblong fleet deployment bent around the ‘impact’ point, encircling the invoker even as it was chewing through their ships by the dozens per second. More and more firepower was poured into it and eventually some of it began to get through the invoker’s shields. That didn’t last long, for after only a light amount of hull damage the invoker reversed course, clearing the debris field it had created, and jumped away from the planet.

The Alliance fleet was left in shambles, but still with a considerable amount of ships remaining. Those ships, however, were soon met with Cajdital cruisers jumping in to engage them, having come from the moons they’d already cleared/secured. Like several water faucets they poured ships into the growing engagement that formed up into organized packs hunting specific targets, all the while the Alliance fleet was in such disarray it nearly became a free-for-all defensive effort.

Kamalat’s cruiser survived long enough to see the arrival of the first Cajdital battleships, which pounded the elongated Calavari warship until its shields went down, then it and several Cajdital cruisers tore apart the outer hull, taking his plasma cannon turret offline. When that happened his screen blanked and he knew his days were over, with him considering how many minutes, if not seconds, he had before the section of the ship that he was in either exploded or decompressed.

He sat in his control chair, squeezing the gunnery controls in anticipation and summoning up a wave of anger at both the Cajdital and their treasonous allies in place of the courage that seemed to escape him. Muffled pops, hisses, and bangs were audible as parts of the ship were hit, but the air didn’t rush out of his compartment, and for what seemed like an eternity he waited for the end to come.

Then suddenly a torrent of wind cut through the open doorway behind him and hit Kamalat with a blast of heated air so hot that it singed his skin where his uniform didn’t cover it. He flinched, but while the air thinned a moment later it didn’t completely disappear. With a roar partly of rage and partly of fear, he leapt out of his chair and turned to face the doorway, intending to die on his feet.

The hot air continued to pelt his skin, then all of a sudden it stopped with one massive screech and the power went out. Suddenly he was floating free of the floor, no longer with any artificial gravity to hold him in place. He grabbed the back of his chair with his lower right hand and steadied himself, but no further explosions followed.

Kamalat waited in his gunnery chamber for quite a while, floating in darkness before he finally became curious as to why the attack had stopped. Maybe the Cajdital had left the ship for dead, in which case there was a very slight chance that he might live another hour. He contemplated staying put and waiting or venturing forth, and decided that if he was going to die today that death was going to have to come and get him, he wasn’t going to sit and wait for it.

Remembering the layout of the hallway beyond the door he pushed off and grabbed the entryway with all four hands, bracketing himself in place as he looked for any trace of light. He thought there was just a tiny haze down to his left when he suddenly heard a voice in the otherwise silent ship.

“Hello? Is anyone out there?”

“Yes,” another voice answered, and Kamalat pushed off gently in the direction of the sounds. He floated through blackness, keeping his four hands and two feet spread wide to act as bumpers, but it was eventually another hand that stopped him, planted on his chest.

“Easy there,” a voice said, though he couldn’t see the speaker…nor anything else for that matter. “Head the other way.”

“What’s to head to?” Kamalat asked as he spun about with the help of the hand and a nearby wall, though he was still floating about.

“Aft section. I’ve got a comm link to people back there. Move it. That goes for everyone!”

With a shove Kamalat was sent floating down the hallway until he brushed up against a wall and steadied his tumble, then he ran into the back of another person, but that actually helped to right himself with another source of leverage. Feeling around in the dark for the bulkheads and the Calavari in front of him, Kamalat and the others assembling behind made their way through corridors they couldn’t see, being led by whom he didn’t know, but gradually a bit of light filtered in, not enough to see by, but enough to start casting some slight shadows.

It was enough to show him the fuzzy silhouette of the Calavari in front of him as they turned to the left and entered another passage. A few more intersections up and the light became heavier, allowing Kamalat to see where he was going, dim as it was. The line of Calavari was much larger than he’d thought, meaning more had survived…but why was the ship still intact? And were the Cajdital going to come back and finish them or leave them for dead?

He got the answer to his question a few minutes later when he crossed into a powered zone, with his feet returning to the floor with the artificial gravity. From there he and the survivors from the forward sections were moved about in quick order, then shuffled to an armory where they donned their shield harnesses and weapons, plus whatever equipment packs they had available.

Before Kamalat got up the courage to ask what was going on, for everyone around him was stone-faced with either fear or shock, both of which he was also feeling, he was led to a hull breach that shown as a wicked slash through a wall in a storage compartment, on the outside of which was daylight…not stars.

To his dismay the others were jumping out the gash, though a few hesitated as they came up to it, but as soon as they got a look they proceeded to jump out, disappearing to the left. When Kamalat got up to the edge he also hesitated, not wanting to jump out into vacuum, then he saw a tilted forest landscape ahead of him…and he suddenly realized they had crash landed on the moon.

He saw a descending rope attached just inside the gash and grabbed hold of it, stepping outside…with the gravity immediately pulling him to the left. He twisted his legs around and got them below him, then four-armed it down the rope until he got to the very distant bottom and landed on a mound of dirt that had been plowed out upon impact.

Kamalat stepped aside and looked back up at the part of the cruiser that was sticking up out of the ground at a high angle. The screech he heard must have been the crash landing, but the inertial dampeners had held up so he didn’t feel the impact. The front of the cruiser was buried, and probably flattened, but everything not in the compacted forward sections would have been protected from the extreme deceleration, making Kamalat glad that his station had been midway between the fore and aft, allowing him to survive.

His personal quarters were in the forward section, meaning that if he had swapped out his watch with a replacement he’d probably be dead by now.

“Hey, snap out of it. We’ve got supplies to sort and unload,” another Calavari said, coming up and lightly punching a fist into his chest. “You want to wait around for the Cajdital to come clean up?”

“No. What do you need of me?”

The other Calavari pointed to a small stack of crates that was being added to from a lower breach point that looked to be just above the dirt line.

“Inside there is the cargo bay. Get in there and salvage what you can, but watch out for surprises. No telling what power conduits are live or not.”

“On it,” Kamalat confirmed, trodding over the hot soil with his heavy footsteps making two inch imprints all the way up to the edge, where the ground turned from soil to a glassy, gnarled substance that was no doubt a result of the intense friction of impact.

“Catch,” a voice said as a crate floated his way.

Kamalat stepped inside to catch it, immediately feeling the gravity vanish, but he kept a hand outside the boundary of the still active IDF to center him. Where it was being projected from he wasn’t sure, but wherever it was that part of the ship still had power, otherwise everything would have been dumped forward rather than floating around…though he did see some jagged pieces of debris poking out from the forward wall, apparently having been driven through on impact.

“Got it,” Kamalat said, grabbing hold of the supply crate with two arms while using his other two to leverage him and the foodstuff container outside and back into gravity. The transition was clunky, but he stayed on his feet and held the container against his chest as he carried it over and added it to the growing stash, then headed back to the torqued open doors of the cargo bay, happy to be alive and with other survivors, though how long that would last was anyone’s guess, but for the moment at least the Cajdital had more important things to do than inspect the debris of crashed ships when there was still a large Alliance fleet left in orbit for them to engage.

2

May 7, 2470

Pagalis System

Inner Zone

With the Alliance fleet still in control of Varasiss orbit, though having been reduced in size by three fourths, the Cajdital had abandoned the mass attacks and resorted to smaller tactical assaults focusing on a select group of ships, eliminating them, then pulling back out with whatever ships they had left. Most of those assaults were cruiser groups led by a battleship or two, and the Hycre figured that the Cajdital were setting up for another attack with their invoker. To combat this, the Alliance had spread out their fleet across orbit, which made the Cajdital attacks even more effective at eliminating specific ships.

With that fact in mind and expecting the big attack to come eventually, spread out or not, the Hycre chose to hit first, having located the invoker in a shallow orbit around the huge orange star in the binary pair where the stellar winds nearly hid it from sensors. Farther up was the Cajdital fleet, still receiving a steady flow of warships into the system via jumpship, with well over a thousand of the carriers parked in a slightly higher orbit.

It was those carriers that the Hycre jumped on, despite the huge Cajdital fleet of warships nearby. Their binary drives added to their already higher agility, allowing the Hycre to make strafing runs on the jumpships, blowing by with 15-25 destroyers/cruisers and puncturing the shields on one with a single pass. Another group would follow through and take advantage of the temporary weakness even as the swarm of Cajdital cruisers moved in to try and block their path.

Of all the fleets that had been hard hit by the invoker, the Hycre had lost the least ships. Most had pulled back to their outer weapons range when the attack began, expecting the furthest portions of the energy field to be the weakest…and then pulling back outside it when their expectations fell short and they lost ships they’d expected to be safe.

After that they made short runs into gaps in the field, firing off their high yield plasma weapons and then ducking back out, hoping to survive any incidental hits, for it seemed that the energy arcs were at least partially targeted rather than completely random after a few moments of study. Normally some plasma would deflect off the Hycre shield matrixes, but unfortunately the invoker’s energy didn’t work the same way, though it did skip a bit across the shield perimeter, impacting on multiple spots before breaching through and hitting the hull.

The Alliance races that didn’t have energy shields had no protection at all aside from their armor, which the energy arcs were very good at melting/vaporizing.

The Hycre ships quickly learned how much invoker energy they could take…which wasn’t much, but it allowed them to make quick attack runs in that initial assault that had hurt its shields badly, while most of the firepower from the rest of the Alliance fleet didn’t make it through in the case of missiles, with the plasma being reduced to spit as they tried to stay out of range save for those ships brave/reckless enough to charge forward.

Both tactics had left the other fleets decimated, with the Kvash being the best to withstand the invoker attacks…though their slower speed had been disadvantageous. They were used to being the immobile power that others would play against, but with their starbase being taken out of the fight they had quickly been taken out of their element, and that shift in the tactical situation had cost them a significant number of ships before they’d adjusted and started to pull back.

Fortunately the invoker had started to take damage and retreated before it could pursue them, but still the Kvash had lost a high number of ships, leaving the Hycre with the defacto command of the crumbling defenses, which had already seen a few of the smaller races’ ships abandoning the effort and jumping away.

The Hycre knew if the invoker came back in the fleet would scatter, as they should, but that would leave the Cajdital with possession of a piece of planetary orbit, opening up a ground invasion of the planet. Plus, the fewer ships the Alliance could pull together, the less chance there was of taking the invoker down, which was why the Hycre had decided to take the fight to them, and were doing so in spectacular fashion.

The Cajdital jumpships, heavily armed as they were, were sitting ducks against the Hycre’s fleet, with many of them beginning to scatter and turning a once orderly formation into navigational chaos. The Hycre used that to their advantage, maneuvering through the gaps where the Cajdital cruisers couldn’t follow with as much ease. Like schools of deadly sharks the Hycre moved around and through the mass of Cajdital ships, but only hit the jumpships, forgoing the easy targets the cruisers made.

Thinking ahead past this invasion, the Hycre knew the less jumpships the enemy had the less ships and troops they could move around in future years, meaning that even if they couldn’t hold the Calavari homeworld they’d be slowing down other invasions by taking these sitting jumpships down while they were clustered together and vulnerable.

The mass of cruisers, battleships, and even a few dreadnaughts that the Cajdital were holding back moved to defend their jumpships as the big behemoths ran for wherever they could get openings, but the Hycre had come in from numerous angles, blocking the jumplines to the surrounding planets and making the Cajdital move laterally, giving them extra time to poach their targets given the Hycre destroyers’ greater speed.

As that ruckus was underway another group of Hycre ships was waiting on the jumpline they’d determined the Cajdital were arriving by and hitting new jumpships as they came in against the other star. Simultaneously a group of much larger Hycre ships…cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships…jumped from one star to the other and began circling around its orange mass at low altitude enroute for the position where they knew the invoker to be hiding.

Given the Hycre’s natural habitats within gas giants and their navy’s ability to fly into and through the massive atmospheres that they contained, the Hycre dipped lower into the star’s orbit and pushed through the thin, hot gasses there, weathering the damage to their shields until they came up on the invoker from below and made an initial strafing run against it at considerable speed intended to deliver their plasma at nearly pointblank range so that it wouldn’t be disrupted by the stellar winds.

The Cajdital saw them coming and began rising in altitude, but not before the Hycre got to them. The energy cascades didn’t manifest, which the Hycre had been hoping would be the case. The Cajdital would have to move clear of the star’s highly charged, thin upper atmosphere to use their primary weapon, and the Hycre were going to hurt them as much as possible before that.

The invoker’s shields had already been up and weakened by the sustained effort to ward off the star’s continual light damage, meaning that when the Hycre hit them they had less shields to punch through than normal. As soon as this and the fact that the ship wasn’t powering up its primary weapon became evident, the Hycre aborted their strafing runs and moved up in between the invoker’s arms and blasted away at the ship as it desperately tried to climb out from the star without creating too much turbulence.

Given the choice of getting blindsided by the Hycre or jumping too far in, the invoker’s crew decided to go with the later and made a very light microjump away from the star on no particular jumpline. The friction of the very thin stellar atmosphere popped what was left of their shields and sandblasted the massive ship’s hull, tearing through the outer layers of armor and damaging some of the emitters on the arms.

The Hycre followed easily, though it took them a moment to get back within firing range. When they did the primary weapon lit up and the invoker was once again encircled with cackles of multi-colored energy as it continued to run, though laterally this time, trying to get to a jumpline where it could escape.

Meanwhile the Cajdital fleet trying to defend the jumpships split in two, with half running back the other way to try and get to the invoker. Over the minutes between that happening or the invoker getting to a decent jumpline, the Hycre ships braved the energy field and continued to attack the invoker with short strafing runs led by the largest of their ships.

The Hycre battleships would punch a hole in the energy arcs, taking the brunt of the storm while the others would follow them through taking less hits than otherwise, but after the first pass was made the Hycre discovered that some of the emitters had been damaged, leaving a few holes in the invoker’s ever fluctuating energy field.

The Hycre moved instantly to exploit the weakness and flew very difficult navigational routes to keep their ships tucked up inside those holes and directly over the hull of the invoker as it altered its trajectory and speed regularly, trying to shake its pursuit. They managed to break through the armor and get at the Cajdital ship’s interior, eventually sheering off one of the emitter arms and creating a much larger gap in the field around where it had been.

The Hycre packed ships inside that gap, but the Cajdital finally got to a useable jumpline and bumped their way free, ramming four of the cruisers at low speed and taking additional damage from the collisions as the energy arcs disappeared and the massive black ship disappeared in a blur.

The Hycre went after it, sending some of their ships out on the same jumpline while the others laid down tractor beams onto their own damaged ships and pulled them away on slow jumps after extending their IDF fields to cover the energy tethers, else the surge of acceleration would have torn them apart. They managed to do so just before the swarm of Cajdital ships caught up to them, and the enemy knew better than to try and pursue, given the Hycre’s better navigational capability.

The fleet attacking the Cajdital jumpships didn’t stay around long either after the other ships came into play. While the enemy couldn’t stay with them, give them enough numbers and all they had to do was blanket the approaches with plasma and the Cajdital would rack up enough hits on the Hycre ships to take them down.

Still, they persisted a bit longer, expertly navigating through the hoard and hitting a few dozen cruisers for good measure before pulling out, taking shield and armor damage with them, but without losing a single ship.

They left 86 damaged Cajdital jumpships behind, some of which were so torn up they were near to snapping in half. That number was small compared to how many were present in the system, with more still arriving with fresh warships and troops, but anywhere else that would have been a massive catastrophe and the Hycre knew it. Plus, two of the 86 had been the Cajdital’s largest jumpship models, capable of ferrying around their battleships and dreadnaughts, if not upwards of 1000 cruisers.

One of those massive jumpships, along with several ‘small’ ones were falling into the star, having been trying to escape in that direction when their gravity drives were hit, with the Cajdital fleet of warships swarming around them and trying to physically push the larger craft into a stable orbit, but in the case of the big jumpship the math wasn’t in their favor, and soon the Cajdital figured that out as well, for a plethora of smaller craft began abandoning it in a hurry as it began to kiss the star’s upper atmosphere.

The Cajdital’s plan of rendezvousing close in to the star to help mask long range sensors was now coming back to bite them, spectacularly so, as the mammoth jumpship began to burn in a huge plume of atmosphere it kicked up on the way down, then it fragmented as it hit a lower layer within the star, with each piece breaking up and further disintegrating as it sank lower and lower into the star.

Once again the Hycre’s naval mastery had stuck it to the Cajdital, but they had so many ships in the system they could overcome the losses and continued to do so, immediately jumping the bulk of their fleet out, intent on assaulting Varasiss while the Hycre were absent.

They left behind a significant force to guard the damaged jumpships, but the rest of the huge Cajdital ships were dispersed throughout the system, making it impossible for the Hycre to locate and exploit any clustering of vessels. That said, the Hycre also saw this as an advantage, for their ships were good at hunting others down, and the larger the ships the easier it was to track and intercept them…which was one reason why the Cajdital had chosen to press the attack now, forcing the Hycre to make a decision.

Over 2,000 cruisers, 50+ battleships, and 6 dreadnaughts surged their way back towards Varasiss in a stream, holding off high above the planet until their numbers pooled, then they dove towards low orbit, heading towards the nearest cluster of Alliance ships which was pathetically small in comparison, given how spread out they’d become in case the invoker came back.

The Hycre ships still in orbit, few as they were given they’d devoted nearly everything they had to the stellar assault, issued orders to the rest of the Alliance fleet, and regardless of what the other races thought about their arrogant presumption, they complied with the ‘suggestion’ and moved off on specified courses that the Hycre had not deigned to explain.

That explanation was given in the arrival of handfuls of Hycre destroyers, frigates, and corvettes that had been sitting in ambush positions across the system coming back on specific jumplines and intercepting the Cajdital with calculated precision that was typical Hycre. The other Hycre smaller ships were still bouncing around the system chasing errant jumpships and making a few kills, though most were playing a wounding game, eliciting damage where they could until their little stings could eventually get through, which in the case of a jumpship was more about mass than shield strength, with their gravity drives buried deep within the hull.

Seeing the Cajdital counterattack a lot of those ships had to be recalled, but enough were left to keep the enemy jumpships busy, and with the Alliance’s coordination with the Hycre the massive battle the Cajdital was looking for didn’t arise. Rather, it was broken down into smaller engagements that favored the Hycre ships when backed up by other Alliance vessels.

The enemy wasn’t stupid, and they saw this immediately. Instead of trying to abort the attack they pursued it and fought the Alliance on their own terms, all the while calling for some of their jumpships to return. They picked their jumplines carefully, and as the fighting entered its 3rd hour across low to high orbit, a group of 16 jumpships plus escorts arrived in an empty region above the low orbit defense grid of Calavari battle stations.

Before the Alliance could get enough ships back over to intercept them, the Cajdital launched a wave of cruisers that blew past the battle stations, taking numerous hits as they went, mostly from missile impacts. A few ships were lost, but the cruisers were clumped together so tightly the Calavari stations couldn’t down them quick enough, letting some 88% through to the atmosphere…where they were met by swarms of Valeries that exploited the damage the stations had made in their shields and hulls.

They followed the cruisers all the way to ground, losing many of the fighters in the process, but even more once their descent slowed and their anti-air plasma shards became more effective at range with the air no longer blowing them apart as soon as they left their batteries.

The Valeries were forced to withdrawal and watch the cruisers land, staking out four different locations on the second largest southern continent, whereupon the cargo cruisers began disgorging huge numbers of hover tanks and infantry protected by the cruisers’ guns that held back both the Calavari air and tanks. They were used to getting their asses handed to them on the ground by the Nestafar, but the Cajdital didn’t have walkers and in that regard they were even…both had tanks, both had infantry, both had aircraft…and the Calavari liked the matchup, but not the Cajdital cruisers’ ability to influence the ground campaign.

And as they always did, the Cajdital began burrowing and building within their cruiser ring, with a portable shield generator going up within the day, covering all the cruisers in the ring with a much stronger shield that also protected the surface structures being assembled, giving the Cajdital their first footholds on the Calavari capitol.

3

May 9, 2470

Pagalis System

Outer Zone

The invoker made another microjump, braking against a significantly-sized planet on the outskirts of the system…and right into a group of Hycre warships waiting for it. They were waiting just to the side of the jumpline and ended up within 40 kilometers of the massive Cajdital ship, guessing with incredible accuracy where it would end up. The smaller Hycre ships, who didn’t show up on sensors as soon due to their limited cross-sections and which were pointed straight onto the jumpline to further decrease the sensor image and give the Cajdital less warning to alter their braking point, accelerated quickly and got into firing range before the invoker could spin up its primary weapon.

Smaller Cajdital plasma cannons fired back, but they were few in number, capable of defending against a handful of ships, but it was readily apparent that the invoker had been designed for one purpose and one purpose only. It was a tool designed to be used in concert with a fleet of warships, but as it was fleeing from point to point within the system it had no escorts, and the Hycre had been nipping at it for two days, with the largest damage having been done when it tried to get back to the pair of stars to make a jump out of the system.

The Hycre had been waiting in ambush and pounded it to the point that its hull armor was punctured and a serious internal wound became visible as the ship vented both atmosphere and debris out the small hole…but due to the invoker’s huge size even that amount of damage was trivial, and it had microjumped back away from the stars, hoping to bounce around to one of dozens of jumplines that would bring it back into the primary gravity wells where the Hycre weren’t waiting.

But nearly every jump it made saw at least a few Hycre ships that usually got in a good salvo or two. By now the invoker had limited shields, unable to secure enough time to recharge them, and the one time they’d tried to make a slow jump to buy them time the Hycre jumped ahead and were waiting for them with even more numbers than it faced now.

The whale-like ships pounded its hull at close range, then pulled back as its primary weapon finally came online. The invoker began repositioning over to another jumpline, but the Hycre still had an opening to hit, given that the energy fields were missing around the severed pylon.

The weakened shields gave way before it could jump out and the Hycre racked up some more small-scale hull damage, hitting both armor and exposed interior components before the invoker accelerated away towards a planet on the far side of the system. The longer jump took additional time, and when it arrived there was already a battle going on between the Hycre and the Cajdital who’d placed cruisers at that location.

Those cruisers were having their ass handed to them, but the Hycre couldn’t ignore them completely and only got a few light hits in against the invoker as the Cajdital warships hounded them. It jumped out again without taking any further hull damage, enroute to another location that the Cajdital was positioning support ships.

When it arrived at a large moon of the 6th planet, the invoker ran smack into a larger Hycre fleet in the final moments of tearing apart the cruisers that had been put there to support it. A Hycre battleship was amongst the group, and it immediately surged out towards the invoker that had its braking point at a slightly higher altitude.

The invoker tried to run around to the nearest jumpline, not wanting to reverse course and go back to the ships waiting for it where it had just been, and began to spin up its primary weapon, but it wasn’t fast enough. The Hycre battleship got up close over the weak spot and blasted away at another pylon, getting through the shields just as the energy field began to manifest. That made the blind spot even bigger, and the invoker tried to spin around to catch the battleship in the intact portion of the field, but the Hycre ship moved with it as other ships also came in and added their firepower.

Two more pylons were disabled, though not destroyed, before the invoker made the jump away from the moon, heading over to the planet in the blink of an eye. The Hycre followed, but the maneuver gave the invoker a little bit of a head start. It took more damage enroute to the jumpline it wanted, then emerged back at system’s center, coming out against the smaller of the two stars were a large Cajdital fleet was waiting.

It was battling the Hycre as the faster Alliance ships zipped in and out of their lines, but when the invoker arrived the fleet immediately surrounded it in escort formation as it headed for an interstellar jumpline that would get it out of the system. As they did they lost numerous ships, for the Hycre coming at them from multiple directions ate up their perimeter ships rather than trying to bust through and assault the invoker directly. With a blind spot in its offensive capability the Hycre knew they now owned it, and were more than happy to take the advantage offered them and eliminate more of the Cajdital ships, even if they didn’t get the invoker.

Which they didn’t. It successfully moved through stellar orbit until it got to its jumpline, then vanished in a blur of motion after the Cajdital support ships moved out of the way after plowing a road through the Hycre waiting to block them.

When the invoker jumped it was immediately damaged, having run into a mine field the Hycre had hastily set up further out from the star along the jumpline. The ‘mines’ were kinetic, meaning they were just chunks of dense mass deposited in a location where the invoker would jump through. The mines were tiny compared to the size of the invoker, but they cut into it like a hot knife through butter, breaking apart as they hit the hull and turning into a narrow cloud of shrapnel at each location, punching through the entire length of the ship and blasting out the far side, with their debris dragging behind the ship on its outward trajectory with high speed, effectively clearing the jumpline after an hour or so due to the erratic drift of the residue.

The invoker lost several gravity drives, which eventually killed it a few days later when it wasn’t able to decelerate as quickly as needed, resulting it in hitting the destination star. The Hycre didn’t know of their kill, for they had no ships in the far system to note the impact, but when the mine-layers went back to recover their mines they only recovered 78% of them, so they knew they’d done damage to the ship killer.

The rest of the Cajdital fleet that had been covering for the invoker got chewed up by the Hycre until they started to mass together, at which point the Hycre spread out and fled, preferring to hunt smaller groupings of the Cajdital around the system or waiting for them to come back to Varasiss and ambush them there when they had other Alliance ships to assist.

Eventually that’s where the Alliance and Cajdital fleets ended up, with a more standard battle ensuing. The enemy kept sending cruiser formations down to the surface of the planet, which the Hycre and others would try and intercept, often with success. As the Calavari army attempted futilely to assault their encampments, going up against the grounded cruisers’ firepower, the Hycre dispatched several smaller ships to assist them, but aside from damaging a few ships they couldn’t get past the clustered Cajdital defenses.

The Hycre eventually responded by sending down more ships, which is what the Cajdital wanted. With a significant number of their warships on the ground the main orbital assault resumed, with the targets being the remaining Kvash battleships, of which there were 9 left…out of an original 26. They were spaced around orbit in clusters of three, along with most of the rest of the Alliance fleet, though there were some smaller groups from other races dotting the wide spaces in between so they could get better runs against Cajdital cruisers going to ground.

The enemy hit all three groups simultaneously, with a dreadnaught leading each attack alongside a handful of battleship escorts and a mass of cruisers. Each dreadnaught was three times the length of the battleships and equally rounded and elongated, but with a vertical fin coming out the top and bottom that ran from bow to stern, making them reminiscent of the flat cruisers and equipped with a handful of supersized plasma cannons.

The rest of their hulls were coated in cruiser-size cannons and anti-air plasma units, making them more than a formidable match for a Kvash battleship. Three, on the other hand, was more than a dreadnaught could take alone, which was where the rest of the Cajdital fleet was going to come into play…but once again the Kvash found themselves on the small side of the engagement, putting them outside their comfort zone.

But not far out. The three battleships formed into a vertical triangle, giving each a clear view of the dreadnaught minus the ships in between. Most were Cajdital cruisers, but there were also a handful of Hycre destroyers leaping out to the front to zip around and through the enemy lines, hoping to disrupt their formation and cause some damage before the two fleets slammed into one another. Spaced around the trio of battleships were the Kvash’s ‘smaller’ vessels. Battlecruisers, cruisers, and destroyers aligned into a halo around the three, waiting for the Cajdital to come to them, with a mass of Kitot warships lined up in between the gaps.

They were one of the Alliance’s junior races, brought in by the Kvash and well accustomed to doing battle alongside their benefactor, not just against the Cajdital, but against a number of other threats over the history of their relationship, given that Kitot territory overlapped with the much larger Kvash domain. Individually they were older, much older, with the average lifespan upwards of 500 years, but physically they were small, coming up to a Human’s waist and appearing like a ‘tripod’ on their three legs…which the Star Force pilots had come to nickname them on Daka.

Their ships were small as well, each being frigate class. Normally that wouldn’t be of much help to the Kvash with heavy fighting, but the unique design of the Kitot warships provided them with far more punch than their size suggested. They had one weapon and one weapon only, housed within the forward column of the tri-finned design that mimicked their body structure. That weapon was plasma based, but unlike a streamer which discharged a continuous narrow beam, the Kitot cannons produced and held the plasma inside a forward cavity, growing the contained plasma orb to insane size before finally releasing it when and where they chose.

As the Cajdital ships approached the Alliance fleet and began engaging the forward elements belonging to the other races, little glowing orbs of pink popped up like Christmas lights encircling the Kvash warships, with each of those lights growing brighter by the moment as they increased their charge. Then, when the forward Cajdital cruisers began taking hits by the Kvash plasma streamers that tore through their shields in a matter of seconds, the Kitot ships began to move, forming into little schools of fish that swam after individuals ships that moved past the Kvash, either intact or damaged.

They fell in behind them and launched their pink plasma orbs, each of which hit with a wider cross-section than even the largest plasma streamer on the Kvash battleships, or any other plasma weapon within the Alliance fleet aside from the starbases. The weapons had a slow recharge cycle, but by having 10-15 ships per group, they were able to hit the ship they were trailing with several quick shots that downed the cruiser without trouble.

Once the task was done the Kitot swarm turned around, snaking their way back up in next to the Kvash ships where they waited for their next target, either picking one themselves or going after ships the Kvash tagged for them. Conventional wisdom held that when attacking the Kvash you had to go after their biggest ship first, else they’d wear down your fleet, diminishing your weapon count, and making it harder to take down the biggest one later.

With that tactic in mind, the Kitot were literally daring the Cajdital to shoot at them instead. A gifting of shield tech gave the little ships more durability than most, but they wouldn’t stand up against a lot of firepower…but if they were attacked, then they were taking the hits for the Kvash, which would mean their bigger ships would persist longer in the battle, which was bad news for the Cajdital.

If the enemy didn’t target the Kitot, they’d essentially get free shots in that would assist with the Kvash’s weapons fire, exploiting shield breaches or weakening others as an extension of the Kvash fleet when needed. More often than not the Kvash ships would hit a passing Cajdital cruiser, taking down its shields but failing to kill it, then they’d send the Kitot to finish it off, often with the support of the Fanset, another Kvash invitee to the Alliance, but one that they had a looser relationship with.

The Fanset fleet was lined up behind the Kvash, given their ships were largely inferior to the rest. What they had going for them was mass…they were all fat blobs halfway to being a sphere with strategic/random protrusions over their hulls, and not all of their ships had similar designs. They, along with six other races, in addition to the Hycre, were deployed behind and around the Kvash, letting them take the brunt of the attack.

The Kvash had indicated that they wanted it that way, with the understanding that the others would move forward and engage when called for or when they saw an opportunity to strike without getting themselves mauled by the larger Cajdital ships…which headed straight for the Kvash behind a wave of cruisers.

The dreadnaught targeted the lower Kvash battleship, pouring its forward cannonfire squarely into the forward lobe of the tri-sphere ship, smothering the shields with huge green plasma orbs as maroon streamers replied from all three battleships. Smaller cannons on the dreadnaught that were in range also opened fire, though most didn’t have firing lines given the angle or the mass of other ships flanking them.

The Cajdital battleships also targeted the same Kvash battleship, which quickly became overwhelmed with plasma, prompting it to rotate to bring another sphere into the firing line as the Kvash signaled for the other races’ fleets to begin assaulting the flanks of the enemy.

They responded by flying around the outskirts of the Kvash fleet and angling in on strafing runs, small ships and large, against the battleships and whatever cruisers got in their way. Many of them moved slowly, but they didn’t stick around to slug it out with the Cajdital, forming several rivers of ships that constantly kept moving, all the while the Kvash remained as still as the rocks they looked like.

The Fanset were the only ones that didn’t move, for the Kvash were keeping them in reserve. As it was plenty of cruisers were coming their way as they strafed the battleships, which the Fanset were engaging if they moved through the gap between the fleets, in the middle of which the Kitot were chasing down many. It wasn’t until the Cajdital dreadnaught lost its forward shields and saw that it wasn’t going to be able to take down the battleship that it dipped underneath the Kvash formation and accelerated ahead, trying to get away from the battle as the enemy cruisers continued to fly and shoot in a frenzied storm, now targeting the smaller Alliance ships.

The Kvash battleships continued to pour plasma streamers into the top of the dreadnaught as it passed underneath, then two of the Kvash cruisers dropped down to pace it, exchanging close range fire with its side batteries. That was when the Kvash commanders tagged the Fanset with hitting the dreadnaught as it accelerated away closer to the planet as it curved through a wide arc setting up for a jump.

Using their fat hulls to surround the dreadnaught, the Fanset hit it with everything they had as the Kitot swarms were sent after it as well. The Kvash battleships and most of their support ships took on the rest of the Cajdital fleet, which was still largely intact, leaving the hunt to their two subordinate races now that they’d wounded the big ship.

It was a fair fight, with the Fanset and Kitot taking heavy losses, but their combined firepower shredded the dreadnaught’s exterior hull, knocking out most of its weaponry before it resorted to lightly ramming three Fanset ships out of the way to make an escape jump, with the rest of the Cajdital fleet retreating soon thereafter.

The other two Alliance fleets didn’t fare so well, with one losing a battleship and the other losing two, though that Cajdital assault group was virtually destroyed in the effort. The other two groups had different races in support, for each faction within the Alliance didn’t like splitting up their fleets, leaving the Kitot and Fanset bolstering only the one group of Kvash ships, which had made the difference in this engagement by giving the Kvash more combat assets to work with, whereas the other races were more or less random factors in the otherwise controlled and scripted battle.

The Hycre poached many ships in the engagement, including the dreadnaught some hours later when they ran it down and delivered a fatal blow to its gravity drives, pinning it in place in orbit around the 12th planet in the system. After that it was just a matter of time before they killed it, though they got many cruisers to die defending it beforehand, essentially using the monster ship as a lure to peel off ships from other deployments into smaller, manageable numbers.

The other two dreadnaughts suffered damage as well, with one being destroyed and the other coming off lightly. It retreated along with the other ships, but failing to have taken out more of the Kvash ships the Cajdital transitioned to a more coy strategy, given that their long stream of jumpships entering the system had come to an end. There would be more reinforcements coming in the months ahead, but their initial assault group was now fully assembled, with there being too few ships to rely on the swarming tactic. Had they eliminated the Kvash battleships it would have been another story, but six still remained, and that was more than the Cajdital could easily handle.

With troops already on the ground and the ability to land more under protest, the Cajdital switched from an orbital assault plan to a ground assist strategy, with cruisers running cargo ships to ground and clustering around their shield generators when the Hycre came knocking. Had their warships not been in play, the Cajdital would have sent their ships en mass into the atmosphere to attack Calavari ground targets, but they knew that was suicide, so they decided to play the waiting game, defending their footholds as needed while they constructed bases that would eventually grow to the point where they could start producing troops and ships of their own.

When that happened, they would be all but impossible to remove from the surface.

4

July 2, 2470

Pagalis System

Radamal

Kamalat ran through the trees, a rifle in both sets of hands, following three of his fellow Calavari as they retreated ahead of a thong of Cajdital infantry whom they’d just ambushed. He ducked under one low branch then pushed his way through a dense set of bushes until he came out onto the creek bank and ran across the mostly dry stone wash, hearing the smaller Cajdital foot strikes closing in behind him.

His shields flared with a plasma hit on his back as he got to the water, but they held up, protecting his otherwise vulnerable skin. The shield harness he wore blocked energy only, not physical objects, and fortunately the plasma counted as both, but he knew it wouldn’t last against more than a few hits without time for its capacitor to recharge, so he dug down into his well of energy and forced his tired legs to move a bit faster.

Before he got to the opposing brush line a hail of golden plasma streaks sailed around him and the others, coming from concealed snipers. Though he couldn’t see it, more than a dozen Cajdital went down behind him as they exited the vegetation cover, with more coming out by the second as they ran into the second part of the ambush.

Kamalat burst through the green leaves and back into the forest, turning a quick right and zigzagging his way around to an opening in the Calavari line that had decent cover, then he knelt down and brought both rifles up into firing position. With the leaves covering most of his body and his eyesight, he relied on the holographic tracking icon that floated above the top of each barrel as he set the power level to low and began firing off a hail of golden lances.

He and the other Calavari mowed the Cajdital down with great satisfaction, with Kamalat wounding/killing at least half a dozen himself, though it was difficult to keep track of them all, for there was so much plasma fire exchanging and bodies dropping that it quickly became chaotic…then he heard yells from the opposite side of their line, Calavari yells, which told him something had gone wrong.

Kamalat only had a split second’s warning as he rotated both rifles around to the left enroute to pulling back and heading to assist where the trouble was when his holographic tracking markers picked up the Cajdital flankers’ body head, flashing quick targets across the tiny displays as he turned.

“On the left!” he yelled, pointing the barrels back to where he’d picked up the signatures and opening fire as quickly as his thick fingers could pump the triggers, eviscerating the greenery in between him and his targets.

In response a much larger storm of green plasma orbs came back, blasting into tree trunks and branches, setting them on fire or simply blowing them apart, with what plasma didn’t hit coming through hitting the Calavari line and Kamalat in the head. Fortunately his shield covered his face and held up to the hit, but he flinched so bad on impact that he tipped over backwards and fell to the ground with several more plasma orbs passing through the space where his body had just been.

Cajdital infantry then came into sight, and Kamalat aimed at them from the ground with no time to get up, simultaneously resetting his power levels to a low medium so that he could be sure to take them down with one hit each, then he fired off thicker lances at two of them simultaneously, using the advantage of four arms and superior rifle tech to cut down those enemies closest to him.

The thin chest armor the Cajdital wore didn’t fully stop the Calavari plasma, leaving each shot with enough plasma to cut deep into their flesh. As he’d come to expect after weeks of ground combat, the two dropped to the ground wounded or probably dead, leaving four more coming out of the greenery behind them. The Cajdital had let their other infantry get mowed down crossing the creek as a diversion, buying time for this group and probably one on the other side to flank them, and now they were about to get the payoff.

The Calavari next to Kamalat took several hits, with at least one of them penetrating his shields. He heard his scream as the green plasma burned into his leg, but he didn’t dare look back as he fired more and more shots off against the enemy infantry while he struggled to get back up on at least a knee. He didn’t want to get shot dead sitting on his ass.

Kamalat shot another one dead before two more plasma orbs hit his chest shields, weakening them to the breaching point, then as more Cajdital infantry worked their way out of the brush he saw a tiny blur of fur jump up from the ground and cling to one of their heads, whereupon the Urik’kadel fired a tiny wristbound pistol into the Cajdital’s skull when the short barrel made physical contact.

The Cajdital dropped to the ground, dead before it landed, with the little rabbit-like alien jumping off and heading for another as several dozen of them came out of the forest and ambushed the flankers.

“Move Calavari!” one of them yelled at Kamalat as he slowly got himself back up on his feet. “More are on their way. Follow us.”

Kamalat glanced down the line, seeing that most of his fellow soldiers were dead, with two firing at something off to the right as they retreated towards him. Taking their cue he turned and backpedaled in the direction of the Urik’kadel, shooting at Cajdital targets out of sight with his rifle’s sensors while glancing back over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t trip over anything, get ambushed, or lose sight of their diminutive allies…who were quickly outpacing him as they jumped a few more enemy infantry that were popping through from the creek bed.

Eventually he just turned and ran, hoping the faster Cajdital wouldn’t catch him, and followed the Urik’kadel through the woods on a nonlinear path…with Kamalat not having a clue where he was by the time they finally stopped in a crater-like hollow. The little aliens crept up to the top edges to stand watch while Kamalat and a few other Calavari took cover in the center, with their heads just below the height of the surrounding ridges.

“Where are we?” one of the other Calavari asked.

“Northeast of the mining site,” one of the Urik’kadel said, running up between the huge aliens. “We can follow trail back to base once we make sure Cajdital are not coming.”

“What trail?” Kamalat asked. The base they’d been operating out of had been built underground in a clearing that had four roads leading out of it, with the intent being to deny the Nestafar the use of their walkers in assaulting it and making them come down inside with infantry and protomechs, while the Calavari’s own tanks would fit through the entrances, giving them the vehicular advantage for once. But as far as he knew, other than the roads, there were no trails leading to the base.

“Scent trail we leave. It’s how we know to get here.”

“Thank you,” one of the five Calavari said, kicking a stone half buried in the dirt and dislodging it enough to pop it up two meters into the air. “How did they beat us this time?”

“I don’t know,” Kamalat said, equally angry. The ambush should have worked. How the Cajdital had gotten across the creek and flanked them without being seen didn’t make any sense.

“Enemy transports,” the Urik’kadel said, pointing at the sky. “They fly behind and drop troops.”

“Where did they come from?”

“Mining base, far side. We saw from trees.”

“They must have gone pretty far out of their way to get around us,” Kamalat said in disgust. “Why didn’t you signal us with comms?”

“They no work near base.”

The Calavari beside Kamalat checked his, finding it marginally operational.

“Damn it. They’ve got a jamming field set up. That means they were waiting for us to strike.”

“Why?” Kamalat asked.

“Because we’ve been hitting too many of their precious convoys, that’s why,” he said, stomping on the ground so hard the little Urik’kadel visibly bounced. “They need resources to feed their invasion of Varasiss and we’ve been disrupting their output, so they set a trap.”

“By letting us set a trap for them?”

“They’re devious bastards, I’ll give them that,” the Calavari said, looking down at the Urik’kadel. “Did anyone else make it out? Have your scouts seen anyone else?”

The little rabbit-like creature twitched and looked to the perimeter around the hollow, conversing in its native language for a few seconds before staring back up at the high Calavari head above it.

“No one. Just you here.”

Kamalat took a knee, angry and depressed. “That was a fourth of our troops.”

“So long as one of us remains we’re gonna make these bastards pay, I promise you,” the elder Calavari said, dragging Kamalat to his feet by his left upper elbow. “We need to get moving…if it’s clear?” he asked, glancing down.

“No pursuit. Trail is open,” the Urik’kadel said, moving off to the edge. “Calavari follow.”

“Go ahead,” he said, bumping Kamalat as he passed. The Calavari naval officer fell into step behind the mechanic, with the other three doing likewise as they walked up and out of the hollow and off through the forest on a random path following their little guides, alert for more Cajdital ambushes.

None would arise by the time they got back to base, whereupon a subsurface structure lifted up to expose an entrance cupola towards the edge of the grassy clearing, but not so near as to give the enemy cover in the tree line. There were a mass of weapons turrets currently hidden below ground that could pop up and give covering fire if needed, thus the entrances had to have a clear radius around them, though Kamalat and the others certainly didn’t feel like running across the open any more than the Urik’kadel did.

The little ones went first, racing across the grass with their bodies being mostly obscured by it, and attaining speeds the Calavari couldn’t match. They got to the entrance and hopped down into the stairwell long before Kamalat and the others arrived. When the five of them had entered, barely two steps inside, the whole assembly began to lower down, closing off the entrance and leaving only a thick chunk of armor on top surrounded by dirt for the enemy to shoot at if they so chose.

The base had been attacked twice already. Once by air and once by ground, but both times the Calavari defenses held and the Cajdital seemed unwilling to lose another cruiser, with the remains of the dead one sitting upended in the forest several kilometers off where it eventually fell. The base defense turrets had been designed to shoot and kill Nestafar walkers, meaning they had to be very potent weapons, which proved sufficient to penetrate the shields and armor on a Cajdital cruiser in short order, though they had lost three turrets in the process.

That victory had kept the base in Alliance hands, with them gathering every survivor they could find to them…which was extremely few, given the lack of population on the moon. Kamalat and his crew had been the biggest fine, with most of the workers in the nearby facilities having been evacuated to the base before the first Cajdital arrived.

The Calavari had then been divided into 5 teams, each of which had enough troops to conduct round the clock operations, with the base commander insisting on such. He and the others knew there would be no escape for them, for the moon’s orbit was fully under Cajdital control. The Alliance still held Varasiss orbit, more or less, and the base was in constant contact with them, but they weren’t in a position to assist any of the moons, for the Cajdital had taken over them all and begun harvesting their on-hand resources immediately to set up bases.

Those bases had started their own mining efforts recently, with at least some of the produce being shipped off the moon and sent down to Varasiss…meaning that the moons were the industrial base that the Cajdital were going to use to feed their invasion, even if the Calavari troops on the capitol managed to contain the enemy’s footholds and not allow them to expand to the point where they could harvest their own resources, either from salvage or directly from the planet’s crust.

The Alliance had determined this and informed Kamalat’s base that they needed to do as much as they could to disrupt the Cajdital’s efforts there, and to their credit the Hycre had been assaulting the moon’s orbit and on occasion strafing surface targets, but they’d been unable to drive the Cajdital off, leaving it to Kamalat’s ragtag band of conscripts to fight a guerilla war against their enemy’s resource gathering operations, most of whom were not infantry trained.

The Urik’kadel had come to the moon the same way Kamalat had, having been onboard a carrier when it crashed on the planetoid. The pilots it’d been servicing had mostly been killed in the battle, but a few had made it to ground in their miniature Valeries, ironically giving the base more Alliance pilots than Calavari, which was a mark of shame to the piloting specialists, but at this point any bit of military hardware and personnel was of extreme value, and they were grateful for the tiny pilots…especially given their high skill level.

The carrier they’d been based on was Calavari, and a few of its crew also survived the crash, having been brought back to the base after the Cajdital strafed the survivors. Fortunately that hadn’t happened to Kamalat’s cruiser, but then again the carrier was a greater threat, and even crumpled on the surface it still could have had useable aircraft…which it had.

The Urik’kadel had been on the Calavari carrier because their own starships were pathetically primitive, and even though it had been the Kvash that had brought them into the Alliance, they and the Calavari had quickly become close friends, given the innate piloting skill that both races seemed to possess. For that reason the Urik’kadel had offered to help defend the Calavari capitol, though in truth they didn’t belong here, for some of their own worlds were being overrun by the Cajdital, and those conflicts were little more than organized slaughters.

Kamalat knew this because he was naval, and the Urik’kadel lived on naval carriers. Perhaps they were better off here than getting destroyed on their own worlds, but it seemed that it wasn’t going to matter anyway. Here or there they were going to die at Cajdital hands, and if Varasiss did fall, then the Calavari empire was doomed as well. Things already looked bleak, but if they could hold the capitol then some hope remained…and if they were going to do that, Kamalat and the others on the moon needed to give their troops fighting over there as much assistance as possible, meaning hampering the Cajdital here in whatever way they could.

To that end, as soon as Kamalat arrived at the base he was put back into the field on another mission, and would continue to do so round the clock with adequate breaks for sleep and food, but little else. Time was the object of the game here, for they knew they couldn’t beat the Cajdital. They were too many and had naval air support, which aside from over their base they couldn’t hope to touch.

No, their objective was to slow the Cajdital down and steal from them as many resources as they could, whether by destruction or relocation. Every pallet of ingots they took away from them here was one that wouldn’t be delivered down to Varasiss, so even though their own fate seemed sealed, all of the Calavari worked diligently to do what they could for their brothers down on the planet below.

5

February 23, 2471

Pagalis System

Varasiss

The Hycre cruiser, recently arrived insystem, glided across the Calavari landscape of tulip-shaped buildings capped off by an invisible defense shield enroute to the Cajdital encampment some 132 kilometers away. A ring of destruction surrounded it, marking the location of intense naval bombardment from the grounded enemy cruisers that now sat underneath their own defense shield, shooting at any Calavari ground troops stupid enough to assault them…and many had tried before abandoning the effort short of a new idea arising.

Likewise the Cajdital stayed bunkered underneath their own defenses, burrowing and building as the Calavari likewise dug tunnels toward them, creating an underground war zone where the tunnels met up that favored the Calavari up until the Cajdital began producing mauler variants. Their forearm blades and thicker build allowed them to get up close and go hand to hand with the larger aliens, cutting through their energy shields as if they weren’t even there and causing a considerable amount of wounds where their plasma wouldn’t penetrate.

The Calavari countered this with more conventional body armor, which the Cajdital then countered with det packs in the low numbered battlefield that kept the high population of the planet out of the fight and reduced the conflict down to numbers the Cajdital could handle. While they would gladly take any advances the tunneling could provide, for the enemy it was yet another delaying tactic as they brought down more transports through the aerial blockade and supplemented the troops they were now growing on the surface with additional materials, foodstuffs, and armaments.

The Hycre couldn’t get through their cruiser stacks, with more than 100 in each of the now 7 foothold locations, all of which were close enough to one another that they could disrupt the Alliance’s aircraft, making them zigzag their way through the area to avoid the growing number of wisps on patrol that were no longer allowing the Valeries to fly free around the defense shield, not that they were going to penetrate it with aircraft weapons anyway.

The bases were close enough that the wisps could easily come to the aid of the others after a short delay, with the Calavari and Urik’kadel working to thin those numbers, but the Cajdital kept producing and importing more to replace their losses, enough to create a lingering standoff that favored the enemy.

The Hycre cruiser was about to break that standoff, flying through atmosphere towards a rendezvous spot with six destroyers already on station outside the effective plasma range of the Cajdital cruisers…which was significantly reduced in atmosphere compared to the vacuum of space. The Hycre cruiser, however, was a recent model, fresh out of the shipyard and yet to see any combat. It appeared to have the same hull specifications as the others of its class…save for one tiny spot on the front that held a different, large weapon battery.

The destroyers spread out when it arrived and moved into holding hovers more than a kilometer out from it, ready to intercept the hornets’ nest they were about to poke. The warships were 78 kilometers away from the closest Cajdital base and well outside of weapons range of the plasma that the enemy relied upon.

They were also outside of Hycre plasma range, but thanks to the gift from their Star Force allies, this cruiser had a weapon that could far exceed that range.

With its nose pointed towards the base, the Hycre cruiser spat out a perfectly straight white cleansing beam that passed underneath the elevated shield arc and slammed straight into the tower producing it. That tower also had a secondary shield wrapped around it, but the cleansing beam sucked power out of it quickly, then shut off. The capacitor inside the cruiser quickly refilled, then the Hycre warship fired again, hitting the weakened shields and punching through into the armored exterior.

By the time it fired a third shot the cruisers underneath the shield were already beginning to lift off, with the Hycre beam drifting sideways and slicing through the tower. Several dozen meters later, but still well shy from reaching the exterior, something vital within the tower was hit and the protective cap over the base disappeared in the blink of an eye just before the beam abated.

The next shot went for one of the cruisers charging out of the base towards the Hycre ship, puncturing its shields in short order, but not causing enough damage to destroy it with a single shot. The recharge rate on the weapon was significant enough that the single weapon wasn’t going to do much against the dozens of cruisers heading their way, with even more coming out from the other bases as backup.

But they weren’t sending all of them, for they correctly presumed that they needed to keep units in place to protect the infrastructure they’d been building. From several positions within the Calavari cities a mass of Valeries took to the air as more Hycre ships in orbit suddenly dropped down and headed for the now exposed base.

When that happened virtually every cruiser on the ground began to lift off and stack the airspace between the target and the incoming Hycre ships while wisps poured out to defend against the incoming fighters…which while ill-suited for going against warships of the size and number of the Cajdital cruisers, were quite capable of razing building and ground troops.

The upgraded Hycre cruiser got off another shot before its escort destroyers took off, their targets chosen, and zipped out to flanking attack lines while the cruiser gained some altitude as the Calavari anti-air defenses peppered the underside of the Cajdital cruisers. The Hycre ship was obviously their primary target, but it was also much larger than the destroyers and more than capable of defending itself, but to do so effectively it had to start moving.

After it rose up a few kilometers it accelerated forward and opened up with its formidable array of plasma cannons, hammering the Cajdital ship it had already hit with the cleansing beam. It took fire from several ships, then let the first one go as it accelerated through the Cajdital formation in a wide turn to the north and accelerated heavily as it pulled for more altitude, stretching out the enemy formation as its escort destroyers flicked about hitting the cruisers and running before they could respond with sufficient firepower to take down their shields.

As they were doing that the Hycre cruiser flipped over and dove, heading straight into the ships that were pursuing it and picking one at a time to unload on before it passed them, no longer using the power hog cleansing beam, but instead relying on its plasma cannons and the two maulers, with one located on each side of the ship but with a rotating arc that allowed them to just barely combine fire into a forward targeting sync, giving it a heavy strafing ability on a single pass…though it had to get very close to get the maximum potency out of the weapons.

In conjunction the 7 Hycre ships held their own against more than 40 Cajdital cruisers while several dozen Hycre ships, mostly destroyers and smaller, engaged the other enemy vessels as they attempted to pass through their lines and hit the base. So desperate they were to make good on the opening that they hit the Cajdital head on, with ships on both sides going down, but a few ships slipped through and tore up surface targets in strafing runs that immediately caught the enemy’s attention, with the attacker either fleeing quickly or staying to pound the target long enough that it got itself killed.

One of the Hycre corvettes that suffered that fate managed to fall towards the base, intend on using its death as a weapon until two of the Cajdital cruisers dipped underneath it and used their flat tops to redirect the ship’s fall into the burnt out ring around the base, though they were both dragged down with it into a gigantic, debris-spewing crash.

The Cajdital cruisers dropping elsewhere landed on the Calavari city buildings, most of which had been evacuated months ago around the invasion zone, but the Calavari ground troops didn’t have that luxury and had to hope that the naval battle occurring in atmosphere directly over their heads didn’t drop down on top of them…with not all of the army units being fortunate enough to avoid the fallout.

In the fighter engagement the Valeries eventually won out, leaving their reduced swarm free to hit the base and help the Hycre against the cruisers, picking at them and reducing shield strength or hitting exposed hull that their allies had already peeled the shields off of.

Eventually the Cajdital forfeited the base and sent all their available ships after the cleansing beam-equipped cruiser, which seeing its newfound popularity tipped its pointy nose up and accelerated hard into orbit, pulling the enemy behind it but at a speed they couldn’t match. Eventually it rendezvoused with the Alliance fleet in orbit, safe behind their guns and forcing the Cajdital to wave off and return to the surface, nestling into their other six intact bases while the Calavari army moved in and tore the exposed enemy base apart.

Seeing the vulnerability in their defenses, the Cajdital fleet in high orbit ran more cruisers down to the surface and expanded their defense lines around the other bases, putting cruiser clusters down outside the defense shields to keep the Hycre ships from trying the same cleansing beam attack again without an immediate counterattack.

The previous stalemate resumed, but the Calavari now had access to new Cajdital tunnels and poured troops down them, pressing the underground war and taking several new locations before that too deadlocked again, with both sides analyzing the new reality of the battlefield with the Hycre’s ability to hit the Cajdital from range with impunity.

And that was only one ship, with many more to come to the system in the days ahead.

Unfortunately the same was true for the Cajdital, with numerous cruisers arriving insystem on a regular basis.

Over the following months the hit and miss naval war in orbit continued with the Hycre reinforcements beginning to take their toll on the Cajdital cruisers. Combining the Human weapons with the Hycre’s speed, agility, and naval strategy was a winning combination, with small packs of the enhanced ships poaching a cruiser often with a single pass, hitting it with several cleansing beams from range, breaching its shields and armor and disabling it, then coming in close to hit it with plasma and finally maulers. They’d fly off, leaving it severely damaged and move onto the next one, forcing the Cajdital to operate in larger deployments for fear of isolated groups being hunted down.

That gave the Hycre the run of the system, with the enemy holding several key positions. One was near the star where the primary Cajdital incoming jumpline was located. They could not afford to have the Hycre poaching there, so they spammed the immediate area with ships to discourage that practice, but in order to keep the jumpline clear of potential collisions they couldn’t camp out on the exact spot, leaving some room for adventurous Hycre captains to shoot their ships in and ambush the incoming single enemy vessels, given that they couldn’t jump in clusters.

The moons of Varasiss were where the rest of the Cajdital fleet was located, despite heavy Hycre efforts to thin the fleet there, but as many ships as they killed, more arrived to replace them, but the more Hycre vessels that arrived the more they could kill, meaning the Cajdital had a numbers race on their hands.

The incursions on the planet were thoroughly bottled up, both ways initially, but as more cleansing beam-equipped ships arrived the Cajdital could not defended against all angles with sufficient numbers and the Alliance gradually whittled down their shield generators, then their defending cruisers, before finally eradicating their bases.

It was a significant victory against an enemy that had proved extremely intractable, and as word spread through the surrounding star systems more Alliance reinforcements began to arrive from other races, some of which had no presence in the system to begin with. What they all wanted was a safe zone, and at the moment Varasiss was the closest thing to it. If the Cajdital could be stopped here, then it was possible to push them back elsewhere, giving them a sliver of hope of defending their own worlds…but if this strongpoint failed, it was assumed by many that nothing would be able to stop the enemy.

Then, as if in some cruel joke, a fleet larger than what hit the planet initially arrived in the form of jumpships carrying nothing but thousands of cruisers. They assembled and waited around the star until their full fleet had arrived, then jumped to Varasiss en mass and blew straight through the Alliance fleet, with most of the allied warships running in the face of the armada.

As soon as orbit was secure, the cruisers headed to ground…all the cruisers, and began assaulting the city shields, battle forts, air fields, and every other valuable position on the planet, after the destruction of which they leisurely began establishing hundreds of surface bases as their cruisers roamed the planet, eradicating the half trillion Calavari population through close range aerial bombardment.

Kamalat and the other survivors on Radamal knew what was happening on Varasiss initially, then contact with the planet was cut off, leaving them temporarily safe in their underground base without a purpose to continue fighting for. They knew there could be no surrender, and they had no starships to escape on, with the Alliance fleet having quickly disappeared. Where the Calavari civilian ships had ended up no one knew, but if they were still insystem it was likely they had been destroyed…and if they had left the system then they were just as useless to them.

So Kamalat and the others waited for the end to come, but for months nothing happened. When they stopped hitting Cajdital supply convoys the enemy seemed to forget about them, with many of the Calavari wishing the enemy would just get around to killing them already if it was fated to happen.

Kamalat didn’t wholly disagree, but knew he’d rather be alive than not, and for the moment they had enough supplies to continue their futile resistance. He could only image the carnage occurring down on Varasiss, with even the less graphic nightmares chilling him to the bone. Varasiss was the home of all Calavari, whether they had been born there or not, and it held the wisest, most skilled of their race. With it falling Kamalat felt like a part of him deep inside was dying ahead of his body, putting him into the same zombie-like stupor that the rest of the base population was suffering from.

The Urik’kadel were the only exception, either not knowing or understanding what was happening. They continued to head out to the forest on scouting missions, unwilling or unable to understand the Calavari’s sudden reluctance to fight the enemy. They found it uncharacteristic of their gigantic race, who were always ready and eager to fight, and proceeded to do what they thought was their duty, spying on the enemy and trying to figure some way out of their predicament.

If Kamalat had time to think about it he would have granted that the little aliens were right, but once the base alarm went off he didn’t have time to think. If the Cajdital were finally attacking he and the others were going to take as many of them with them as they could. That sentiment ended the zombification, with a fatalistic anger swelling through the base as they were called to battle stations.

When Kamalat got on station in the armory he found a very different energy present…one of hope which quickly spread to him and those around him when they were informed that the Cajdital were assaulting the base to try and prevent them from being evacuated. The Alliance hadn’t abandoned them, and once he had his weapons and shield harness on he ran towards the surface exits, coming up through a stairway and into the open where numerous hidden turrets had sprung up and were firing on enemy infantry trying to advance across the grassy plain…with the sight of several Cajdital tanks sitting burnt out from plasma fire that was even now coming down from a trio of Scionate ships hovering over the base.

A fourth had landed and was spilling out the armored cats that were forming a loose gauntlet path from the base entrance to the ship for the Calavari to evacuate through. Kamalat moved halfway up the line then stepped off to the left, taking a knee and sighting through his rifle as others nearby were also doing, helping to aid their allies that were taking the fight out to the nearest Cajdital in person, jumping up on them in their yellow armor and firing plasma blasts directly into their torsos as they ran with incredible speed from point to point, eventually circling back to the parallel defensive lines that the Calavari survivors were pouring out of.

Eventually the defense turrets fell silent as their gunners abandoned them to form the last of the evacuee line. Kamalat and the other rifle infantry waited till they ran past, then they in turn formed the last of the line and ran up into the ship with the armored Scionate infantry following them in, with the last two jumping up and into the cargo ship as it began to lift off.

The three warships pounded the single Cajdital cruiser that had moved over to intercept them, with several more already enroute from orbit and one from another surface site. They didn’t have long to organize the evacuation, but the fact that there were few survivors was a blessing and the four ships raced up into orbit with the Cajdital fleet moving to cut them off…but the ships that got too close were intercepted by a pair of Hycre destroyers that were covering the Scionate exit.

Others did the same thing at various points around the moon, with some 28 Scionate ships in all finishing up their flash evacuation and taking cover behind a handful of Hycre ships that only now raced down into low orbit ahead of a sudden microjump by one of their jumpships. Its weaponry, also upgraded with cleansing beams and maulers, discouraged the scattered Cajdital cruisers from further pursuit after gunning two down while the Scionate starships boarded the giant transport.

They were followed in the three massive holds by the Hycre warships, and once they were all onboard the intimidating vessel jumped out of the moons orbit, carrying with it a scattering of survivors…the last of which they would be able to recover from the system after several months of similar efforts. Not for lack of trying or enemy resistance being too great, but for the simple reason being that there were no more Calavari left alive to rescue within the system.

6

March 21, 2473

Numar System (Calavari Territory)

Sashneo

Kamalat walked off the Scionate cargo ship that he’d spent the past week onboard, tasting planetary air and sucking in its refreshingly unique feel as he joined millions of other Calavari survivors in one of their remaining ‘safe’ systems, though their number were diminishing quickly with both the Cajdital and Nestafar picking off their worlds in alarming number, and rumor had it several smaller races were also taking the opportunity to take what they could from the withering Calavari empire…races that normally would have been squashed under their imperial foot.

But things were not what they once were, and the Calavari had gone from being a dominant race to a group of scattered worlds with most of their populations turning into either refugees or corpses as their enemies continued to hunt them down. Sashneo may have been secure at the time, but no one assumed it would stay that way for long.

It was a moderately developed world, dry air, low topography, and the thick atmosphere that the Calavari pilots liked, giving them plenty of engagement room above the surface and keeping the warships in orbit further away. Cities dotted the planet, but they hadn’t consumed it, with more wild regions than infrastructure. Its normal population was a tranquil 200 million, but it had swelled to nearly a billion as they took in refugees, last Kamalat knew, but what he didn’t know was how many people had been pulled out of Varasiss to swell those numbers.

As soon as he and the others got off the Scionate transport they were met and escorted into a makeshift processing center that looked to be of relatively new construction…and not of Calavari origin. He could have sworn it was an Irondel design, but on the inside there were only Calavari present.

“Kamalat?!” he heard someone shout off to his left as he stood in line with the other survivors. He turned his large head and raised a hand in greeting when he saw a familiar face.

“Nemaba! What are you doing here?” he said as the other Calavari walked over to him in a uniform that denoted him as part of the staff. “I thought you fighting on the Nestafar front?”

“Was,” Nemaba said, pulling him out of line and over to a corner of the crowded room where they could get a little privacy. “We took two planets from them before my ship was destroyed, then I got shuffled back to the Chattis System, which fell a month after I arrived. I made it out, and have been bouncing around from one place to another until I landed here. Now at least we have a stable platform to work out of.”

Kamalat frowned. “What’s different here?”

“What’s different?” his Calavari broodmate said incredulously. “Did you miss the fleet in orbit?”

“I was on a Scionate ship,” he explained.

“Then you really don’t know?”

“Know what?” Kamalat insisted.

“This is a gathering world. Transports from many Alliance races are bringing survivors and evacuees here and to the others the Hycre have set up. Most of the people coming through here are shipped out within a couple of months back to the Sanctuary Zone, which is where you’ll be headed unless you want to stay on here and help me and the others organize the mess of people coming through. The Calavari are easy enough to work with, but some of the other races are downright obstinate.”

“Brother, I’ve been stuck in a base on Radamal forever. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Nemaba shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. A lot of people are coming in knowing less than you. I thought the fleet would have been kept informed. The Kvash withdrew their support after the capitol fell and are pulling all their ships out of our territory to reinforce their own worlds under assault. The Kitot, Fanset, and Seenqua have gone with them.”

Kamalat’s fists clenched up in anger, as did his teeth, but he quickly released the tension, knowing that meant the Cajdital were going to overrun their worlds much quicker without the Kvash’s superior naval forces. “I suppose that was inevitable.”

“The Bsidd have also officially withdrawn their support, not that they had much here to begin with. The Hycre have stepped in and assumed control of this half of the Alliance, and are pretty much calling the shots now. The Cajdital are hitting them hard, but so far they still haven’t lost a system. They’ve got worlds inside Kvash and Bsidd space, with that being the only link left. Otherwise the Alliance has split and races are running to cover their own asses and most likely pick the circumstances they’d prefer to die under.”

“Your tone suggests that’s not the case here. If we couldn’t stop the Cajdital with the Kvash, how can we do it without them?”

“There’s a plan. I don’t like it myself, but the more I’m here the more I’m beginning to think it has a chance of working.”

“What plan?”

“The Hycre are establishing a Sanctuary Zone that we’re evacuating refugees into. The Scionate are actually relocating their entire population, crazy as that is, but then again maybe they’re the smart ones. Wish we’d thought of doing that with Varasiss.”

Kamalat poked his friend in the chest, hard, to make him focus. “There were too many people, and holding the planet was our last chance to save our empire. We had no other choice.”

“Easy, brother. I meant no offense.”

Kamalat gestured with his hand to forget it. “Where is this place you speak of?”

“Beyond the war zone, at the moment. It’s a region centered on Star Force territory. They’re holding a line against the Cajdital on the farthest end, and the Hycre seem to think they will continue to do so. So do their Calavari conscripts that I’ve talked with. There are a few on planet if you’re fortunate enough to run into one.”

“Fortunate?” Kamalat said with disgust.

“I thought the same at first, but if you talk to one you will quickly find yourself in the wrong. The rumors are not true. They have not submitted. They are not servants.”

“Is that where we are being sent?”

Nemaba cringed. “Yes, it is. They have a world in the Sanctuary Zone known as ‘HTC’ that has been given exclusively to us. There is where the others have trained, then returned here to do battle.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this…” Kamalat said, turning around and looking at the line of Calavari behind him as they were being processed through an identification checkpoint, then escorted off to who knows where. “I can’t believe you’re a part of it either,” he whispered angrily.

Nemaba spun him around and held his upper and lower shoulders firm. “You know me, brother. You know I would not lie to you. The Star Force Calavari are our future, and if you take a look at the ships in orbit you’ll see a handful that belong to them. Warships that are far superior to what we’ve had to work with. You of all people should understand the significance of that.”

“I will not serve a Human.”

“There are no Humans onboard those ships. Only Calavari. I do not fully understand their relationship with the Humans, but they told me they are treated as brothers, not servants, though ultimately the Humans are in command.”

“A soft leash is still bondage.”

“If they trust us enough to give us ships and technology without so much as a single observer onboard, is that truly bondage?”

“I do not like this, Nemaba. I do not like this at all.”

“As I said, neither did I at first. You’ll be stationed here for a while with no Human connection. Look around, see what’s happening. Find the truth. The Hycre have always dealt with us fairly, and they are fully behind this plan. They know we’d never willingly become slaves, yet they are devoting a vast amount of ships and resources to pull our people out of the war zone. Consider the logic in that, my friend, and I will talk with you later. At the moment I have duties here.”

Kamalat put a hand on his upper left arm. “No promises. But it is good to see you alive and well, brother.”

“Come with me,” Nemaba said, passing Kamalat through another exit in the long checkin barrier that currently had 5 stations operational that the lines were feeding into. He logged his information in personally and sent him off to a temporary billet, with instructions on where to go and not go, and giving him a pass card for greater autonomy than the rest of the refugees were afforded.

On the other side of the processing center Kamalat passed through a checkpoint that let him out into the city, or rather the rail line that led into the nearby city, around which numerous extraneous facilities had been and were being built. Once he got inside the realm of the more permanent denizens he was shocked to see that 1 out of every 3 people on the streets was an alien.

There were Urik’kadel, Scionate, Gnar, Irondel, Nammet, Gardeen, Lemickas, and even a scattering of the flying Hammids. All were moving about as if they belonged there, rather than having been guests on the Calavari planet. That felt most odd of all, right down to the fact that the rest of the Calavari acted as if they belong there as well.

And not only on the streets, but in the air. Transports were coming and going from the spaceports built around the city, with nearly all of them being non-Calavari. The Calavari transports were heading to the city interior, where he assumed they were setting down at their own spaceport, but the airspace was literally crawling with outsiders, making him wonder just what the hell was really going on here.

Kamalat sought to find out, venturing into and out of a variety of Calavari establishments and getting the locals’ take on what was happening. In fact he spent the next 13 hours doing so, feeling the need to find the truth as his friend had insisted, and in doing so found himself very confused.

The Hycre were in fact the glue holding together this part of the Alliance, and their vast fleet of jumpships were moving around the starships of other races, most notably their transports, and shuffling around people and resources at a frantic pace to try and stay ahead of the Cajdital advance. Sashneo was one of some 12 worlds that came up in his conversations on which the Hycre were doing the same thing, 9 of which were Calavari worlds, with the others belonging to the Gardeen, Gnar, and Reen, the last of which wasn’t even officially part of the Alliance.

All the worlds in question were being used to evacuate Calavari out of their dwindling territory along with evacuees from other races suffering a similar fate…all of which were then being transferred off to other locations that eventually led, as he was told repeated times, to Star Force territory where the war had yet to arrive.

That didn’t quite mesh with what Nemaba had told him about the Humans already fighting the Cajdital, but if they were holding their own, as impossible as that sounded, then the region past that contentious line would truly have been a ‘safe’ zone…but for how long, he wondered.

For so many races to work together under the Hycre’s leadership was quite a feat, and he didn’t see the logic of the Hycre putting all this effort into a futile gambit. More likely, he expected them to pull back their support like the Kvash did and defend only their own worlds, especially since the Cajdital couldn’t seem to get at them inside the atmosphere of their native gas giants.

If they were dedicated to this endeavor, then it meant they thought it had a good chance…or at least a decent chance of working. But did they really think they could stop the Cajdital advance after so many repeated attempts and failures, the most recent being Varasiss, or were they expecting to keep running year after year trying to stay ahead of the war zone?

It wasn’t until he ran into one of the nefarious Star Force Calavari did he get some answers…which started with a double left uppercut that sent him spinning to the ground when Kamalat insulted the Humans and their ‘ownership’ of the Calavari. A few punches later and the two of them were deep into a discussion about what was really going on, with the convert insistent on making Kamalat understand, given his military rank and knowing the need to bolster their naval forces as much as possible.

At first Kamalat was defiant, but several more ‘attitude adjustments’ finally got him listening. He told him that while everyone thought the Hycre were behind this mass exodus that it was really the Humans leading it. They had a small fleet, he was told, but one with technology, training, and tactics to put the rest of the Alliance to shame…and they were sharing virtually all of it with the Calavari in order to rebuild them into a force that would be capable of fighting and winning against the Cajdital. He was told that the Humans had adopted them into their brood rather than making them allies, and had done so with one other race called the Kiritas that he wasn’t familiar with.

Together, they were going to beat the Cajdital, and the other Calavari almost convinced him on the spot with the conviction in his voice and the confidence he bore, both of which were a welcome change to the depression swirling through the rest of his race. But there was a catch, he said. The Humans were small, not just in physical size but in numbers and worlds. They didn’t have enough to beat the Cajdital on their own, not yet anyway. They needed time to grow, resources to build with, and as many skilled individuals as they could get to teach their ways to, and in turn to learn from.

He said that the Calavari’s pilots had taught the Humans much, and that the Valeries that they now flew were hybrids, combining the knowledge and tech of both into the new fighters, though the Humans still preferred their skeet designs…but it was rumored that those too had been augmented with Calavari tech. Kamalat’s race wasn’t just being taken in as refugees, they were contributing to a mutual goal, and as much as Star Force was giving them, they were also giving back.

He told him that in time the Calavari refugees would outnumber the Humans within Star Force…if they could get to them all, which the Hycre were adamant about making happen. They were joining with the Humans, who wanted them as strong as possible, rather than fearing them and restricting their access to resources, tech, and knowledge. Given time the Calavari would reassert themselves as a major power equal in prestige to the Humans, and both would be considered Star Force.

Then he went on to tell him that the Calavari on HTC, the training world, were well away from the Cajdital and the Nestafar, but that the Calavari that had already proven themselves there and joined Star Force were staking out territory on the edge of what had been their original territory. They had made Drema their foothold and were gradually expanding out from it, forming one edge of the Sanctuary Zone and ready to defend it against the Cajdital and the Nestafar, the latter of which had already attacked and been defeated several times.

That changed things for Kamalat, because it meant they weren’t running away. They might be losing most of Calavari territory, but they were going to hold onto at least a small part of it. It might be part of the Sanctuary Zone defenses, but it was home to the Calavari, and the fact that Star Force had seen fit to protect it rather than pull their forces back to their own territory told him there was more to the truth than the rumors, for like the Hycre, defending Drema wasn’t in the Humans’ best interest.

If they were using the Calavari as conscripts they’d have them defending Human worlds…and that wasn’t the case. Once Kamalat accepted that, he had more questions…many more, and spent the next few hours getting some of them answered before heading back to his tiny billet and trying to sleep, but finding he couldn’t. Too many thoughts were running through his mind, and by the time his friend came to find him the next day he was sit sitting on his bunk staring at the wall.

“Ah, I know that look. Eyes opened, eh?”

Kamalat twisted his neck and top shoulder so he could look up at Nemaba.

“Tell me everything you know.”

7

March 27, 2473

Llone System

Scion (Scionate homeworld)

“Hurry,” Om’ra insisted as the quadruped sprinted down a narrow street towards the spaceport with Dre’for half a head behind her on the right. “They will on the transports within moments.”

“Don’t wait on me,” Dre’for lectured. “I’ll get there when I can.”

Without another word Om’ra sped up, moving in her armor far faster than Dre’for could have managed on his best day. Normally she was too polite to show her superior speed, but with the evacuation of their people complicated by a surprise attack by Mershak raiders, formality wasn’t given as much credence.

Four fifths of the planet’s population had already left, along with a significant portion of Scion’s defense fleet, though the cheetah-like race hadn’t been stupid enough to leave it underdefended. They had the 8th largest navy in the Alliance and was one of the few that hadn’t seen much combat, save for in the one system they’d lost to the Cajdital. They’d held it long enough to evacuate their people, rather than devoting the resources necessary to rid the pair of planets of the enemy surface bases the Cajdital had set up and were expanding.

Unlike most other races the Scionate didn’t build large cities that spanned continents, rather they preferred a more open landscape dotted with settlements. That kept their planetary populations low, but that gave their society a more relaxed feel than the claustrophobic megacities that the Calavari and others built, though none were worse than the Bsidd, who they had contact with on their upper border.

The Kvash weren’t much better, whom they also shared a border with, and the three big races were suffering for it when it came to evacuations, being forced to leave many behind to die…and that was something the Scionate were not going to do, thus the foreplanning and ongoing evacuation of their capitol before the Cajdital arrived.

But the scaly creatures weren’t the Scionate’s only enemy, and one that had been their personal bane and continual nuisance had decided to drop in to say goodbye, having launched several raids down onto the planet, bypassing their defense fleet in orbit, and causing what trouble they could. Dre’for didn’t know what they were here for, precisely, but whenever they had encountered them before they were as much interested in looting resources as they were in killing his people. If they only waited a while longer they’d have a planet of technology left to plunder, so why they were coming now he didn’t understand.

By the time Dre’for made it to the spaceport Om’ra was already lifting off in her Scionate-modified Valerie, and he saw two other pilots arriving as well into the half-full hangar that sat underneath a solid shield that blocked out the sun and rain, but allowed the wind to come underneath as well as the fighters, that on the ground sat in open-ceilinged berths.

Dre’for leapt up onto the short staircase near to his personal fighter and hopped across a short gap into the open cockpit, settling down onto the belly pad and sliding his four paws onto control pads as he bit into the primary control bar and began rotating it around in his mouth, powering up the fighter and closing the cockpit.

The pointy aircraft lifted up on antigrav and drifted above the short walls bracketing it, then Dre’for slid the fighter to the east, rising up over a circular retaining wall and climbing into the gap between it and the high roof. From there he accelerated out and into the open air, seeing the distant weaponsfire on the outskirts of the city, coming from both the ground and the sky.

Less than a minute later he was within range of the enemy aircraft, finding a knot of them overtop their battle tanks with a few Scionate icons intermixed as they hunted them down. He picked one of the enemy’s cubical fighters and raced after it, tagging it with plasma after a few quick maneuvers that the raider couldn’t match.

It dropped from the air, then pulled a tight curve and continued to fly with extensive armor damage…but no antigrav hinderment. Dre’for cursed himself for falling for the ploy and raced after it, coming across another that cut across his path in pursuit of Om’ra, who had another two on her tail.

Dre’for broke off and followed them, using the distraction to take down one before she looped around in a corkscrew that the enemy fighters couldn’t match and tagged another, then he left her alone with the last one as he tipped the Valerie’s nose towards the ground and made an attack run against one of the battle tanks blasting into the city’s exterior defense turrets.

A belly-mounted plasma cannon built up a thick orb as he held the trigger between his teeth, then released it squarely into the top of the giant tank when he released pressure and turned away from his collision course, skimming the grasslands and nearly running into another tank that was already smoking from plasma damage.

He didn’t bother to turn back on the one he’d shot, or even look to see how much damage he’d done. Dre’for knew time was important and that he and the other few pilots on station had to take down the fighters as quickly as possible, then they’d be free to harass the tanks, whose normal ground opposition was no longer present in this region, already having been evacuated to the Scionate jumpships and their massive Hycre cousins waiting in orbit.

The Mershak fighters were fast, but only in straight lines, and they carried no shields, only heavy armor, which likewise diminished their maneuvering capabilities. They had strong plasma cannons, but the agility and firepower of the Valeries clearly made them the dominant fighters, allowing them to eventually take down all of the enemy, but not before the tanks reached the city’s edge and unleashed their ground troops.

Given time the Valeries took out the tanks without losing any of their own despite an anti-air turret that all of them carried, but after that Dre’for and the others couldn’t do much but fly over the buildings and streets and hope to catch one of the Mershak infantry out in the open. That happened occasionally, but not nearly enough, leaving the raiders with an essentially empty city to disappear into, with only a handful of their own infantry in place to try and protect the last of the evacuees coming out on a road heading towards another city where the evacuation transports were landing.

The vehicles carrying them had been kept safe from the tanks, but they weren’t all loaded yet, meaning there were people walking freely through the streets towards the vehicle loading points that the Mershak could hit, and too few infantry to do anything but guard the vehicles. Realizing that Dre’for sent his fighter to ground, or rather to a thick rooftop where he set it down and leapt out of the cockpit, sliding down to the edge of the roof and falling off the edge.

He landed on all fours with his battle armor moving up along his neck to cover his head, leaving him fully protected as he sprinted off towards the last known position of the evacuees that had yet to reach the vehicles, intending to do some ambushing of his own where his Valerie wouldn’t reach.

Several hours later, when the last of the city’s non-military personnel had been evacuated and the other Valeries had left to fight the Mershak at other settlements, Dre’for returned to the rooftop where he had parked his Valerie and was relieved to find it exactly as he’d left it. He climbed back in using some clawholds on the exterior and lifted up into the sky just as the last of the personnel transports were assembling for ‘last call.’

He commed in and reported that he was airborne and they needn’t be looking for him, then he hovered in a slow spiral over the vehicles until they finally pulled out of the assembly area and floated their way clear of the city in a small, single file convoy. Dre’for flew over top of them, providing a single fighter escort all the way across the grassy plain for some 83 kilometers until they came to a slightly larger city where their starship transports were grounding to pick up evacuees and equipment coming in overland from multiple other locations.

The Mershak weren’t stupid enough to attack here, choosing instead to pick on the weaker settlements and those that were nearly empty. Once Dre’for’s convoy was safely to the departure site he flew off looking for somewhere else he could help out, but finding no activity within a 500 kilometer radius.

That was reported, anyway, so he took up an impromptu patrol around the departure city and the surrounding cities, watching over incoming convoys and looking for ambushes, eventually finding one in progress as a Mershak tank jumped a group of vehicles as it came out of a narrow valley just ahead of them and blocked the road, firing on the first vehicles as the others spread out. Those with wheels turned about and headed back on the road they’d been driving along, while those with antigrav charted their own course and swung wide to get around the tank before heading back to the road and resuming their course…assuming they didn’t get hit in the process.

Two did and went down, with one digging into the grass and plowing up dirt while the other skidded across the stone-like road, spinning around until it eventually hit dirt, whereupon the edge caught and the whole vehicle flipped over twice, eventually landing upside down.

Dre’for dropped into a slow strafing run and lit up the tank on a quick pass to get its attention, dodging some late anti-air fire in the process. A quick check of his sensor board confirmed that he was the only starfighter or military asset in the area, meaning the tank was now his sole responsibility and if he got shot down the vehicles would be easy pickings, so he had to work quick, but not carelessly.

He circled around low to the ground then pulled up into a high arc that brought him back down on the tank like a scorpion sting, whereupon he delivered several small plasma orbs, followed up by the ‘bomb’ orb. It hit the tank and breached its shields, setting up future passes that allowed him to burn armor off its thick hull as it continued to fire at him with its anti-air cannon, but otherwise kept its attention on the vehicles, which it was just as fast as, if not faster.

Their scattering meant it had choices to make, and it took off after a pair of hovering vehicles, taking them down but not lingering for the kill, intending to disable as many as it could then come back for them later. The wheeled vehicles it went after last, knowing where they would be, given that they were reluctant to try and drive through the grasslands on their small tires.

The tank disabled one of the wheeled vehicles, then rammed into it as it passed by, knocking both askew but damaging the Scionate personnel transport heavily. It put two plasma shots into its side as it moved on, then focused its fire ahead down the road, slowly closing distance on the next one as Dre’for came back around on a very low angle and hit the tank in the flank with another bomb orb.

He got hit by the anti-air fire this time, with his shields sparkling as the tiny plasma needles ran into it like a buzz saw. The Scionate fighter passed the tank with some shield strength remaining, then agitated, Dre’for pulled a skid loop that he’d seen the Humans do multiple times at Daka in their own craft, bringing the nose of his fighter around and keeping it on target throughout the turn, firing as fast as he could the entire time.

He kept the plasma landing on approximately the same spot, one that he’d damaged earlier, and was gratified when he saw a puff of smoke rise up as he finally got through the armor and hit something on the interior of the tank. Another wash of plasma needles forced him to move off, but the tank continued to pursue and fire upon the next closest wheeled transport, hitting it in the rear with plasma ‘spit’ and eventually blowing out the rear wheels with consecutive hits.

The vehicle slowed but didn’t stop, dragging itself on and keeping away from the tank as long as possible. Dre’for knew he had an opening and needed to take it before the tank got the transport, but his shields were almost gone so he had a choice to make…risk a hull hit or play it safe and lose another transport, with the people inside possibly surviving the hit?

With only one tank in play he didn’t need his Valerie to survive the encounter, he just needed to take out the tank, so he circled once then darted in towards the wound on the enemy vehicle and lightly strafed it, drawing an immediate response, given that the Mershak knew which direction he’d be coming from. It fired at his fighter with every weapon it possessed, which ironically bought the transport more time, so he made another light strafing run and nibbled away at the wound, increasing the smoke pyre coming from it.

He kept patiently wearing it down until it finally returned its attention to the transport ahead, catching up to within 400 meters of it, then Dre’for charged up another plasma bomb and ran it right down the tank’s throat, taking hits from the anti-air and anti-personnel turrets on the tank, but managing to avoid the anti-vehicle ones…which would have downed him rather fast.

When he passed it by his control board lit up with damage indicators, but he was still flight worthy, swerving upwards through a wide turn to disrupt following fire, then turning around to see the tank motoring on…but dragging its left side on the ground. Dre’for set up another couple light passes, needling the spot with plasma fire as his shields recharged slowly, then he went in and landed the killing blow, nearly getting himself blown apart in the process as an anti-vehicle plasma blast clipped his Valerie’s right side, melting off a bit of the fighter and giving him a smoke trail of his own.

The tank kept firing, for it wasn’t completely dead, but it no longer hovered over the ground, thoroughly stuck in place as its antigrav no longer functioned. Dre’for flew off, watching the evacuation vehicles gain distance and eventually get outside the tank’s firing range, then he escorted the wheeled versions out back to an intersection and through a long detour of the spider web-like roads. Eventually empty transports came out and picked up the survivors from the ones the tank had disabled, with most of the passengers having survived.

The equipment was mostly left behind, though a few key pieces were recovered. Dre’for watched over the hasty efforts, keeping an eye on the distant tank in case it came back to life and began moving, but it stayed put and Dre’for paid it no further mind after the last of the Scionate vehicles reached the city. The Mershak could pick their tank up later or leave it to rot for all he cared. They were leaving, and as much as he wanted to kill the thing, the mission was to get his people safely off the planet.

“Valerie, what’s your status?”

“Damaged, but operational,” Dre’for answered the comm.

“Are you spaceworthy?”

A quick glance at the control board confirmed otherwise. “Negative.”

“Then this is your ride out. Rendezvous onboard the outgoing transport. We’ll see you at the colony site.”

“Take care,” Dre’for said in thanks, looking across the skies of his homeworld one last time before heading towards the large cargo ship just now rising up from the spaceport. One of its hangar bay doors remained open and he flew towards it, easily matching the big ship’s course and speed, and ducking inside before it gained any appreciable upward momentum.

Once inside the hull the ship’s artificial gravity took over and he gently landed his damaged ship in the berth indicated by the hangar controller. The area was designed for small dropships, with three open slots out of nine, each of which was big enough to hold multiple Valeries, allowing him plenty of room to set down, after which a pair of techs ran out to meet him.

“Do what you can with the ship,” Dre’for said as he jumped down to the deck. “It still has life in it.”

“It won’t be scrapped,” the tech promised.

Dre’for nodded and walked off, retracting his helmet onto the rest of his body armor as he looked out the closing hangar doors at the sliver of planet still visible…a planet now occupied by only a scattering of Scionate that would be following him and the cargo ship out within a few days. Their sensitive technology had been destroyed or taken with them, but everything else had been left as it was, open to looters and nomads until the Cajdital arrived…assuming they would. He didn’t know if they’d still want the planet if no one was on it, for their previous assaults seemed to have been more about killing than acquiring worlds.

Regardless, Scion was no longer his world. Sad as he was about that, they were abandoning it in order to survive, so with the regret came determination and a wisp of hope. He didn’t know what the Alliance could do against the Cajdital, but by getting out ahead of the invasion path they were buying themselves more time to find a way to beat them…if such a thing existed. Dre’for wasn’t sure it did, but where there was life there was hope, and if his people were to be destroyed it wasn’t going to be today, nor any day in the near future. Abandoning their worlds was buying them time, and they were going to make the most of what they had.

8

May 1, 2473

Numar System (Calavari Territory)

Sashneo

Dre’for walked through one of the warrens set up on the Calavari planet specifically for the Scionate, feeling claustrophobic but otherwise at home. The facilities had been constructed by Scionate engineers using local materials, giving the layout of the area a traditional architecture, but due to the limited land space available to them they’d had to build the temporary structures clustered together, causing Dre’for to feel like he was bumping into people every other step he took.

He was being held over on the transitional world along with a great number of his people, and various others, waiting for transport into the Sanctuary Zone. The initial evacuation of the Scionate worlds had been complicated enough, and was still ongoing on some planets, but there was no way their limited ships could have taken them on a direct route to the promised planets…at least not in time to evacuate them all before the Cajdital got to them. They’d opted for a shorter evacuation to the transition worlds the Hycre had organized, leaving most of the Scionate stranded in transit.

But between the generosity of the Alliance and the Scionate’s preparedness they were well taken care of here, and what inconveniences they had to put up with were minor in the grand scheme of things. For every person he bumped into was a victory snatched from the claws of the Cajdital, so Dre’for reminded himself every time he had to walk off his directional line to avoid hitting another Scionate as they passed one another.

He was one of the few wearing armor, for unlike the others he was permitted to leave their warrens given his place in the combined defense force protecting the planet. His Valerie, now fully refurbished, was situated in a combined Alliance hangar that he was headed to now, and he and the other military members had made a point of wearing their body armor when amongst aliens, never knowing when a bad situation might arise. While allies they might be against the Cajdital, not all of them got along with each other quite as well as that moniker suggested.

When Dre’for got to the entrance/exit he passed by their own guards without incident and joined the even more crowded public streets with all manner of aliens about. Most were civil enough, but many smelled more foul than he liked, putting him in a disgruntled manner all the way to his destination.

Once he got to the spaceport and was permitted entrance, the crowded streets disappeared and a much more normal environment resumed, with the open air and lack of people running every which way prompting him to stop and stretch out his front legs, then back in a typical cat-like show of flexibility. He shook his head twice, resetting his demeanor before he headed for the pilot-only areas of the spaceport.

Though still a mix of aliens, these smelled right…at least as much as he’d gotten accustomed to them smelling on Daka. Those smelled like pilots, and now so did these, putting him more at ease as he headed for his Valerie with a Calavari tech giving him the rundown on the maintenance completed before he climbed inside and lifted off.

He flew high up from the spaceport then leveled out once he was above the tallest building and drifted in place, waiting for two more Scionate Valeries to join him a few minutes later. Once together they flew off, crossing over the vast warrens devoted to multiple races until they got to the boundaries of the city where additional construction was taking place…then they were off across the grasslands that reminded him of those on their homeworld, though more brown.

They traveled over 100 kilometers before meeting up with a much larger group of Valeries, most of whom belonged to the Calavari, though there were a few tiny versions piloted by the Urik’kadel. Dre’for knew from his time on Daka how skilled their pilots were, so he didn’t take it as offense when the Calavari had brought them into the patrol maneuvers without informing him.

“We bring three,” he said, tagging the lead Valerie for the direct comm.

“Good morning, Scionate,” Nangon greeted them. “We have air patrol for the next two hours. Would you like to spar or circulate?”

“I’ll take the circulation, but my wingmen would like to spar.”

“Granted,” the Calavari said, shunting a navigational path to Dre’for’s computer.

As the course came up he pulled off from the other two Scionate pilots and began a wide, ugly circular path around the region they were tasked with ‘defending.’ What they were really doing was keeping some fighters in the air at all times so they’d be available for instantaneous response to any attack, rather than having to rouse pilots from their beds or wherever they were, get them to the hangar, their fighters prepped, and then into the air.

All of that was valuable time the enemy could use to its own advantage, with Calavari philosophy being to keep a small number of fighters in the air at all times to act as a response unit and to buy time for the rest of their pilots to get into the air when the moment came. That said, sitting in a cockpit doing nothing for several hours a day, every day, got to be tedious, so while some of them kept to a patrol route, the others would engage in dogfights with simulated weapons, honing their edge and keeping them from succumbing to boredom.

Dre’for had only arrived a few days ago, but he’d sparred with the other pilots every day since, prompting him to take the boring patrol today so others could mix it up…that, and he didn’t want to be the first to go against the Urik’kadel. His wingmen would be good experiments, given that they’d never flown against the little pilots before, then he’d take what he learned from their imminent defeat and adjust for when he did get another chance to go up against them.

He could have monitored the brawl while on patrol, but he felt that would be a distraction and kept his attention on his duty…not that he felt the planet was going to come under attack today, but just out of a sense of professionality. With his course set into an autopilot function, he released the controls and went along for the slow ride with his eyes scanning the regions below and flipping back to the sensor hologram habitually, with any activity set to trigger a small tone once he left the dogfighting fighters behind.

Dre’for flew from city to city while a handful of other pilots did the same at other points on the circuit, marking the outer edges of their patrol zone while the training dogfights continued at its center. A few of the Calavari cities hadn’t been added to as of yet, but most had grown considerably with the short buildings of the Alliance warrens stretching out around them, but as he progressed through the course given to him he flew over one that was just beginning to get added to, literally only a few days old with the construction.

As he looked down on it his sensors beeped, drawing his attention to a ship descending from the upper atmosphere. Its plotted trajectory was bringing it down near him, so Dre’for went off the autopilot route and manually flew clear of the city, making a giant circle around it for good measure before continuing on.

Flying low to give himself a better view of the construction, he saw numerous Calavari workers along with a scattering of Humans. That wasn’t uncommon, for the smaller bipeds had been annexing the Calavari, so he’d been told, with many of their projects reaching out into their former territory. Even now they held a considerable fleet in orbit, centered around the largest warship he’d ever seen outside of the Kvash, underscoring how important this planet was to the evacuation efforts and their commitment to seeing them through.

The Hycre couldn’t come to ground, so it only made sense to see Humans filling in the gaps, with them popping up in small numbers across Alliance territory. Some had even come out to the Scionate, carried by a Hycre jumpship, to negotiate the terms of relocation until both races were satisfied. The Humans were donating a lot of prime colonization spots within their borders to the effort, something the Hycre were ill-suited to do, given their radically different physiology, almost making the Humans an equal partner in this effort, despite their tiny size.

The Hycre were the glue to the reformed Alliance, now that the Kvash and Bsidd had gone their own ways. While they still shared intelligence across what was left of the relay network, it was clear that they weren’t going to be helping anyone in or on the opposite side of Calavari space. They’d communicated as much to the Scionate, who were on their side of the new dividing line, asking for their allegiance, but without any promise of assistance for Scionate territory when it was hit by the Cajdital.

The Hycre plan had seemed far more sensible…especially given that they had a plan whereas the Kvash didn’t, other than turtle up and defend themselves on a smaller perimeter than what the Alliance had been attempting to do. Dre’for knew that was only a delaying tactic, which could also be said of the relocation efforts, but those at least would buy decades, if not centuries…whereas the Kvash’s plan might last them years, with them eventually getting overrun anyway.

Dre’for had been surprised when he’d been informed that they’d be moving to Human space with the assistance of the Hycre fleet, but right now it seemed the only sane option, for both the Scionate and many others in the Cajdital’s immediate path.

As the descending starship closed range Dre’for casually glanced at the identification tag, then did a double take. He was nearly through his loop around the city and about to head back onto his patrol route, but veered off for a pass by of the average-sized transport, seeing for a fact what his sensor board told him.

It was a Dvapp ship. Dre’for had never seen one before, outside of pictures, for their territory was at the farthest end of Alliance space, opposite that of the Humans, and only marginally connected to the Bsidd. Originally they had rebuffed an Alliance invitation, citing that the Cajdital were not a threat to them given the distances involved, but a number of years ago that had changed and they came in as an ally of the Bsidd, though they never had much contact with any of the other Alliance races. With the Bsidd cutting ties to the Calavari, what the hell were they doing here?

As the transport came over the city Dre’for saw it divert to the construction site and double checked his heading to make sure he wasn’t going to run into anything, for he had a hard time taking his eyes off of it. Unlike all other Alliance vessels, the Dvapp starships were not built of metal or rock, they were constructed of crystal, all of which glowed from within, much like Bsidd technology did. This transport shown ruby red, as well as picking up reflections from the sunlight, making it stand out brightly against the cityscape and making for one grand entrance.

The ship was compact, with a number of short, thick pylons jutting out here and there, but overall it was elongated fore and aft with sharp corners and edges and not so much as a single curve in the entire design. It came to a hover over the Calavari and Humans, prompting Dre’for to come in closer for a look at what it was offloading.

He flew so close that he virtually brought the Valerie to a standstill, but it was worth it, for the underside compartments opened up and out dropped globs of rounded crystal that fell to the ground and, rather than shattering, smooshed like thick liquid, then pulled back up into globs and moved their way across the ground.

Dre’for was amazed that such a life form could exist. The Dvapp were completely amorphous, and even as he watched he saw several of them heighten and form arms, legs, and a head, mimicking the Calavari and Humans in a very crude manner as several of the Alliance construction crews came forward to meet them. Other Dvapp extended themselves into long tendrils that snaked back up to the ship’s underside, creating slide ramps when four or more of them worked together, down through which ‘hard’ crystal containers followed.

The Dvapp themselves were crystal, though only on a microscopic level. They had redundant everything, allowing themselves to lose massive amounts of their body to damage and still keep fighting…or so the rumors went. The Alliance had gotten a large amount of information about them when they’d joined, but still there were many questions left lingering.

But above the splendor of it all was the undeniable fact that the Dvapp were the largest Alliance race after the big four, with their power ranking matching, though being somewhat questionable given their lack of combat with the Cajdital or others by which to evaluate them. They exclusively used beam weapons, no particles or plasma, which also left their combat capability questionable, especially if they were seeking refuge with the rest of the Alliance races this far away from their own territory.

The Scionate had come far to get here, but that distance paled in comparison to what the Dvapp had to travel, making Dre’for wonder if something else wasn’t in the works, because their presence here made no sense whatsoever. He did know that this ship was a transport rather than a warship by its color, for their warships glowed green, and it was said they had no jumpships. Had the Hycre carried them here? Dvapp territory was well beyond what he knew the Hycre border to be.

Dre’for watched the unloading begin, then forced himself to return to his patrol route with many questions running through his mind. Had he stayed a bit longer he would have gotten another eyeful, learning about it from others after his patrol had ended, though he and the others were banned from visiting that particular Calavari city, given that the Dvapp preferred some amount of autonomy, much as the other races did with their own warrens.

“Greetings allies,” one of the Dvapp said as it took a bipedal form in front of Vanessa Locke and her Calavari engineering partner Sanmat, whose height it matched exactly.

“Hello,” she answered back in the trade language, though her own voice seemed pathetically flat compared to the almost electronic voice of the Dvapp, which was laced with an overlapping echo. “You’ve arrived earlier than we expected. The transit terminal isn’t completed yet, but we do have the growth components you requested on hand.”

“We’ve marked the boundaries,” Sanmat continued in his deeper voice, “with the low wall you see there,” he said, pointing. “Can you build around that?”

“We can,” the Dvapp answered. “It matches the schematics given to us in orbit. If you will allow us access to the cargo you agreed to provide we can begin immediately.”

Vanessa turned around and motioned with a flick of her wrist to someone behind her, then some 20 seconds later a hovertruck floated out of the construction site with large vats of liquid and boxes of solid compounds, most of which was powderized carbon…all of which were in pure form.

More hovertrucks followed, eventually forming into a long cargo convoy that the Calavari workers unloaded onto the dirt and allowed the Dvapp to do with as they pleased…which involved them setting up a large tarp over the mostly level ground, around the edges of which a retainment ring was formed a meter and a half high, making it look like a football field-sized kiddy pool that sparkled bluish/white.

With that in place, and many others being set up at specific points underneath the hovering cargo ship, the vats of liquid were drained while additional gel-like liquid was deposited directly from above, extruding out of vents in the underside of the ship’s hull. A few of the Dvapp ‘walked’ out into the shallow pool and deposited a large, sharp crystal shard at a precise place, then backed away as it began to pulse with an inner white light.

The Dvapp oozed their way over the edges of the pool as more gel and liquid continued to flow in, threatening to spill out as it nearly reached the top, but when the solid components were added and eventually drifted into the shard near the center of the irregularly shaped pool, the object suddenly shrieked and began to rise up out of the liquid on antigrav.

Except it wasn’t antigrav. The crystal was growing at a rate of several inches per second and draining the liquid/gel/powder mix around it, creating a shallow crater in the fluid that drew the rest back towards the center and kept it from spilling over the rim. Slowly, but fast enough for the eyes to easily register, a Dvapp structure rose up, expanding in all directions while the city denizens got to withstand the nearly constant whistle/shriek of the flash growth.

Vanessa and Sanmat watched with wide eyes over the next 12 minutes as the Dvapp crew continued to pump resources into the pool up until there was only a narrow ring left around the exterior, with the building finishing its construction a meter from the retainment wall and soaking up nearly every drop of liquid within it.

“Damn,” she whispered, looking up at the 5-6 story high structure. “Talk about your fast builds.”

“What?” Sanmat asked, not taking his eyes off the building.

“Nothing. Just engineer envy. We’re going to need to bring their cargo in faster.”

“Agreed. I did not realize they, or anyone, could build this fast. I am thoroughly impressed.”

“I’m curious to how strong it is,” Vanessa said, touching her earpiece. “Bring up the rest in continuous convoys. We’ll have additional offloading spots marked by the time you get here…yes, bring it all up. There’s no need for a delayed schedule. It seems the Dvapp can grow their structures as fast as we can deliver the raw materials…no I’m not joking. I’ll fill you in later. And send someone with a camera, I want to document this for later analysis.”

9

August 11, 2473

Numar System (Calavari Territory)

Sashneo

Ik’re drew considerable attention as it walked through the Calavari city streets, glistening with reflected sunlight as its sand-like white body tissue shifted with every bipedal step, a courtesy to the other Alliance races, for normally it would have traveled through other configurations. The Dvapp was headed for the center of the city, far past its own warrens, and was the first to do so of its own race, causing quite a stir in the other denizens.

Ik’re ignored their attention. As an ambassador/diplomat it had dealt with other races before, though never as many as were present here. Most around it now were Calavari, but there were others scattered among them, causing it more apprehension than normal, for most mono-forms found the Dvapp disturbing, and even though these were their supposed allies, old habits were hard to break.

But Ik’re had enough poise to ignore them and continue on its way with large, plodding steps most similar to the Calavari whose form it was mimicking, save for having only two arms. Those arms had no hands, nor the feet toes or the face features. Its body was configured into appendages that pressed flat against the ground below and hung uselessly at its sides for balance. The bipedal form seemed to calm some of the apprehension in others, given it was familiar to them, but Ik’re was still vastly alien and carried with it a group of onlookers all the way up to the ambassadorial building.

Inside the reception was muted, as the street travelers didn’t follow it in. The Dvapp was met by Calavari receptionists and directed to the appropriate chamber in which it met the Calavari ambassador assigned to them on this planet.

“Hello Vorshak,” it said coming into the room and seeing the Calavari standing with his back to it as he looked at some type of hologram mounted on the wall. The Dvapp stood perfectly still just inside the door as it shut, leaving the two of them alone.

The Calavari turned around slowly. “You spoke of an important matter in your message. What is it? And please relax, there is no need to hold that form for me.”

“Thank you,” Ik’re said, melting in place and forming a thick pool of material on the floor that quickly pulled back together into a rounded pillar similar to a Jell-O mold. “What I have to say is also for the Hycre. Can you initiate communications?”

“I already have,” the Calavari said, touching a button on the chair he stood beside and enlarging the hologram on the wall to real size, with the floating gas bag materializing to his left.

SPEAK AMBASSADOR

“Many of the Alliance races have made inquiries as to why we requested permission to establish an outpost on this transitional world. To all we have told that we wished to create a diplomatic link to the other races in the Alliance beyond the Bsidd and to extend that link to the new territories you are retreating into when the time comes. This is true, but it is not the full truth. I offer it to you now.”

“Proceed,” Vorshak urged, crossing both sets of arms over his chest.

“It is with great shame that I reveal this information to you, and I would ask that you keep it a secret, for knowledge of it endangers the Dvapp, but we no longer have any choice but to ask the Alliance for assistance. All are suffering from the Cajdital invasion, but we more than any other. They have found a weakness in our technology and are exploiting it to ravage our fleets and annihilate our worlds. We have no defense against their new weapon. I am here to ask that we be allowed to join in the relocation, in whatever numbers we can muster, but above that we ask if either of your races can devise a technological solution to our vulnerability. Our scientists cannot.”

WHAT VULNERABILITY DO YOU SPEAK OF?

“The Cajdital have developed a chemical that causes a chain reaction within our building materials. The reaction dissolves the structure while creating more of the chemical in the process. The Cajdital deliver it to our ships via physical impact once our shields are down, and even a single drop will consume an entire starship given enough time. But far worse is that fact that they are now using the chemical on our worlds, delivering it to the surface with little loss to their own fleet. The chemical devours and spreads across the entire world if we cannot starve it out by destroying our own infrastructure ahead of the reaction.”

Vorshak glanced at the Hycre, then unlocked his arms and pounded his right fists into his left palms. “Then that is why you have ventured this far out. Have you not asked the Bsidd for aid?”

“When they discovered our weakness their aid to us ended. They said they will not waste resources defending those that are already dead. Likewise the Kvash have refused our pleas for assistance.”

DID EITHER ANALYZE THIS CHEMICAL?

“No.”

“Did you bring some of it with you?”

“No. It is too risky to bring onboard our ships. We have not been able to analyze it, for it affects our tools as well. All our technology is built around the same crystalline structure. We have nothing aside from energy shields to repulse it…and our own bodies. We contracted another race who was unaffected by the chemical to study it. We brought their data with us.”

Ik’re’s body moved internally, and soon a small Calavari data module extruded from inside, held aloft by a white tendril. “We beg your assistance, and failing that, sanctuary far from our enemy, whom we cannot combat with this vulnerability. If compensation is required, we are willing to negotiate.”

11 months later…

Leif-069 jumped over a moving bar on Balboa Lane before sliding under an identical one a half second later. From there he pivoted on one knee up into a jump over yet another, rolling out of the leap into a somersault and avoiding contact with the object. He landed in the finish area at the end of the lane, triggering the clock to stop and the challenge to end.

The trailblazer glanced at the time, satisfied with that run when he noticed a message beacon blinking on the control panel on the wall. Had it been something urgent the Admiral would have interrupted him via the room’s comm…but then again, if it wasn’t important it would have waited until he’d left the sanctum onboard the gigantic Command Ship.

He walked over and pressed the button, pulling up a text message indicating that the Hycre wanted to talk to him. That usually meant something worthy of paying attention to, for unlike some of the other races within the system, the Hycre weren’t ones for chit chat.

“Are they still available?” he asked once he got an open comm to the bridge.

“Standing by,” Admiral Bennington confirmed.

Leif pressed a few buttons on the wall-mounted panel. “Route it down here, private line.”

A moment later a hologram appeared around Leif, from which he stepped back a couple of meters but still within the receiver’s limits, leaving him staring at the reduced image of a Hycre from a distance of a few inches.

“You wanted to speak to me?”

WE HAVE A PROPOSITION FOR YOU TO CONSIDER.

Leif frowned lightly. “Concerning what?”

THE DVAPP.

“Proceed,” Leif said, not having a clue what this was about. The Dvapp mainly kept to themselves, with little interest in the other races, though more of them were coming into the system by the week on isolated ships.

THE CAJDITAL HAVE DEVELOPED A WEAPON THAT HAS LEFT THE DVAPP UNABLE TO DEFEND THEMSELVES. IT IS UNIQUE AND NO THREAT TO US, BUT IT HAS LEFT THE DVAPP COMPLETELY INCAPABLE OF COMBAT.

“Go on,” Leif prompted.

THEY HAVE CREATED A CHEMICAL THAT DEVOURS THE CRYSTALINE STRUCTURE OF THEIR TECHNOLOGY ON CONTACT. THE PROCESS LEAVES A RESIDUE THAT INCLUDES MORE OF THE CHEMICAL. IN THIS WAY A SINGLE DROP DELIVERED TO THE HULL OF THEIR SHIPS CAN EXPAND AND CONSUME THE ENTIRE STRUCTURE. THE SAME IS TRUE OF THEIR SURFACE INFRASTRUCTURE. SEVERAL PLANETS HAVE BEEN DESTROYED BY CAJDITAL CRUISERS DROPPING SMALL PACKETS OF THE WEAPON AND RETREATING.

“Devious as always,” Leif said, now understanding why the Dvapp had come out all this way.

WE HAVE DEVELOPED A CHEMICAL THAT NEUTRALIZES THE CAJDITAL’S WEAPON ON CONTACT. IT WILL BE USED TO COAT THE HULLS OF THE DVAPP WARSHIPS, BUT AT PRESENT THEY ARE UNABLE TO REPLICATE THE SUBSTANCE. WE HAVE AGREED TO PROVIDE THEM WITH AS MUCH OF THE CHEMICAL AS WE CAN MAKE, BUT IT IS NOT A SOLUTION. MERELY A DELAYING MECHANISM.

“But still valuable. Are you wanting us to assist with its production?”

NO. WE CANNOT PRODUCE ENOUGH OF THE CHEMICAL TO PROTECT THEIR INFRASTRUCTURE. WE WILL CONTINUE TO SEARCH FOR A MEANS TO OVERCOME THEIR WEAKNESS, BUT GIVEN THE RATE OF THE CAJDITAL’S ADVANCE THROUGH THEIR TERRITORY WE DO NOT HAVE MUCH TIME. ONCE A WORLD IS INFECTED WITH THE ENEMY’S WEAPON IT IS DIFFICULT TO STOP THE SPREAD OF DESTRUCTION. THE CAJDITAL KNOW THIS AND ARE SENDING RAIDING PARTIES OUT TO MANY DVAPP WORLDS THAT THEY DO NOT HAVE THE MILITARY ASSETS TO CONQUER. THEY ARE INFECTING THEM AND LETTING THE CHEMICAL REACTION TAKE ITS COURSE, LEAVING ALL STRUCTURES DESTROYED WITHOUT THEM FIRING A SINGLE PLASMA CANNON.

“Does the chemical kill the Dvapp?”

FORTUNATELY IT DOES NOT. IT DOES CONSUME ALL OF THEIR TECHNOLOGY.

“If you can provide us a sample I’ll have our techs see if we can come up with a solution.”

THAT IS A SMALL REQUEST WE MAKE OF YOU. WE HAVE A LARGE ONE.

Leif raised an eyebrow. “What is the large one?”

YOUR WAR AGAINST THE SKARRONS. WE BELIEVE THE DVAPP WOULD BE WILLING TO AID YOU IN EXCHANGE FOR PLANETS AWAY FROM THE CAJDITAL. THE DVAPP HAVE LONG RANGE WEAPONRY SUPERIOR TO OUR OWN PRIOR TO YOUR GIFT OF THE CLEANSING BEAM TECHNOLOGY. THEY ALSO HAVE A POPULATION AND FLEET FAR LARGER THAN YOUR OWN. IT IS NEXT TO USELESS AGAINST THE CAJDITAL. WE BELIEVE IT WOULD BE OF GREAT VALUE AGAINST THE SKARRONS.

Leif crossed his arms over his chest as he thought. “I thought you didn’t consider the Skarrons to be that great of a threat?”

WE RECOGNIZE THE SERIOUSNESS OF THE THREAT. WE DISAGREE ON THE SIZE OF THEIR TERRITORY. IF THE DVAPP CANNOT ASSIST US AGAINST THE CAJDITAL, THEY CAN FIGHT THE SKARRONS AND FREE UP MORE OF YOUR FLEET FOR THAT PURPOSE. WE BELIEVE THEY WOULD BE WILLING TO ACCEPT THESE TERMS. THEY ARE LOSING TERRITORY QUICKLY AND HAVE NO VIABLE OPTIONS.

“But are they trustworthy?”

YOU WILL HAVE THE CAJDITAL CHEMICAL. TRUSTWORTHY OR NOT, THEY CANNOT BETRAY YOU. STAR FORCE IS NEEDED TO BATTLE THE CAJDITAL. WE SEEK TO INSURE YOU ARE NOT DESTROYED BY THE SKARRONS. THE DVAPP WISH SANCTUARY AWAY FROM THE CAJDITAL. THEIR TECHNOLOGY WILL BE EFFECTIVE AGAINST THE SKARRONS. THEY CAN FIGHT THE CAJDITAL INDIRECTLY BY PROTECTING STAR FORCE AND THE PROTOVIC FROM ANOTHER ENEMY. THIS IS OUR LOGIC AND OUR PROPOSITION.

“In theory there is potential in this,” Leif agreed. “How much of their civilization is transplantable? It’s taking everything the Scionate have got, plus your jumpships to move them out, and they’re considerably smaller than the Dvapp according to the Alliance data sheets.”

THEY WILL LOSE MANY. THIS IS UNAVOIDABLE. WE WILL SEND JUMPSHIPS TO AID THEIR EVACUATION. THEIR NUMBERS WILL BE SIGNIFICANT, BUT GIVEN THE DISTANCES INVOLVED WE MUST ACT QUICKLY TO BEGIN THE PROCESS. THEIR WARFLEET CAN TRAVEL INDEPENDENT OF THEIR POPULATION AND IS LARGELY INTACT AT PRESENT. THAT WILL NOT REMAIN TRUE FOR LONG.

“Have you discussed this proposal with them?”

NOT AS OF YET. WE DID NOT WISH TO SUGGEST HOPE WHERE THERE MIGHT BE NONE IF YOU WERE NOT IN AGREEMENT.

Leif took in a deep breath, then let it out very slowly, thinking fast. “How much infrastructure support will they need?”

WE BELIEVE THEY WILL REQUIRE NONE. AVAILABLILTY OF BUILDING MATERIALS WILL DICTATE THEIR RATE OF CONSTRUCTION AND ENHANCEMENT WOULD BE PREFERRED. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ASSIGN THEM WORLDS AND ALLOW THEM TO COLONIZE THEM WITHOUT SUPPORT. THEIR FLEET SHOULD BE SUFFICIENT TO INSURE SECURITY. WHAT THEY REQUIRE IS DISTANCE FROM THE CAJDITAL.

“How fast are their ships compared to your jumpships?”

APPROXIMATELY 40%.

Leif wrinkled his nose. That was slow, considerably slower than Star Force’s jumpships, but far faster than their drone fleet was capable of jumping, which was why they still used jumpships.

“I’ll require an advance colonization team with a small defense fleet moved into position quickly to secure a foothold, then you can bring the rest along at whatever pace you choose. If all they need is territory, we can accommodate them. But make sure they understand the threat the Skarrons pose.”

HOW MANY WORLDS CAN YOU OFFER?

“How many do they need?”

WE ASK THAT YOU OFFER A MIMIMUM OF 10.

“I’ll have to do some map checking first before I can commit to a number. I also need to know what their habitability ranges are, and what level of desirability they want.”

WE BELIEVE THEY WILL TAKE ANY YOU OFFER. THEY ARE ALREADY FLEEING THEIR CURRENT TERRITORY AND COLONIZING WORLDS BEYOND OUR KNOWLEDGE. IF WE OFFER THEM SAFE HAVEN WE BELIEVE THEY WILL TAKE IT REGARDLESS OF TERMS.

“Give me an hour to consult our charts.”

WE WILL AWAIT YOUR RESPONSE.

The image of the shrunken Hycre disappeared and Leif deactivated the comm with a few telekinetic button presses as he jogged out of Balboa Lane, headed back to his quarters. When he got there he sat down at his personal terminal and brought up the master Star Force map and highlighted Beta Region. The current systems held he disregarded, for they weren’t going to share them with what amounted to strangers. Likewise he ignored the communal Alliance systems they were setting up, leaving some 98% remaining.

A few of those were inhabited by other races, some with space travel, some without, but most being single system entities. Beyond those there was a lot of unclaimed territory, with some of the systems being used as trade routes by the other races. He didn’t want to put the Dvapp down on any of those so he ruled them out, then began a search function on the available planetoids based on environmental conditions, which he double checked with the information the Alliance had on the Dvapp.

He got a list within half a second, then switched from data form to map form, with the available planets triggering their systems to glow red. He cut off the list with the top 100 and looked at what they had.

It was a shotgun spread, as he had expected, but within a few minutes he had a basic outline of a region near to Randy’s most coreward colony. Not so far out that it would leave the Dvapp exposed, but it would put them squarely on the line that the trailblazers had drawn as their furthest border. So far the Skarrons hadn’t hit another Star Force system, choosing to focus all their efforts on Protovic territory where both sides were going at it hard. If the Dvapp could slip into the region relatively unnoticed with a warfleet to cover their colonization efforts…this could work.

Leif pulled up a few of the planetoids in question and gave them a quick look over. Most were volcanic worlds with oceans present, places that Star Force could colonize but otherwise wouldn’t want to. That said, he pulled up a secondary map from his personal files and overlaid it on the primary, making sure none of the tagged worlds were included in the alternate networks the others were setting up.

One was, and Leif removed it from his list, which after a little more trimming left him with 22 viable candidates. He saved them and their data to a separate file, knowing that he’d have to get final checks from Randy, but even if a few of them weren’t available he could promise the Dvapp the 10 worlds the Hycre suggested and then some if they could get enough of their people there to colonize them.

With a quick glance over to make sure he hadn’t made any glaring oversights, Leif contacted the bridge and reinitiated communications with the Hycre directly from his quarters.

10

February 11, 2475

Numar System (Calavari Territory)

Sashneo

Dre’for flew his Valerie up to orbit over the Alliance world for the last time, rendezvousing with a Scionate cargo ship that had been converted into a carrier. Onboard he met up with a host of other pilots, all of which were moving on from the still growing world as more Scionate and other races’ refugees were coming in. His time guarding this world was done, and once he and a few others finished up loading the carrier it moved to a higher orbit and docked with a Scionate jumpship.

Another two days of waiting while other ships arrived followed, then the massive jumpship left the system on a 6 jump course enroute to Drema, after which it would follow the Human ‘conduit’ into their region and branch off to one of the Alliance worlds they were setting up there.

Dre’for’s carrier was eventually dropped off along with the other 21 ships in stellar orbit, then the jumpship left immediately to maximize time, leaving the Scionate ships to make microjumps of their own to reach the 2nd of three Alliance worlds in the Lkat system, where the Scionate had established a transitional base of their own.

When the carrier arrived in orbit it met several hundred other ships from 8 different races. There were few orbital facilities, all Human, and they likewise had a few warships of their own present patrolling the area. The rest of the ships belong to the Gardeen, Irondel, Yammot, Hammids, and three more races that Dre’for wasn’t familiar with. They weren’t part of the Alliance, but apparently they’d been given slots on a sanctuary world?

As he flew his Valerie down to the surface he saw the expansive Scionate cities under construction in their sector, with him heading to the largest one as he descended. The Scionate had been given sector 7, which occupied one of the four southern hemisphere quadrants. Their immediate neighbors were the Irondel, Hammids, and one of the races he didn’t know. That one had more infrastructure built up than any of the others, but still it only occupied a small amount of the land space allotted, given that the entire planet had no oceans, forests, or other native life. Just vast tracks of desert underneath a humid atmosphere.

Dre’for flew down through that humidity in the form of a thunderstorm enroute to the spaceport, with many more of the tiny, isolated weather patterns popping up across their territory. He’d been told that the weather would be active, but as he came down near the spaceport he found the wind to be negligible with the rain falling gently, as if bathing the relaxed cityscape beneath.

He ducked his Valerie underneath the spaceport canopy and landed in amongst a bay full of military craft, finding a berth reserved specifically for him. The quadruped opened the canopy on the fighter and sniffed the air, finding it as humid as the thunderstorms suggested.

“Welcome brother.”

Dre’for slid off the top of the Valerie and dropped to the floor next to the other pilot, one far younger than himself.

“Who are the other races on the planet? They are not part of the Alliance.”

“Star Force and the Protovic are engaged in a separate war against a powerful race known as the Skarrons. Their territory is far coreward of here, but when the Nestafar diminished under Calavari attacks they grew bold and attacked the Protovic and others in the region. Many of these races have sought sanctuary with Star Force as well.”

“I was told these worlds were to be shared by the Alliance, not others,” Dre’for said as he looked over the scattering of pilots and techs within the hangar, taking their measure in little more than a glance. He was amongst the most veteran of pilots, and knew the others of his race well enough that it didn’t take him long to ascertain their mettle.

“The other two in the system are, but there were slots left available on this world that the Alliance chose to use rather than expanding to another system.”

“More population under the same naval umbrella,” Dre’for surmised, rotating his shoulders around to stretch them…then his hips.

“Exactly.”

“I trust the same is not true of our allotted worlds?”

“I have no knowledge of that.”

Dre’for huffed. “No, you wouldn’t. My stay here will not be long. I leave with the colony expedition when it is fully assembled. Do you know where I will be billeted until then?”

The other Scionate bowed slightly. “I am your reception. If you wish I can take you there now? Or perhaps you would like something to eat first?”

“Show me to my billet, and I will find my way from there.”

“Follow,” the Scionate said, turning and walking lazily across the fighter bay.

Dre’for did so silently, and was led on a circuitous pathway through the Scionate city until they eventually arrived at the den where 13 sets of quarters were located, set around a small courtyard. His guide pawed the doorframe, opening the vertical door and allowing him access to the small, private chambers.

“You are dismissed,” Dre’for said graciously as he entered.

The other Scionate bowed and walked off, leaving him to acclimate himself.

Dre’for shut the door behind him, then began to peel off his armor now that he was safely within the confines of their own city. Unlike on Sashneo, this city fully belonged to them and there was no mixing of the races. Each zone on the planet was similar, belong to a single race who controlled immigration, commerce, and all other aspects. Other races might have allowed public access to their cities, but the Scionate did not, preferring to be left alone save for select visitors.

There had been some conditions to be given territory on this world, because ultimately it belonged to the Humans. They had a scattering of their own settlements here occupying a narrow strip of land that separated the eight sectors. Those settlements contained resource markets that the Scionate and others could trade with, securing goods and assistance with construction or tech issues as they built up their territories, if necessary. They were also open to the public, allowing the Scionate and others full access, making them the communal points on the otherwise divided planet.

There was a long list of rules governing conduct within those settlements, and a lesser list regarding what the Scionate and others could or could not do here. Normally the Scionate would have found that offensive, but their restrictions were inconsequential save for one, given that Scionate society already operated by the same.

That one was a decree that meat production was not allowed. The Scionate didn’t wholly rely upon it for their food supply, but they did maintain herds of animals to consume as a delicacy. Those herds were not permitted here, under threat of forcible confiscation and punishment. That rule also applied to the worlds the Humans were outright giving them, along with a handful of other conditions that the Scionate had negotiated. It had been rumored that the Humans had rescued several such food herds from the Cajdital, not for their own consumption, but to give them sanctuary.

Dre’for liked that they had offered such insult to their enemy, but otherwise didn’t care for the Human’s squeamishness. He respected their piloting and hand to hand skills, along with the way they’d stepped up on Daka during the Nestafar betrayal, though that had mostly been due to the fact that the Nestafar hadn’t seen fit to consider them a worthy enemy and had trashed the other race’s fighters first.

Never the less the Humans were scrappy fighters, but the idea that they would be dictating to the Scionate was laughable. Why Dre’for’s leaders had agreed to the Humans’ terms he didn’t know, but he was certainly going to miss the meat once their stockpiles ran out. Apparently the Humans didn’t mind them eating the meat, they just didn’t want them bringing their herds into their territory.

He supposed it was a small price to pay for getting away from the Cajdital, if only temporarily, but he didn’t like sacrificing part of Scionate culture in exchange for it. Hopefully this colony still had some meat reserves. If not he’d adjust, but after such a long trip out here he had a serious hankering for a slice of bernen.

After Dre’for shed his armor he walked around the three-tiered billet, finding all as expected to be, then he pawed the door open and set off to explore the surrounding area and get something to eat…meat or not.

“We’re getting deviation again,” Ryan Umberson said, watching the vid screen displays. “Just like last time.”

“Damn it,” Tennisonne swore, monitoring a different readout on the other side of the research lab in Avalon, one of 18 Atlantis-style oceanic surface cities on Earth where most of Star Force’s small scale research and development occurred…save for what had to transpire within the pyramid.

“Shutting down,” the third engineer in the chamber said, in charge of the reactor controls.

“No!” Tennisonne said sharply. “If the computer keeps chasing the rabbit we’re not going to get anywhere,” he said, glancing at the wall between him and Ryan in the triangular room and telekinetically pressing a button, with equipment folding out of a hidden compartment. “We’re going to try this manually.”

“How is that going to be any better than the computer?” Victoria asked.

“If I can stabilize it for even a few seconds longer we’ll be able to gather data to build a better program, at minimum. The current one we’ve got is crap,” the senior level 5 tech said as he walked over to the Ikrid interface and placed his hands on the sphere. “Ryan, link in. We’re going to have to double team this.”

“Right,” his fellow engineer said, opening up an identical interface on another wall, with the reactor standing middle of the room blocking their view of one another, though from his current position Ryan could see Victoria at her corner station.

“You sure about this?” she asked. “We’ve almost lost it. If you can’t do something in the next 20 seconds I’ll have to shut down.”

“Then we have our work cut out for us,” Tennisonne told his fellow level 5 engineers, though in truth they were still his junior. He was really a level 6, but thus far Star Force hadn’t bothered to create that distinction, and skilled as they were, some of the other level 5s were still hesitant to improvise on the fly…but then again he’d had far more experience doing that than they had coming up through the ranks. Tennisonne had been at the forefront from the very beginning, and never had anyone else’s lead to follow.

Ryan got his Ikrid interlink out of the wall and mentally connected with the reactor controls, simultaneously sensing/detecting Tennisonne’s presence and the functions he was asserting control over.

“I’m in.”

“Regulate flow, I’ve got the shielding,” Tennisonne said, claiming the toughest task for himself. The reactor behind him was constraining a series of very specific and active reactions between matter and energy, set up in a mousetrap like chain designed to create a specific product at the end, but the physics involved were so new that the computer had insufficient modeling to regulate it all, which was accomplished by a series of intricate energy shields, far more dense than anything employed in combat, and designed to accomplish specific tasks rather than block anything thrown their way.

Tennisonne saw in mind’s eye the settings they were currently running, as well as the computer modifications that had them fluttering like a flag in the wind as it tried to overcome the erratic nature of the third reaction. Try as it would, it couldn’t compensate for the fluctuating nature and continually took bigger and bigger swings at the shield adjustments trying to null it out…which in turn made things worse.

The senior engineer took direct control over that shield setting and forced smaller adjustments, with the containment security warnings rising towards dangerous levels as he did. Not dangerous as in blowing up the reactor, but in overcoming the containment fields and messing up the interior…which would require days if not weeks for a rebuild, considering that everything in the reactor he and his two peers had designed and built from scratch.

“Hurry,” Victoria prompted.

Tennisonne ignored her and used a series of shield walls to chop down segments of the growing reaction as Ryan feathered the amount of incoming particles and energy, reducing the reaction without smothering it entirely. That helped Tennisonne after the first few tries it took for Ryan to get synchronized with what the other engineer was doing, then the two of them gradually pulled back the reaction with both having to make constant mental adjustments.

“Halfway there,” Victoria noted, seeing the levels calming down.

“Confirm computer is recording.”

“Confirmed. Keep schooling it,” she prompted, checking the status on the other links in the reactor in case they somehow managed to get this one working. They all appeared nominal, but to date had never been tested, given that the first three stages were as far as they’d gotten.

Pushing aside all outside influence, Tennisonne focused his psionic abilities…a gift from Davis for his long service, and something that he’d devoted daily training time towards for just this sort of manipulation that normally only a computer could accomplish. The speed of the link allowed him to make adjustments far faster than his fingers otherwise would have allowed, though still not as fast as a computer was capable of. The difference was wisdom, for a computer could only do what it was programmed to do, and improvising was something that could never be programmed.

Inside the third stage of the reactor two exotic forms of energy that Star Force had only learned to produce a few decades ago were bombarding a slurry of molecules created in stage two. Those had to be kept at extreme heat and pressure, otherwise their unusual atomic configuration would dissipate. Those molecules were then spawning a precise number of andermob particles per cyclical spin, and in order to feed stage 4 a certain flow rate was required. At present the cycles were erratic, giving large surges of andermobs followed by mere trickles, none of which stage 4 could use.

Using the shields and flow rate, Tennisonne and Ryan compressed and relaxed the pressure in various regions of the slurry, adjusting the cyclical rate and trying to maintain a steady output into phase four. The tiny tier 2 subatomic particles had to occur in large amounts to feed the reactor, meaning that a large amount of the molecular slurry was required…which was what was causing the regulation problems. In test runs smaller amounts had been easier to control, which the computer regulation program had been designed to emulate, but given the larger numbers the slurry took on a different behavior, much akin to how a lake and an ocean differed in current patterns.

Tennisonne was having to learn those patterns and counter them, as well as to get a feel for the adjustments Ryan was making. He would have liked to have communicated with him telepathically so they could increase their efficiency, but his psionic skills were already being taxed by the interlink and he didn’t have enough processing power left over to shout a telepathic word, let alone coordinate in real time.

He could still speak though, given that that ability wasn’t psionic, nor were his ears, which Victoria kept annoying with constant updates. He could see the reaction as well, if not better than she could, so he didn’t know why she kept talking at him, other than just being bored with nothing else to do.

More on accident than anything, the pair of engineers managed to keep a stable reaction for a brief span of 4.2 seconds, their longest sustained period yet, which achieved the 3.04 seconds of continuous production necessary to activate stage 4.

“We’re through to four!” Victoria announced excitedly.

“Talk to us,” Tennisonne said, now wanting her input as he continued to chase a stable reaction in stage three.

“We have 79% transfer…stage 5 is activating. Wait, no…hold on,” she said, making an adjustment on her end. “Contained within 5. We’re at 68% capacity. We need more to get through in the next few minutes or we’re going to lose it.”

“Working on it,” Ryan said as he and Tennisonne tried to repeat their success. Again, through what seemed sheer accident rather than intent, the reaction stabilized for 3.8 seconds, sending another continuous burst into stage 4.

“That did it! Stage 5 has reached threshold, transferring to six. Massive loss…we’re only getting 31% through and…” she cut off suddenly.

“What?” Ryan demanded.

“Stage 7 complete.”

“Shut down,” Tennisonne prompted, holding the reaction in check until Victoria deactivated the entire assembly. When it went offline he disconnected from the Ikrid terminal, returning his normal senses to the forefront of his mind. He blinked away the disconcertedness and walked back over to his corner terminal and studied the results.

The reactor was reading .0003 milligrams of Erruvium, and according to the readings it was in a stable form. He’d worried about there being a transitional instability in the halo of neutrons surrounding the empty core of the atom being held together solely by corovon linkage, but the structure appeared to be holding, otherwise there would have been an instantaneous collapse into traditional C-type elements.

“Did we finally do it?” Ryan asked, looking at his own terminal with the other two engineers in each corner of the triangular room with the reactor and its precious contents between them.

Tennisonne cracked a smile, but it was safely inconspicuous from the other two. Most people considered manual override of computer control absolute folly, but he knew from experience…and a little Archon envy…that it was the preferred route to take in select situations.

“Welcome to the new age,” he said loudly and proudly, “of Arc Elements.”

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STAR FORCE Wiki

_____

1

36 years ago…

Travis-189377 hopped over a barricade on the ‘indoor’ paintball training chamber, ducking down and rolling to the left before popping up and shooting the target sphere on a turret with a red stinger…with a purple one coming in almost simultaneously from behind him where Karen-189376 emerged, jumping over the same barricade then hurdling the next. The pair repeated the process on the next turret, working their way out from the start area in the center of the chamber towards the outermost ring where the finish pedestal lay.

They didn’t know where it was, hidden behind the barricades and pillars, with various bunkers on the outer wall where trainers were stationed to add their sniping skills to the tandem challenge. To make things worse, each of the turrets had to be hit by both colors of paintballs, else they wouldn’t deactivate…and the shots had to come in together, meaning the Archon trainees had to coordinate fire, all the while ducking for cover and keeping themselves from getting hit.

Travis and Karen were having little trouble, moving from point to point in a snake-like pattern that coiled them in an expanding spiral rather than trying to head straight towards the outer ring as most trainees attempted. Even now, after completing several circulations, the pair was nearing the outer areas with most of the turrets atop of the pillars inside of them still active. There were too many of them to take out with their limited ammunition, so they had to pick and choose as they found a path to the outer ring.

Their chosen path was longer, but more reliable. Travis and Karen had ran this challenge multiple times, and had worked out the route they were most comfortable with, allowing them to move quite quickly, despite the extra distance they had to run and jump. The two trainees were so in sync that they very rarely had to stay behind cover, with most of their ducks followed by rolls, runs, and jumps that kept them moving constantly.

The trainers were a wildcard, for there were many hidden bunkers in the exterior walls and they never knew which ones would contain the sniper rifles throwing stingers at them. There was also a rover moving about through the rings, passing through the gaps between the low walls that were heavily guarded by turrets, discouraging trainees over the centuries from taking that direct route to the outer ring.

Travis and Karen had tried that way before, as many others had, but like their predecessors they knew that running the gaps was a sure way of getting hit, though the rover had no such difficulties. If trainees stayed put for too long the rover would come up on their flank and dislodge them…which was another good reason to keep moving, and at the speed the trainee pair were progressing the rover wasn’t going to be an issue. Their indirect path kept it moving around chasing them, reducing it to a ranged sniper like the trainers, except it wasn’t designed to operate as such.

Travis leapt over another of the low walls, firing at a turret simultaneously as Karen popped up out of cover to his left, with their binary rifles tagging and disabling the target sphere on top and deactivating it. By the time the trainee had dropped into cover with a few stingers passing over his head, Karen was already coming over with him, but a few meters to his left. When she ducked down, drawing the turrets her way, he popped up and moved over the wall, ducked down, rolled to the right, then came up and fired on another, becoming a distraction for Karen who likewise came over firing, hitting the same turret and deactivating it before she dropped down behind cover.

Both of them then moved left, rotating around the wide curve and taking out two turrets that were actually inside their ring before coming up and moving over again…this time with a feint from Karen that drew sniper fire just long enough for Travis to go over. As he did he spotted a barrel within a wall bunker over the outer wall. Remembering the spot as he dropped down, he rolled to the right and came back up, sending three shots towards it.

Two missed and hit the upper wall over the small firing slit, with the third hitting low and doing little more than throwing a few red paint splatters up onto the barrel…which flicked his direction.

A muffled groan sounded as Karen’s more carefully placed purple stinger slipped through the four inch gap and hit the trainer inside. That gave Travis an opening that he took, flinging himself up and over the last wall, whereupon he landed into a somersault roll and came up with his back towards the outer chamber wall, glancing side to side.

He didn’t see the finish pedestal, but he knew from gut instinct that there was a sniper nest to his right, and as he looked he saw two stubs of barrels sticking out around the curve of the wall move towards him. Travis dropped to his belly as he turned, giving him an extra split second, then fired off two quick shots. They hit low, but were followed up by Karen’s shots as she came over almost directly in front of the snipers, firing as she fell.

Both barrels went askew, and Travis knew the trainers were unconscious or numbed to the point that they couldn’t hold onto their weapons. He got to his feet, pushing his safety sunglasses back up a fraction on his nose, and followed Karen further around the curve of the outer ring, combining fire with her on another turret as the rover finally showed up ahead of them…but on the far side of the short finishing pedestal.

Travis sprinted ahead, dodging left as Karen went right and the rover shot between them, then Travis jumped up into a superman pose over the middle, giving the rover a very shallow firing angle as Karen went low and ducked behind the pedestal’s silhouette some ten meters away, using it to block the rover’s shots. Travis fell to the ground hard behind her, but he rolled out of it and came up shooting a couple of pointless shots at the rover as she scrambled forward and came up next to the pedestal.

Just then a distant sniper caught Travis in the gut and he doubled over…but remained conscious. His uncontrolled landing smashed his face into the ground, popping his glasses off as he fought to twist his neck around to unblock his nose that was filling up with blood from the impact and allow him to breathe easier as his torso seemed unwilling to respond to his body’s commands.

His legs still worked, and he got them up underneath him, flipping him over to where he could see the blue finish lights on the ceiling, indicating that Karen had gotten to and slapped down the button on the finish pedestal…but he already knew that, even if he didn’t actually see it happen. She’d been close enough that there was no way she was going to miss.

“Looks like your rifle took half the hit,” she said, suddenly appearing over him and helping stretch out his body into a more comfortable position. “Your face is a mess though.”

“That I can feel,” he told his sister, finding it a little hard to talk, for once the stun energy hit his blood stream it spread throughout his body in small amounts…which actually helped to mitigate the larger amount in his torso as it slowly broke down and absorbed into his cells.

The sensation didn’t last long, for a medic came out to him and injected the destunning serum that returned life to his body, then applied a small device to the side of his nose that triggered an acceleration of the healing process enough to clot up the breach within seconds. He kept the small Star Force device on for several minutes, knowing from past experience that if he didn’t his nose might break open again, for the thing wasn’t a regenerator. He’d never been injured bad enough to need one of those, but Ender-189388 had when he almost snapped his arm completely off in what looked like a harmless enough fall on Blood Gulch.

The thing had repaired him on the spot, making it obvious that the alien technology was far superior to the weak ass devices Star Force built, but he was glad to have the help, otherwise he’d be holding a bloody cloth to his face for a half hour or so. This way was much quicker…and cleaner.

“Congratulations,” the medic offered. “Is that your fifth?”

“What…oh, yes. Yes it is,” Karen said, belatedly realizing that he was referring to the challenge record once she took at glance at the display board on the ceiling that held their time. She’d gotten distracted by Travis’s faceplant and forgot to look. They’d finally got the mark…but only by 1.4 seconds.

“Thanks,” Travis offered as the medic retreated.

Karen reached down and offered her brother a hand up. “Good?”

“I think so. We got lucky that it was that close this time. Not sure we’re going to be able to shave much more time off without a hundred more runs.”

“We don’t have time for that,” she reminded him, referencing the end of their training. Their class was through all of the challenges, with them going back to boost their scores with redos that theoretically had an unlimited amount of attempts, but all of them knew that they wanted to get to the Final Challenge and graduate before too long, so they weren’t going to draw this out forever. A few more weeks at most, maybe, but not more than that.

“Agreed,” Travis said, picking up his rifle and walking off around the ring until they came to the open doorway that the medic had entered through. “Let’s focus on the Ring-out course. There’s points there to be had.”

“Aquatics first.”

Travis sighed. “You still think we can add anything there?”

“If you quit moping, yes.”

“Alright, we’ll play it your way.”

Karen lightly punched him in the ribs. “We’ve got this.”

“We’re still 70 some points off their mark.”

“Doable.”

“But not easy.”

“If it was easy, it wouldn’t be a challenge.”

“We’re talking trailblazers here. That’s more than just a challenge.”

“We just took another course record away from them,” Karen pointed out.

“Small stuff compared to the tandem record…and I don’t want to hold everyone else up while we’re scraping for points.”

“We won’t need to,” she said confidently.

Travis half laughed. “Right, let’s get to it then. At least underwater my nose isn’t going to bump into anything…so long as you don’t kick me again.”

“That,” she said, pointing at finger at him, “was half your fault.”

“And all my pain,” he added as they checked in their equipment and slipped out of their challenge uniforms and into their traditional trainee uniforms. From there they headed over to the aquatics section of the training facility within Atlantis.

Two weeks later they’d give up the ghost and turn in their final score, abandoning any further attempts at gaining more points. A few days later the last of their class did the same, moving them all on to the Final Challenge.

And the two siblings went into it carrying the overall tandem record with them.

Nathan-47434 ducked underneath Travis’s sword slash aimed at his head, then rolled across a knee to his left to avoid Karen’s thrust that came within an inch of his butt. As he twisted he flicked his double-bladed practice sword around, causing Travis to flinch backwards and give the level 83 acolyte enough time to get back to his feet.

He didn’t stay there long, jumping up into a dropping kick towards Karen as she came at him. The level 52 adept jabbed up at his knees, but a quick twirl of the double blades knocked her blade askew, prompting her to jump/roll to her right, over top of which Travis came and locked up blades with Nathan. A moment later Karen kicked up at his gut from somewhere on the ground and the Sangheili was propelled backwards a couple of steps…ending with a satisfied smile on his face.

He came back at the two, no longer holding back now that he’d gotten a feel for the way they moved, and attacked Travis hard for a pair of sword blows that the level 51 adept barely blocked, given the acolyte’s greater strength…then he switched to a jab towards Karen, knowing that she’d be coming at him in the blink of an eye.

Then he was back on Travis again, not giving either one much of an opportunity to move or think without having to defend themselves until the pair split, with each going to the far sides of the training mat. Nathan let them go, then sprinted towards Karen, knowing he had a few seconds of time to get at her alone.

She recognized that too and ran to her right around the perimeter, but Nathan caught up to her and exchanged three blows before he got her off balance and set up a fourth hit that swept her left leg out from under her. Nathan brought the stroke high, pulling her calve up above her waist and flipping her over, then spun around, pulling that half of his double sword away from his body as Travis came down on him from behind.

He caught his attack and repulsed it, pushing the adept backwards and taking him down quickly with a foot to his gut…then Nathan retreated to the center of the mat and waited for the pair to come at him again.

The brother and sister pair brushed themselves off and walked towards the much older and stronger acolyte slowly, watching their spacing, then the pair rushed him…with Travis just slightly in the lead. When Nathan moved to counter his blow first Travis hit the brakes and let Karen arrive ahead of him. Nathan switched targets quickly, then the pair reversed again at arm’s length away from him, with Travis jabbing his sword past Nathan’s as Karen locked it up with a two-handled leverage hold that used most of her right forearm for bracing.

It was all she could do to resist Nathan’s strength, but she didn’t have to hold it for long and down the acolyte went, bending over forward with the impact, then getting both adepts’ swords coming down on his neck/back at the same time, smashing him down into the mat face first…after which they backed up and waited on him to get up.

Nathan did so slowly, trying to learn from the encounter. Travis and Karen had developed quite the reputation for their tandem skills, not just by beating Jason and Paul’s trainee record, but by the near magical ability they had to coordinate with each other…and without telepathy at that. They’d gotten so good that they were able to take on higher ranking opponents together that neither could touch individually, with Nathan being their latest attempt. He’d requested the sparring session to test their skills…as well as his own, seeing how he’d react to such an unusual pairing.

He was getting quite the education, for even given a handful of seconds he could own either one of them, but the way they were working together exploited weaknesses that he didn’t realize he had, for virtually every time he struck at one he was leaving himself open to the other, causing him to rethink his defensive posture on the fly, with the pair of adepts getting the better of him in roughly a 2 to 1 ratio, leaving him the inferior in this engagement.

But Archons liked challenges, and he was loving this, so even as he pulled himself back up he was eager to get back at it…and was glad they were beating him, because that meant he had cause to up the difficulty again. So far he’d been sticking strictly to swordplay, but he was an acolyte, and that meant he had other options.

Nathan walked towards Travis, seeing him reposition accordingly as Karen rotated around the pair, getting in almost behind Nathan but not quite out of his peripheral vision by the time he struck. The acolyte locked swords with Travis and pushed him back with one half of his double blade, then reversed his handhold, whipping the other half forward and knocking the adept in the head before he could get his footing enough to evade, then Nathan spun both ends of his sword around in a defensive twirl, not knowing where Karen was.

When the first quarter turn didn’t contact blade or body, Nathan released a Fornax field, intending to catch her wherever she was…then found his legs being knocked out from under him as Karen slammed into him. He fell on her and their swords, getting poked in the groin and bending around the point of impact as much as he could, but feeling himself get sick to his stomach from the blow.

He laid there for a moment, then rolled off her and onto the mat where he lay in sickened agony for a number of seconds until it began to slowly wear off. Forcing himself to stand up he put a knee on the ground under him and got his head upright enough to see where the other two were.

He frowned, and not from the awkward pain he was still suffering from. Both Karen and Travis were laying on the mat and not moving. They were limp, and for a moment Nathan wondered if he was somehow still transmitting his Fornax energy, but he wasn’t. And even if Karen had somehow gotten knocked unconscious when they were tangled up, slim as that possibility was, that didn’t explain why Travis was also down.

“Guys, you alright?” Nathan asked, getting to his feet and walking over to Karen. He knelt down and put a hand on her head, linking with her telepathically as much as his limited skills allowed. When he did he jerked back, getting a none too pleasant feeling in his own head, almost like he’d touched a live electrical wire.

“What the hell is going on?” he whispered, checking to make sure they were both still breathing. They were, so he tried to wake them up physically, but no matter how much he poked or shook them they were both out cold, so he jogged off the mat and found the nearest comm terminal, calling for a medic.

2

May 3, 2476

Solar System

Trunks

“And?” Nathan asked as the head medic walked over to him while both Travis and Karen were lying unconscious in the med bay on adjacent table/beds with other techs doing further scans.

“They’re not injured as far as I can tell. If I had to guess I would say it’s something psionic…except that they’re adepts. At this point I have no idea why they’re out, but they’re both showing anomalous brain activity.”

“Could it have anything to do with them being twins?” Nathan asked, grasping at straws. He didn’t know how a Fornax field could have done this to them, because it actively disrupted the nervous system, meaning once he stopped transmitting the effects equally disappeared.

The medic shook his head. “Fraternal twins are no different than any other sibling pair, aside from their birthdate.”

“They’re identical twins.”

The medic frowned and looked at the Archon like he’d lost his mind.

“They both have identical DNA and XY chromosomes, but Karen’s male genetics never activated.”

“Oh, Androgen Insensitivity. That is curious, but I don’t see how it could be a factor…then again, with us being unable to determine a cause I suppose it’s possible,” he said, referencing a condition found in some Humans where they are immune to the effects of certain bio-chemicals. In the case of Karen and others, one of those chemicals was the developmental trigger to activate the male portion of her genetic code.

All Humans contain female genetics, with approximately half also containing male genetics. During pre-birth growth a ‘fork in the road’ moment occurs where one is chosen. For XX chromosome females there is no male genetics to activate, thus they develop the only genetic characteristics they have. Those Humans with XY chromosomes have the option to go either way, and a trigger chemical is surged through the individual during development at the moment of differentiation.

That chemical activates the male genetics and they develop. In a few cases something goes wrong with the chemical trigger and the male genetics don’t activate, leaving the default female genetics as the blueprint for development. In this way a handful of females carry inactive male genetics, whereas all males carry inactive female genetics.

Karen was one such case, leaving her with the same DNA as Travis, despite the fact that they had developed into different genders.

“Scan me,” Nathan insisted.

“For what purpose?”

“Just in case my psionics are operating incorrectly. Them both going down simultaneously can’t be a coincidence.”

“Have a seat,” the medic said, pointing to an open bed/table beside Travis. Nathan walked over and hopped up, then laid back as several pieces of scanning equipment were extruded from the wall and brought out over his head.

“I have something,” the medic continuing to scan Travis said. “Looks like malformed Ikrid tissue.”

Nathan waved off his own medic and sat up, careful not to bump the hanging equipment. “He has Ikrid tissue?”

“A very small amount, but it’s not developed correctly…at least, it’s not developed according to the base pattern we have on file.”

“He shouldn’t have any at all,” the head medic said, walking up and viewing the scan results. He glared at the datapad then glanced at Karen. “Check her.”

It took a moment to set up the proper scan, for the wealth of their equipment operated in different ways without there being one ‘check all’ function. Her medic did the scan, then handed the results to the head medic.

“She has one too,” he told Nathan, then stared at the ceiling for a moment trying to piece it all together. “We’ve seen others have similar spontaneous psionic tissue growths, and the fact that they’re operating off of an identical genetic code can explain why they both have them, but I can’t theorize a link between this and their current condition. Ikrid acts as a biological comm relay. It doesn’t control any bodily functions, let alone anything critical enough to knock them unconscious. Am I wrong in that?” he asked Nathan.

“I didn’t use any Ikrid abilities on them, but it is possible to overwhelm them in various ways, none of which I’m capable of doing even if I tri…” Nathan cut off, flinching suddenly as Karen jerked awake, sitting up so fast that she banged her head on the scanning equipment and reflexively hit back at it with a right forearm swing, breaking it off and throwing it into the medic at her side.

He took the equipment to the face, breaking his nose and knocking him off his feet.

“Easy,” Nathan said unnecessarily as Karen fully woke up and got her bearings.

“What?” she asked groggily, seeing that she was in a med bay and Travis was lying beside her unconscious.

The head medic raced around the end of the bed and got to the injured one, with Karen belatedly noticing…then feeling the dull spot on her arm where it had hit the now broken equipment.

“Did I do that?” she asked apologetically.

“He’ll live,” Nathan said, walking up beside her and placing a hand on her shoulder. “What happened to you?”

Karen looked down at the medic and the river of blood oozing out between his fingers as he grasped his nose lightly, wincing against the pain.

“Sorry,” she offered.

The medic lazily waved off her comment with his free hand as the head medic pulled him to his feet, then motioned for one of the others to take him over to another station for treatment while he got back to their patients.

“How do you feel?” he asked her.

“Sucky,” she answered, then looked at Nathan. “Last thing I remember was getting tangled up with your legs. What’s wrong with Travis?”

“You both blacked out at the same moment,” the acolyte told her. “I used a Fornax field on you, but I have no idea how it knocked you out.”

“I thought Fornax was white noise,” she said, staring hard at Travis. “It loses effect when you stop transmitting.”

“As far as I know that’s the case…but something happened to you two.”

“Did you wake me up?”

“No. You just came out of it on your own. I tried waking you up on the mat, but your mind was locked down. Both of yours were. I don’t know how to do that with mine if I tried. Have you two ever blacked out at the same time before?”

“A couple times,” Karen admitted, “but that was because we both got hit at the same time. You didn’t hit us with any stun weapon?”

“No.”

“Then this is new,” she said, swinging her legs off the side of the bed and looking directly at Travis.

The head medic pushed between her and Nathan and got to the head of Travis’s bed, where he rotated the scanning equipment around to reach over to Karen, given that she’d just trashed her own.

“Hold still,” he said, running the equipment around her head with Karen accommodating him.

“Did you know you have some psionic tissue?” Nathan asked.

Karen glanced at him. “I do?”

“Both of you do.”

Her eyes moved to Travis, who was lying perfectly still. “No we didn’t. What type?”

“Ikrid.”

“A very small anomalous growth,” the medic corrected. “I’m not even sure if it’s active. Have you any conscious control over it?”

“I didn’t know I had any,” she reminded him. “How did I…did we get it?”

“It’s very rare, but some people have them without going through the upgrade process.”

Karen looked at Nathan and saw the acolyte shake his head, indicating that the medic didn’t have clearance to know what the ‘upgrade process’ truly was, though all medical personnel involved with Archons had to be given some knowledge of psionics in order to treat them.

“They’re usually nonfunctional or malfunctioning without the designer genetic modifications. I’m not sure how it works, but we’ve got documented cases of many civilians being treated by Star Force to correct the growths. How you guys were missed I don’t know.”

“They were never scanned,” Nathan said, a few puzzle pieces falling into place. “Any bad headaches in the past?”

“Nothing like what you’re talking about,” she said, looking at Travis again. “And he’s been with me since basic training. He hasn’t had anything either.”

“How’s she look now?” Nathan asked.

“The anomalous brain activity has ceased, and now that she’s awake she appears fully normal. Am I right in assuming that there’s some information that you’re withholding that would require passing this on to a higher level tech?” he asked, looking directly at Nathan. “Psionics seem to be a touchy subject with you guys and I don’t want to pry.”

Nathan was silent for a moment, glancing down at Travis.

“Is he going to wake up anytime soon?” Karen asked the medic.

“I have no idea what’s keeping him unconscious, so I can’t answer that, though the fact that you woke up on your own is encouraging.”

“Give me 10 minutes,” Nathan said, lightly punching Karen in the shoulder as a friendly gesture before he hurried out of the med bay.

“Is he just asleep or something worse?”

“His mental state is erratic, so I can’t really say,” the medic answered as one of the others came back over, though the one with the broken nose was no longer in the bay, having been sent back to his quarters while he recovered. “But it’s more than just being asleep, otherwise you two would have woke up with some chemical persuasion. The source of the lockdown is mental, I can tell you that much. And if it is psionic related then I’m not going to be of much help to you.”

“But we do have psionic tissue?”

“Yes,” he said, pulling the datapad over and showing her the scans from both adepts, along with a bit of translation for the images. Before they finished Nathan came back in and pointed to Travis.

“Get him mobile. You two are going to Earth.”

“How soon?” the medic asked as Karen took a step over to Travis and lightly lifted him up into a sitting position.

“As soon as we can get to the spaceport. Anything you can do for him in transit?”

“Other than run additional scans and stand by to act if something changes, no.”

“Go ahead and transmit the data you’ve gathered to Atlantis. You’re relieved,” the acolyte said, looking to Karen. “Let’s go.”

She slid an arm underneath Travis’s knees and lifted him up across her chest, carrying him out the door and all the way down to the waiting puddle jumper, with the insystem transport carrying them up to orbit and onto a jumpline directly to Earth that got them to Atlantis within 3 hours.

Travis woke in the same manner as Karen, bolting upright still in combat mode, that having been the last waking memory he had. When he blinked away his grogginess he found that his head hurt…along with the rest of his body.

“What the…”

“You’ve been out for four days,” Karen said, walking up beside him in a small med bay with half a dozen medics around him, plus one Archon that he recognized as Jaime-532, the highest ranking Sangheili currently stationed in the Solar System. “We’re in Atlantis.”

“Why, what, and how?” Travis asked, picking up on Karen’s serious mood.

“That’s rather complicated,” one of the medics said, hopping up on the foot of Travis’s bed as the Archon sat up. “I’m Chandler Vortison. Me and my team,” he said, thumbing towards the other medics, “are tasked with trying to understand the V’kit’no’sat genetic engineering. We haven’t learned much, as pathetic as that admission is, but we have learned what happened to you.”

“I’m all ears,” Travis said after throwing Karen a glance.

“Well, first off you blacked out during a sparring session. Somehow you transmitted this to your sister and knocked her out too.”

“Thanks, bro,” Karen said sarcastically.

He glared at her then turned his attention back to Vortison. “Transmitted?”

“Both you and your sister have malformed Ikrid growths. How this occurred is not known, but it’s not unheard of either. We have 834 documented cases of psionic tissue developing in non-Archons, all but 3 of which were dysfunctional in some way. The three that weren’t were lucky, because the genetic degradation should have messed them up. You see, Zen’zat were never meant to reproduce. As such, the V’kit’no’sat never took into account translational problems when they genetically engineered the psionic abilities into the Ter’nat.”

“Wait…you’re saying I knocked both of us out because of faulty Ikrid?”

“No, it’s more than that. Let me explain in full before you ask further questions…it’ll save time. When our ancestors were left on this world and began to reproduce, their Zen’zat abilities transferred to their offspring, but over the millennia they degraded. They’re still fully intact within our genetic code, but they’re no longer active, just something we carry around with us like a lot of additional coding. For some reason these dormant abilities wake up in a few people, but they don’t fully wake up and you get all kind of problems as tissue develops incorrectly, sometimes resulting in death, but most of the time in partial abilities. Then again, a lot of the cases we’ve seen have tissue that doesn’t do anything because it’s not fully formed. We imagine there are more people like that out there, but we don’t scan everyone, so it’s usually the ones experiencing problems, headaches and such, that we find.”

“Your Ikrid growth is malformed. It is smaller, incomplete, and the tissue that is present is very different from what it’s designed to be…trick is, yours is actually working, but in a new way. Somehow your body adapted it to serve a specific function, which in this case is providing a low Ikrid link to your sister and only her. It took some time to identify, but you’re both continuously transmitting to one another. That’s probably why you never noticed it before, but your tandem skills, I’m told, are top notch, which suggests that you’re both using this connection in a positive way, so it’s not just random transmissions.”

“Basically you cheated,” Jaime interrupted, “but it’s a very useful cheat. One that I’d prefer you didn’t waste.”

“Waste how?” Travis asked.

“Well, normal procedure in these cases is to correct the malformation by fully unlocking your psionic abilities and allowing you to grow proper tissue. Problem is, that will destroy your current Ikrid growths, severing this connection you two have.”

Travis looked at Karen. “What connection?”

“I said the same thing, but the computers say there’s a link, and I’m not interested in finding out what it will feel like to not have it.”

“What’s the range of this link?” Travis asked Vortison.

“We’re not sure, but we’re guessing about 20 meters based on Karen’s transmission strength. You’ve been in lockdown so we couldn’t measure yours.”

“I’ve been further than 20 meters away from her before and I didn’t notice any negative effects.”

“It may not work that way. It could be that you just get tidbits of information from time to time that are useful, like knowing where she is during close range training drills without having to look.”

“Not that it’s perfect,” Karen noted, given the number of injuries they’d given each other over the years, all of which were light.

“You two hold the tandem trainee record and are one of the better team pairs regardless of rank,” Jaime pointed out. “It might be natural for you, but you’ve definitely got an advantage. Don’t waste it.”

“Wait, what happened to make us…me, black out in the first place? You said I was in lockdown?”

Vortison exchanged a glance with Jaime, then swallowed hard before he spoke.

“The trailblazers have been breaking through into tier 2 psionics, and we’ve been fortunate enough to get some of them under observation when it happens. We’ve learned there are triggers that have to be satisfied before the flash growth of tissue occurs. You hit a trigger and your body tried to grow new tissue that your genetics didn’t appear to have, because it’s dormant. When that happened you blacked out, and stayed out because your body kept trying to access what wasn’t there in an endless cycle that we only just now broke.”

“How the hell did I try to skip to tier 2 psionics?”

“We’re not sure, but we think it might have to do with your link to your sister. If the trigger somehow was reading you both at the same time it might have thought you were more developed than you are, but that’s just a theory at this point. I don’t have a firm answer for you.”

“What’s to stop it from happening again?”

“We’re going to give you the other 6 basic psionic abilities,” Jaime told him. “Adept or not, you’re a special case.”

“What if what I need is in the 7th?”

“That’s the problem,” Karen agreed. “If we reset our Ikrid, we lose our link. If we don’t, you could be blacking us both out at any time now.”

“It probably won’t occur unless you’re in training or combat,” Vortison added, “but we don’t know for sure what the actual trigger is. We’ve partially mapped out some of the others, but this one is new to us.”

“Mapped out?” Travis asked.

“We know what we need to do in training to trigger them,” Jaime answered.

“More or less,” Vortison added. “We still don’t have specifics, nor are we close to finding a way to medically trigger the upgrades.”

Travis frowned. “Is that even possible?”

“If you’re a V’kit’no’sat, sure,” Vortison explained. “We, however, are not.”

“And good thing too,” Jaime chimed in. “Because we’d probably be killed for even suggesting it.”

“Point,” Travis admitted, knowing that the V’kit’no’sat wanted the Zen’zat to earn everything, even though the other races got their bio upgrades at birth where Ter’nat did not.

“Ultimately it’s your choice,” Jaime told him, “but for the time being I want both of you down to the pyramid for upgrades and a permanent training assignment. The techs are going to study you in detail, and you’re going to explore this link you two have got. If you lock up again they know how to end it, so for now we’re in information gathering mode. Later on, if you want, we can erase this, but I strongly suggest that you keep your link. It’s the only one we know of to exist.”

Travis looked over at Karen. “Just when I was starting to get tired of you.”

“Shut up…this is all your fault anyway. I didn’t knock you out.”

“You’re just sore that I advanced sooner than you did.”

“Tried to advance,” she reminded him, “and failed.”

“Whatever,” Travis said, brushing off her accurate comment and looking at Jaime. “How long do you expect we’ll be down there?”

“I don’t know. This is new territory for us.”

“I’ll be going with you,” Vortison said.

Travis raised an eyebrow. “That high of a priority?”

Vortison nodded, underscoring how much so with his silence.

Travis glanced at Karen, then she turned to face Jaime. “When do we leave?”

3

July 25, 2476

Solar System

Earth

Karen ducked down as Travis jumped over her and landed on an illuminated square on the floor, with the red marker going out on contact. A split second later a green one lit up along with a tone to Karen’s left, prompting her to take a short hop over to it, landing on one leg for the square was too small to fit both feet on…and stepping anywhere else would have disqualified them both from the tandem challenge.

A red square lit up two over and one back from where she was standing, and immediately she knew it was going to be a problem. There was only a few inches between it and her leg, with Travis on the opposite side and only three seconds for him to get to it. Her brother jumped into a slow half flip and she caught him with her hands on his waist as he passed over her. The momentum threatened to tip her off balance so she knelt down on the one leg she was standing on, using it as a spring to cushion some of the force as she dumped him over to the left.

Travis’s left hand came down on the square in time, leaving the pair forming a crude living arch that extended even further as another green square lit up in front of Karen. She reached her free leg out and tapped it, forming a tripod between the two of them. So long as she didn’t lift either foot the squares would stay safe, and at the moment she needed as much leverage as possible, for as she guessed, Travis’s next square popped up some distance away.

Without discussing what they were going to do, her brother pushed off with his hand and she held him up over her shoulders as her legs were spread wide, with her balancing on the balls of her feet to keep them from sliding off and hitting the adjacent squares. Once she had a fairly firm posture Travis got a foot on her hip and jumped off to land awkwardly on his square, then the challenge continued on with them alternating new positions for as long as they could keep up.

This ‘Twister’ challenge was a new one, specifically created to test and push their sibling connection further than other challenges had…and both twins admitted it was by far the hardest for them to manage, not for sheer strength, but because they had to incorporate balance, timing, and each other’s body position into an impromptu acrobatics display, creating a situation that was very frustrating, but one that they were gradually adjusting to.

The landing squares were tiny, barely big enough for one of their feet to fit in. Both of them had opted to go barefoot to save a few centimeters, and fortunately they both had size 7 feet, because some of the other Archons that had taken a crack at it just for fun couldn’t put more than their toes down without stepping out of bounds. The challenge had been created specifically for Travis and Karen, and even though they couldn’t consciously feel it, it was triggering an increase in activity through their Ikrid link, which the coin-sized biomonitors that they were wearing were measuring and transmitting the data from to the medical team stationed nearby in the pyramid.

The longest they’d progressed through this challenge was 7 minutes and 23 seconds, with them just now passing 4 minutes. The computer was programmed to only give them target squares within a certain radius, but the chamber itself was half the size of a basketball court, meaning they had quite a bit of room to bounce around and the computer was doing a good job of not letting them get into a rhythm. It’d throw several close squares together, then switch to a distant one that would require a jump or throw to get into position, then another long followed by a short and every conceivable combination trying to shake their coordination.

Karen and Travis were constantly having to adjust with no time to think it through. They had to react and go on gut instinct…or failing that, remember from the last time how to attack certain maneuvers, with the more times they ran and failed to complete the challenge giving them experience in the terms of flash maneuvers. Those were what some people referred to as ‘muscle memory’ only on a higher, more coordinated scale, with Karen pulling a flip landing or Travis doing a one-handed pushup to tag a square as if they were predetermined chess moves that they could throw out at a moment’s notice.

Such flash maneuvers had been expected by the Archons who’d developed this challenge for them, the trick of it was that flash maneuvers were individual based, and the 3 second move limit wouldn’t give the two of them time to coordinate verbally. They had to act on ‘instinct,’ which in their case meant they’d be relying on their twin link, the full dynamics of which the med techs hadn’t yet been able to deduce. The patterns didn’t match up with any tissue growths on record, suggesting that the twins’ bodies had adapted the Ikrid tissue for their own purposes, creating an entirely new ability.

Or so some hoped. Without more data they couldn’t know for sure, and the pair of adepts now wore their biomonitors round the clock to squeeze out as much as they could, prompted by challenges like this designed to push their psionic limit to new levels of activity.

Karen and Travis got through 5 minutes before Karen felt a wash of disorientation and tipped over, smashing an elbow onto a square that wasn’t lit and ending the challenge. She almost blacked out again, but this time managed to keep ‘standing’ on all fours, fighting off the effect after some twenty seconds and looking for Travis…whom she found lying on the ground a few meters off, unconscious again.

“Crap,” she said, crawling over to him as the door to the chamber opened and a lower ranking med tech rushed inside.

“You’re still awake,” he said, glancing at Travis then staring at her.

“Wasn’t easy,” she admitted, still feeling a bit light headed. “You guys were right. I can block it out…at least partially,” the adept said, pressing a pair of fingers against her temple and trying to use the pressure to force her head to stop spinning.

“Can you hang on another 30 seconds?”

“More data?”

“As much as we can get,” the tech prompted.

“I’m good for now,” she said, tipping over a few inches and sitting down. The bump of her butt against the floor sent her head spinning again, but it leveled out after a few seconds of stillness that stretched out into more than a minute before the medic got around to reviving Travis.

Using a bit of the V’kit’no’sat genetic engineering they understood, he placed a rectangular strip across his forehead that acted like a crude regenerator, save for it made only a handful of mental alterations…in this case shutting down the ascension trigger that had activated once again. Both adepts now had their Rensiek, Lachka, Sesspik, Pefbar, Fornax, and Ensek abilities activated with fully developed growths…but whatever this trigger needed to go along with it had to be located within the Ikrid tissue that had never developed, leaving Travis in this endless cycle of flipping the genetic switch and having nothing happen.

The device took away the impetus to flip the switch, breaking the mental lockout like unfreezing a computer, with him waking up almost instantly.

“Not again,” he said, looking up at the ceiling as the medic removed the device from his head, though the small biomonitor button still remained.

Karen, whose head had cleared along with Travis’s, stood up and offered him a hand, pulling him to his feet as the medic looked him over.

“All is well, I hope?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Travis answered, “but I’m beginning to wonder if keeping this link is worth the trouble. We can’t have this happen in the field…or a hot tub,” he added as the thought of blacking out and drowning to death crossed his mind.

“Does that sound like a Sangheili to you?” a voice asked from behind them.

“Sounds like quitter talk to me,” someone else said as Karen and Travis turned around to look at the doorway, with their draws dropping when they saw who it was.

“Definitely quitter talk,” Paul confirmed.

“What are you two doing here?” Karen asked as the medic quietly slipped out past the two trailblazers.

“Arriving just in time, it seems,” Jason answered. “Sounds like you were going to throw away your advantage to get rid of a temporary weakness.”

“I’m starting to be glad I lost that coin toss,” Paul mentioned, his eyes on the pair of adepts.

“We’re here,” Jason continued, “to help you solve this problem.”

“What can you do that the techs haven’t?” Travis asked.

Paul smiled. “Training.”

“Meaning what?” Karen asked.

Paul glanced at Jason. “Are all Sangheili this dense?”

His blonde counterpart poked him in the ribs as he walked forward and came up within two feet of his fellow Clansmen. “You need fully formed Ikrid tissue, but to get it the normal way you’ll lose the adaptation you already have. If you treat this like a wound, you’d heal it through activity, gradually reestablishing full strength and range of motion, and you’re going to do the same with your Ikrid…helped along by a lot of trips to the V’kit’no’sat medical station.”

“I don’t understand,” Karen said, with Travis thinking the same.

“We’re going to build each of you a custom Ikrid through training. The tissue you already have will be added to, bit by bit, with your bodies adapting to the demands and the medics feeding you tiny changes. The link you two have is too valuable to waste, meaning we can’t adapt it to regular Ikrid tissue…so we’re going to adapt regular tissue to it through customization.”

“Do the medics even know how to do that?” Travis asked.

Jason shook his head. “Not yet. Your bodies are going to teach them.”

“I still don’t get it,” Karen said.

“You’re going to get a treatment, then you’re going to train your asses off. You’ll get scanned, the medics will determine what you need next, then you’ll get another treatment, followed by more training. Long term, you’ll grow a fully functional Ikrid that will retain your special ability rather than having it wiped out in the Zen’zat car wash.”

“To be more precise,” Paul added, walking up behind Jason, “the treatments will undo the unwanted parts of the previous treatment, with the training flushing out what works and what doesn’t.”

“Why do you need to be here for that?” Karen asked.

Paul raised an eyebrow. “I thought that would be obvious.”

Jason didn’t say anything, and both of them just let that comment hang in the air until one of the twins decided to say something.

“You want to study our link,” Travis finally guessed.

“More than that,” Jason answered. “We want to teach you to make the most of it.”

“As well as unlocking this new trigger you’ve discovered,” Paul added. “There’s a lot of new stuff going on with you two, psionic wise, and we want to probe it.”

“Probe all you want,” Karen said with a smirk.

Jason held up a warning finger. “Hush youngling. You do through instinct what Paul and I learned to do through training. You have a psionic link, we never did…and what we have now is different from yours. You’re going to learn from us to consciously enhance your coordination, meanwhile we’re going to try and figure out your trigger problem,” he said, looking at Travis, “from an Archon perspective. You’re wholly inferior to us, so the question is what benchmark have you reached that we haven’t?”

“I’ve been asking myself that quite a lot, and I don’t have an answer,” Travis admitted. “I also don’t know why she hasn’t got it. She’s a level above me.”

“Another valid point,” Jason agreed. “You focus on the training we give you, and we’ll figure out the rest.”

“Is that really worth pulling both of you off the front lines?” Karen asked.

“Our work there is mostly done,” Paul told her. “Others can handle the rest, and it was time we rotated out anyway.”

“Yes, this is that important,” Jason answered her more directly. “You’ve developed an ability that normal Zen’zat do not possess. I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s important.”

“You don’t,” Travis said, understanding his meaning. “But from our point of view we’re completely unaware of this ‘ability.’ I don’t feel any different when she’s standing beside me or miles away. If it wasn’t from the scans I wouldn’t believe there was anything psionic involved.”

“That just means you’ve fully assimilated it, probably as a child,” Paul pointed out. “When we teach you how to do it old school you’ll start to see the difference.”

“If you say so,” Karen said, not fully convinced.

“Walk,” Jason said, turning around and heading to the exit with Paul.

The twins glanced at each other, sharing a perplexed expression at the sudden end to the conversation, then they jogged a couple of steps over to pick up their shoes then caught up with the trailblazers and followed them out and over to another training chamber, with them each picking up a sword and sunglasses in the antechamber on their way in. Paul input several instructions into the control panel, with two large circles illuminating on the floor spaced 8 meters apart.

Jason walked over to one of them, with Paul joining him a few seconds later, swinging his training sword up into a guard position while standing back to back with his friend.

“Time to show off,” Jason prompted.

“Are we working together?” Karen asked, stepping into the other 3 meter wide circle with Travis.

“Nope,” Jason said, flicking his sword into a reverse grip with the tip pointed towards his toes.

“Hold on…our laces,” Travis said as they both quickly got to retying their shoes that they’d only slipped on.

Paul telekinetically hit the start button, with a series of countdown tones descending and Karen and Travis quickly trying to finish tying their shoes before the tiny projectiles began shooting out from the walls.

Travis ducked one, then got pelted with two more before he got to his feet and his sword up into guard position and began intercepting the little thuds, swinging around in a twirl a split second before Karen’s head came up to hit one coming in at his back. The limited Pefbar he had didn’t help, but somehow his situational awareness knew it was coming in, allowing him to make the block and reposition for another.

Meanwhile Paul and Jason were both moving about inside their circle, alternating positions and moving around each other’s bodies with a fluid precision, seeing the incoming thuds with their Pefbar and moving to intercept them before they could get hit while avoiding the temptation to telekinetically stop them midair…which would have been cheating as far as this challenge was concerned.

The computer was scoring both pairings, with impacts measuring as negative points and deflections as positives. The program Paul had chosen worked them through a few easy rounds then began escalating through the harder settings remarkably quick, with the twins having a hard time keeping up with the faster moving thuds as they also came in greater numbers.

Within 6 minutes Karen and Travis were doubling over from hits more than they were swinging to block, but the challenge didn’t end. It continued well past the -100 points that usually deactivated it, with the pair getting pelted regularly until Paul finally turned it off.

“What happened? I thought you guys were good,” the trailblazer taunted.

Karen rubbed a sore spot on her leg just above the knee and glared at him. “Is this payback for breaking your record?”

“Yes,” Paul said deadpan.

Karen blew out an exasperated laugh.

“We need to know what your current capabilities are,” Jason explained, “in order to start giving you specific workouts. Best way to do that is to overload you and see where you break.”

“And you guys went through it for what, fun?” Travis asked.

“So you’d have something to compare with on the replay later.”

“Remember,” Paul added. “Useful as your link is, it only coordinates your individual abilities, and if those are lacking you still lose. You two should train together, but not all the time. I hear you’re both holding yourselves back in that department, with several marks already in acolyte range?”

“Is that uncommon?” Karen asked.

“It is when they’re not in your specialty. You two are drawing off of each other and advancing far faster than most Archons, but you’re neglecting certain skill areas and have more than a 50 level spread. Archons face their weak areas, not hide from them.”

“We haven’t been hiding,” Travis objected. “Our weak areas are well above the strengths of our classmates.”

“So we’ve noticed,” Jason said, stretching his neck a bit in a disinterested manner. “But the spread says you’re sandbagging. We want you to press this psionic link for all its worth, both for your sakes and so we can learn from it, but you can’t let yourself rely on it or it’ll become a weakness. Already you’re knocking your sister out, or close to it, because of the feedback through your link. You both have to work on becoming individuals, as hard as that may be.”

“We already are,” Travis argued. “We don’t even feel the link.”

Paul sighed. “That’s the problem.”

“If we’re leveling up, in all areas,” Karen asked, “faster than the others…then where’s the problem?”

“It’s a problem in attitude,” Jason said simply. “None of us would let a weak area persist to such depths. We’d hammer it until it was more on par with the rest of our skills.”

“You’re slacking…even as you’re succeeding,” Paul added. “And nobody has called you on it because of your impressive advancement rate.”

“So…you want us to focus on our individual skills,” Karen said slowly, “while we focus on honing our link? How can we do both at the same time?”

Paul smirked. “That’s why we’re here to show you how…along with a great many other things.”

4

October 2, 2476

Solar System

Earth

Karen stood in front of the wall, facing it from only a few inches away and raised her right hand up, touching it above shoulder height and tracing a zigzaggy path with her palm all the way down to the base before letting go. She stood up and pressed her left knee against the wall, then fist bumped three vertical taps at torso as if she were punching the lights on an old school stoplight before dropping to the ground and resting on her ankles before pushing both knees in and leaning them against the wall. She followed that with both hands pressed flat wide above her head, making her feel like a tree frog.

How much longer do we have to do this? she asked her brother telepathically.

No clue, he answered from the other side of the wall, choosing the various body positions she was to mimic just as she’d done for him several times over the past hour. The wall was solid and sound proof, with them unable to see or hear the other, and their Pefbar blocked by the material of the prototype psionic cage that a number of techs had recently constructed by incorporating one of the new arc elements into an already discovered design. The chamber was one of a handful of initial projects to get their limited but growing supply of the elements, and given that it had been constructed in the pyramid Paul had decided to make use of it for the twins’ unique training.

The shielding was designed to prevent Pefbar only, which in turn would render Lachka useless without the controlling mechanism of the Pefbar, but Ikrid wasn’t blocked, meaning that while Karen and Travis had limited Pefbar abilities sufficient to ‘see’ through a normal wall they couldn’t use them here. None the less, Karen was mimicking Travis’s body placements almost perfectly, with cameras set up on both sides for monitoring purposes.

I heard that, Jason told Karen telepathically. You’re transmitting in the open again.

The adept frowned even as she was continuing to match Travis’s movements, searching out the location of Jason’s mind and sending him a direct reply. How do you know that?

A direct link and a broadcast feel different on reception. Focus is something you have to develop over time, and right now yours is lacking.

Can you give me an answer then? she asked, still playing mime against the wall.

Another 10 minutes.

Karen sighed. Alright.

Some place you’d rather be?

Practicing combat applications, she said honestly.

Combat applications run off of base attributes, the trailblazer reminded her.

I know, I know, she said, reaching up high and tapping on the wall four times, copying Travis’s hand on the opposite side. She couldn’t see him through the wall, but she could feel where he was and how his body was moving almost as if it was an extension of her own. They’d been able to know where each other was within close proximity as long as she could remember, never having given it much thought, but now that she didn’t have sight or sound for the sense to piggyback on the extra perception was coming through much clearer…and weaker, forcing both of them to push to try to retain constant perception.

Normally it operated in blips, like someone blinking their eyes constantly, and training themselves to keep a steady flow of position information through their normally subconscious link was meaning they had to assert conscious control over it, both to maintain and boost the signal…which was something this training drill was frustratingly accomplishing.

But both she and Travis kept it up until Jason finally called them off and back over to the sanctum they’d built inside the pyramid, meeting him in one of the many sparring chambers.

“Tighten these,” he told Travis as he walked over to him.

“Ok,” the adept said, cinching up the cuffs on Jason’s wrists until they were bound together in front of him with only a half inch of separation. “What’s going on?”

“I’m tired of having to hold back against you two. Cramping my style,” he said, pulling a blindfold over his eyes. “This should make things more even.”

“Seriously?” Karen asked.

“Knockdown,” Jason ordered, walking over to the center of the ring and dropping into a light combat pose. “Let’s see if you can do better this time.”

“What good is the blindfold if you can see with Pefbar?” she complained.

“One less sense to use. Something you won’t understand until yours develops further. Now, be warned, I’m not pulling my punches like normal. So expect to get knocked on your ass harder than you’re used to. If you two can’t take me down at least a few times…well,” he said, letting that thought/insult hang in the air.

“Always like to make things interesting, don’t you,” Travis said as he and Karen split up and walked around to different sides of Jason.

“It’s called training,” Jason said as Karen suddenly moved towards him in a feint that drew a wrist block from the striker. Travis moved in and struck at his back a moment later, with Jason whipping around, grabbing his leg, and pulling him in even as Karen jumped on the pair of them and tried to get him in a stranglehold.

A moment later she was flying back through the air and landed on her ass four meters away, suddenly realizing that Jason hadn’t been kidding about not holding back. She got up and moved back into the fight, intent on rising to meet the challenge.

Paul looked up from the lounge chair in his quarters as Jason walked in, his blonde hair still slightly wet from the shower he’d just taken.

“They do any better?”

“Not good enough,” he said, sitting down in an identical chair set across a low table that held a plate of biscuits, two glasses of blue, and a second datapad. “But they’re starting to get innovative…not that it helped them.”

“Did they get any hits in?” Paul asked with a smile.

“A few, but no knockdowns,” Jason said, picking up his sugar-laden drink. “Karen has a habit to transmit in the open. Not sure if that’s all newb or she’s missing a few neurons.”

“Just been working through their latest data,” Paul said, gesturing to the datapad on the table. “I think they’ll be needing another adjustment in a few days. About half of the new tissue is running smoothly, but the rest is normal trash, with about a third really getting junked up this time. Have they been complaining about headaches?”

“Not to me, no,” Jason said, exchanging his drink for the datapad. “Travis hasn’t had an incident recently either, and I’m starting to wonder if we accidentally knocked him out of alignment.”

“I hope not,” Paul said earnestly.

“Or maybe Karen is.”

Paul frowned slightly. “You think her learning to restrict their link is suppressing him?”

“If the trigger is erroneously reading both of them…”

“Good point, but she shouldn’t be doing anything consciously.”

“Unless she’s learned to do it subconsciously. Not block the whole link, but just the component that gets her body thinking it’s his.”

“Damn…didn’t see that coming.”

“Just a theory. We still don’t know what’s provoking the trigger anyway.”

“Actually,” Paul said, raising his datapad symbolically, “we have a partial answer.”

“We do?”

“It’s syncage.”

“Is that even a word?” Jason joked.

“It is now. The techs haven’t been able to identify the type or intensity required, but it’s definitely occurring when they’re of one mind, so to speak.”

“We’ve been of one mind before,” Jason pointed out. “So have a lot of the others. Aaron especially. Why haven’t one of us triggered this?”

“I have a theory.”

“I thought you might.”

“We coordinate, they meld.”

“Explain,” Jason prompted when the distinction didn’t immediately sink in.

“Everything we do is based off of individuality. They’ve been a pairing since before birth. Even during basic training they were in the same class, same team, and have been giving the same assignments since. I’m thinking their individuality has a different meaning than ours.”

Jason shook his head slowly in disagreement. “The triggers all have something to do with the abilities they activate. I’ve been through the list multiple times and I can’t find anything like a tandem skill.”

“Neither have I, which is why I said it was a theory.”

“I think it’s time we tested another theory.”

“Which is?”

“This supposed resistance to Fornax.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “News to me.”

“Just one of the rumors floating around the Clan regarding them. It seems they don’t go down as easy as they should when they’re fighting together.”

“Resistance…or a calibration point?”

“That’s what I was wondering.”

“Let’s add the element of surprise.”

Jason smiled. “Way ahead of you.”

The next morning Karen and Travis were finishing up a run around the pyramid’s command deck and nearing one of the internal buildings Star Force had constructed, about half a kilometer from the Archon sanctum when a buzz went through Karen’s head, nearly tipping her over into a faceplant…but she caught her balance and ran on, onto to realize that Travis was no longer beside her.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was down, so she skidded to a stop and turned around just as he was getting up…only to have her body go twitchy limp with her legs collapse underneath her.

Travis likewise stumbled when she was hit, but he kept his balance and started to walk over to her, pounding a hand against the side of his head to try and realign his brain that seemed to be malfunctioning violently.

“Are you ok?” he asked as she climbed to her feet.

“What the hell happened?” Karen asked as he got to her. “Did you black out again?”

“I don’t know, I…” he started to say when both of them got wobbly at the same time and dropped into each other, clawing for balance until the mental maelstrom finally stopped and their heads fully cleared.

“Sis, I think we’re really screwed up.”

“What did we do to bring this on…we were just running.”

A sound to their right turned both their heads, just in time to see Paul standing up from a crouch in front of the V’kit’no’sat pedestal he’d just jumped off of. “Morning.”

“What the hell was that?” Travis demanded.

“Fornax,” Jason said from the top of the gigantic, dinosaur-sized lounging pad as he too jumped off and dropped a few meters into a soft landing crouch.

Travis and Karen exchanged glances. “I didn’t think it would be that…intense,” she said.

“You guys suck,” Travis said angrily, finally letting go of Karen and standing on his own balance. “You could have at least let us stop first.”

“We wanted to catch you off guard,” Paul explained.

“Congratulations,” Karen said vehemently, her head still hurting from where she’d smacked it against the stone-like floor. “Other than you two are dicks, what did we learn?”

“If we hit one of you, the other one feels it,” Jason said, ignoring the insult.

The twins looked at each other oddly. “That’s never happened before,” Travis said warily. “Is it the new tissue growth?”

Paul shook his head. “No. It’s because you’re also using each other to resist the Fornax effect. When you lose bodily coordination the world seems to spin out of control, but unlike the rest of us you’ve got your sister’s body as a stable point to steady yourself on. That means you can take a Fornax hit and not go down, and vice versa.”

“But we did just go down,” Karen argued the obvious.

“That’s because we hit you with a lot more than normal,” Jason admitted.

“Oh, duh,” Karen said in a moment of mea culpa. “Acolyte Fornax and Striker Fornax…I should have expected this.”

“No, you guys can’t be that strong,” Travis argued.

“Correct,” Jason agreed pithily, waiting for him to come to a conclusion or for Paul to speak. Travis wasn’t sure which at first, but the lingering silence inclined him to think the logic through, though Karen got it first.

“I got hit with mine and a part of his,” she said, thumbing her right hand towards her brother.

“Technically no, but fundamentally right,” Paul half agreed. “The Fornax didn’t transmit across your link, but the messed up sensory data did. That said, you were both recovering from the effect even though I was emitting a low level field continuously after I took Karen down. Even disrupted, you were pulling orientation data from each other.”

“Wait, you haven’t had time to analyze the data,” Travis said, gesturing to the biomonitor on his head.

“We don’t have to,” Jason said confidently. “It’s logical deduction. You both have the ability to help each other weather a single or double Fornax attack so long as it doesn’t completely overwhelm you…”

“…and when it does,” Paul finished, “it becomes a disadvantage by backflowing.”

Come with me, Jason told Karen telepathically as he turned and jogged off in one direction, with Paul doing the same going the opposite way.

Karen took a step towards Jason as Travis did likewise towards Paul, then they hesitated for a moment, exchanging glances before following the trailblazers off.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Karen said as they split.

“Ditto,” Travis agreed, racing to catch up with Paul. “What are we doing now?” he asked.

“Getting you out of range of your sister.”

“So you can knock me out again?”

“Yes, but you can stand this time,” the striker said as they ran off across the huge command deck, zigzagging their way between pedestals in long, smooth turns.

“Wonderful. This is payback again, isn’t it?”

“A part of training is trial and error.”

“So you’re not still ticked we beat your record?” he asked bluntly, looking across his shoulder at the slightly shorter man who seemed to embody a raw power that made Travis feel infinitely smaller this close to him.

“Nope.”

“But you were earlier?”

“Of course.”

“What changed?”

“We found out you cheated,” Paul said lightly.

“What, you’re going to erase our scores?”

“No.”

“Then…I don’t get it. We either cheated or we didn’t…which we didn’t.”

“Yes you did, and no, your scores stay.”

“Why?”

“Because you beat it fair and square.”

“While cheating?”

“Yep.”

“You lost me.”

“That seems to happen a lot.”

Travis snarled. “If you weren’t so strong I’d hit you.”

“That wouldn’t stop me,” Paul teased.

“Probably wouldn’t,” Travis said with an ounce of grudging respect, even though he was still sore at both of them for ambushing them like that. “So why no payback?”

“There’s nothing to pay back.”

“We beat your record.”

“And kudos to you for that. We’re glad you kicked ass. We’ve got too many weak Archons as it is.”

“Wait, you want people to beat your records?”

“Of course.”

“But you got upset when we did?”

“Yep.”

“But not now?”

“Nope.”

“Is this some sort of love/hate thing you got going on?”

“If someone beats our record that means they’re better than us…but no one is,” Paul said cockily.

“We did.”

“But you cheated.”

“Oh, I get it now. Our scores count, but they don’t really count as far as you’re concerned.”

“Bingo, kiddo.”

“We didn’t know we had a link back then.”

“I know.”

“And we couldn’t have turned it off if we did. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Never said you did.”

“You said we cheated.”

“You did cheat. And please continue to do so. The more cheaters like you we have the stronger Star Force will be for it.”

“So cheating is a good thing now?”

“When it helps you defeat the enemy, yes.”

“So why were you sore earlier?”

“You broke our record.”

Travis felt like smacking himself in the head. “Why won’t you give me a straight answer?”

“I’ve been giving you nothing but straight answers,” Paul reminded him.

“You’ve been giving me nothing but gib…” Travis said, suddenly falling over as Paul slowed to a stop.

“This is far enough,” he said, releasing the Fornax field as he knelt down next to the adept. “Looks like we were right. You went down with a much weaker hit now that your sister is out of the equation.”

“I hate you,” Travis said, pulling his feet up under him but resisting the urge to stand for fear of Paul knocking him down again.

The trailblazer half stood up and offered him a hand. “On your feet. You need to fight for balance as I lower the intensity level and see how much you can withstand on your own.”

Travis grabbed his wrist and let Paul drag him up on his feet, then out of spite Travis summoned up the strongest Fornax field that he could muster and released it, knowing that at this range Paul would get the full brunt of it.

Stoically, Paul didn’t budge, with little more than a forehead crease to suggest that anything had happened at all. “Wow. That almost tickled.”

“Just get it over with,” Travis said with a sigh.

“Brace yourself…” Paul warned before emitting a field approximately 3/4ths the strength of his last one, which also took Travis straight to the ground and half blacked him out as Paul held the effect a moment longer.

“…record breaker,” he finished with a smirk.

5

October 5, 2476

Solar System

Earth

Travis stepped out of the V’kit’no’sat medical station, trading places with Karen who was waiting nearby the tech and Jason. He had a light headache now that the numbing effect of the machinery had worn off, but that wasn’t unusual. He’d been told that since the tissue being added was makeshift there would be some ‘roughness’ to the transition, and this time was no exception.

This was the 8th adjustment he’d had made, with his sister progressing on an identical track. He’d been told this upgrade would bring his Ikrid tissue up near 90%, but how much of it would take and how much would have to be undid at the next treatment was anyone’s guess. Once Karen got her new tissue added, flash grown in place drawing from a vat of biological molecules so the regenerator portion of the machine didn’t have to suck material from other parts of her body, they’d go through a now familiar set of psionic drills while the biomonitors registered their efficiency and logged any anomalies.

Already they both had more tissue than normal, given that their original Ikrid growths had been left in place to preserve their link. The new tissue was forming around that, creating an even larger lump in their heads that the rest of their brain tissue had to adjust to, and in fact Travis had been told that the machine actually enlarged their skulls microscopically to adjust for the extra mass.

He’d tried to notice the changes in the mirror, but never could, making him wonder exactly what ‘microscopically’ meant in med tech terminology.

Karen’s treatment didn’t take any longer than his had, with her stepping into the small platform and having the various equipment arms encircle her and connect to her body, through which the regenerator tendrils entered and worked their magic, altering her DNA slightly and growing new tissue to match. Less than two minutes later she stepped out, having completed the procedure…then she stopped short, with a weird look crossing her face.

Travis felt the same thing, and a simultaneous beep from both their biomonitors caught Jason’s attention.

“Don’t fight it,” he urged.

“What is it?” Travis asked, holding his head as the internal stress increased.

“Your trigger is activating again, and this time it’s not being blocked. You’re showing 3 yellow.”

“So is she,” Travis said, pointing to Karen.

“Is he doing this to me or am I doing it to him?” she asked Jason, wincing against the pain.

“Could be either one, maybe both,” the trailblazer said, putting a hand on each of their shoulders. “Sit down and work your way through it. Let the pressure build but keep it channeled.”

Travis and Karen sat down crosslegged, facing one another. “That’s not very helpful,” he mentioned.

“You’ve got to work it internally,” Jason said eagerly. “Stay with it. You might not get it this time, but the further you go the more you’ll learn. Only block it if you’re spiraling out of control.”

“What happens if we don’t?” Karen asked.

“Mental rug burn, so focus.”

The twins didn’t ask any more questions, instead working to corral the escalating instability and pressure within their heads. Travis could sense Karen’s distress, and she his, but there was too much for each of them to worry about that they couldn’t focus on the other, with their mental haze rising so high the rest of the world outside the two of them seemed to disappear from mind’s eye.

“One red,” Jason informed them. “Keep at it.”

Travis let out a grunt, but otherwise the two of them remained silent, though Jason could see them rocking back and forth a bit, which meant they were starting to lose a bit of their balance as their minds were being overloaded with instability…which was why he’d had them sit down in the first place. When he saw Karen twitch badly, the trailblazer knelt down next to them and grabbed each of their necks from the back with his hands and firmly held their skeletons in place so they could shift some of their processing power away from balance to the problem at hand.

In truth Jason thought it would have ended by now, for the first time he’d gone through this he hadn’t been able to control the instability and he’d lost it…but maybe their twin link was helping to give them both an added bit of control, especially given the fact that they were just adepts.

“Two red,” he said aloud and telepathically so they’d be sure to hear him. “Stay with it.”

They barely heard him, awash in a mental fog that seemed to be charged with electricity. Surviving that swirling mess was hard enough, but trying to channel it to where it was trying to go was virtually impossible, with every small success being rewarded with yet more mental wind. Karen resolved herself to wait it out while Travis was a bit more bold and reached into it, actively trying to redirect the flows.

Both approaches bled across their link and affected the other, but soon Karen lost all conscious contact with Travis, reduced to the only stable point within the mental hurricane she was experiencing, with the pressure in her head continuing to escalate. Though she didn’t know it, the extraneous link to her brother remained, helping both of them to keep their center, though Karen nearly lost it three times before it finally exploded.

She never heard Jason’s warnings about 3 red lights, nor about them starting to flash. The adept was doing her best to survive what seemed to be uncontrollable, with the last thing she remembered as the pain became too much for her being her screaming…then the next thing she knew her head was throbbing and her eyes were open, looking down in her lap as her physical senses suddenly returned to her from wherever they had disappeared to.

Jason still had a hand on her neck, and for the first time she felt his presence in her mind.

“What…did you do?” Travis asked a moment before she did.

“I helped stabilize you as much as I could. How do you feel?”

“Like shit,” Karen said honestly.

“Ditto,” Travis echoed.

“You’re still bleeding off the instability…down to 1 red, and that will continue to decrease. Do you feel any new abilities?”

“No,” Travis said flatly. “I think I screwed it up.”

Jason shook his head firmly. “I felt you ascend…both of you. I just don’t know what changed. Where are you hurting?”

“Head,” Karen said immediately and emphatically.

“Just your head?”

“Yeah,” Travis answered.

“Well that’s a small datapoint. Just sit still and wait this out,” Jason said, loosening his grip and feeling both of them slump down on their spines. “Can you sit up?”

“Didn’t realize I wasn’t,” Karen said, straightening her spine enough for Jason to fully let go.

“I’ve been through this before, so I know what it’s like.”

“What did you get?”

“Rentar…it lets me see and disrupt others’ Lachka tendrils. It’s a psionic ability that manifests from the entire body, not just the head, so my pain was everywhere at once.”

“Meaning nobody can force choke you anymore?” Travis asked sarcastically.

Jason smiled. “Nope.”

Karen groaned. “I don’t know what just happened, but I really need a nap…bad.”

“Same here.”

Jason nodded. “Don’t worry about training today. Whatever just happened needs to process further. I was burnt out when it happened to me, and you’re just a couple of weak ass adepts, so…”

“Shut up,” Karen said, punching for his leg and missing as her arm protested halfway there and dipped towards the ground.

“Like I said,” Jason commented with a frown. “Can either of you stand?”

“Some help,” Travis said as he started to get to his feet. Suddenly he felt a firm grip around his waist and legs, belatedly realizing that Jason was steadying him with Lachka rather than a traditional arm under the shoulders.

“Ow…ch,” Travis said, standing up and feeling his head explode like a grenade had just gone off.

“Karen, stay put. Travis, head over to the platform. I want to see what was added.”

“Ok,” he said, walking very slowly over to the device with Jason doing most of the heavy lifting. Once he got inside he leaned forward on the two circular pylons and felt the trailblazer let go.

“You good?”

“So long as I don’t move, sure.”

“Just stay put a few seconds,” the tech prompted, pulling a full body scan that Jason was eagerly watching build in holo. When overlaid with the previous one taken a few minutes ago the computer immediately identified a new growth on his Ikrid tissue, and Jason immediately knew this was something new, for he’d studied all the tier 2 psionics listed in the database and their corresponding physical growths, but nothing that been even close to this size, for the tissue was nearly half again what the normal Ikrid material would have been.

“And?” Karen prompted, still sitting on the floor.

“And we’ve got a mystery on our hands,” Jason told her. “This isn’t one of the tier 2 psionics.”

“Tier 3?” Travis asked hopefully.

Jason shook his head. “No. This doesn’t match up with anything in the database.”

“Don’t tell me we grew a faulty one again,” Karen begged him.

“No, no…the placement is different. This is something new. Feel anything yet?”

“Just a monster headache,” Travis answered.

“Alright,” Jason decided. “Switch up and then I’ll take you back to your bunks to rest and we’ll figure this out later.”

“Thank you,” Travis said, stumbling out with Jason telekinetically catching him again until he got to the adept and wrapped an arm around him, freeing up his Lachka so he could help Karen into the device as she stood up a few inches before falling back down.

“Take it slow,” he prompted, dragging Travis out of her way.

The pair spent the next 38 hours in bed, with Travis being the first to make his way to the sanctum for a very easy run to flush the crap out of his system, feeling like he hadn’t worked out in a month. His head had stopped complaining with every little movement he made, but it was still a constant dull ache, with it taking more than a mile before he started to feel any relief.

He got through 8 miles on the track, watching his pace carefully because his body was feeling all out of whack, before Karen showed up. As soon as she did his head exploded…but not in pain. Suddenly his senses seemed to wobble and he nearly ran off the track before he adjusted to a very strong pull coming from Karen.

Travis coasted to a stop and walked off to the side, seeing her ‘glowing’ in front of him.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked.

“What are you feeling?”

“You…like you’re the only thing around here in color.”

“Ditto. Happened as soon as you came within range.”

“Meaning Ikrid. If this is a new ability, what the hell is it supposed to do…other than distract us.”

“Don’t know. You up for a few miles?”

“How many have you done?”

“8…it’s helping out my head.”

“Good. Maybe this will wear off too,” she said, slowly getting up to speed as they both angled into lane 1 and ran side by side with Karen taking the inner curve. By the time they got around to the backstretch they both knew something was different. They’d always known where each other were, even when they couldn’t see each other, but this was far more intense.

Travis could literally feel every inch of Karen’s body, her footsteps, arm swings…even her breathing and heartbeat. Her bio telemetry was saturating his senses and taking precedence over everything else, but with focus he was able to keep running and quickly got a handle on it. Her ‘glow’ didn’t diminish, but it quickly incorporated into his normal twin feel as the shock of it first activating wore off.

They both completed the first lap without comment, then they began pulling weaving maneuvers close in to one another on the second. By the third they were seeing how close they could get, stepping inside each other’s stride and coordinating their arm swings to the point they were literally jumping on and over each other as they held sub 6:00 pace, drawing some very odd looks from the other Archons on the track.

They pulled off after completing a mile, and as soon as they got out of lane 1 and to the outside of the track they started shadow boxing…and missing each other by a fraction of an inch. That lasted some 20 seconds before they started going through gymnastic maneuvers, again missing each other by narrow margins, and eventually leading up to paired holds and flips, executing them with more precision than they’d ever been able to do in the past.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Karen asked once they finally stopped and got their breathing under control. As elated as they were, they still felt drained from their ascension two days ago.

“Our link just got stronger.”

“Way stronger,” she echoed.

“Is that what it’s supposed to do, or did it just do it for us?”

“Don’t know. Let’s run this by Paul and Jason before we try anything else.”

“They should be doing their own workouts now. I think this warrants disturbing them,” Travis suggested with a wry smile.

Karen copied it perfectly. “Let’s go.”

Paul and Jason were locked in a heavy, blow by blow sword fight in a small sparring chamber when suddenly they lost their balance and stumbled into each other, quickly steadying themselves and pulling apart…which was when they finally noticed Karen and Travis standing just outside the doorway as they released their steadying arm lock.

“Sorry, did we interrupt something?” Travis said, smiling widely due to the fact that their overlapping Fornax fields had been enough to break their rhythm, though they’d had to blast each other with it as well because they hadn’t learn to send out individual Fornax blasts yet, but it was well worth it.

The two trailblazers glanced at each other, then both pointed towards the twin with their free hands, jerking them off their feet and throwing them onto the mat a meter away with a heavy telekinetic ‘Force’ tug.

“No, not at all,” Paul said lightly, looking down at them.

“What did you want?” Jason asked, matching his mocking tone as the twins climbed to their feet minus their previous levity.

“Something happened,” Karen said, biting back a curse.

“Our coordination got better,” Travis explained. “A lot better.”

“When, where, and how?” Paul demanded.

“As soon as we got within Ikrid range, on the track, and we’re guessing our new tissue,” Karen answered succinctly.

“Is it still active?” Jason asked.

Both twins nodded.

“Have you tried shutting it off?” Paul asked.

“No,” Travis said, resulting in Jason pointing a finger at the door. “Right,” he said, walking out and putting some distance between him and Karen.

“How’s the head,” Paul asked her.

“Dull ache,” she said, then jerking suddenly. “Ouch.”

“It shut off?” Jason guessed.

“Yeah. There was no fade out. Ugh, everything is…dull now.”

Jason sent a telepathic summons for Travis to return. “Explain what improved.”

“I know exactly where he is at all…times,” she said, twitching when Travis returned into range. “I can feel exactly where his arms and legs are right now,” she said without looking behind. “And he glows, like everything else is a weak signal.”

Paul held out his hand. “Show me.”

Karen took it in hers, allowing the two Archons to form a direct Ikrid link. Most of Paul’s mind was shut off from her, but she let him through her defenses and highlighted her new sense…with Paul also digging through her recent memories and transmitting what he saw to Jason.

Then suddenly he let go and walked around the pair, heading to the door and leaving the three of them behind.

“Where’s he going?” Travis asked.

“To send a message. Ok then, if you have enough energy to be pulling pranks, you’ve got enough to start probing this enhanced link. Let’s take a trip to Balboa Lane and see how coordinated you really are.”

6

November 11, 2476

Retari System

Atlantica

Kara woke when she heard the soft tone in her otherwise silent quarters onboard the Broadsword, prompting her to sit up in her bunk and look towards the comm terminal. As she’d suspected a message from one of the trailblazers had come in, meaning that the ship had finally returned to Star Force space and linked up with the network. After several months in lizard territory backlogged messages coming through in bunches was common, but she’d programmed her terminal only to audibly signal her when a priority alert or a message from one of her ‘peers’ came through, with all others waiting until she decided to check in and see if she had mail.

Kara slid out from under the thin covers and walked over to the terminal, feeling the slightly cool air on her bare arms and legs. She sat down and pulled up the message, seeing it was from Paul, and opened a nearby water bottle to take a swig…then nearly choked as she read his startling revelations.

The twin prodigies that Paul had tried and failed to recruit into Clan Saber had been confirmed to have a psionic link, which invariably helped to aid their tandem coordination, but Paul also indicated that he thought it was helping them to level up faster than the average Archon. He couldn’t put his finger on how exactly it was occurring, but he was sure they were gaining some type of advantage through what was described as being a continuous subconscious bond.

But that wasn’t what startled Kara. It was the headline for the message that Paul had chosen.

UNKNOWN PSIONIC ABILITY DISCOVERED

Paul went through in detail what they’d learned from Karen and Travis, eventually working up to the recent ascension that had both of them transforming simultaneously. That was unheard of, and Paul cited that he also believed that whatever allowed them to train to more effect had also triggered the simultaneous ascension, and not just because of their prior blackouts. He theorized that whatever the trigger was searching for it had found it in both of them because of the link, meaning that either one could have triggered it in the other…or that it had been looking specifically for a binary ability.

That blew Kara’s mind for a moment, then she started staring at a spot on the wall above the vid screen as a memory made its way to the forefront. In it she was a Zak’de’ron looking at a display with Zen’zat data and having a discussion with one of the other dragons about the abilities they were placing in their genetic code. They dismissed the foolish sentiments of the other V’kit’no’sat races involved in the programming and decided to include the full lexicon of abilities into the tiny beings, citing that if any of the Zen’zat proved to be capable enough of handling the myriad of skills then they would need the more extreme abilities in order to serve their purpose.

A light argument was had about whether or not to create a separate genetic template for the Zak’de’ron Zen’zat or to use the same for all of them, with the later proposition winning out. They would design the Zen’zat as they so chose, but not inform the rest of the V’kit’no’sat about the extra abilities they were weaving into their genetic code…abilities that the Oso’lon and Hjar’at were adamant that the Zen’zat not possess.

Their concerns were deemed paranoid, for even with all the abilities they were giving the Zen’zat the potential to develop, they would still be grossly inferior to the Zak’de’ron and the other major V’kit’no’sat races. True, the Zen’zat would have the full slew of V’kit’no’sat psionic abilities available to them, but their tiny size would make them inferior…so long as their counterparts worked to develop their own abilities. The dragons didn’t care one bit about the whinings of the lazy, especially when the Zen’zat would have to earn all their abilities past the initial 7 they were granting to them.

All the other races received their psionics as default, and while they did have to be developed, none of them had to be unlocked in the way the Zen’zat gained theirs. That way the Zen’zat would never be superior to those who continued to work and advance, but they could exceed…and far exceed, those who did not. That is what most of the other races feared, despite the fact that the full range of psionics would make the Zen’zat far more useful servants.

The Zak’de’ron that Kara was seeing the memory through wasn’t going to hobble their own Zen’zat based on what the others wanted, so they decided to go ahead with weaving the full array of psionics into the Zen’zat genome they were creating, while leaving out the controversial ones from their official report. The Zen’zat would maintain the potential to develop the other abilities, and if/when they did they’d deal with the backlash from the others. In the meantime the Zak’de’ron Zen’zat would train to develop them all, leaving the rest to chart their own path.

The memory suddenly shifted, as if her Vorch’nas was sorting through the knowledge it contained to tell her exactly what she need to know and nothing more, and came to an overview of Zen’zat abilities from the view of the V’kit’no’sat and not the dragons. It showed what she had already seen in the pyramid database…the 7 basic abilities, 15 second level, and 3 third level. But from this memory she knew there were more that had yet to be unlocked, with a brief glance at the true ability tree from the V’kit’no’sat point of view, with 7 basic abilities, 27 second level, and 8 third level.

She didn’t know what the others were, for the memory didn’t let her focus on that, but next came the Zak’de’ron ability tree, with many more being added that the V’kit’no’sat had never learned of…meaning their Zen’zat had never developed them. This memory wouldn’t let her count, but it did show her that there was a 4th level of even more powerful abilities…but there was also an 8th basic ability showing, which spawned its own very large ability tree of which, again, she couldn’t focus on enough to count, let alone identify the abilities.

The basic 8th did come through clearly though, with the word Pa’no’semak emblazoned over it. The name translated as ‘battlemeld,’ and as soon as Kara focused on it alone a wealth of knowledge opened up to her, all in a split second, making her feel like she’d known it all along but had somehow forgotten.

The memory epiphany ended, leaving her blinking and wondering how long she’d been staring at the wall. Bringing up a comm prompt, she activated the holocamera, intending to send Paul a recording instead of a text message.

“Paul, just had a…” she said, pausing to tap her fingers on her forehead twice, “update. What the twins stumbled upon is very significant. It’s something in the Zen’zat genetic code that the V’kit’no’sat never unlocked, only the Zak’de’ron Zen’zat did. The other V’kit’no’sat races don’t even know it’s in their code. It’s called Pa’no’semak, translated as Battlemeld…”

Paul watched Kara’s message for the third time, having brought Jason in for this showing, as she detailed how three of the other V’kit’no’sat races had the ability to link together to create larger and more intense Fornax fields, increase Ikrid transmission range, and generate stronger bioshields. Those abilities had been given to the Vi’vek, I’rar’et, and Ni’ma’so, respectively, for special purposes unique to those races while any and all tandem skills were forbidden to the other races.

The Zak’de’ron, however, already could combine virtually all of their skills to greater power…though they had never elaborated to the full extent of those abilities. It was yet another sticking point between the dragons and the other V’kit’no’sat races, and they had been adamant that the soon to be created Zen’zat not possess any tandem abilities.

The Zak’de’ron had originally wanted the battlemeld to be part of the basic skills granted to the Zen’zat, but instead they chose to hide it, with the trigger being any individual developing a similar tandem skill using their existing Ikrid ability. As far as Kara knew none of the V’kit’no’sat Zen’zat had ever opened it up, and if that were still true to this day, then it was an opportunity to one up them if they could figure out how to do what the twins accidentally did.

She then went on to explain the other abilities that she’d glimpsed, indicating that the V’kit’no’sat Zen’zat had not discovered all of their hidden talents. That was a welcome bombshell, despite the fact of being unaware of what was happening to them over the last 100 millennia. It meant that as good as they were, they were still ‘inferior’ in the eyes of the designers of their genetic upgrades.

Kara went on to apologize for not having further information, insisting that there must have been some safety protocols in place to keep her from having full access to the memories and that any further breakthroughs should be relayed to her immediately, for they might unlock further information. Then she ended with the option of recalling her to Earth if Paul thought her knowledge and skills would be needed in their probing of this new ability.

Jason sighed after the message ended. “Are you going to bring her back?”

“I’d like to bring all of us in to work on this, but I think you and I can handle it.”

“I concur. After Travis and Karen we’re the closest to developing a sufficient psionic link…though from the techs’ analysis I think we’re still far off.”

“Way off,” Paul agreed. “But we’ve got them to actively pattern off of, and I think I’m starting to get a feel for what they did. From what Kara said, the battlemeld is just a primer used to link other abilities as they manifest, with the enhanced coordination being mostly a side effect.”

“You’re underrating it.”

Paul shook his head. “I know it’s valuable, but by the way it’s designed it lets two people work together…like creating a conduit between them. Useful enough on its own, but it’s built as a foundation to build on. They could practice with the meld, but since we don’t have it…”

“…or anything like it…” Jason added, catching on.

“…neither we nor they knew what to train for.”

“Until Ken and Barbie stumbled onto it.”

“A very fortuitous stumble,” Paul agreed, “for the linking they do is far more than we ever tried. Everything we’ve done is transmit, not read.”

“They can’t read either.”

“No,” Paul said, pointing a finger at Jason as he began to pace around his quarters. “They can’t. But they’ve gotten around it with years of experience. They transmit constantly and openly, so there’s no need to read because they’re not holding anything back…well, some things obviously, but not the essentials.”

Jason gave him a funny look. “You’re saying our badassness is blocking us from attaining the necessary linkage?”

“We think and fight as two individuals coordinating together. They act as a pair that occasionally operates as individuals. Whatever these battlemeld powers are, they must require an enormous amount of connection, either in finesse or processing power. All we’ve ever needed is some situational awareness and thought sharing.”

“You’ve obviously got an idea of how to train for this, so spit it out already.”

“We spend a few more days piggybacking on their battlemeld, then we one-up their twin link by training with constant physical contact.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “That will get us past the Ikrid blocks that even their twin link suffers from. After which we get very comfortable inside each other’s head.”

“More than that…we have to stop thinking like individuals.”

“Yeah, that could be a problem. Archons are supposed to act as individuals.”

“And they will once we learn how to teach them to meld, but since the twins are clueless as to what they’re doing, we have to go overboard.”

“Alter our training, temporarily, and go deep into paired philosophy?”

Paul nodded. “We put our individuality on the shelf for a while, then reclaim it after we’ve learned what we need to.”

Jason followed that line of thought quickly through several logic functions. “We’ll need to minimize breakage. The twins spend most of their hours together. They even have quarters next to each other, though I’m not sure if their bunks are within transmission range or not now, but they were growing up. They shared a single room.”

“Then we do too from now on.”

“Handcuffed,” Jason reluctantly suggested. “That way we don’t have to worry about holding hands constantly.”

“Ugh,” Paul said, realizing he was right…and how this was going to hamper their training, but it had to be done if they were going to stand a chance of unlocking the battlemeld. “Restroom breaks?”

“And shower, but nothing else and we keep those brief.”

“Agreed. Let’s get the techs to design something more useful than normal restraints.”

“Already got a few ideas,” Jason said as the two headed for the door, intent on starting this deviation in their training immediately, knowing how big of a training hit it was going to be and not wanting to let their minds dwell on that with second thoughts before they committed to it and linked up.

Six hours later they were bound together at the wrist with palms facing out so that the back of Paul’s right hand was smashed against Jason’s left inside a short gauntlet that not only held their hands and wrists together, but the lower portion of their forearms. This kept their skin in constant contact without rubbing from rotation, a deliberate design with long term planning in mind.

The gauntlet could be switched off from arm to arm, meaning they wouldn’t be stuck with a strong arm and a weak arm after weeks of training, but the pair quickly learned that there wasn’t much they could do with their linked arms, meaning all sparring blows had to be accomplished by their other three limbs.

Paul and Jason got through several hours of training on Balboa Lane and an awkward lap around the command deck before Travis and Karen finally met up with them…laughing their heads off.

“What the hell is that?” Travis asked between additional snickers.

“I didn’t realize holding hands required any…accoutrements,” Karen added mirthfully.

“We’re replicating your twin link,” Paul said calmly, dismissing Jason’s idea to Vader them both, “since you two don’t have a clue what you’re doing.”

“You’re trying to gain our ability?” Travis asked, settling down.

“It’s called a Battlemeld,” Jason explained, equally calm, “and is an ability that the Zen’zat never attained.”

“Except the Zak’de’ron Zen’zat,” Paul added.

“And it is the 8th basic psionic,” Jason finished.

“What? I thought there were only 7?” Karen asked.

“There were only 7 known to the V’kit’no’sat. The Zak’de’ron did the genetic programming and included things the others didn’t know about, and over their objections. Apparently the Zen’zat didn’t stumble onto them on their own…until now,” Paul said, looking at both of them in turn.

“Kara filled us in,” Jason told them.

“What’s it supposed to do?” Travis asked. “The battlemeld, I mean.”

“It creates a link between two individuals that is the precursor to a number of tandem abilities. Kara couldn’t give us specifics, but there are many.”

“And the V’kit’no’sat don’t know about them?”

“Apparently not, as of 106,000 years ago. That’s why they’re not in the database.”

“Though they do know of some that aren’t in there,” Jason corrected. “The pyramid database is the system hub, but it seems some things are kept more private. The restricted files didn’t contain the other abilities yet to be unlocked, so it’s possible that most of the V’kit’no’sat didn’t know they existed either. And according to Kara there’s a lot the Zak’de’ron knew that the rest didn’t.”

“Did the dragon Zen’zat have these other abilities?” Karen asked.

“The battlemeld, yes,” Paul answered. “The others…somewhat. Kara couldn’t be specific.”

“Is she still in Alpha Region?”

“Yes.”

“Well nuts. She could be a lot of help here.”

“She already has helped. And now that we know…”

“Kind of know,” Jason added.

“…what we’re doing, we’ll figure this out and learn to teach the others. You two just focus on getting better at what you do. Oh, and Kara did say the battlemeld isn’t supposed to be constant. You’re supposed to turn it on and off at will.”

Karen and Travis looked at each other and shrugged. “We’re fine.”

“Thought you’d say that,” Jason said as he pointed to the perimeter of the command deck. “Once you finish your laps meet us in Cerebro 6.”

“Will do,” Karen said, taking one last glance at the trailblazers’ bracelet and snickering as the pair ran off ahead of them.

Little pricks, Jason thought.

Slow pricks, Paul amended as they started running again and, despite their arms being bound together, quickly caught up to and passed the twins…who then sped up to match them.

That set up an impromptu race that lasted a quarter lap before Paul and Jason veered off to the interior and kicked it up another notch, getting better at syncing their strides together. They weaved back and forth and around the giant lounging pedestals, sometimes doing two or three completed circuits before breaking off again and chasing some of the mongooses on their painted trails.

Eventually it ended up with a long, straight finish run that had the twins barely hanging on when they began it, but another speed increased dropped them a few seconds later…with the trailblazers running ahead and waiting for them at the foot of the down ramp, seemingly untired while the twins were dragging as they finally caught up.

“Stupid younglings,” Jason commented with a shake of his head before he and Paul rotated around and began hopping down the dino-sized steps in a bit of a victory dance.

Karen and Travis watched them descend, not feeling like walking with them down to the lower level in the pyramid where additional training facilities had been built.

“Pricks,” Karen commented, with Travis nodding in agreement as they walked over to the side where the smaller steps were and slowly made their way down the ramp.

7

February, 2477

Solar System

Earth

Paul sat with Jason in one of the cafeterias built inside the pyramid, eating along with a few Archons and a lot of techs, their arms bound together but having no trouble getting food in their mouth, for in addition to their free arm they also has telekinesis to work with, making every meal a bit of a show for the techs that weren’t used to having them around. Just for a bit of fun, Jason had gotten used to pulling liquid out of his drinking glass or bottle telekinetically, and in between bites of pasta he created a snake of red that stretched out of the bottle’s thin neck and arced up into his mouth.

Doing so was far more difficult than people thought, given that he had to grip the entire exterior of the liquid glob with Lachka and not just a few key points that would suffice on a solid. After a few more bites he did it again, but this time tried for a loop rather than a straight shot. As he got through half a curve in his invisible straw, the liquid started to drip off at a couple of points as Jason’s telekinetic skills were pushed to their limits in terms of small scale control.

Being Ikrid linked at the hands, Paul knew he was having trouble even before the first drop fell and reached out with his own Lachka to grab the drops and return them to the stream, then combined his telekinetic power with Jason’s to reinforce the loop, succeeding in delivering the post workout replenishment liquid to the striker’s mouth.

Jason, already being inside Paul’s head to a degree, didn’t thank him, for they’d gotten in the habit of just picking up after one another over the past months without recognition, whether it be in training drills or seemingly pointless tricks like this, though they both knew that every bit of psionic practice they got, regardless of the circumstances, would have an additional training effect, meaning they actually had a reason to play with their food.

Paul reached his left hand over and grabbed a cookie from his tray, but it stopped halfway up to his mouth as a beep sounded from his biomonitor. Jason looked over at him and saw 2 yellow lights glowing, but he didn’t need to say anything, for Paul knew it from his thoughts anyway before he could even have bothered to form the words.

Jason wondered if it would be enough for Paul to latch onto, but again he didn’t ask the question in words or even telepathically. The thought was just there, for both of them to think, with Paul beginning to grasp hold of the mild instability and channel it in the direction he wanted…which ramped it up to 3 yellow.

Both of them were excited, but Jason’s biomonitor wasn’t showing any activity and suddenly Paul’s sense of Jason began to blur away as he had to draw more and more of his concentration into channeling the instability. Jason could still sense Paul, but knew better than to interfere unless he asked. He watched through mind’s eye as the Paul controlled and pushed the instability on, then when the biomonitor got up to 2 red he decided to disconnect.

Jason pulled the gauntlet off and felt Paul’s mind disappear…an odd sensation given how much time they spent linked nowadays. If Paul needed him to he’d link back up and help him as a focal point, but they both assumed, for some reason he couldn’t identify, that it was probably a disadvantage to have another set of biofeedback thrown into the mix, and even if Paul wasn’t consciously trying to read Jason, he probably was doing so at least some subconsciously.

Right on cue, as soon as he disconnected the monitor went 3 red, with Paul pushing his chair back and dropping to his knees on the floor as he tried to control it. Jason could see his muscles clenching up against the stress, but he made no sound as the 3 red lights started flashing. A few people turned to look, wondering why he’d quietly dropped to the floor, then all of a sudden Jason heard his mental scream and everyone in the cafeteria jerked in shock and fear as they heard it too…with several people dropping trays as the involuntary Ikrid transmission washed over them.

“Stay put and relax!” Jason yelled to the crowd as he kept his eyes on Paul. “It’ll pass in a moment.”

He heard a number of questions raised, for the mental scream was painful enough just to ‘hear’ and wasn’t subsiding. It seemed to oscillate and then increase in intensity right up to the point where it vanished…leaving everyone in the surrounding area taking a deep breath and shaking off the effect.

“Sorry about that,” Jason apologized, “but that’s what happens when you step on an Archon’s toe.”

He waved to everybody, most of whom got the joke but didn’t know what was going on, then knelt down beside Paul as he continued to rest on his knees with the biomonitor dropping down from 3 red to 1.

Did you make it? he asked telepathically.

Yes.

And?

Get one of the twins so I can check. I felt the flash growth, but I have no ability to use. It’s like I’ve got a spotlight reaching out for something that isn’t there.

You staying here?

It’s not as bad as the bioshield upgrade, but I’ve got quite the headache.

I’ll be back, Jason said as he stood up and left the cafeteria, leaving Paul to wobbily climb back into his chair and scoot it back up to the table.

“What just happened?” a woman asked from the table next to his.

“A spontaneous psionic upgrade,” Paul said, cradling his head in his hands in tripod fashion on the table without looking at her. “Sorry about the scream.”

“It hurts?” someone else asked.

“Yeah,” he said, his head throbbing as he felt someone walk up behind him and place a hand on his neck.

“Do you know what you got?” the medic asked, with Paul recognizing the voice as one of the geneticists on Vortison’s team.

“I think so. We’ll know as soon as Jason gets back.”

“You’re really chewed up in there,” the medic said, feeling inside his head with his own Ikrid ability…infantile as it was compared to Paul’s.

“Flash growth,” he reminded him.

“Or you’re pushing it too fast,” he differed. “The instability surge is designed, we think, to allow you to partially upgrade in stages. How many times was this?”

“First,” Paul said with a touch of pride.

“I’d recommend taking it slower next time,” the medic said in all earnest.

“We can’t control when it happens, and we’re not going to waste the opportunity,” he said, wincing against the pain.

“A few dozen repeats and you might not have to,” he said, referencing the data they were gathering with the biomonitors, “but I suppose it doesn’t help your group.”

“Tip of the spear,” Paul said in agreement.

“Is there somewhere you’d like us to take you?”

“I’m good,” Paul said, still face down to the table as he held as still as possible while several waves of pain rippled across his forehead. “Go back to eating.”

“Actually, I think I’ll go see what new data you just gained us,” the medic said, laying a light hand on Paul’s shoulder before he walked away, leaving him in blissful anonymity until Jason eventually returned.

“He’s not glowing,” he heard Karen say from beside him, surprising him by the fact that he hadn’t notice her or Jason walk up…nor Travis, for that matter, who was standing behind them as Paul finally pulled his head off his hands and looked at them. He used what he felt like a spotlight and pointed it at Karen, feeling her to be slippery and not wanting to accept his contact, but after some 30+ seconds of trying the link finally took and she began to glow within his mind.

“What the…” Travis said, flinching as Karen’s glow disappeared.

“I guess you did join the club,” she said, seeing Paul glow as well as feeling him as she’d only felt Travis before. “Damn, you are in good shape.”

“So you have the battlemeld?” Jason asked to be sure.

“Seems so,” Paul said, marveling at the depth of connection it was providing him. Not only could he feel Karen’s body position, the light stress in her muscles from standing and the slight bind of the hair tie in her ponytail, but he could sense what she was thinking similar to the Ikrid link he’d had with Jason…except there was no physical contact here. “I think the meld overrides the Ikrid block. I’m getting more connection with her than I had with you…a lot more.”

“My condolences,” Jason offered, drawing a glare from Travis, but Karen didn’t seem to mind.

“Can I have my sister back please,” he said, slightly annoyed.

“What do you mean?” Jason asked.

“I’m not connected to her anymore. It shut off whenever Paul did whatever he did.”

“It’s supposed to work with more than 2,” Paul said, reaching out with his spotlight and finding Travis, who was just as slippery. “Try and connect with me.”

“I don’t know how. It’s always been automatic.”

“Just let me in. Karen will try to reach out for you too.”

Travis stared for a moment, then closed his eyes as he concentrated. His sister was wanting to connect, he could feel that through their twin link, but she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, until he finally found a crack to let Paul in, then they both connected simultaneously forming a 3-way link.

“Holy shit,” Travis said as both the other Archons’ senses flooded into his.

“How’s your head now?” Jason asked.

“Like King Kong is pounding on it,” Karen answered for him, using the phrase he was about to speak.

“I suggest you disconnect soon and get some rest…alone. You can get me up to speed later.”

“Feeling left out?” Travis asked.

“A bit,” Jason admitted. “We didn’t ascend at the same time, and I think it’s pretty obvious why you two did.”

“Might be true of all their future ascensions,” Paul commented. “Actually, I can feel their auxiliary link now. It’s weaker, but definitely there in the background. Encrypted, I think. It’s like they’ve become wireless components of each other’s brain. I think that’s why we couldn’t pick it up before. We don’t have the right context to interpret it because it’s not traditional telepathy. We were looking for sentences and they’re communicating in numerical code.”

“Fascinating,” Jason said sarcastically, “but this has to be frying your head, especially with 2 people linked in.”

“It is,” Paul said, reluctant to let go of the new sensation. He concentrated and withdrew from Travis…immediately getting dropped by Karen. That made sense, given that Travis’s connection should trump his since he’d spent far more time with his sister. Then again, he’d been able to trump him to establish a connection in the first place.

“He’s out,” she said, suddenly missing his presence. He wasn’t half the jerk she’d thought he was.

“I off,” Paul said, slowly standing and walking away. “I’ll check in with you guys tomorrow.”

“Night,” Jason joked, then turned to the twins as he grabbed a roll off his plate and took a quick bite. “Try disconnecting from each other again.”

The twins looked at each other, then both shrugged innocently. “We don’t know how,” they said in tandem.

“Try,” Jason pressed as he sat back down. “And keep at it the rest of the day until you do.”

“I think that means we’re dismissed,” Travis quipped, glancing around at the others in the cafeteria, most of whom were not paying attention to them, though there were a few nearby that were listening and pretending not to notice, though their body language gave them away.

“Want to grab something?” Karen asked.

“Just a snack.”

“K,” she said, heading over to the food lines as she examined their battlemeld link. It was firm and constant, and no matter how she tried to manipulate it, it felt like she was trying to grab a bar of soap under water, with it slipping through her fingers every time. With no ‘grip’ she couldn’t disconnect, and short of walking out of range or having Paul bump Travis out again, she didn’t know how to even theoretically go about manually disconnecting from her brother.

“We’re going to be at this for a while,” Travis said once they were out of earshot.

“I know,” she said, grabbing a bottle of green.

It took another 3 weeks of handcuffed training before Jason’s trigger activated, and like Paul he also nailed the ascension on the first try…with an equally nasty headache in exchange, but as soon as it passed the two got back to their normal training with a few additional melding sessions that surged them past the twins’ scores on the challenges that they’d developed for them, and after only a few hours of trying.

From there it was a constant whirlwind of training, with most of their free time spent either designing new challenges and equipment or kicking the crap out of the twins as Paul and Jason continued to oversee their training, and now that they knew what the melding was like, they pushed them far harder than they’d pushed themselves previously, now with no excuse given that the twins were now on the short end of the psionic stick.

Or at least they were for several months. With the new training regimens that the trailblazers were creating, Karen and Travis started working on things that they hadn’t even imagined were possible before…like sequenced timing of Fornax blasts, oscillating telekinetic holds so one could rest while the other held an object aloft, allowing both to keep it levitated for far long than either could do individually or in turns, and overlapping Rensiek fields to hyper-compress their heat emissions and turn their limited skill in that area into a metal-melting handhold that, when combined with Lachka, gave them the ability to craft crude objects out of raw materials.

The twins thought some of the training was downright stupid, but they went along with it and during a paired telekinetic drill involving an overlap of their Lachka energy to try and extend their combined range, they both suddenly found themselves on the floor and going through another ascension…this one a bit quicker than before, but no less traumatic.

The next day Vortison and his team confirmed what Paul and Jason suspected after running the twins through a few exploratory drills…that they now, through the battlemeld, could produce one Lachka field rather than an overlapping two. Now in perfect sync, the tissue in both of their brains functioned like an extension of each other, producing one field as if they were a much larger individual with greater brain size…like some of the medium V’kit’no’sat races. But more than that, the binary nature somehow enhanced the effect, with Vortison speculating that it had to do with the field being produced at an angle rather than from a single point, in effect giving them the equivalent of more leverage.

In a private conversation later on between the genetics team and Paul and Jason, they discussed in detail how they thought the twins were leveling up faster due to their non-meld link, with Vortison adding some more tidbits of data that confirmed their ‘duality.’ For whatever reason they’d developed and grown the link before birth, he suspected, and on some level they were operating as a single individual while maintaining the option of individuality when they were separated.

As such, the genetic triggers were reading them as a pair, which was why they were ascending together and why, it seemed, they had a great deal more aptitude at the battlemeld. Paul and Jason disagreed with that vehemently until Vortison revised his assessment, specifying that the duality that they suspected the triggers were searching for was already partially present in the twins due to their link, letting them get into the specified ‘zone’ with far less adjustment…though with only the four of them to study that was only a little less than wild speculation at this point.

That grudgingly made sense, and the two strikers left their info chat satisfied. If the twins continued to unlock battlemeld abilities then that would be good for them and Star Force overall…but they weren’t doing it because they were better, they were doing it because they, once again, were cheating.

Which meant the race was on, with Paul and Jason diving into the challenge. They’d have to work longer and harder to keep up with the twerps, which they’d come to almost like now that they could see them from a new perspective with the battlemeld, but there was nothing that spurred the trailblazers on more than going up against a superior opponent…and one that was cheating to do it gave them an even greater drive to ‘correct’ that injustice.

That set up a war between the two pairs, with Paul and Jason decided to remain in the pyramid for continuous training indefinitely, knowing that the sooner they uncovered and mastered these new abilities the sooner they could teach others to do the same, enhancing all of the Archons. They both made long term adjustments to their previous assignments, seeing that others could function in their absence, and set themselves in an even more rigorous schedule as they probed their potential in their own unique way while simultaneously getting a read from Karen and Travis and trying to replicate the Lachka meld.

They would succeed four months later…but only after the twins had unlocked yet another ability, with the two gleefully staying ahead and mocking the trailblazers whenever they got the opportunity, for their own schedule was becoming quite rigorous as they had no intention of letting Paul and Jason catch up.

8

May 31, 2489

Solar System

Earth

Greg arrived in the pyramid, haven’t seeing Earth in a very long time and only now returning at Jason’s request, leaving the ever-expanding lizard front in Alpha Region as their enemy was constantly trying to flank the Star Force colonies and push around the edges of their sparse defensive line. He’d been leading one of the roaming fleets hunting them down and pushing them back as the reformed Alliance was extending that line with newly colonized shared worlds along with three Irondel/Star Force colonies that were forming quickly as the physically smallest race in the Alliance was staking out a piece of the shared border to assist in the defense, rather than merely hiding out on the interior with the other refuges.

The chipmunk-sized race wasn’t the only one beginning to pitch in, for there were four more races doing the same…one on the lizard border, one on the Calavari, and two on the Skarron front, though those weren’t originally from the Alliance, but from Randy’s contacts near Beta Region that had fled the Skarron invasion, and still more were talking about claiming their own piece of the ever-growing puzzle that was the Alliance Defense Zone.

That was the semi-official title, with the Alliance portion of the races still referring to it as the Sanctuary Zone, but with many more non-Alliance races being allowed in by Star Force the term ‘Alliance’ had taken on a new meaning, with the ADZ meaning all of Star Force’s allies, making them the center of power while the Hycre were still the dominating force within the anti-lizard Alliance.

The recent surge of help from the ADZ denizens had come on the heels of Star Force deploying its first Sentinel-class defense platform that outraged all weapon systems within the Alliance and their enemies…by far. It utilized a new power core and targeting orrery coupled with multiple cleansing beams that could now hit ships in excess of 1,000 miles with the accuracy of what had once been the equivalent of 20. With the promise of several such defense platforms being built, numerous races were now eager to position themselves on the ADZ borders, wanting both a chance to strike back at the enemy and to gain more stature within the quickly growing ADZ community…now that they felt they had a safe haven to run back to, provided by the Sentinels.

Blade-097 and Zack-085 had been sent to the lizard front to replace Greg and to take care of several new projects popping up within Alpha Zone, with several more trailblazers and other high ranking Archons repositioning throughout the ADZ in a slow shuffle as a new, multi-racial dynamic was forming within what had once been Star Force’s ‘territory,’ though in truth it had been more their neighborhood than their possession.

The few star systems they actually owned had remained exclusively theirs, and thus far the Core Region was remaining a Star Force-only zone, but Alpha, Zeta, and Beta Regions were seeing heavy colonization, including lesser amounts in Gamma and Delta. Only Epsilon, which had very few Star Force colonies, was left unsettled by Alliance refugees, and Greg wasn’t sure how much longer that would last.

With their borders becoming more firm by the year, Greg wasn’t overly concerned about leaving, but he had never liked Paul disappearing from what had been his personal little empire out in Alpha, and would have much preferred he’d stayed out there tinkering with their infrastructure and defenses.

That said, he understood the importance of what Paul and Jason were doing, which was why he hadn’t complained when they’d called Greg back to Earth.

“Been a while,” a familiar voice said as Greg walked in the main doors of the pyramid along with a light flow of mongooses carrying both people and cargo in and out.

“That it has,” Greg agreed as he walked up to Aaron carrying his gear duffle and shook his hand. “How goes the psionic training? You qualify for the X-men yet?”

“Not quite up to Xavier levels yet,” Aaron said with a laugh, “but it’s really Paul and Jason that have taken it to another level.”

“So I heard. What exactly have they been up to?” Greg asked, stepping aside as a supersized mongoose drove past.

“What haven’t they been up to,” Aaron corrected him. “I’ve managed to keep the top Ikrid marks, but their battlemeld skills are getting scary. They’ve uncovered 7 of the 19 abilities, and have developed a couple of them to combat ready levels in an incredibly short amount of time.”

“Whoa…hold up. 19?”

“Kara was finally able to give us a specific number.”

“How’s she been doing?”

“Been here two years and working her tail off every day, but she’s not up to Paul and Jason’s level.”

“Who is,” Greg scoffed as the pair of trailblazers began to walk inside and down one of the humongous hallways meant for dinosaurs that stood dozens of meters tall.

“Actually, in a very narrow field the twins are, and it’s pissed them off something fierce.”

“Really?” Greg asked, suspecting that there was some grounds for teasing to be found there.

“They’re the ones finding the new abilities first, then teaching them to Paul and Jason. They like them having the breakthroughs, but are aggravated that they aren’t getting to them first.”

“How are they getting to them first? They’re just adepts.”

“If you ask me they’re just getting lucky. Paul and Jason are designing their training for them, so in a way they’re working against themselves, but they know the twins are the best bet to finding the other melding abilities. That doesn’t stop them from trying to get there first though.”

“Define ‘lucky?’”

“I don’t think they know what they’re doing and they’re just finding them by accident.”

“Isn’t that how we find all the new psionics?”

“No, I mean lucky by getting there without training…or much anyway. Their whole messed up Ikrid link somehow skips them ahead and puts them very close to the trigger requirements, then they just stumble around and trip over them and…boom, new ability. Neither Karen nor Travis is even a tenth as powerful as Paul or Jason in the battlemeld category, yet they’re the ones ascending first.”

“That is interesting. And that’s where this mind meld came from?”

Aaron nodded. “Jason was the one who found it…with a lot of help from the techs. It’s the one actual trigger we’ve been able to locate, and without the twins to study we wouldn’t have found it. Their lack of skills is giving us a much smaller haystack to look through.”

“Score one for the newbs,” Greg said as they turned a corner and headed up one of the segmented ramps, choosing the smallest pieces along the side that were meant for their tiny legs.

“I give them some credit. After Paul and Jason they’ve got the next highest battlemeld scores.”

“Out of how many?”

“Last I checked there were 15, though I don’t know about Rikku. She got here a week ago.”

“How long’s it usually take?” Greg said, taking very steep steps with almost a bouncy ease, despite the duffle over his shoulder.

“Depends on the individual. Took me four days with Paul.”

“Are the twins helping?”

“Like I said, they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s all instinct with them. Their battlemeld automatically turns on as soon as they’re in range of one another and stays on permanently. They had to work to learn to turn it off and link with others. With each other their linkage is crazy good and effortless, which allows them to rack up some considerable scores on the challenges.”

“But Paul and Jason are better?”

“They’re writing the training as they go, which is the only reason why the twins are progressing. They have no knack for it, and without the push they’re getting they’d be stuck on a plateau…but it’s a very high plateau within the discipline.”

“Sounds like cheating to me…no wonder Jason and Paul are pissed.”

“If their situations were reversed, we’d have all 19 by now. Probably would have had them by the end of the first year.”

“The twins are that close by default?”

“Seem to be, which makes them very valuable. Otherwise I think Paul and Jason would have beat them to death by now.”

“Attitude problem?”

Aaron laughed. “Oh yeah. Those four have had a private feud going on for a decade. Karen and Travis even went so far as to revoke their Clan affiliation, citing they were going rogue and too valuable to this training research to be distracted with Clan issues.”

“Is that a nice way of saying nobody else would take them?”

“No. They meant every word of it.”

“Screw that. And you said they’re still writing workouts for them?”

“They have to, otherwise Star Force loses out, and you know they’re not going to let that happen because of a personal squabble. The twins have got situational leverage and they’re milking it in compensation for every ounce of strength they don’t have.”

“Oh, I have got to meet these pricks.”

“Later,” Aaron promised. “We want to get you going as soon as possible. I’d do it myself, but sadly I’m not advanced enough. Paul’s spending his time with Rikku, leaving Jason free for you.”

“Let’s get to it then,” Greg said, accelerating into a jog as they climbed the second half of the ramp, with Aaron jumping out ahead of him and leading the way.

The pair of trailblazers moved to a level above the command deck that had been a Rit’ko’sor area, now repurposed into more training facilities, with the one they were coming up on being of recent construction. Inside was a room that mimicked the Jedi temple from Star Wars, right down to the fake windows making it look like they were standing in the council chamber atop one of the spires. Greg didn’t see any cityscape outside, but there was a desert-like landscape that gave the interior room a feel of great space with an empty, calming ambiance.

“Paul’s idea?” Greg asked, setting his duffle on the floor behind one of the masters’ chairs.

“Of course,” he said, coming out of the doorway on the far side. “What better place to meditate?”

“Like the view,” Greg said as the three of them met in the middle.

“The walls are shielded for Ikrid,” Paul added, “so when the doors are shut you know you’re not going to be disturbed. Kind of a necessity, for the battlemeld trigger is tricky to find.”

“How exactly does that work,” Greg said, picking one of the cushioned circles and sitting down. “Comfy.”

Paul and Aaron backtracked a few steps and sat down on their own chairs, with Paul sitting in what would have been Yoda’s spot, prompting an ironic smirk from Greg.

“It’s a two part process,” Paul explained. “First is simulating the trigger, which I can do because I know what it is and I’ve already achieved it. I just have to resume that state, which in this case is a mental processing requirement necessary to achieve the battlemeld. High sustained bandwidth with an interlinking component remaining open for the duration…which basically proves that you’re capable of limited Ikrid ‘melding’ before you’re given the hardware for the real thing.”

“You can measure it?” Greg asked.

Paul nodded, then hesitated as Rikku-452 came out of the back area with her shirt off and just now pulling it over her head.

“Sweetie, you didn’t say we had company,” she said sarcastically, drawing a muffled laugh from Aaron.

Greg looked at Paul questioningly. “You didn’t say it was naked meditation.”

“It’s not,” Rikku said as she walked through the middle of the circle of chairs headed for the exit. “I just prefer the simplicity.”

“And trying to distract me,” Paul added.

Rikku shrugged as she got to the door. “Hasn’t worked yet,” she said with a wink before walking out.

Paul rolled his eyes after she left. “Second gen are always trying something.”

“Are you complaining?” Greg asked.

“Nope,” Paul said with a hint of a smile, “but now that she’s gone there’s something else you need to know…in house.”

Greg’s amusement faded and he responded with a nod, knowing that by ‘in-house’ Paul meant it was to be kept private amongst the trailblazers.

“The second part of the process involves recreating the way the twins share their biofeedback. When they ascend they both do so simultaneously, because on some level their minds act like a single individual. It’s a very weak bond that doesn’t compromise their individuality, but it’s created a glitch in the trigger process that I think the V’kit’no’sat never anticipated, given that Zen’zat were never meant to reproduce.”

Greg nodded. “So you need to teach me how to form that link with you to trigger the battlemeld upgrade?”

“Not me, Jason will. I’m still working with the stripper and it takes several hours a day, the rest of the time I have to spend training. Right now the two of us are the only ones that have learned to create what we’re calling the ‘mind meld’ effect. The twins have it, but they don’t understand what they’re doing, so they can’t help train others.”

“So I’ve been told,” Greg said. “What’s the in-house part? I assume you told Rikku the same thing.”

“If we can identify more triggers, Jason and I think we can figure out how to share our abilities with other Archons…all of them, not just the battlemelds.”

Greg whistled. “That would certainly change things.”

“No kidding,” Aaron agreed. “Right now we’re restricting battlemeld to rangers with Ikrid level 50 or better.”

“Ranger 1 plus the Ikrid?”

“Yeah,” Paul answered. “Learning the mind meld takes a lot of skill, and there’s only so much I can do from my end.”

“And if you can find the other triggers?”

Paul sighed. “I don’t know. We’re all going to get them, but the second gen and others…we’ll have to figure that out later.”

Greg looked at the ground for a moment. “How certain are you that you can do this?”

“It will work,” Paul said confidently, “if we can find the triggers. For that we’re going to need a lot of help from the techs, but this will only work if at least one of us gains the abilities on our own.”

“What’s the chances of the techs being able to unlock the rest directly?”

“Nil,” Paul said. “The only reason we’ve even got this option is because of the twins’ cheat.”

“But in theory, if the V’kit’no’sat could create these abilities, then someone with equal knowledge should be able to do the same…or at least turn them on?”

“We’ve already had this discussion,” Aaron said. “Kara seems to think that the pyramid database isn’t complete. That there are deeper secrets that had no need to be known on this planet, or probably a lot of others. She also says that the Zak’de’ron were responsible for most of the genetic coding, and those files are not definitely not in the pyramid. She thinks they kept them to themselves and maybe the V’kit’no’sat don’t even have a full copy.”

“Wait,” Greg stopped him. “Do we or do we not have the necessary genetic engineering knowledge in the pyramid?”

“We think yes,” Paul said noncommittally, “but the coding is essentially a masterpiece of ingenuity, and it was designed with triggers, not ‘on’ buttons. We’d have to rebuild the abilities from scratch, and from what Kara said that’s a very bad idea.”

“And the techs agree,” Aaron added. “Plus, they’re nowhere close to understanding that level of science.”

“Alright, I like the training route better anyway,” Greg admitted. “I just hate the idea of some V’kit’no’sat tech being able to whip up new superpowers on a whim and us not able to counter that.”

“Kara thinks the Zak’de’ron gave us the premium package,” Paul said, feeling much the same way Greg was. “If that’s true, we should at least be on par with the V’kit’no’sat no matter what new tricks they pull out of their collective butt.”

“Once we root out all the abilities,” Aaron cautioned.

“Work, work, work,” Greg said with a sigh. “Good thing we like training our asses off.”

“On that note, I’m due for a workout with Jason. His schedule is a mirror of mine, more or less, so he’s not going to be able to work with you until tomorrow, probably.”

“Good enough,” Greg said as Paul stood up. He and Aaron did as well, then as they walked out with Greg in the rear he added, “Might as well take the opportunity to meet the twins.”

Paul half stopped and glanced at Aaron.

“I filled him in a bit.”

“They’re valuable,” Paul said deadpan. “Try not to break too many bones.”

“I heard they joined Clan Asshole?”

“Founded it, actually. I’ve tried cognitive recalibration…doesn’t seem to have any effect. They’re a stubborn pair. See what you can do.”

“Happy to,” Greg said, both interested in seeing how these two little adepts could have got under his skin this bad, and reflexively viewing them as adversaries given they’d set themselves against two other trailblazers. Tick off one of them and you’d usually get the other 99 gunning for you as an added bonus.

9

June 11, 2489

Solar System

Earth

Greg sat crosslegged opposite Jason in one of the smaller meditation rooms in the back of the ‘council chamber,’ facing each other with their arms resting on their legs and their fingers interlocked with one another’s until Greg jerked suddenly and broke their Ikrid connection as the biomonitor he wore went straight to 2 red.

Jason pulled back slowly on his padded seat, giving his fellow trailblazer a few more inches of room as he saw him physically clench up as he fought to both maintain control of the surging instability and to ward off the pain of the flash tissue growth. It only took a few seconds for him to reach three flashing red lights, then the ascension process fully activated and Greg suffered through a brief, but intense period of pain…all the while riding it out in his meditative pose like the beast he was.

Jason noticed the slack return to his form a moment before Greg reopened his watery eyes.

“Damn that hurts.”

“Well done,” Jason congratulated him. “Now try and link up.”

Greg reached out his hands again, but Jason sat still and shook his head. “Not like that. Just pick up my call.”

“What call…” Greg said a split second before he felt what Jason meant. He released his mental clenching a touch, despite the fragging his mind was still fighting against, and opened himself to the connection…immediately seeing Jason ‘glow’ in mind’s eye as he got a wave of biofeedback from the other trailblazer.

“Wow,” Greg said, swiping a tear from his eye. “This is one hell of a mind meld.”

“And it doesn’t require a physical link,” Jason said, referring to the Vulcan version. “Now break and reestablish.”

“Give me a moment,” Greg said as he concentrated, quickly finding it wasn’t difficult to break. He reestablished some of his mental armor and the connection severed, but remaking it was far harder, for Jason wasn’t reaching out to him this time.

“You have to search me out with the ability, not your standard Ikrid,” Jason said when he realized he was having trouble. “The battlemeld has its own spotlight.”

“Trying, but my head really hurts right now.”

“I know. I felt it when we were linked.”

“Duh,” Greg said, realizing how slow his thought processes were at the moment giving the searing pain. He felt like someone had just cauterized his brain with a plasma torch.

It took several bumbling tries before Jason telepathically sent him a memory of what it felt like, after which Greg was able to find and reproduce it in short order. Locking it onto Jason took a bit of work, with him realizing he needed to search out a target with his Ikrid before aiming his battlemeld spotlight. Once he did he got a firm lock on Jason then reached out towards him as if he were extending a shield column on an aquatics warship.

When the invisible energy conduit reached him it connected immediately, with the glow of telemetry coming from Jason dulling all his other senses.

“Why is everything…”

“That’s just your senses getting adjusted. It won’t look so dark later.”

Jason reached a hand up in response to a subtle suggestion from Greg and they did a triple fist bump, 360 swirl, and a top/down/side/side/middle fist bump before finishing off with a finger ripple with perfect coordination, almost as if Greg were mimicking his reflection in a mirror.

“This is so cool,” he said, going through a few more unpredictable arm and hand movements that Jason mimicked perfectly. “Just wish my head wasn’t killing me.”

Suddenly Jason withdrew his connection.

“We can practice later. I just wanted to make sure you could link in at will. Go take a nap.”

“Yes, Master,” Greg joked, standing up on the wide cushion and stepping off onto the hard floor. “Looks like you’re ready for a new apprentice. Who’s up next?”

“Dakota and Dante should be on their way,” Jason said as he too stood up. “At the moment, I’ve got some practice to do with Paul.”

“Battlemeld?”

“Yes.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

“You need to sleep.”

“I can sleep later. I want to see you two in action.”

“Danger Room,” Jason said, checking his watch. “2:30. You can catch a half hour nap before that.”

“No, I’m going to get something to drink. If I crash now I have a feeling I won’t be getting up for a while.”

“Walk slow,” Jason suggested, heading out ahead of him.

Greg knew enough to not try and match his pace, and as Jason suggested he took his first few steps slow, feeling a pounding in his head with each one. Rather than wince and curse he chose to take it as a challenge and managed a decent pace after a few dozen steps, heading down to the lower levels in the pyramid and stopping by the cafeteria on the way to make a ‘suicide’ out of the available drinks, mixing red, blue, green, and black together in a large bottle and taking it with him as he headed towards the Danger Room, sipping away as he walked out to grab one of the mongooses.

He drove down the narrow ramp that Star Force had installed over portions of the V’kit’no’sat version and down into the lower levels of the pyramid, not feeling like running and knowing that walking would mean a lot more pounding in his head. When he got to his destination he was early, but found Paul already inside, along with several more rooms being occupied by other Archons…though Paul had claimed the largest of the Balboa Lane upgrades.

The ‘Danger Room’ was where the Archons went to cut loose on targets, with multiple versions being able to be remotely controlled and moved throughout the chamber, which in Paul’s case had a diameter the length of a football field and a ceiling height spanning several stories, making Greg feel like he was entering a sports stadium. The floor was firm but slightly cushy, expecting occupants to fall regularly as they got knocked about, but there was nothing else inside aside from Paul who was doing some warm-up drills that included flips, tumbles, and spins.

The targets to come were stored in wall compartments and computer controlled, with thousands of different combinations possible. When Jason finally got there he programmed the scenario they wanted to run and left Greg by the control console to watch as he and Paul met up near the center and a host of man-sized vertical pylons came out from the walls and moved down to the floor, forming up into a grid that flowed out around them and set up covering almost the entire chamber. Each object was lightly padded and had pressure sensors to register hits and intensity of hits…but that’s not what they were using them for this time.

Jason stayed put and braced himself. Greg could see him angling his legs to the side, putting himself almost off balance as Paul jogged off behind him then curved around and ran forward on a flanking line. When got back up even with Jason and set about 15 meters away Jason put both his hands up, palms forward towards Paul and he did likewise, jumping up slightly into a twist and landing with both feet planted, whereupon he skidded on his heels.

Greg was surprised he could manage the slide, not because it was hard to do but because it was something he had never tried, let alone at the speed Paul managed. A moment later his jaw dropped when he saw Paul’s skid arc to the right, pivoting around Jason’s position. Eventually he came to a stop almost 90 degrees into the turn, whereupon he held position and Jason took off running, going wide them coming back up even and them switching rolls.

The same thing happened, with Jason skidding forward and curving around Paul, with Greg seeing that they were going around at least two of the pylons each time. They didn’t stop after a few goes, but worked their way throughout the chamber, zigzagging here and there and setting a pace that thoroughly impressed Greg. He didn’t know what they were doing, but it was all very clean and rhythmic…up until they swung by his position, which was when he noticed a little bobble in the skidding arcs.

It took him some 7 minutes of observation until he figured out what was happening, realizing that however they were linking themselves together, probably through some type of energy field, every time their line of connection passed through one of the pylons it either weakened or cut out, reacquiring on the other side as they skidded around it. Greg saw them stumble a few times from the disruption, but neither of them went down throughout the 20 minutes they practiced the odd, but very cool drill.

Greg was about to ask them what was going on when Paul came over to him, but the fact that he was running suggested he should hold off on the questions, with him coming over to adjust the control panel before running back out to the center. As he did the man-sized pylons retreated into the walls and longer horizontal bars shot out, flying towards their positions and hovering in place, locked into magnetic/antigrav holds to keep them solidly in place as various sized cubes came out and coated the floor in clumps…setting up some sort of an obstacle course.

Once it was in place Paul hopped up about a meter and set his feet into Jason’s hands, then somehow he launched him up more than ten meters over his head to where Paul got a hand on one of the horizontal bars and flipped himself over it and dropped back down to the floor…except he never made it down. Halfway there Jason walked underneath him and put his hands over his head, almost meeting Paul’s feet but the two never touched…at least that’s what it looked like to Greg, but he was so far away he couldn’t be for sure. The gap had to be only inches if there was one.

Regardless, Paul launched back up into the air and passed over another bar, with Jason repositioning underneath him and sending him back up like volleyball multiple times until they got to one of the cube clumps. Paul grabbed hold of the last bar and climbed up on top of it, tightrope walking across and dropping off onto one of the clump peaks as Jason took off into a sprint below.

Paul angled his legs and pushed his hands out towards him, looking for all the world like he was about to let loose a Kamehameha blast. Jason did the same and jumped, with their invisible link somehow acting like a rope that pivoting him up through the air like a fulcrum to a half-sized cube stack top…but he didn’t wait there, for as soon as he got his footing he jumped off at a different angle, or more precisely ran off, stepping down a couple times to gain speed before pulling a Tarzan and swinging through open air and coming down on the floor.

But again Greg was surprised, for he didn’t hit despite the obvious math that said he was about to. Somehow the ‘rope’ between them shrunk and Jason swung out through the middle of the arc and back up the other side to where he was suddenly cut free and let to drop on the top of another cube cluster equal in height to the one Paul was on.

As soon as Jason was there he turned and pointed his hands towards Paul, who then jumped off his. Together in alternating fashion they moved from one mini mountain to another, zigzagging their way seemingly in random fashion across every corner of the Danger Room until they came back to the center and the largest of the cube clumps. Paul swung Jason up to the top then dropped down the side in three leaps until he got to the floor and set up on the receiving end of a platform dive by Jason.

Greg flinched as soon as he saw it, for despite how strong they were, dropping from that height, head first, was going to result in some sort of injury if he hit ground, potentially even snapping his neck if he came down wrong, but with the way Jason jumped off it looked like he didn’t care. He came down hands first and absorbed most of his fall against Paul’s equally outstretched hands, with the remainder bouncing him back up into a short arc that he twisted out of and landed on his feet a few meters away before both of them took off running towards another spot on the course.

“Shit guys, you’re making me look like a newb,” Greg said to himself as he watched them launch each other over various obstacles before moving to a gauntlet of short cube clumps where he saw them each climb up on one side and jump into the narrow gap between them where they bumped into each other and rebounded off with surprising force back onto the cubes without hitting the floor. They did that multiple times, working their way through the gauntlet and Greg was fairly sure by the end that they weren’t actually touching on impact.

The pair worked through a few more drills before finishing off with the high beam throws, this time with Jason going up and Paul bumping the volleyball, after which they came back over to Greg and the control console, shutting it down rather than starting another session.

“What…the…hell…is…that?” Greg asked slowly, the coolness literally dripping from his voice.

“Thought you’d like that,” Jason said with a smile.

“It’s called a Repulsor,” Paul told him. “It’s a type of binary energy that acts like a tractor beam.”

“And it’s inverse.”

“Push, pull, and…bounce?” Greg asked.

“That counts as push,” Paul explained, “but we also have a neutral version that only pushes or pulls enough to maintain shape.”

“Like a rope?” Greg guessed. “I saw you using it on those swings and skids.”

“Yeah, cool stuff when you figure out how to use it. Takes two to work, which is why it’s a melding ability only.”

“So the V’kit’no’sat don’t know it exists?”

“Hopefully not,” Jason said, “though it’s possible they might have discovered it by now, or at least seen the Zak’de’ron Zen’zat use it when they fought them.”

“That doesn’t mean they know they have it,” Greg differed. “They could have thought it was an upgrade the Dragons gave them after the fact.”

“Point,” Paul conceded. “Either way it’s useful if you don’t mind getting fancy.”

“Which you two don’t,” Greg pointed out.

“None of us do,” Jason reminded him, “which is why we’re cooler than the second gen.”

“Among a hundred other reasons,” Greg agreed. “Do the twins have this Repulsor energy too?”

“They’re the ones who discovered it and we copied them, but they haven’t done much with it.”

Greg frowned. “I thought they couldn’t train others?”

“By ‘we copied them,’” Paul explained, “he meant we figured it out by watching and feeling them, then we had to uncover it on our own.”

“He got it a few weeks ahead of me,” Jason pointed out. “By keeping our training almost the same and sharing the battlemeld every day we’re ascending at more or less the same pace and the same abilities.”

“But you still can’t share them directly?”

Paul shook his head. “It’s different with the melds, but no, we can’t.”

“What we can do is nudge each other in the right direction by linking up,” Jason added. “We share so much biofeedback that it helps to physically align us properly in order to trigger the upgrade. What we’re trying to learn to do is mentally align with an Ikrid link to trick the trigger into thinking that we’re physically where we need to be. Still a long way from achieving that.”

“So I heard. I saw you bobbling on the skids when a pylon passed in between?”

“We can transmit through thin walls, but matter in the transmission path diminishes the interlink effect,” Paul said. “It’s not a normal push/pull relationship, it’s a single energy conduit that we both contribute to, like tying each of us to the end of a long beam.”

“Stable then?”

“Very, until something passes in between. We weren’t losing full connection, but the momentary dip in power caused the bobble you saw. Just something we have to get used to and anticipate.”

“Wish I could join you, but it looks like I’m a long ways from this.”

“So’s everyone else,” Jason admitted. “We can’t train like this with anyone else, so it’s pretty much just us and us writing the training manual for the battlemeld.”

“Don’t know who’d be more qualified than you two anyway, though I wish I could help out a little. I’m going to stick around at least a few months and get a handle on this before I head back to lizard land. If there’s anything I can help you guys with let me know. Right now I’m heading to bed before I keel over. You guys going again or have something else to do?”

“We’ve got other abilities to work on, so we’ll be in here a bit longer. You need a lift back to quarters?” Jason offered.

“I’d say yes, but I don’t want to lose you any training minutes. I’ll make it back alright. I’m not so far gone that I can’t sit and steer. Keep at it, fellas.”

“Night,” Paul said as Greg slowly walked out, bottle in hand.

He’s got to be really hurting right now.

He is, Jason confirmed, but it’s a good pain. The more the better.

I hear that, Paul agreed, walking over to the control panel and setting up a scenario designed to test their linked Lachka fields, which the V’kit’no’sat called Nemsa, though they referred to it as ‘Power Lock.’

The first of six large targets exited nearby walls and moved towards them, with the pair already with an active battlemeld linking their telekinetic fields and throwing an invisible punch into the first of them with far more power and range than either could have managed solo.

10

June 23, 2489

Solar System

Earth

The Danger Room spat out another weight, floating it over to the target zone and dropping the couch-sized cylinder a moment later. It fell straight down, but slowed to a sudden stop four meters above the floor as Kara and the twins used a three-way meld to combine her considerable Lachka abilities with their weaker versions, strengthening all into a single field that allowed them to stop and hold aloft the object before it crashed down on top of them.

Stopping it was hard enough, stretching the three near to their limit, but in order to achieve a count for this drop they had to move it over a few meters to the left and up to a holographic wall almost as high as it had been dropped from. That required more skill and power, for the longer the range involved, the less effective their Power Lock.

But this wasn’t their first object, rather their 18th. They were all of the same mass but different shapes that required different grips, some of which made the objects increasingly difficult to both stop and maneuver over to the finish point. The cylinder was one of the easier shapes to catch, and together the three Archons lifted it up and over to the desired location in midair until it breached the holographic plane, at which point the Danger Room retook control and floated it off elsewhere as the twins took a short, but much needed breather.

The next object came some 22 seconds later, dropping a sphere on them that was much more difficult to telekinetically grab, but the threesome managed all the same and chucked it back up and out, then waited on the next one. They made it through several more tries, but on number 25 it was a no go, with a cube coming down on top of them and Kara reaching out to stop it like before with the twins’ help, but as soon as they made contact she felt the two of them disappear from her mind and her/their available power level dropped drastically…as did the cube.

Kara’s own strength was insufficient to lift it, but she did slow the fall as Karen and Travis dove out of the way. Kara didn’t follow them, choosing to hold her ground, and raised her left hand in the air as her wrist burst forth in a flurry of red particles that coated her arm and spread over the rest of her body as the cube made contact before she was fully covered.

Kara had trouble holding onto it, but its weight wasn’t a threat to her, even without armor. Using her own Lachka as a third hand she steadied the cube, then like Atlas from mythology she held it over her head and jumped into the air. There she spun around in a circle twice before flinging the object over to the holographic wall with ease given her powered armor, whereupon the Danger Room picked it up and cycled it off, ready to bring in the next one.

“Tomosat, ka,” she said, instructing the computer to stop in V’kit’no’sat.

The next incoming object froze in place, as did the others circling around near the ceiling. Kara held her airborne hover for a handful of seconds, then the mass of red armor scales retracted and she dropped to the floor in her Archon training garb, landing in an agile crouch.

“Sorry,” Karen offered.

Kara shook her head. “Don’t be. That’s three more than last time. You two are making progress, but you’re still dropping your battlemeld when you get fatigued. You have to learn to focus at all times.”

“Our battlemeld stayed up,” Travis told her. “It was you that disappeared.”

“I didn’t sever the connection. Both of you pulled out simultaneously…again. Your twin mojo has a lot of advantages, this…is not one of them. You’re reverting back to each other as your default when you get rattled, not when you’re incapable of continuing the meld, which is why you jerked away from me.”

“You felt that or are you guessing?” Karen asked.

“I could feel your strength give way, then you both blinked out. Some simple deduction and you can figure out what happened.”

“I still don’t understand why we give out so suddenly,” Travis complained. “You’d think it would be more gradual.”

“It’s not muscle, it’s an energy pool,” Kara explained. “When you exhaust it, all you have to work with is the recharge stream.”

“Are we done here?”

Kara nodded. “Good work for today. We’ll have a go at some more tomorrow if you’re available.”

Karen snickered. “We live here.”

“I meant if you didn’t have other training planned.”

“We’ll make time,” Travis promised. “I like sucking off your power reserves. Makes me feel superhuman.”

“We are superhuman,” Karen reminded him.

“Super Saiyan then,” he amended.

“Tomorrow then,” Kara said, looking over at the distant control panel and telekinetically punching a few buttons that ended their current scenario and withdrew the objects into the walls, along with the hologram disappearing. “If you don’t mind clearing the deck, I need the chamber for another workout.”

“You go girl,” Travis said as he and Karen jogged off towards the doors. Kara followed behind them at a walk and came up on the control panel once they were gone, locking the doors and bringing up a scenario she’d designed specifically for herself…and one that was too dangerous for spectators. Normally she had to work her way around others using the main chamber, but today, at least, she didn’t have to worry about that for another 45 minutes, which would be more than enough time for her 20 minute scenario. She might even go for two if she was feeling like it after the first.

Kara tapped the start button, then immediately turned and ran away from the control panel, activating her Vorch’nas and leaping into the air after four steps, fully covered in red, dragon-like scales. She flew up to about half altitude in the room and punched a meter-wide object flung at her like a remote-control missile, knocking it aside and scoring a point as more popped out from the walls and came at her.

Kara flew around, hitting, kicking, ramming, and dodging the objects that ranged in size from a basketball to a hovertruck, scoring points and trying not to get hit herself. This challenge wasn’t about using psionics as much as it was her getting in some flying combat practice with her armor…something she rarely got outside of real combat, for none of the standard Archon sanctums had a chamber such as this. She was lucky it had what she needed to practice, though it hadn’t been designed with her in mind.

By the end of her first session she’d broken two of the smaller targets, hitting them so hard that the pressure sensors overloaded from the blunt trauma, and added three more in her second round. The techs would fix them up later, as they had numerous times before. She didn’t mind giving them extra work to do because they’d been a bit slow to design new targets that could hold up against her powered armor, and now they had five more reminders to get their asses in gear.

Once completed, Kara flew back down to the floor and resumed ‘normal’ mode with her Vorch’nas retracting back into the clear crystal that rode imbedded into her left wrist like an ornament…but an ornament she could never take off. It was fused into her bone and had become a permanent part of her, which she had objected to at first, but she’d long since gotten used to it and now viewed it as another body part.

Her score for the second round was slightly lower than the first, but that was to be expected due to fatigue. Even with the power-augmentation of the thin armor covering her body from head to toe, flying around and hitting things took a toll on her body, with a considerable amount of the power she employed coming from her own muscular strength.

The score was acceptable, given that she hadn’t tailed off too much and it made for several more minutes of valuable experience. When she got back to the control panel and reset the room to normal, she unlocked the door and found Paul and Jason outside waiting for their reserved time slot that was still a few minutes away.

“How many did you break this time?” Jason asked.

“Five,” she said, walking by the pair and giving Paul a fist bump as she passed. “All yours boys.”

They went inside and she walked on, eventually heading up to the command deck for a few laps of medium intensity running that left her dripping in sweat afterwards. She thought about heading for a shower but Kara decided against it as a thought kept tugging at the back of her mind. She took off jogging easily until she got lost in the pedestal forest and out of sight, then quietly leapt into the open air and flew up through the chamber, hanging from the jewel on her wrist.

Quietly she ascended up to the platforms around the narrower roof where the I’rar’et and the few other flying races had some built-in perches. They had backdoor access for Zen’zat, but nobody was ever up there, giving her a quiet place to think.

She landed Mary Poppins style, coming in over the meter high ridge/railing that separated what was essentially a series of small hangars from the drop off that would have easily killed anyone falling over the side, which was why they had the railing, she knew, to protect the Zen’zat from doing just that, either by their own stupidity or by accidentally getting knocked off by the winged creatures moving about.

She landed just inside the ledge and looked around, seeing nothing new since the last time she’d been up here. Sooner or later she expected the techs to start annexing these areas, but apparently they hadn’t run out of room below just yet.

Kara turned around and climbed up on the railing, then sat down on the half-meter wide stone slab and let her feet hang off the side, not fearing the height. It was odd, because before she’d always been wary of heights…and with good reason. One little ring-out and it was all over.

But now that she could fly the only thing she worried about was falling while unconscious, meaning she wasn’t going to be taking a nap on the ledge any time soon, but just sitting here she was in no danger, for all it would take was a single thought and her jewel would levitate with her hanging from it. That gave her a freedom that she relished, especially since no one else could follow her.

She kicked her legs a bit, pounding her heels on the outside of the ledge as she leaned back and grabbed the inner edge with her hands, then closed her eyes and focused on her handholds while letting her mind spin about, trying to get at that elusive thought that had been dancing around on the edge of her senses. As she’d done many times before, she lost herself in a wash of thoughts and didn’t pull out of it until sometime later when she got a slight telepathic tap on her ‘shoulder.’

Kara opened her eyes and her senses returned to normal, with her feeling a presence behind her on the ‘roost.’

“I’m sorry, I didn’t sense you coming,” Kara said, twisting her neck around as Greg walked up.

“Am I interrupting?” he asked, coming up behind the railing on which she sat, but off center to her right.

“Not really,” she said, glancing down at the watch on her right wrist. “I thought I had another memory resurfacing, but if I haven’t gotten it by now I’m probably not going to today. Did you need something or were you just wandering around?”

“No, I just sensed someone up here and came looking. The door was locked, so I didn’t know if you wanted to be alone or not.”

“I came up this way. I never use the door.”

“Quite the view,” Greg said, leaning over the edge carefully to halfway look over the drop-off.

“Care to join me?”

“I’m fine standing, thanks.”

“Relax, I’ll catch you if you fall.”

“Didn’t think you were that fast.”

Kara looked down past her feet. “Fast enough. Pick something up and chuck it over the edge if you want to test me,” she said, half expecting him to say ‘don’t bother,’ but to his credit he slipped off his own watch and casually tossed it over.

Kara pulled with her legs and pushed with her jewel’s antigrav, sliding her off the edge and dropping her out of sight. Greg didn’t lean over to watch, but some 8 seconds later her wrist came back into view, dragging her arm and body underneath it until she got her feet on the ledge and sat back down in her original position. Then, without a word, she held up his watch in her right palm.

He picked it up and slid it back on his wrist, then carefully sat up on top next to her crosslegged, feeling a little wobbly but resisting the urge to grab the back edge.

Kara laughed. “It’s ok. I never liked heights either.”

“I’ll manage,” Greg said, sticking with it. “I heard you’re working out with the twins?”

“Yeah, but just with the three-way meld. They’re not that powerful, but their coordination is amazing. Second only to you know who.”

“I’m surprised you can stand them.”

“Well, I’m second gen, so it’s not quite the same. Their feud with you guys doesn’t seem to include me, so we get along for the most part…once you accept that they’ve got a chip on their shoulder that’s driving their arrogance. They’re still barely more than kids, so I cut them a bit of slack. Though they do push the boundaries every now and then.”

“Funny, I thought we adopted you?”

Kara smiled. “Apparently they don’t see it that way…and they didn’t break any of my records.”

“You have records?”

“No…which is why there’s less conflict there, I suppose.”

“Paul and Jason are still ticked about that, but mainly because the twins are being jerks and poking the tiger on purpose. Do that and you’re going to get the claws.”

“As they should,” Kara agreed. “They just don’t feel like poking me for some reason.”

“Then they’re finally starting to show some wisdom.”

“They have an ability that they didn’t have to earn, and it makes them think they’re higher rank than they really are. That doesn’t excuse their arrogance, but it’s the source…and the fact that they keep accessing new abilities before Paul and Jason is only feeding it. If they’d had a full smackdown I think they’d learn quicker, but as long as they’ve got an edge on them they’re going to put their stock in that and continue this feud.”

“I just wish they’d leave the fantasy out of it,” Greg said.

“I think they’re learning that through me. Sharing a battlemeld has a way of opening one’s eyes.”

“That trinket doesn’t hurt either.”

Kara held up her jewel and looked at it. “Kind of surprised they don’t react harsher to me because of it.”

“They can’t compete with it and they know it. But they’re stupid enough to think they can best us in psionics. You said something about more memories?”

“Yeah, happens every now and then. Some just come out without me trying and others nibble away until I dig them out. Felt one earlier when I was running, but haven’t been able to get at it.”

“You remember something special about the three-way melds?”

“Meaning is that why I’m putting up with Prick and Pam? Maybe some truth to that. I do have some memories, but they’re incomplete. Shielding things I’m not ready to know yet, I’d guess. I do know that during the war Zak’de’ron Zen’zat would form hunting parties to go after stronger opponents, be that other Zen’zat or the larger races. We made a lot of takedowns that way until the V’kit’no’sat got wise to it and adjusted their tactics.”

“So they do know of the battlemeld?”

“They know the Zak’de’ron used it in their Zen’zat, but I don’t think they ever knew they had the potential themselves.”

“They thought the dragons made extra enhancements?”

“Seems like it, because we never saw the battlemeld used against us.”

“I keep thinking, with all these defensive abilities that we keep finding, might not there be a more offensive set? Kara’s Jumat is, I know, but that’s just knocking things around. We know the Hjar’at have an energy weapon built into their biology. Might not the dragons have included one for the Zen’zat too?”

“A good question, and I…” Kara cut off as something flashed into her mind.”

“What is it?”

Hold on, she said, chasing it. The memory didn’t want to be found, darting here and there like trying to catch a bug, but she’d had enough practice by this point that she eventually pinned it down and forced it into the conscious portion of her mind.

When she did it almost hurt, like she was forcing something into place that wasn’t meant to be there…or wasn’t meant to be there that soon, for as she did, some of those blocks on the psionic abilities dissipated, letting memories arise that had been previously shrouded in mental fog.

When it did she held her mind motionless, fearing that it might whip away as soon as it arrived, as had happened a few times in the past, but as she waited and let it soak in she got a memory of a very specific ability, a tier 4 psionic with its battlemeld counterpart, that literally made her jaw drop.

“Holy shit,” she said, looking down at the palm of her right hand.

“You remembered something?” Greg asked.

Kara nodded. “Now I know why we have Rensiek. It’s a precursor to something a lot more powerful. A tier 4 called ‘Choratrik.’”

“What is it?” Greg asked excitedly.

“Something I saw firsthand from the Dragon,” she said, remembering him arch his neck back towards the ceiling and spew a plume of white fire that melted the material of the chamber she’d found him in. “It translates as ‘bioplasma.’”

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1

September 8, 2495

Fvatt System (Hycre territory)

Kri’mas

Iesmena shuttered as he felt the concussion ripples impact his translucent skin, which he then ‘saw’ as his sensory organs translated the sonic signature within the Hycre’s brain. Not needing to turn its body, for he could perceive in all directions simultaneously, Iesmena watched the streak pass through the thick atmosphere of Kri’mas, which had been his home for the past 23 years.

The object came in high and dropped amazingly fast, passing Iesmena’s altitude and falling further into the planet’s gravity well, burning the atmosphere from the friction and creating the ‘boom’ that he could see from kilometers away. The muted flash of light was almost undetectable given the thickness of the atmosphere at this level, but given the normal blackness the flickering glow stood out…as did the second one coming down from above.

Iesmena was free floating in the atmosphere and ‘swimming’ as fast as he could while remembering to pace himself. The four internal air atriums that he used for propulsion were rhythmically pulsing as they sucked in air from ahead and expelled it out behind from numerous surface exits on his body that opened and closed as necessary, making his internal body structure look like a spike ball. Most of those spikes were inactive, save for stabilizing squirts, as he forced all the air he could get out his rear ‘jets’ as he raced towards the outpost that was considerably far ahead.

It was an unmanned outpost, but the closest bit of infrastructure to the Hycre and the location of his parked skip that had brought him this far out from the nearest cluster. He’d left it tethered there before heading out in person to study the nakra flocks that inhabited this region of the planet, as he regularly did. By the time the word of the Cajdital invasion had come through over the communal comms he’d already been out in the field, with the warning sitting on his communication device that he’d left in the skip.

The first notice he had that anything was wrong was the sound of a very distant detonation. He’d stayed put after that, listening/looking for any further sign of where it had come from, but he hadn’t perceived anything else until the rain had started to fall…and he wasn’t talking liquid variety, for those streaks coming down from above were solids by the telltale way they echoed, plus the disruption trails were an easy sign that they didn’t belong, for the Hycre ships never moved in such a way.

Iesmena knew that meant this was most likely asteroid bombardment and held his position, for the falling rocks were far away, though he would have definitely preferred to have been indoors. He continued his observations of the nakra for a few minutes until a sinking feeling in the pit of his gas bladder manifested itself as he realized the impacts weren’t random, but rhythmic…meaning they had an artificial origin.

That was horrifying, for he knew it was nothing of Hycre origin, and he had left the flocks immediately, heading back to his skip as fast as possible.

Halfway there the closer objects began to fall.

As Iesmena swam he scanned ahead with his bjovo, a biological organ that functioned as a spotlight sensor that created casendic energy…which his skin could also ‘see.’ Right now it was trained in the direction of the outpost, which was finally coming into view some 1500 meters ahead.

A much closer object fell behind him and soon the little nakra came swimming by, moving far faster through the dense air than he ever could. Then another object fell ahead, passing within 400 meters of him and creating a huge concussion wave that knocked him and the nakra around…with the little critters turning and the fleeing the other way.

Iesmena saw the outpost rock slightly from the wave, but it was the impact far below that caught his attention as the object dropped deeper into the planet’s atmosphere and impacted the top of one of the Hycre’s deeper clusters, with the boom of impact clearly audible despite it being some 18 kilometers below.

After that impact more objects began to fall on an identical track, coming down in a conduit of disruption that forced Iesmena to travel a different direction, fearing for his life but knowing he had to get to the outpost. Fighting the disruption turbulence he swam far wide, making a huge arc up and around the danger area but was still too close, with fear spiking through his body the entire time. Gone were the nakra, leaving him with nothing but an up/down/left/right trajectory as object after object fell down through the atmosphere, knocking him around violently until they eventually stopped when he was within 300 meters of his target.

It took his senses a moment to recalibrate, then he saw the objects start to come down in a more distant location, giving him a calm swim over the last 50 meters up to the outpost, seeing its shell had been cracked…and his skip was gone.

Iesmena swam around the outside of the bell-shaped building, feeling a huge relief as the skip came into view. It had been knocked free of the outpost, its tether snapped, but it appeared to be intact.

The Hycre swam over to the needle-shaped craft and inserted his spherical body into the rearmost section, sliding inside the thin hull and gripping the handholds with its six tentacles, giving his tired atriums a rest as he physically leveraged his body into the pilot’s cradle and opened up a diagnostics program, gratefully finding the craft to be fully operational.

He started up the engines as he checked the comm, finding the myriad of warnings and sitreps detailing a Cajdital attack on the planet, first a massive orbital assault that saw the Hycre losing their orbital facilities and many ships, then the upper atmosphere combat as the enemy began sinking their warships into the planet and trying to assault the higher clusters.

As he read the reports he kept his tendrils off the steering mechanism, realizing he was safest right where he was. Several of the upper clusters, which were lightly connected structures clumped together into city-like formations, had been hit by the Cajdital suicide cruisers. The remaining Hycre warships had retreated into the planet’s atmosphere and were defending the upper levels, but the enemy had ran several formations down and succeeded in getting single ships through…which then rammed and detonated against the cluster, destroying or at least heavily damaging it.

12 clusters had already been hit, with the Hycre making them pay for it by destroying hundreds of escort cruisers that had run interference for the suicide craft.

Iesmena was much deeper than those clusters, and based on the alerts he figured he was safe from that type of attack so long as the fleet remained in the fight, but the more recent warnings detailed assaults on deeper clusters via orbital bombardment…not by the Cajdital’s traditional plasma, but by a type of mass launcher that was hurling objects on fairly accurate trajectories down towards the lower targets, including some below where Iesmena now sat.

He was sure the torrent that had nearly hit him had been one such attack, and from the various warnings from individual clusters, or about individual clusters, he knew he couldn’t return to the one he had come from.

Trolling the skip over to the side of the outpost, Iesmena powered it down and swam outside to check on the condition of the tether mount, finding that only the line had snapped. He slid a tendril in underneath the hook for another and pulled it over to the latch on the skip, detached the broken one, and hooked up the good one so his only means of transport wouldn’t drift off. Then he swam around the perimeter of the outpost on tired atriums inspecting the damage, finding the one huge crack as the only visible disruption from the building’s usually smooth form.

He poked a couple of tendrils into it experimentally then withdrew and swam around to the entrance, opening up the uninhabited structure and moving inside, again resting his atriums as he used tiny crater handles on the walls as grip points to pull himself along through a narrow tunnel that emptied out into a U-shaped main room that held most of the outpost’s internal volume.

Iesmena reached out and grasped one of several vertical poles, swinging his bulbous body around to a control panel where he grabbed hold of a front handle and pulled himself up taught to it, leaving his other 5 tendrils free to operate the controls, powering up the outpost and linking in to the Hycre’s comm grid.

A holographic map materialized in ultraviolet spectrum, detailing the Hycre civilization on Kri’mas that was present on only a quarter of the massive planet. They had 1,291 clusters spread out through multiple layers, but spaced far enough apart from one another to provide ease of movement for their fleet between them on the prescribed zonal lanes. This outpost existed in one of the ‘safe’ zones where the starships and other large craft would not go, allowing Iesmena and other Hycre the ability to free float without fear of collision.

The map, which only hours ago had been intact, showed dozens of clusters off the grid, either having been destroyed or having the comm systems knocked out. Evacuations were being ordered and those clusters that were capable of descending were doing so, trying to put more atmosphere between them and the Cajdital ships in orbit, for as fast as the objects were descending Iesmena could see that their acceleration profiles were slowing once they hit the 5th layer, meaning the lower you got past it the less damage they could do.

He knew others would be heading down there, pressing their biological limits if they were out in the open, or descending in craft where possible into the thicker layers of the planet, but eventually there was a line that only a few of their craft could pass without being crushed from the pressure…and fortunately the enemy’s projectiles didn’t appear to be reaching that far down at speed, though the heavy objects would eventually sink down to the core, but at a lackadaisical pace.

The currents were also helping to throw off their aim, Iesmena saw, as one of the clusters under attack was seeing many misses, but he knew the shielding on them was limited and couldn’t hold up to very many impacts. He couldn’t tell from the limited data how large the Cajdital projectiles were, but he could see the damage statistics updating as three more clusters were taking hits…one of which suddenly dropped off the map.

Seeing that his current location was in a region that had already come under attack, Iesmena figured he was safer here than elsewhere, and that the outpost was too small to target from orbit. How the Cajdital were targeting their lower clusters he didn’t know, for the atmosphere should have shrouded them from orbital sensors.

The map didn’t show their fleet in the planet, but it did show the orbital situation and the ships that were bombarding them. Iesmena wasn’t a soldier, but he did know what their enemy’s ships looked like. All Hycre did, for they’d been fighting them since before he was hatched, and this was not a normal design.

The ship, or rather ships, were larger than a cruiser but smaller than a battleship. They were thick and blocky, with what looked like squarish pouches poking out at multiple angles…a complete departure from the sleek cruisers and the bulky but smooth larger capital ships. These vessels almost didn’t look Cajdital, save for the same yellow/tan hull coloration, but the 16 of them were the source of the targeted ‘rain’ falling down into the atmosphere.

And those 16 were surrounded by hundreds of escorts, preventing the Hycre ships from popping up out of the atmosphere and attacking them. None of the defense ships had the new Human ranged weapon, so they were going to have to fight their way through to get at them…which apparently had already been tried and failed, for there were no Hycre warships visible in orbit.

The cluster Iesmena had been living in was still showing active, now descending slowly as the next closest one to it was coming under attack, leaving him nowhere to run to so he decided to count himself fortunate and remain at the outpost, but he knew he couldn’t stay here forever.

Moving over to the vertical poles he pulled himself across the room and checked the storage compartments, finding some limited foodstuffs and gear when he heard a whine/thump from outside, quickly followed by several more. He pulled himself back over to the entrance tunnel and saw flashes from outside, prompting him to jet his way back inside and over to the control panel where he brought up the outpost’s sensor array.

Outside was a small dot, what it was was unknown, for the sensors weren’t very advanced, but it was floating several dozen meters away and it was not his skip, for it was far larger. Then he noticed that his skip wasn’t showing as an intact object, but rather several small ones as more thuds sounded, this time on the outpost hull, along with damage statistics popping up.

Trying not to panic, Iesmena activated the outpost’s distress beacon then fled over to the area furthest away from the sounds of plasma fire. There were no weapons on the outpost, nor in it, for the Hycre didn’t carry personal weapons except in the most extreme of cases. While this definitely qualified as one in Iesmena’s mind, the outpost didn’t have any, leaving him completely exposed as the pounding continued to mount, with successive damage occurring with each hit, small as they were, given that plasma weapons were far less effective in the thick planetary atmosphere.

The unprotected outpost only held together as long as it did due to that fact, with each impact from the Cajdital weaponry being small, but it ate through the thin hull plates with ease and began trashing the interior equipment along the outer walls, leaving Iesmena waiting in cover, frantically thinking of a way to survive and deciding that playing dead was his only option. If he swam outside he’d be easy to shoot down, and one shot would be enough to kill him. He couldn’t see what was attacking the outpost, but he knew how susceptible their bodies were to plasma, despite their high heat tolerances.

It took forever for the Cajdital plasma to break through to the main chamber, which fortunately was on the opposite side from where Iesmena was hiding, giving him a few more minutes. Bits of charred debris flew everywhere, floating about in almost neutral buoyancy before slowly falling to the floor.

Then the outpost lurched downwards and Iesmena thought he might have a chance. If the tiny antigrav unit holding the outpost was already damaged and didn’t engage, then the broken bladder that had currently been holding the structure aloft now doomed the structure to slowly sink down into the planet’s core…and if the Cajdital thought it was dead then they might just let it go to its eventual death rather than blasting it apart, leaving an opportunity for Iesmena to escape if they didn’t know he was inside.

But a glance at the partially functional control board indicated that the bladder was still intact, which didn’t make any sense until a much larger flash/screech sounded outside, followed by an ‘all clear’ vocal transmission.

Iesmena floated over to the control board and quickly activated the comm, signaling that he was still alive and receiving a response. He turned about, grasping the vertical poles and pulling himself out into the tunnel as fast as he could, then he jetted out of what was left of the outpost, pushing his way around debris and through smaller pieces, which tore into his thin skin but he didn’t care. He had to get outside now before his rescuers left.

When he got into the clear he saw what had caused the sudden downward lurch of the outpost…a huge and beautiful Hycre frigate hovering over the remains of the small Cajdital scout craft it had destroyed in a single plasma blast. A tiny ring illuminated on the hull indicating the airlock that Iesmena needed to enter through, with him swimming as hard as his air atriums would allow and even adding a little fin ripple to gain some extra speed.

By the time he got over to it his fin was fatigued to the point of it going limp, meaning he had to use his atriums to steer as it began to pull him off course, but within a few more meters he was able to grip the hull handles with his tendrils and pull himself inside the tiny compartment where he passed through a double energy shield as the outer doors closed behind him.

Once he was past the shields he felt the crisp and clean atmosphere of the ship’s interior as another Hycre met him. Seeing his injuries Iesmena was led to a compartment where he would be attended to as well as being out of the way of the crew as the warship moved off, staying away from the projectiles falling into the atmosphere and looking for any opportunity to exploit. Best case scenario would be the Cajdital fleet moving down into atmosphere to press their attack, but that didn’t look to be the case with the surviving Hycre clusters moving down into the thicker atmospheric levels where the Cajdital plasma would be virtually useless.

Some of those clusters were hit on the way down, with those that couldn’t descend, or descend fast enough, being targeted and eliminated as the Cajdital trimmed away part of the Hycre’s 2.3 billion population on the planet before settling into a large fleet cluster in geosync orbit, intent on blockading the planet and waiting the Hycre out rather than moving down into what would be their prime kill zone.

2

March 19, 2496

Volnu System

Jasperion (Hycre Capitol)

“The Kri’mas System has been retaken. Orbit is secured. Surviving clusters are rising to altitude.”

“How many ships did we lose?” Arnja’el asked.

“67,” Bv’en answered, “but we destroyed over 400 of their vessels before they fled.”

“I am not concerned with how many the Cajdital lost. They are infinite,” the Hycre queen said. “They will wear us down through attrition. It is only our losses that are a concern.”

“They are many, but they are not infinite. The more we destroy, the more we slow their advance. They may build fast, but they cannot summon ships at will.”

“They may as well be,” the third Hycre of six in the chamber said to the military commander. “Their numbers grow while ours dwindle. We cannot hold our current territory. We are spread too thin.”

“What would you suggest?” Bv’en asked, heavy with sarcasm.

“We begin evacuating to the sanctuary zone with the rest of the Alliance.”

The queen puffed out multiple little spurts of air in all directions, nulling out the movement but producing a razzing sound of displeasure.

“That would be folly,” a fourth Hycre said. “It would take centuries to build new worlds equal to what we already possess. Abandon our territory and we hand victory to the Cajdital.”

“I concur,” Bv’en said, snaking a tendril out to a control board and producing a holographic map between the Hycre leaders for emphasis. The map showed the widely spaced Hycre systems, many of which now sat inside Cajdital ‘territory,’ though their enemy didn’t possess all systems in the area, leaving many uninhabited or unclaimed ones that were useable for transit, but the former Alliance worlds belonging to other races were quickly falling, leaving the Hycre as the last man standing in many regions.

A handful of the systems were highlighted with danger markings, indicating that they were under assault, with intelligence coming in through courier ships for the most part now that the Bsidd relay grid had mostly been destroyed, which meant that the data wasn’t as current as it used to be. They’d requested the specifications of the technology from the Bsidd so they could patch or reroute around breaches in the grid, but they’d hadn’t responded to their multiple requests and the Hycre didn’t expect them to now after several years of silence…which from the Bsidd was their polite way of saying ‘shut up and stop asking.’

In fact, all Alliance coordination and assistance on the Kvash half of their combined territory had ground to a halt. Those races that hadn’t chosen to relocate to the Sanctuary Zone had either thrown in with the Kvash or Bsidd, or just backed out of the Alliance altogether, attempting to find their own means of surviving the Cajdital advance.

The Hycre still had systems in those regions, which they were continuing to defend, but the Kvash and Bsidd wanted nothing to do with them now, for what reasons they couldn’t fully comprehend.

“We must maintain our current territory,” Bv’en continued. “Time is now our ally, for with every year that passes we field more of the Shaven vessels. They are wholly superior to the Cajdital fleet, and with them I believe we can hold out against their advance.”

“But we don’t have the ships to hold our territory now,” one of the other Hycre leaders stated, this one serving the queen as her master builder.

“Not all of it, no,” Bv’en conceded. “Which why I suggest that we temporarily evacuate these systems down to a minimal caretaker population,” he said, adjusting the hologram with dozens of dots shifting color. “We can sink the clusters below what the Cajdital have shown to be capable of reaching while leaving a few ships behind with them. Our orbital facilities will be a loss, but if we can maintain functioning clusters in a type of stasis we can return to these worlds later, once our fleet is full of Shaven, and restore them to productive status without having to rebuild.”

“How long will this take?” Arnja’el asked.

“It will take many years to evacuate them, then well more than a century to build up our fleet. It will allow the worlds we choose to hold greater defense and less distance the Shaven have to travel to respond to attacks,” Bv’en said, using the Hycre term for ‘hybrid’ to describe their warships that incorporated Star Force tech into the design.

“Where would these evacuees go?” the Hycre in charge of internal harmony asked.

“To the new colonies in the Sanctuary Zone,” Bv’en said firmly. “There they can assist in building Shaven to send back here, but it is here that we must make our stand. If the Cajdital destroy our primary shipyards the war of attrition will weigh heavily in their favor. The Sanctuary Zone production must add to this, not replace it.”

“Can Star Force protect the Sanctuary Zone without us?”

“They do not have the numbers,” Bv’en dismissed offhand.

“But they do have the technology,” the master builder said. “I have seen data from a recent weapons test in their second home system. They have developed a medium-ranged weapon of immense power, and of a type I cannot categorize. It is energy-based, but neither beam nor plasma. They are keeping the nature of the weapon a secret, but not its damage potential. I believe they fear our portion of the Alliance cracking, and are releasing this information to instill unity and hope in securing the Sanctuary Zone, but they are not sharing the technology with us.”

“Have we received a response regarding the relay technology?” Arnja’el asked.

“They have offered us a choice between their older, slower models…which we just received the specifications for two days ago, or the option of them building newer models for our use.”

“In exchange for what?” the logistics chief wondered.

“They offered their older schematics freely, but the production of their newer models would be in trade for assistance with deep mining of gas giants. They are having trouble procuring enough specialized materials, namely corovon, to produce their advanced technology. They have located a number of sources but are unable to reach them, given the pressures involved. They want us to teach them how to access them.”

“Material in exchange for knowledge?” Arnja’el asked.

“Star Force has garnered a reputation amongst the other races as generous, as this exchange would also suggest, but I believe they are savvy negotiators who do not allow others to know what it is that they want or need, so as to not provide diplomatic leverage. It is quite possible that this mining technology is essential to their future plans…then again it could be simply an enhancement that they desire. What their motivation is, I do not know. But their breakneck advancement belies great wisdom in their planning. If not for their small population they would be able to hold back the Cajdital on their own.”

“Then it is fortuitous that we came to their aid when we did,” Arnja’el pointed out. “Sanction the exchange.”

“Looking at this map,” the internal harmony adjutant said, addressing Bv’en, “you would have us cede several valuable worlds, including Darmek. How is that in our best interests?”

“They are valuable in a non-military sense. We must build more ships, thus those worlds with extensive shipyards and material resources take priority. And we will not be ceding them to the Cajdital, for they cannot claim them. Only we can live there, and it is possible that if we appear to abandon them they might not try to get at the sunken clusters…or even realize they exist.”

“A big assumption on your part.”

“A probability,” Bv’en countered. “Regardless, we cannot waste resources guarding extraneous systems. If we can preserve them for later, it is best not to devote fleet resources to them.”

“Is this a limited list?” Arnja’el asked.

“I do not understand your question.”

“Have you chosen the minimum number of worlds to lie dormant?”

“I have. Any fewer and our continued existence is a gamble. The Cajdital will send as many ships as necessary to defeat us, so only by feigning weakness and hiding our true strength will we buy enough time to create enough Shaven. Grouping our existing fleet deployments gives us more regional strength than they are expecting.”

“Then I command you to choose more worlds to lie dormant. Keep only those that are vitally important to us and send the rest to the Sanctuary Zone,” she said, startling the other four Hycre, with Bv’en seeming unphased. “We cannot act meekly, and if these worlds can be reclaimed later then we should not be hesitant to hide them away now. Choose no more than half to keep, and go as low as you dare. When we are surrounded by enemies, our footholds must be like stone.”

“We will lose resources,” the logistics chief informed without complaint.

“If the exchange is greater, then so be it. Choose your worlds carefully,” she told Bv’en, “then begin relocating all non-essential personnel from all our worlds to the Sanctuary Zone. We need to lean our numbers here before the Cajdital grow bolder in their attacks. See to it that transportation begins immediately, then allow the evacuees from the worlds we are abandoning to transition through here. Let them feel the atmosphere of a secure world before they go to the Sanctuary Zone so that they know this is a strategic decision rather than a defeat.”

“Are we staying to buy time for Star Force?” the oracle of wisdom asked.

“We are staying because this is our home and we intend to keep it,” Arnja’el said stoically, “but the two motivations are not mutually exclusive.”

6 years later…

“Fourth section has arrived,” Captain Dseng said, taking a momentary break from overseeing the Starkill’s drone fleet as it fought the Skarrons around the perimeter of the construction site.

“Bring it in immediately,” Jennifer-801 ordered from the bridge command nexus, having taken direct control of the construction drones. “And get that jump cradle out of here before the Skarrons strafe it to death.”

“Copy that,” Dseng said, then he went about issuing orders to his remote pilots who were also on the bridge and spread out into rows of control booths. On the main hologram several dozen of the drone warships peeled off from their defensive assignments and retreated in to the massive space station Star Force was constructing in orbit over Praxnek, a Protovic world that had been a Skarron target for more than two years, but one that the enemy had failed to land more than a few ground units on.

Both the Protovic fleet and Star Force’s smaller naval force, that was constantly jumping around from system to system to assist on multiple fronts, had managed to hold planetary orbit at great cost, with the Skarrons responding by upping the pressure periodically, with this latest assault hitting them hardest of all…simultaneous with other assaults across Protovic space. This planet was the most vulnerable and on the verge of falling, which was why Star Force had retasked one of its Sentinel stations for deployment here, and after the debacle the Skarrons had suffered when they’d assaulted the one set up at Erentia they knew they couldn’t let another one come into play here.

As a result they’d repositioned their entire insystem fleet and sent them after the first piece of the jumpship-sized station that had arrived, with the Protovic moving en mass to block their way, leaving all Star Force warships to set up the final defensive perimeter and escort the massive jump cradles in and out from the star they were arriving on.

Each one looked like a giant spider with legs that would wrap around the craft they were carrying and extend an IDF field over the entire inner area, as well as latching on with any range of physical holds. Current there was an empty one sitting a couple of kilometers away from the station that Jennifer was hurriedly putting together, for the massive segments had been designed for quick assembly, though like with all new toys, some assembly was required.

The drones that broke off formed a wedge ahead of the cradle, whose legs were now curled in underneath it and creating a much smaller presence than what it had just been. It had a small crew onboard that took control of the drones after it reached an outgoing jumpline, pulling them with it in nearly simultaneous jumps and hanging onto the escort until it got to the star and an outsystem jumpline. There they ordered the drones to return to the planet, but they’d be late getting back to the party.

The jump cradle that had just arrived was likewise built by Star Force, having slightly patterned themselves off the Hycre version, and inside its open space hold it carried a 7 kilometer long piece of Sentinel that contained several package pieces ‘glued’ alongside. Once it made it past the Skarrons and into the ‘safe’ zone that Star Force and the Protovic were mostly holding and losing a lot of ships to maintain, the jump cradle moved it into position alongside the other three main segments that were already attached, with Jennifer getting it into the position she wanted before dismissing the cradle, but not ordering it out.

There was enough room in the defensive perimeter for it to sit for the moment, and she didn’t want to lose more drones in escort or risk losing the cradle and crew by sending it out alone. She picked the spot she wanted it and sent the nearby coordinates, getting it clear of the massive chunk of station that her construction ‘bots’ scurried out to and began removing the extraneous pieces.

Some of the bots moved into positions around the perimeter of the mass and latched on, becoming maneuvering thrusters, and very gently lowered it down atop the other three, forming a long, cigar-like grey gem with multiple faces, all with sharp lines and not a single curve in the design. Onto those faces the extra pieces were added, some fitting into preexisting slots and all but disappearing inside, others remaining on the surface like ugly warts.

Jennifer knew they were running out of time, so even as the last pieces were being put into place she began reworking the internal configuration of the completely automated station and got one of the lower cleansing beams online, then routed control of it over to one of the pilots on her warship, bumping him from drone control and leaving his drone with only 2 pilots instead of 3.

The pilot immediately put the large cleansing beam to use, targeting the strongest of the Skarron vessels within firing range, for many were blocked by friendly ships, and proceeded to put a shot into its shields that penetrated within a second and a half. When it abated there was a small hole in the ship that was otherwise fully intact.

The next shot didn’t hit the ship, but picked another and likewise breached its shields, leaving it vulnerable to the Protovic fleet. Wisely the pilot continued with the targeting motif, plucking shields off the Skarrons’ heaviest ships rather than taking the time to cut one apart.

Satisfied with that addition to the battle, Jennifer continued with the construction efforts and avoided any more reprogramming shortcuts, knowing that the cleansing beam she’d jerry-rigged would have to be taken offline and retasked before it could link up with the others. Normally that would have been accomplished with only a few keystrokes, except that the Sentinel station was designed with moveable internal equipment that would allow for reconfigurations to keep it fighting at maximum potential when suffering from battle damage.

Getting the fourth piece in place took too long, but in reality was accomplished in all of 6 minutes once the main section made physical contact with the others…which was remarkably fast for the size of the project they were undertaking. As the construction bots scurried out of the way and back to their own specialized jumpship sitting nearby, the cleansing beam went silent as the internal components began to shift, but the other 9 large batteries came online instantly once the primary power cores synced up, which Jennifer quickly delegated off to more of her crew, leaving the main extra large battery silent to save juice…plus none of the Skarron ships were strong enough to require its attention anyway.

With its power being rerouted to the others cleansing beams the 26 kilometer long behemoth began spitting out tiny lines of light that looked like tinsel falling off a Christmas tree, inconsequential compared to the overall mass…but those tiny little beams were so concentrated with energy they ripped through Skarron shields and armor with ease, prompting a massive retreat 20 seconds after they saw the station go operational.

The Protovic fleet, or what was left of it, let the Skarrons go, but the Sentinel station continued to tag them at range until they all microjumped out, giving the Alliance a 1000+ mile radius around the station into which the Skarrons wouldn’t go unless they had overwhelming numbers…and at present they didn’t have close to enough ships within the system, and probably wouldn’t for some time.

That didn’t prevent them from assaulting the planet from other locations in orbit, but it did mean the Alliance now had a foothold that the Skarrons would be hard pressed to remove…and to which any ships would greatly add to the defense, for the enemy had to throw everything they had against the station to take it out, with any delay resulting in egregious damage to their fleet while its cleansing beams remained active.

“Begin recovery operations,” Jennifer ordered once the Skarrons were well away. “I’ll get the construction bots to help,” she said, referencing their own control pilots onboard their jumpship and the massive amount of debris and damaged ships left behind in a crude halo around the now fully operational station as the Archon saw the 10th cleansing beam move into the green on her holographic schematic. That meant it was good to go and any Star Force warship or properly equipped outpost could remote control it and let the Skarrons waste hundreds of ships taking it out if they so chose, and if not, it would pick apart any fleet that came near it, letting Alliance vessels run towards it for sanctuary.

Yet one more piece in the overall ADZ defense line now in place. Problem was, the massive stations were both hard and expensive to build, but worth every bit of their construction. And the longer the conventional forces of the Alliance could hold their turf, the more of these would come online, making the ADZ that much harder to breach, whether it be Skarrons, lizards, or anyone else.

Time was on their side, so long as they could win or reduce these current and near future battles to a draw. Doing such was burning through a lot of Star Force drones and an even larger amount of Protovic lives as their unaugmented ships were aggressively defending their territory, knowing the stakes and the overall strategy, and leaving their growing mainline fleet with roving duty as they hunted the Skarrons with their own cleansing beams and maulers.

The old school ships and their crews were the barricades being thrown up as defense, and they were committed to doing their part, no matter how many of them were lost to the effort, if it would ensure the Protovic race’s survival.

3

May 3, 2502

Rvot System (Protovic territory)

Praxnek

Two days after the Sentinel went online Jennifer boarded a dropship and descended to the surface of the varied planet, landing in an ice field where the Protovic didn’t have any native populations. There Star Force had been allowed to establish a small base that it was continually expanding into a home for a significant ground force. With the Skarrons looking like they were fully committed to conquering the Protovic no matter how long it took, Star Force had decided to put down roots as well rather than flying in troops and dropping them into combat zones essentially unsupported.

The base Jennifer was landing at had one of the strongest shield generators ever built, far stronger than those on any Star Force warship, and with multiple units to provide redundancy enough to keep a 100 square mile area protected from orbital bombardment. Those shields were down at the moment, allowing her dropship easy access to one of 6 spaceports. Another was under construction along with a slew of new buildings creeping out across the ice as the artificial surface of the base slowly replaced it.

In between the buildings were large pathways meant for mechs, along with two airfields and 6 mech bays…plus a small aquatics cupola sticking up, underneath which was a water corridor that stretched under the ice to a nearby ocean, with Star Force having done a lot of digging to make the connection.

The Protovic hadn’t colonized their oceans, which covered some 34% of the planet and interconnected with each other in the form of long tendrils that segmented the landmasses. Star Force had received permission to develop infrastructure there, with the intent being to create outposts and troop deployment centers that the Skarrons would have a difficult time hitting, for so far they hadn’t deployed any type of aquatics forces, making the Alliance wonder if they even had any in their ranks.

Jennifer’s dropship nestled down into one of the spaceport’s enclosed bays, landing on one of six pads after dropping through an environment shield that kept the cold air out but let the transports come and go, meaning that the Archon walked out onto a warm pad that was busy unloading four Dragon-class dropships bringing down more construction materials from a convoy that had just arrived 3 hours ago.

They’d be busy the next few days unloading as the 3 mech galaxies already on planet were finishing up the last of the Skarrons’ most recent attempt at a surface attack. They’d already finished off the last of the enemy walkers, leaving only infantry to mop up on the rolling grasslands of a southern hemisphere continent.

Their dropship transports were housed in and operated out of the airfield, leaving the spaceports as the commerce terminals, but as Jennifer made her way to the interior she moved up several levels to the skyline walkway that gave her a brief glimpse of the nearest mech bay promenade.

She paused a moment to look it over, seeing the normal burrows that the mech bay was constructed inside and coated over top of with multiple layers of dirt/rock/armor…which in this case was all armor given that they were on an ice field and the actual ground was deep beneath them. Outside the surface ‘bumps’ were large clearings broken up by a scattering of buildings. Here there were multiple mechs, most of which were stationary and set into lines, but a few were walking about and heading towards a couple of dropships, ostensibly readying for deployment.

The other mechs should have been berthed inside, not standing outside. Jennifer wondered what they were doing out there, for she didn’t think there were any pilots currently in them. They looked like they were parked, and sticking them out in the open was a bad idea in case the base came under attack and the enemy either got through the shields or slipped in a sneak shot before they went up.

She’d have to inquire about that when she got to her headquarters, now that this base was falling under her command.

The skyline walkway ran across the top of the spaceport and several other buildings before it came to a tram terminal. Jennifer boarded one of the small craft that ran the enclosed rails and rode it across the top/mid level of the base, passing over some buildings and through others until she got off at the terminal nearest the headquarters and hiked the rest of the way on foot, travelling down multiple levels until she got over to the subterranean control room where she found Kip waiting with his personal bundle set on the ground beside his feet while he studied a hologram of something on the planet’s surface.

“In a hurry?” she asked, glancing at the duffle.

“Places to go, things to do,” he said with a smile. “I trust you can keep things together here?”

“I find that question insulting,” Jennifer said sarcastically.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Make sure this cleanup skirmish is thorough. We don’t want to let the Skarrons keep a few infantry in place to act as scouts for their next attack.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“All yours then,” he said, offering her his armored hand.

She shook his black glove in her bare hand, glad that he didn’t squeeze too hard. Jennifer nodded and Kip released his grip, grabbing his striker helmet and locking it in place before retrieving his duffle and heading out of the control room.

He didn’t waste any time, heading for one of the airfields and climbing into his personal skeet, painted blue through the fuselage and yellow on the antigrav ‘T’ tips. The trailblazer shoved his duffle into a compartment below his feet and slid onto the pommel seat before hitting the button to lower the armored canopy into place, blocking out his view until the holographic HUD activated, replacing the armor with an exterior view seemingly through the material.

Kip lifted off moments later, flying up over the base and accelerating laterally as he continued to gain altitude, eventually rising up to orbit some 1500 miles to the east and rendezvousing with his ride out of the system. Using nothing but antigravs, for the skeets didn’t have maneuvering thrusters, Kip gently crept the aerofighter through the vacuum of space and into one of the hangar bays of the Taro Adun.

His normal flagship, the Tassadar, was sitting in a Star Force shipyard undergoing an extensive refit after getting the crap kicked out of it by the Skarrons. Fortunately for it and him the massive warship had enough mass to survive the assault and keep the drones operational, though the Skarrons had destroyed almost all of the transmitters. They’d had to rely on a short range backup placed at the center of the warship to continue to orchestrate their defense escort, though if that hadn’t functioned there had been other Star Force warships in the area that would have picked up the control slack, meaning the drones wouldn’t have been taken out of the battle.

But it had shown that the Skarrons knew the warships were the control units for the drones, and that they weren’t going to be hesitant in attacking them. It was a potential weakness for Star Force, one that they’d armored over considerably, including preprogramming attack profiles into the drones so they could continue fighting even without exterior control, but so long as they maintained a technological edge Kip wasn’t worried, for they’d been reworking the warship design continuously, now up to the Mk. 23 variety that the Tassadar was being reworked into.

The Taro Adun was a Mk. 22 that had only seen light combat, but that was likely to change as Kip left the Rvot System and headed further down on the galactic plane.

He took no other ships with him, traveling several weeks until he crossed over into Gamma Region, which sat below Earth and the Core Region, but stretched out wider the farther down you went, given the 45 degree angle from centerline that it was charted off of. The system to which Kip was headed was far beyond the scattering of colonies that Nevil oversaw, putting it closer to Zeta and Beta Region colonies.

It was nearly straight down from Protovic territory, with a slight coreward shift, and totally uninhabited…containing two gas giants orbiting a pair of red giant stars that were near to merging into one. Beyond that there was nothing else in the system.

Traveling to the outermost of those gas giants, the Taro Adun made a microjump across the system and dropped into battlemap transmission range with Kip seeing numerous Star Force signatures popping up on the bridge holo. There were three other Warship-class jumpships, one from the 13th fleet and two from Ivan’s Clan Cookie, which took the award for the most ridiculous name, especially when paired with the colored M&Ms paint scheme that all their craft were covered with, including the pair of jumpships.

Hilarious to newcomers, Kip no longer saw anything other than a strong Clan when he pictured the Cookies, and was grateful that Ivan had been able to devote the pair of warships to this latest puzzle piece mission, given that Kip had none to spare. Clan Protoss was fully engaged in the defense of the Protovic, leaving little resources left to go hitting the Skarrons elsewhere.

The rendezvous system they were in now sat 1.4 lightyears from their target system of Dcan, and formerly home to the Issvoks, an associate of the Protovic. They’d been a single system race with trading ties throughout the region, and hadn’t put up much of a fight when the Skarrons targeted their world. The most recent intel the Protovic had suggested that the Issvoks had been completely wiped out, with the Skarrons taking possession of their planet and moving on, leaving the conquered world behind their forward pressing fleets and giving anyone who was bold enough to hit it an easy target.

Normally Kip wouldn’t have bothered going after Skarron conquests, knowing that it would probably draw a reprisal, but this was a special case. First off the Protovic had brought it to his attention, citing they would like to incorporate what Issvoks had escaped destruction by being off planet at the time of the invasion into the Alliance refuge populations. Arrangements for that had already been made, but so far only a handful had been found and brought into the ADZ.

The second reason was the location…just on the edge of what Star Force had loosely tagged as the ADZ border in Gamma Region, despite the fact it was far from any Star Force or Alliance colony…officially. In truth it was close to one of the private networks Star Force was setting up, with this one belonging to Ivan and Megan, which was one reason why he’d been willing to devote resources to the mission.

The nearest outpost was 15 lightyears away, giving them a light, backup supply line out to them if needed, but the plan was to have a self-sufficient presence that could then backfeed into that portion of Gamma Region, establishing colonies that would then link up with current ones decades down the road.

Which brought him to the third reason…and the owners of the bulk of the fleet sitting next to the three warships.

For years Canderous had literally begged the trailblazers to let them have a greater role in the warfront, with them always playing it safe and giving the Canderians small, yet crucial assignments for them to gain some experience on. It had never been enough to satisfy the military civilization, but they’d done their duty all the while expanding their network of sedas throughout the Core Region and elsewhere where allowed.

This was to be the first major Canderian assault, with Kip knowing that he needed to be present to make sure nothing went wrong…and to make sure they got their foothold on this wide open border in the ADZ before the Skarrons felt like pushing inside it. He and the Canderians both knew that the Skarrons might respond aggressively to losing the planet, and they were prepared to face the brunt of their reprisal. In fact, the Canderians seemed to welcome it, while Kip would much prefer the Skarrons overlooking the loss of the world and continuing to press their attacks against the Protovic, much as they hadn’t hit another Star Force world since they’d gotten their butts kicked in their first attempt at an invasion.

He had no doubts the Skarrons hadn’t given up on the idea, but the Protovic were putting up a good fight and he assumed the enemy needed to concentrate their resources on the one target before trying to branch out onto multiple fronts in the region. That, or until the Skarron leadership decided to pay more attention to the region and send the mass of reinforcements that Star Force knew they were capable of producing.

All the more reason to get at least a single point of defense established on the Gamma Region border, especially with more and more refugee populations, and sometimes entire races, fleeing both the Skarron and lizard fronts and filling in the very large amount of territory within the ADZ…of which they had plenty more to accommodate as many allies as they could collect, so long as they weren’t too picky about the environment of the available worlds.

As soon as Kip’s ship arrived the assault fleet was complete, with the entire armada microjumping out to the central stars and making the interstellar jump over to the neighboring system with the Taro Adun and the other warships leading the way. As soon as they arrived in Dcan they scanned the area around the central star, seeing it devoid of ships, then microjumped out to the Skarron-held planet of Waxcvat, finding only 6 Skarron warships in orbit…all of which were destroyer class.

There were more than 50 other Skarron ships, all of which fled the newcomers as the warships moved to intercept them as the Star Force jumpships began to deploy their drones. The Skarrons made a quick run against the Taro Adun, unloading some plasma and missiles against her shields before jumping away from the planet…or rather 5 did. One got skewered by a cleansing beam and couldn’t jump out, leaving it easy pickings for the drones.

The four warships settled into low orbit with their full complement of drones deployed as the Canderians began jumping in. First came their own warships, shaped like knife blades and accompanied by independent drones that were far larger and not block shaped. They had no crews, but operated a variety of functions. Some were carriers that housed smaller drones and fighters, others were pure battleships and some were shield ships that carried few weapons but acted as blockers to stave off heavy, directed attacks against the commanding warships.

Looking like Super Star Destroyers, the warships settled into orbit, some 73 strong, bringing their drone fleets with them ahead of the much larger ships to come.

Or rather the sedas that came, carried into planetary orbit by specially designed jump cradles. First came a trio of small ones, each only 2.3 miles in diameter and specialized for strategic mining operations. Following them came progressively larger ones, culminating in a 23 mile wide giant that took 6 jump cradles working together to carry between the stars.

Those jump cradles detached immediately upon arrival, with all of the 13 sedas maneuvering into their desired orbits on their own, much smaller gravity drives. Once settled in those sedas spewed forth hundreds of landing craft, with Kip taking to his skeet and dropping down from orbit with them as the Canderian troops headed for the wreck of a planet that the Skarrons had taken up residence on in a few key locations.

There might not have been any Issvoks left alive to save, but they were definitely going to be avenged, with their planet serving a strategic purpose against the Skarrons as it was shortly to become part of the ADZ and a big middle finger waving in the enemy’s face.

4

December 19, 2504

Numar System (Calavari Territory)

Sashneo

Morgan watched from the command nexus onboard her Melee-class warship Green Ranger as the last Alliance evacuation fleet slowly moved out of orbit, a few ships at a time, enroute to the system’s star and from there across what had formerly been Calavari territory to Drema and the conduit into what was now being called the ADZ. Most of the ships were non-Star Force, and even non-Hycre, for this was the last call, with the masses that were left on the planet being crammed into every transport available.

Sashneo had served its purpose as one of the transitional worlds, but its time had come to an end. The lizard lines were now just next door, with Morgan’s fleet having held the system against their probing attacks for the past 7 years as they pulled more refugees from the surrounding systems. Recently most of those had been non-Calavari, for despite how large their empire had once been, they’d run out of people to rescue…and unfortunately that was due to the war and not their evacuation efforts, for less than 7% of their former population had been relocated.

There were still other worlds within the region that had been Calavari territory, inhabited by dozens of races, but if they hadn’t pulled out by now the train wasn’t waiting for them any longer, and they’d have to deal with the lizards on their own…or hope that they deemed them inconsequential and passed them by.

Morgan was in the command nexus because several lizard attack groups were snooping around the system, and despite the hunter teams she had out pursuing them they had yet to be completely eradicated. That meant that some of the evacuation ships might come under attack, which was unacceptable. Hence she had her defense fleet spread out to cover the evacuation route to the stellar jumpline, with her massive ship holding the anchor position in planetary orbit where the last of the transporters were clustered as they picked up the remaining dropships coming up from the surface.

Onboard those dropships were the architects of the transition world, those people that had overseen its setup and operation, and who now had just overseen its closure, with the removal of all sensitive materials that they didn’t want the lizards to get their hands on. Morgan had considered bombarding the planet to destroy the infrastructure in order to deny it to the enemy, but ultimately decided not to waste the ammunition. If the lizards wanted the Alliance structures then they were theirs to claim, for in a few hours’ time they’d be abandoning the planet and the system, with Morgan knowing they weren’t planning on coming back.

Wanting to keep the last bit of this operation tidy, Morgan stayed in the nexus keeping an eye on all ship movements and tweaking them as she wished until the last of the dropships were onboard and the transports made microjumps out from the planet with their escorting warships…leaving the Green Ranger as the last ship in orbit.

Morgan pulled up a holographic display of Sashneo and gave it one last real time look, seeing the mass of construction they’d jammed onto the planet only a handful of years ago, only now to abandon it. It had served its purpose, but it still felt like a waste and Morgan knew that while they had accomplished their mission this was still a defeat. Yet one more Calavari world that would soon go to the enemy…assuming they wanted it.

With a simple signal sent to the bridge, Morgan gave the order to leave and Admiral Wilkinson got the massive warship underway as it chased the tail of the evacuation line over to the star, finding a few dozen still waiting to make the jump out when they arrived, surrounded by 6 warships and their fleets of drones that were now beginning to be recalled into their berths. Morgan’s command ship waited on them and let them jump first, meaning they were the last one out, which as fitting, since Morgan had been fighting on the Calavari front for a full century now.

Over the days that followed the Green Ranger made slow jumps, following the long line of transports as they bounced their way from system to system and into the Star Force Calavari territory that was on the edge of the ADZ, but nearly all of the transports didn’t stop there aside for fuel and supplies. They continued down the conduit to various locations while Morgan’s fleet stayed behind, either reinforcing the defense line there or being redeployed out to the other 7 transitional worlds that were still operational.

The Calavari worlds that the Protovic were diligently guarding were the only other Calavari systems remaining intact, with those on the far side of their former territory having succumbed when the Kvash and others abandoned their defense. Morgan had helped to evacuate as many of them as possible, but given the distances involved and the aggressiveness of the lizards and their Nestafar allies, few of those Calavari had survived, leaving only these two little bastions of defiance remaining, with the Protovic protectorate having been convinced to join with the Star Force Calavari.

Taryn was there, facilitating the evacuation routes to that area and organizing their defenses as part of their population was being siphoned off to HTC for conversion training. Slowly, year by year, newly minted Star Force Calavari were being return to replace them, giving the new Calavari territory two clusters on the edge of the ADZ, with Leif heading up the defense and remaining evacuation efforts in the Drema-centered section, which had become known as the Rim sector, with the Calavari systems on the Protovic border likewise being labeled the Core sector.

With a trailblazer overseeing each and the combat within the old Calavari territory all but over, Morgan’s time there was at an end, with her leaving the Green Ranger behind to become part of Leif’s fleet as she took temporary command of one of the older Warship-class jumpships and traveled the full length of the conduit back to Epsilon Eridani, where she spent several weeks getting caught up on Clan Ninja Monkey activities and assets there while she got in some much needed ground training.

She’d spent so much time on jumpships that her ‘land legs’ were quite rusty, with Morgan relishing some long forest runs and the uneven footing challenge that they provided. While she had gone on surface missions from time to time those had been rare…and none of them were workouts where she could just relax and grind out the miles over the terrain.

It took her a few days to begin to really unwind, not just from the outdoor runs, but by the change of venue. The personnel around her, from the Clan to the mainline Star Force colonies, to the workload, which was management, training, and creation, were suddenly back to what had been normal to her prior to going to the Calavari front. She’d been back for short stays on occasion, but it wasn’t until her mind began to release her responsibilities to the Calavari and turning that horrific situation into something positive did she realize just how much she didn’t like being cooped up on jumpships.

Like any Archon, she’d adjusted to the circumstances at hand, but now she was realizing just how much she’d been missing, and after a few weeks of letting it all sink in she promised herself she wasn’t going to take on any more long term fleet assignments…if she could help it.

It was a full month before she eventually got around to meeting up with Dakota, Tyr, and Kerrie at Corneria Prime, the planet’s command center and capitol of the system. She got to the briefing room last, with the other three trailblazers already engaged in a conversation with ArchDuke Hightower.

“Well, well…look who finally showed up,” Tyr said as she walked in.

“Shut up,” she said lightly, pulling out a chair next to Dakota and sitting down. “I had a mountain of Clan stuff to take care of. What did I miss?”

“Not much,” Hightower said dismissively. “We were just arguing over production quotas.”

“Clue me in.”

“Warships vs. infrastructure,” Kerrie summed up pithily.

“Infrastructure builds warships,” Hightower reminded them. “Corneria has a great deal of untapped resources that I want to exploit, but to do so at the pace I desire means we can’t be overrunning the shipyards due to lack of available material.”

“Epsilon Eridani’s shipbuilding capability is beginning to exceed its resources,” Dakota explained.

Morgan frowned. “Doesn’t matter how many shipyards you have if you don’t have the supplies to feed them.”

“Exactly my point,” Hightower said, throwing a glance at Tyr and Kerrie.

“Morgan, you know how badly we need more warships on the front lines,” she argued. “Aside from Sol we’re the major producer, and the Clans can’t field enough as it is. We have to have mainline production ramping up.”

“The real question is how urgent is the need,” Hightower inquired with a raised eyebrow.

“I need numbers,” Morgan prompted.

Dakota tapped the tabletop a few times and a statistical hologram lit up between the five of them at the rectangular table, with Hightower sitting at the narrow end.

The others stayed silent for several minutes as Morgan absorbed the production numbers and the proposed plan that Hightower was floating, which would reduce warship production by 32% in exchange for building MCV jumpships over the next 12 years that he would then use to amp up construction on the slew of smaller planets in the system.

Currently there were 14 main planets, one of which belonged to the Hycre, all of which were heavily populated, but there were hundreds more tiny ones in odd orbits at great distance from the others. Some of them had already been lightly inhabited by mining and construction crews, but there were far too many to get to in a short period of time with their current production slate…and Morgan wasn’t sure why they’d even want to, given their small size.

She glanced up from the holo and looked at Hightower, who technically was in command of all non-Clan infrastructure in the system, meaning he could tailor the production quotas as he liked, but he knew better than to mess with warship production without the Archons’ approval.

Morgan shook her head. “I don’t see what you’re trying for here. These planets are far too small to worry about right now. Surface facilities on the current ones should field more resources in the near future.”

“It’s not the near future that concerns me. It’s our rate of growth. Individually these planets are not significant, but combined they will be the equivalent of two more Class E planets. The trouble is getting facilities built that can service them all. The spread out nature of the resources they contain is the issue, which is why I need smaller development platforms. A temporary reduction in warship production will yield a higher rate of production down the road once the resources from these planets are added into the supply chain. Plus the MCVs can be deployed to other systems afterward. With so many planets going to other races, we’re going to have to be savvy to get what we need in future expansions.”

“Yet we have to survive long enough to get there,” Kerrie countered, “hence the problem.”

Morgan groaned. “We need both.”

“Exactly,” Dakota agreed.

“Where’s the Kiritak supply level at?”

“Holding steady, but it’s limited by the amount of cargo traffic available. Most of our local production is fed by local resources, and even if we had Kiritak supplement it wouldn’t scratch the surface of what we need. Epsilon Eridani has to be self-sufficient, and it has to be able to provide the fleets that the rest of Star Force needs. That need is growing, and if our ability to provide it doesn’t also grow we’re going to limit ourselves in centuries to come.”

Morgan looked at Kerrie, then Tyr, and finally Dakota. “You’ve been here longer that I have been. What do you suggest?”

“Keeping to the production schedule,” Tyr said firmly.

“How bad is it out there?” Dakota asked.

Morgan sighed. “Bad enough, but it’s only going to get worse. The lizards aren’t to the Rim sector yet, but when they get there we’re going to need every ship we can get.”

“Or Sentinel,” Kerrie added.

Morgan looked at Hightower. “Are you building those here?”

“Just the ones for our own use. We’re not exporting any. That’s Sol’s turf.”

“I hate to say it, but…”

“Time to rip the band-aid off?” Kerrie finished.

Morgan nodded.

“Now that’s a reference I haven’t heard in a long time,” Hightower commented.

Dakota frowned. “Meaning what?”

“We go all-in and build his MCVs as fast as possible. Full production.”

Hightower raised an eyebrow, but remained silent.

Tyr shook his head. “That’s not going to work.”

“If we have two bad options, might as well get it over with as quick as possible,” Morgan explained. “This way the onus is on us being able to hold the line with the ships we have, not on him,” she said, pointing at Hightower, “to build more ships than he is capable years from now. The war is only going to escalate, so if we’re going to take a production hit now is the best time to tackle it.”

“Wars,” Dakota corrected.

Tyr looked at Hightower. “How long with full production?”

“I haven’t run those numbers because I didn’t think it was a realistic option, but if we go full-in on both military and cargo lines I’d guess 2 years, 3 max, with a delayed implementation as we finish up the current slate.”

“And that will give you what you need here?”

“As well as the ability to expand to other systems not currently possible, though those projects wouldn’t be under my command.”

“This is a bad idea,” Tyr reiterated. “But I agree that things aren’t going to get any better in the future. If this gets us more ships down the line, then it’s worth doing…so long as we can hold out. As it is, I’m not sure any of us know how hard we’re going to get hit and where, which is why I’d prefer having every ship we can get.”

“I don’t disagree,” Morgan told him, “but I know if he’s asking then there’s a significant need.”

“Thank you,” Hightower said, bowing his head slightly. “I promise I’ll make this work to our advantage if you can hold out.”

“You better,” Kerrie joked, “or we’ll bust you back down to Duke.”

“If I don’t I’ll bust myself down.”

“Ok, next item on the list,” Dakota said with a straight face. “Morgan, what level are you at?”

The striker gave him a bemused look. “54.”

Tyr whistled, and Morgan saw him and Kerrie exchange a glance.

“What?”

Dakota reached over and put his hand on Morgan’s consolingly. “Paul is at 55.”

“Oh, hell no…”

“Afraid so,” Kerrie confirmed. “He’s been on a training tear ever since he got back to Earth.”

“Last update I got said he was at 52. How’d he jump 3 levels?”

“We were curious about that too,” Dakota said. “Seems he had a weak score holding him back that he had a breakthrough in.”

“Let me guess, swimming?”

“Yep.”

“Damn him,” Morgan whispered. “How’d he jump three levels?”

Dakota dug into the interface and eventually brought up the Archon training scores…at least the ones most recently updated, given how spread out they were across various star systems.

“Not three,” he said, pointing to the jump in swimming scores.

Morgan’s jaw dropped. “19?”

“He hasn’t bothered to note how that happened, but we have a few guesses,” Tyr commented.

“What’s the leading theory?” Morgan asked, going through his subcategory list and seeing several swimming scores that were now above her own.

“He cheated and grew gills,” Dakota remarked.

“We’re guessing he finally fixed whatever his drawback was,” Kerrie translated. “Maybe made a correction with the V’kit’no’sat medical station.”

“Why wouldn’t he have done that before…assuming there was something wrong with him. I just thought he was slow.”

“He’s not slow,” Hightower commented, having been his former Clan Marquis.

“He’s not fast in the water either,” Morgan countered. “Do you know something?”

“Afraid not. Other than communiques I haven’t talked with Paul in years.”

“Well has anyone bothered to ask him?” Morgan wondered.

“Message sent, still waiting on a reply,” Tyr told her.

“Well do share when it comes in,” Morgan said, now thoroughly miffed. She’d held top Archon status forever, and she definitely didn’t like Paul pulling some magic out of his ass to suddenly jump ahead of her in the standings.

“Aren’t you due for a checkin with him and Jason anyway?” Kerrie asked. “You still haven’t gotten the battlemeld yet, I assume?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“So go ask him yourself,” Dakota suggested. “And send pictures.”

“I think I will,” Morgan said, having planned to get there eventually anyway.

“If that’s settled,” Hightower said politely, “we have personnel transfers to orchestrate.”

Kerrie could tell by the look on his face that he considered such things to be painful, given that each time it occurred he had to ship out some of his highly skilled subordinates to other systems that were starting up or expanding into larger colonies. That couldn’t be helped, for the most talented people were either here or in Sol, meaning this is where the brain trust had to be siphoned from.

“That we do,” Kerrie agreed, being the one that would be setting up a trio of new colonies in Delta Region through Clan Ahsoka that would eventually become mainline run Alliance Worlds. Her people would be overseeing the supply lines that would feed the startup costs, but it was mainline personnel that would be running them, meaning that they needed both skilled and experienced leaders that Hightower was going to have to part with. “What have you got?”

Hightower brought up the short list he’d assembled and began making his recommendations as Morgan stewed, thoroughly ticked at herself for letting Paul pass her up, despite the meteoric rise his swimming skills had undergone.

5

June 23, 2505

Solar System

Earth

Davis looked up from the datapad he was reading as he heard footsteps entering his office late at night. He was just about to call it a day himself, then was suddenly glad he hadn’t when he saw an old friend climbing the stairs into his office with the gentle grace that made her almost silent, and Davis was proud to have even noticed her approach.

“Now that’s a face I haven’t seen in a long time,” he said, setting the datapad down and standing up.

“Figured I should drop in while I had the chance,” Morgan said as Davis came out around his desk to meet her, then wrapped her up in a big hug.

“I never had a chance to thank you for the work you’ve done with the Calavari,” he said, stepping back and waving her towards a chair. “You’ve saved a race…and one very important to Star Force’s future, I think.”

“Not enough of them,” Morgan countered, sitting down and remembering back to the first time she was in this office along with Paul and Jason as the secrets of ambrosia were spelled out to her.

Davis nodded, knowing better than to argue the point with her. Archons didn’t like losing anyone, and no matter how many she saved her mind would be focused on the failures rather than the successes.

“Are you back to stay?”

“We’ve evacuated everyone we could find, save for those who didn’t want to go. We’ve actually been pulling more from other races than Calavari in recent years. If there are any more out there I don’t know where they’re hiding. We’ve sent a scout into every system that was formerly Calavari territory and evacuated everyone we found. The other races in the region have already evacuated, save for those who chose to stay, so my time there is over. Leif and Taryn are staying in the new Calavari sectors to organize their defense, leaving one trailblazer too many, so I’m cycling back to catch up on Clan matters and soak in some sun. Didn’t realize how much I missed planetary atmosphere.”

“Where are you heading next?”

“I’ve got some business in the pyramid, then I’m a floater until I find another mission. Don’t suppose you have anything for me?”

“Nothing worthy of your skills, no,” Davis said with a light laugh. “You’ve earned a vacation. Why not take it?”

“Being off a jumpship is vacation enough, and I had several weeks of downtime on Corneria already.”

“Typical Archon.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow. “When’s the last time you had a vacation?”

“I’m not involved in combat.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Davis sighed. “Probably before you were born.”

“More Archon than you give yourself credit for.”

“Hardly,” Davis said dismissively. “But seeing how we both have an aversion to off time, how about you bring me up to speed with what you guys are working on.”

“Something specific you want to know about? We usually keep you in the loop.”

“Not your current projects, but where you’re thinking ahead. The stuff I suspect you talk about with each other prior to solidifying any plans. You guys run the frontier regions, just want to know where your heads are at.”

Morgan studied him carefully. “You’ve got something of your own in the works and you want to make sure it doesn’t conflict with what we’ve got running?”

Davis leaned back in his seat with a smirk on his face. “How in the hell did you know that? I thought we all had Ikrid blocks.”

“Deductive reasoning. What are you working on this time?” Morgan asked curiously.

“The future,” he said, with concern on his face, “of this new Alliance we’re forming.”

“Problems?”

“A few, but more on the horizon, I fear. Maybe you haven’t been keeping score, but population wise Star Force is in the minority. We still have an infrastructure advantage, but reports I’ve been getting are indicating that the other races we’ve agreed to shelter are beginning to merge into a communal identity, with plenty of power games beginning to be played.”

“I caught some of that in Corneria.”

“Your thoughts?”

“Not something I’ve been worried about, given my previous mission. But it seems like we’ve picked up a lot of backseat drivers who are thinking less like refugees and more like equal partners, minus the defensive responsibility. Some of the races appear to be stepping up in that regard, but a lot are sitting behind our defense lines and building up their powerbase. Dakota says the diplomatic situation has become a bit like…well, it’s chaotic as everyone is trying to define their position, and some races are using that to advance their own agendas.”

“What were you going to say?”

“I was going to say it reminded me of the Citadel in Mass Effect, but I figured you never played that video game.”

“You figured wrong. A friend of mine was an addict and dragged me through the games. I admit I was less interested in the combat than I was in the logistics, but Citadel Station is familiar. A lot of politics and self-serving races with little interest in the common welfare.”

“Well, that’s pretty much what we’re developing, minus the communal watering hole.”

“That’s where my line of thought was taking me. We’re on good standing with the Hycre and Protovic, thanks to you guys. I still haven’t met either race, and I’d prefer to keep it that way, though I do have a suggestion for how to stabilize this growing internal conflict.”

“Almost no one has met a Hycre,” Morgan corrected him, “and for me there was still a wall in between. Why don’t you want contact with them? I’d assumed your duties here prevented you from traveling out to meet them.”

“I understand Humans, but I’m only beginning to get a grasp of Calavari and Kiritak society. And that’s mostly because you guys have created a bridge by training them in Star Force ways. Jace brought one of the Calavari with him to Atlantis a few years back, and that encounter opened my eyes to a great many things. I felt his mind, limited as my Ikrid ability is, and I was surprised by how different it was. All the training reports I’ve read about the Calavari have been quite detailed, but I made a mistake when interpreting them. They are doing things for a different reason than I believed, and I get the feeling that they’re the most like us of any of the races.”

“I understand them,” Morgan offered, “it just takes some time to get used to them.”

“Which is why I’m glad you guys have stepped up and handled all interracial diplomacy. I’m behind on the learning curve, but I can still spot some warning signs. Our guests cannot be trusted, and if we’re not careful we could be ushering in our conquerors if the exterior threats lesson.”

“Not that I disagree with you, but the lizards, Nestafar, and Skarrons aren’t going anywhere.”

“But if we’re able to establish a defense line and truly create the Alliance Defense Zone, those threats will decrease in immediate importance and a new internal dynamic will form.”

“You’re saying the guests are going to want to start running the place?”

“I can’t be for sure, because of my unfamiliarity with the races, but I suspect a high probability of it.”

“The Hycre came to our aid in the beginning when there was little need to do so. I think they can be trusted, more or less. And while I’m not personally familiar with the Protovic, Kip seems to think they can be trusted in a similar manner.”

“Both of them are engaged in heavy fighting,” Davis pointed out. “And they are not my immediate concern. They and Star Force create the defense shield that protects the others. It’s the others that I foresee the problems developing in.”

“You said you had an idea?”

“We need to provide more structure to this Alliance than handing out territory slots and establishing basic rules. We need to stay in the lead, which means an active involvement in internal affairs.”

“Such as?”

“I have some ideas, but like I said, I don’t know the players we’re dealing with. I need to personally get involved, and I don’t want to bring an embassy into Sol.”

“Transfer to Corneria then. It’s already the hub of the Alliance, both the original and the overall one we’re cobbling together. Every race plus outsiders have an embassy there.”

“I’ve thought of doing just that, given that Sol is pretty much a calm property. There are still some special tweaks that I need to make, but most of that can be handled via the relay network.”

Morgan leaned forward, resting her elbows on his desk. “So what’s stopping you?”

“Changing one office for another isn’t going to be enough. In order to build a real Alliance out of the pieces you’ve rescued, I have to learn who we’re dealing with. And to do that I need…closer contact.”

“Spit it out already or I’ll just grab your hand.”

“For most men that wouldn’t be viewed as a disincentive,” Davis said with a flirty/sarcastic wink. “The problem is I need to go on a tour of everything we’ve got out there beyond Sol, but the travel lag is going to keep me out of contact for too long. Stationing on Corneria isn’t much different than here, as far as comm lag is concerned. But if I move about I’ll be off the grid too much.”

“You’re afraid the kids won’t be able to mind the store without you?”

“They’re used to having me around. I’ve never had kids, but some old friends of mine, now long dead, did, and I haven’t forgotten some of the stories they told me about how everything could be fine and in order at home, then they step outside to do something and come back inside 2 minutes later and all hell had broken loose. That shouldn’t happen with Star Force, but that unknown factor is why I’ve stayed put as long as I have, and I don’t know how to alleviate the problem.”

“Well that’s easy enough. Don’t tell them you’re gone.”

Davis frowned. “I’m not exactly someone that can go missing without being noticed.”

“Why not? Most of your interactions aren’t face to face, are they?”

“You obviously have no idea what my schedule is like,” Davis said with a laugh.

“Aside from personnel in Atlantis,” Morgan corrected herself.

“I have holocomm communications with other locations on Earth and Luna, but you’re right that we don’t bring in guests to Atlantis all that often.”

Morgan smiled. “I know what you need to do.”

“I see that devious look on your face…and for some reason I find myself liking it.”

“Go rogue. Assign a standin, an Administrator you can trust that can take your place here and give orders in your name. That will get rid of the time lag, from others’ points of view, and you can check in with him via the relays to stay in touch. Then you can go wherever you need to and no one aside from a few trusted individuals will even know you’ve left. No records of transit. You’ll be a ghost in the system until you come back here and resume your place. Plan it right, and no one will even miss you.”

“How do I do that when you guys won’t let me leave without an armada for an escort?”

“You won’t be in danger if no one knows you’ve gone, and you can travel in my shadow. I’ll be your guide and escort, and me pulling a warship for my personal transit won’t draw attention.”

Davis sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

Morgan shook her head. “You said you need to get to know the races out there. Well, I can get you far closer anonymously than you can as yourself. And no, we’re not letting you go out without protection. And I wouldn’t trust anyone other than a trailblazer to do this. I’m looking for my next mission and this is it. As soon as you can get things set up we can leave…after I make a short trip down to Antarctica.”

“Battlemeld upgrade?”

“That and a few other things…”

“How?” Morgan demanded.

Paul looked up from his tray of foodstuffs in the cafeteria, having sensed her presence before she’d walked up to him, and raised a wait finger as he chewed the last half of a roll and grabbed the last four cookies in his left hand as he got up.

“I’ll show you,” he said, ditching the tray in the return slot as he walked out with Morgan in tow. “When did you get back?”

“I haven’t posted anything since I left Calavari space. I got here yesterday.”

“In between missions?”

“No.”

“What’s new?”

“What’s new with you?” she countered as they walked through the halls.

Paul laughed. “Ticked?”

“Depends on how you did it.”

“Better if I show you. Let’s head down to the pond. You’re going to like this.”

“Is this what feeling second best is always like?” Morgan said deadpan. “It sucks.”

“Watch it, sister. I found a way to overcome a weakness. Even after you learn it, I’m not going to be so easy to stay ahead of from here on out. My Kryptonite is now gone.”

“You were never ‘easy’ to stay ahead of.”

“Well that’s better,” he said as they got outside the building and Paul grabbed a nearby mongoose. Morgan slid on behind him and wrapped herself up tight against his back as he zoomed off, eventually making their way down to the lower levels where the swimming dinosaurs had made their home.

Both trailblazers donned swim suits and found a small pool that was really a cupola off the underwater levels where one of the swimmers could interface with the Zen’zat in air. The roof was curved and the pool was oblong, with the far end connected underneath the wall to the main area beyond where a number of arrowheads and other craft were zipping about on training runs.

“Alright,” Paul said from the rim of the empty chamber. “Old school. Down and back. Ready?”

Morgan stepped up to the edge. “Ready.”

Paul sounded a three tone countdown telepathically, mimicking Mario Kart, with both of them jumping off head first into the water on the final ‘sound.’

With an ease born of tens of thousands of hours of training, both swam the 72 meter length to the far side, touched the wall that spanned the top of the subsurface connecting tunnel, and reversed direction. As was typical, Morgan beat Paul back by three body lengths, prompting a confused look on her face as they both floated with their hands on the rim catching their breath.

“That’s the normal you,” she commented. “What’s the new?”

Paul pulled himself up out of the water and took up his starting position again.

Morgan followed him up and set herself, then took off when Paul sent her the start tones…but this time he hit the water and took off far faster than she was capable of swimming. By the time he hit the turn he was already two body lengths ahead and pulling away, finishing ahead of her by at least five.

She pulled up along the edge and spat out a bit of water. “Ok, I’m impressed,” she admitted. “What did you do different?”

“Bioshield enhancement,” he said, holding out his hand above the water and pressing it down into the surface…with the water around his fingers smoothing out, showing Morgan that he essentially had an invisible flipper. “I can alter my body line and even add some fins as needed. Took me a long time to figure out how to do it, then even more to build up the necessary strength, but it works wonders.”

“I’ll say,” Morgan said, envious.

“And I can use it to block off my nostrils.”

Morgan laughed as she bobbed slightly in the water. “I bet you were more excited about that.”

“I was,” he said enthusiastically. “No more water in the airways.”

“Ok, I’m not ticked anymore. That’s actually pretty cool,” she said before pulling herself back up onto dry land.

As Paul came up a second later he saw the moisture on her blow off in all directions, save for her hair, as she threw off a little concussive energy to dry herself, then she pulled the tie out of her ponytail and began to ring it out.

“While you’re here, there’s something else I wanted to try.”

“What?” Morgan asked, standing back up straight and replacing the hair tie.

Paul walked to the edge of the water and pointed for her to stand opposite him on the dry side. “Hit me with a hard blast,” he said, bringing his left forearm up in a guard.

“How hard?” she said, taking her position.

“Make it challenging.”

“You think you can block it?”

“Fairly sure.”

“Alright,” she said, summoning up a good wave of tingles across her back and channeling them down into her forearm. She flicked it forward and released a concussive wave directly into Paul, then was shocked to see a wall of firework-like static flash in front of him when it hit.

It disappeared as quickly as it began, with Paul not having moved an inch.

“Did you even feel that?” she asked.

Paul shook his head. “No. Energy on energy. I can produce shields independent from my body or hard linked to my skeleton. This was independent. I just didn’t know how well it’d work, given that you can use it to walk through shields.”

“Most shields,” she corrected him, having read up on the psionic files multiple times. “Do it again.”

Morgan saw his forehead crease slightly, then he nodded.

She walked up and put her hand against the invisible wall, feeling it hard like glass beneath her fingertips and a good foot in front of Paul’s extended arm, then she summoned up another wave of tingles and shunted it into her hand and pressed into it.

The shield sparked and gave microscopically, but even as she leaned her body into it she couldn’t penetrate, eventually giving up and retreating a step.

“Nope,” she said, now thoroughly jealous.

“Good, because I’m almost out of juice. The shield eats ambrosia like crazy.”

“I know. How much force can you withstand?”

“Hard to say. There are a lot of variables involved.”

“What about plasma?”

“Lizard rifle, I’ve been able to hold up against 12 spaced shots when on full ambrosia load, but only three when they come in fast.”

“Useful,” Morgan commented.

“Very, when you’re caught outside your armor. You here for your battlemeld upgrade?”

“Yeah. Don’t suppose you’ve learned how to share that shield?”

“We haven’t found any of the non-melding triggers, and so far I’m the only one with the bioshield, so the techs only have the single sample to work with, though they’re guessing it had something to do with my resistance to an incoming Fornax hit.”

“I read that report. Hasn’t helped me find it yet.”

“You’ve found 3?”

“And stuck on three.”

“Well, let’s get you up to four. Have a seat.”

“Here?”

“We need someplace quiet, and this will do.”

“Works for me,” she said, sitting down crosslegged with Paul sitting to mirror her, reaching out to grab her hands and linking their minds directly, bypassing the Ikrid blocks. She resisted at first, out of reflex, then let him in, finding the presence of another trailblazer mind immensely soothing as it burned out the isolation she’d unwittingly accumulated during the Calavari mission.

Two days later she’d achieve the upgrade which, in typical Morgan fashion, was an unofficial record.

6

August 30, 2505

Prolio System (Alpha Region)

HTC

“There?” Davis asked over his dedicated comm line to Morgan.

“Yes,” she said, looking down on a wide plain full of Calavari from a high building top as they roamed about underneath the morning sunlight.

Davis zoomed in a bit more via the Archon helmet that he wore, seeing the smaller four-armed aliens moving about. “What exactly are they doing?”

“The old Calavari society had a strict gender gap. The males controlled everything and the females preferred it that way. Jason and Jace eliminated that by changing the way their younglings are raised. Those females are four years old and earning points for their brood by moving small weights from the pedestals to the intake slots.”

“What is this accomplishing?”

“Materially nothing, but two very important things. Previously the females were nesting freaks, with many staying indoors for years at a time. To break them of this habit they started them on very basic training activities, but in order to give them motivation to do so they had to tie everything into the brood standings. With the Calavari, their inner society is all about the broods. It’s been their excuse for lack of activity, and now we’re using it to drive their training, both physical and giving them early experience so they can join the workforce later on if they choose, rather than it being a completely unfamiliar field.”

“You mentioned points?”

“The Calavari broods are a bit like our Clans, except they’re based off of bloodlines and a lot of other foolishness. Bottom line is the females are insanely loyal to their broods, while the males view it as a childhood thing. They look down on the females and for good reason. They wouldn’t accept females within the military or workforce until they proved themselves to be capable…while the previous culture discouraged any physical training without actually banning it. End result was the females sat on their asses and let the males handle everything.”

“And now?” Davis asked, glancing at Morgan, who wore nothing more than her white with black stripe striker uniform, as opposed to the set of red adept armor that she insisted he wear whenever they went on one of their field trips.

“We broke the broods apart at birth and created new ones without all the old baggage. At present there are over 2,000 of them, and we create new ones as needed. When an infant is born, whether male or female, their lineage is hidden and they’re assigned to a discovery facility like this. They have to earn their bloodline association through completing their basic training, which usually takes them to the age of 5 or 6. Those you see down there don’t know which brood they are, but they want to know, which drives them on.”

“How long does their childhood last?”

“They’re fully mature at two and a half years, but will continue to grow in size for another 10 or so. They used to say that was just for the males, but once we put the females into training they began to grow beyond their normal size as well, but still far less than the males.”

“So these can reproduce?”

“We keep them segregated so they can’t. Once they earn their brood they’re moved to other facilities where their seconds stage of training occurs, which is still segregated. When they graduate from that they move into an integration period, out of which they can join Calavari society or continue on with advanced training.”

“What’s the current split?”

“We’re getting about 40% going on. The rest usually go turtle and start giving birth, but the underlying experience they gained from the training has had a decided shift in their society, leaving those born here very different from the refugees.”

“Trouble between the two?”

“There has been, but it’s fading as the generations wash.”

“So the females still identify heavily with the broods, but the males don’t care?”

“Oh they care, but more as a hobby. They have a very strong loyalty to their race that supersedes their brood…while the stagnant females tend to show the reverse. The ones that join the males tend to open their eyes to the greater whole, but on an individual basis. They develop a rogue mentality, creating two very different female personas. Those you see here are more uniform, having yet to make that split.”

“How do they respond when their newborns are taken away?”

“The refugees are very resistant, and we’ve had some incidents, but those born into these maturias are reluctant at worst. They understand where their younglings will go. The refugees do not and are understandably concerned.”

“How are the refugee broods handled?”

“They retain their old identity, but their younglings are randomly assigned to a new one. Trying to get them to accept a new brood is like getting gravity to push. Doable, but very difficult. We found it easier to just make a place for them until the old broods die out, unfortunately. Very few Calavari have achieved self-sufficiency, even with their ambrosia.”

“How many is very few?”

“Enough for an upper echelon to develop. Their leadership has stabilized, but it’s not very deep.”

“Have any of the females?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Davis watched the small Calavari continue moving about like ants, carrying the weights across the short distances with the tallies being marked up, making it clear what they were accomplishing.

“What do the points result in?”

“Perks and property. The stagnant females won’t cohabitate with non-broodmates. Rather than try and break them of this we turned it to our advantage. Each brood has a base amount of habitats, enough to hold their population uncomfortably. To get more living room they have to earn it, with the younglings’ points figuring in. The bulk of the points come from the habitats themselves, where the stagnant ones have to do some work or learn to live a bit overcrowded. All the work they do is brood related, but there’s considerable pressure for the younger females to do part-time work, maybe a 6 month stint or so, so the older ones can sit on their ass,” Morgan said disapprovingly.

“Any rebellion there?”

“Usually the rebellion occurs by the females simply leaving to do work that benefits all Calavari…and their brood doesn’t get points for that, so they’re pretty much going rogue.”

“Where do they live if they go rogue?”

“Standard Star Force quarters. If we can encourage them to break with the broods, then there’s no problem, but there seems to be a strong default bonding urge that has to be broken on an individual level, so this is the method we’ve established to facilitate that.”

“Getting unplugged from the Matrix?”

Morgan looked at him, a bit surprised. “Well said.”

Davis smiled beneath his helmet. “I got tired of you guys throwing out references I didn’t understand, so I asked for a list and went on a movie binge a few centuries back.”

“How’s the weight?”

“Tolerable, but I don’t know how many more hours I’m going to last.”

“Let’s get moving then. There’s something else I want you to see today.”

“Lead on,” Davis said, feeling the slight burn in his muscles from moving the armor around, something he hadn’t trained for.

He followed her easy gait down out of the open air of the planet and into one of the Calavari buildings that was a mix of Star Force and their native architectural preferences. They passed by hundreds of the Calavari on their way through the infrastructure, drawing many glances, but none that lingered, for while Humans weren’t common place in this complex, they were a familiar sight elsewhere on the planet.

While sections still housed refugees in a holding fashion, the bulk of the planet’s infrastructure was 100% Star Force, meaning integrated cities built for the use of both races. The Calavari were part of Star Force now, and as such having Humans walking around wasn’t a big deal.

But where Morgan took him next was a bit different. She didn’t don her armor, which may have seemed a bit reckless to others but Davis knew that with her psionic powers she could disrupt multiple minds and hinder any potential attackers. Still, he was glad for his own armor protection as they got off of a tram and crossed through a security checkpoint into one of the refugee sectors.

Davis didn’t need psionics to pick up a very different vibe here. As alien as the other Calavari had been, there had always been a thread of similarity that he could latch onto…and now he recognized how that thread had been Star Force training rather than something inherent to their race. As the pair of Humans walked through the high ceilinged walkways that stood three stories and were just as wide, giving the large bodied males that predominated the area plenty of room to maneuver.

Davis could see many more up on the 2nd and 3rd tier walkways where their quarters had their entrances. Many of the males were simply lounging around on the narrow platforms, leaning or sitting and watching the foot traffic below. A few females were seen moving about, but it was obviously apparent that they didn’t want to be caught outside unless necessary, keeping inside as Morgan had said.

“Has there been trouble here?”

Not much, she answered telepathically now that there were non-Star Force personnel around, hearing Davis’s voice in her earpiece. There is a lot of despair. Remember, these people came from a war zone where they lost, badly. Some are able to put it aside and look towards the future…but most of those have already left these areas for training programs. Those that choose to stay here are, frankly, a shambles.

“Are you giving them space or are they refusing to do anything?”

We haven’t pushed. After what they’ve been through just being alive is a victory.

“But their offspring go to the maturias?”

Yes. And most of the females don’t like it. The males could care less, for the most part. Some here are still awaiting training slots, so it’s not entirely the emotional slum you see here.

“Not the term I would have used.”

What would you use?

“Dangerous.”

That’s your ignorance talking. I don’t fear them. Can you touch their minds?

“I haven’t tried,” Davis said, reaching out with his limited Ikrid ability. He got a wash of weird, alien thoughts, but using what he’d learned of the Star Force Calavari’s minds in previous days he got a basic correlation…then began to see how much different their emotions were, and how they were clouding out everything else. He did feel anger in one of the people they passed, but mostly he felt evisceration. They didn’t want to be here, but had no home to go to, leaving them without purpose and no reason to continue living.

“They’re zombies.”

But they’re alive, and so long as they’re alive they have a chance to recover, she told him as the pair’s path was blocked by an extra large Calavari who had to stand upwards of 8 feet tall.

“What do you want here, Human?” it asked in the trade language.

“I want you to retrieve your honor,” Morgan bit back in a language Davis didn’t speak, with him guessing that it was native Calavari. After a century of dealing with them it only made sense that she would have picked up at least a few words…and knowing the trailblazers he should have expected her to have learned it in her spare time.

Davis felt a flare of anger from the Calavari, churning up his already chaotic mind.

“What do you know of honor, weakling?” he said in kind, leaving Davis out of the conversation.

“I know you are wasting your life here. There is an enemy to fight, yet you wallow here like a female…you coward.”

The next thing Davis knew Morgan shoved him to the side and he hit the ground, cushioned by his armor, then felt/heard a hard thud. He rolled over, getting his head upright, where he saw the trailblazer standing atop the Calavari’s chest and looking down into his wide face.

“Now get up and fulfill your duty,” Morgan said icily, hopping off the behemoth and picking Davis up by the arm before walking back onto their former path as if nothing had happened.

Don’t look back, she warned.

“What just happened?”

I poked the tiger. That one will be alright now, and maybe a few others that saw.

“Why did he get in our way?”

I did that. I felt him stewing and amped up his frustration, then planted the suggestion to confront us. Worst thing for some of these guys is to treat them with kid gloves. Sometimes all they need is a spur to get their heads clear. When you’ve lost so many times, some people stop fighting altogether, even when they can win. Bring the battle to them and old reflexes kick in.

“So you picked that fight?”

Yes.

“For my benefit?”

No, for his. I’ve never met him before, nor expect to in the future, so I had to seize the opportunity when it presented itself.

“You do that a lot?”

Picking fights is part of communication with a warrior-inclined race.

“Do the females respond the same?”

Different pressure points, but the same internal mechanism is there. We have it too, we’re just smarter about it. They may be alien minds, but they still have pride. Just a different flavor you’ll have to learn.

“I have a lot to learn, it seems,” Davis said as they continued to walk through the refugee section. “What other lessons do you have for me today, Master?”

Your sarcasm is improving, at least. Up ahead is what I wanted you to see.

Davis waited patiently as they walked the last bit in silence, with Morgan letting him soak in the scenery and sample the local minds…which he made a point of doing as often as he could without giving himself a headache from the effort.

Eventually they came to a stairwell and climbed up many levels until they arrived at an interior promenade overlooking a type of park, inside of which there were hundreds of females sitting together. Morgan quietly leaned against the wall, trying not to make any sounds, as she looked down on them through the scattering of potted trees.

This is one of the old broods, she said as Davis walked up next to her and looked down over the railing as a Calavari male came up behind them for a quick look, then backed out and gave them some space. Can you reach their minds?

Davis tried, but they were too far away. “No.”

Take off your left glove.

Davis reached down and disconnected it, with Morgan taking his hand in hers and creating an Ikrid link, allowing him to see their minds through her remarkably advanced Ikrid ability. This wasn’t the first time she’d done this to show him something, but every time she did he was no less impressed by her power.

“They feel so…damaged.”

They are damaged. People are meant to be active. This is what stagnation feels like on the inside, and it’s killing them.

“This is normal for a brood?”

More or less. There’s an extra depression here, due to their situation, but this sessile nature is typical of broods I’ve encountered before on their worlds.

“They feel…linked to one another.”

In illusion only. They have no telepathic connection. What you are feeling is a very strong fiction created off the natural biological urges. This is what we call ‘bad bonding’ run amuck, and it manifests most frequently with people who have surrendered or never developed their individuality. They’ve linked themselves to a fictitious hive mind, and because it’s fictitious there is no guiding force. They just sit here and rot…and occasionally mate.

“And they did this originally?”

They had brood pride then that drove them to some small activity, and their pride in their empire gave them cause for joy, but the stagnation remained. It just took longer for it to kill them. This is an original brood on a bad day, but still true to form. And it is this that we have tried to kill with the maturia. We don’t want their younglings transitioning to this without at least seeing that there’s another alternative. Their parents don’t want the separation, but it’s in the younglings’ best interests.

“What about the refugee younglings that come in with their parents?”

It’s hardest on them, with a painful transition, but once they make the adjustment they’re better off. It sounds harsh and if you go about it in the wrong way the parental protection drives flare up and you have an incident, but the Star Force Calavari are seeing the wisdom in it. These, sadly, are probably just going to sit here and mope with each other until they die out.

“You can’t poke the tiger here?”

Pick one.

“At random?”

Doesn’t matter. Just choose one.

Davis ‘looked’ around with Morgan’s sense, then slowly pointed to one with his mind.

The trailblazer responded by blacking out everyone else and highlighting that one mind. He felt her hack into the Calavari female and take control of her body. He didn’t understand what Morgan was doing but paid close attention, feeling her walk the Calavari over to a water fountain where she got a drink, gradually releasing control to the point where the female didn’t realize anything was amiss and finished her drink.

When done she turned and walked back to her spot, with Davis feeling the ugly transition. It was almost as if activity was evil in her mind, with her wanting to return to her sessile pose. When she sat back down it felt like an iron gate closed, with her mental signature diminishing greatly, almost as if she were going into a hibernation mode.

“What is that?”

A mix of fear and despair. Fear of individuality. Despair of purposelessness. If there’s an internal spark to access, you have a chance of waking them up. If there isn’t, you can try the reset button, but it’s a painful option, and if you don’t know the person or have cause to try, it’s near to a futile effort.

“What’s the reset button?”

Forced activity. You saw how she changed just by standing up and walking. The body has a strong influence on the mind, and by encouraging or forcing certain activities you can trigger certain reactions…which is why physical training for the younglings is so important.

“So you just leave them here to rot?”

We’ve given them shelter from the lizards, foodstuffs and a place to live…along with training if they want it. All they have to do is try. If they’re not willing to do that, well, some responsibility has to be on them.

“But each one is still a loss?”

I’ve had a great deal of experience with loss. What it comes down to is what battles we choose to fight. We might be able to wake up a few of these Calavari with intensive time and a lot of jarring, invasive prodding…but our efforts are best used providing the opportunity to those who don’t have it, rather than trying to prod these who simply refuse to try. Many would trade places with them in a heartbeat.

“When you put it that way, it kind of makes me mad.”

It should. But others, like the male we encountered before, are still trying on the inside, buried deep down. On the surface the two can look the same, so it’s important not to write anyone off. And even if they are like these, there’s a part of me that is angry with them as well as a part that doesn’t want to give up on them.

“So what do you do?”

What we can…and recognize the fact that in this messed up universe we’re not going to win every battle, no matter how hard we try. If you can’t come to terms with that you either quit trying or drive yourself insane from the horrors out there.

“Some of these people are so messed up they fight those trying to help them?”

You’re learning.

“As well as getting a bit queasy.”

You learn to deal with that too.

7

January 12, 2506

Dcan System (Gamma Region)

Waxcvat

“They’re heading to ground,” Kip warned from the command nexus onboard the Taro Adun. “Do not try to intercept with fighters. Their anti-air will rip them to shreds.”

“Copy that, Archon,” Consul Dayna-A003-73 confirmed from his command center onboard the A-231 seda that was the largest among the 13 in orbit. “Squadrons will establish perimeter escorts and intercept anything coming off their transports.”

“Keep them well wide,” Kip emphasized as he worked the nexus controls and ordered some of his and Canderous’s drones into more favorable positions to potentially catch the enemy transports on their way back up from the atmosphere after they dropped off their walkers and ground troops. The Skarron warships that had entered the system a few hours ago had retreated back to high planetary orbit and broken up into small groups after a light, exploratory attack on one of the sedas.

They’d been repelled easily, with the 284 warships deciding not to press the issue above screening to get their transports to ground. Entering the atmosphere at points well outside the sedas’ firing ranges, the transports had gotten through while the Canderous remotely-controlled drones had made their first kills, taking down 3 enemy destroyers and damaging several other capital ships.

Now that the transports were in atmosphere they were heading to a variety of landing zones, of which Kip was following closely. Canderous had established several mining outposts, as well as recycling measures for the mass of technological rubble on the planet, mostly due to the previous Issvok civilization, but there were a few bits of Skarron infrastructure that had been trashed/captured and were now being ‘mined’ for raw materials as well.

As he watched, Kip saw that none of the transports were headed to those locations, instead preferring to land in neutral territory, meaning both sides would have ample opportunity to plan out the coming ground game before they made contact.

“Archon, will you be taking part in the surface combat?” Dayna inquired.

“If necessary. We need to see how they plan to play this first.”

“With your permission, I’ll continue coordinating out forces from the ground.”

Kip smiled. “Trust me when I say that there will be plenty of combat opportunities in the coming months. These Skarrons are intractable bastards, and if they’re devoting troops to retake this world then they’re going to make a serious effort. We may get in over our heads, in fact, so don’t get in a rush for direct action. That said, permission granted and good luck. Where are you going down?”

“Firebase 8.”

“Copy that. I’m staying onboard for the moment. Their fleet is experienced and devious, and I want to feel them out a bit before I’m convinced that they’re staying back and watching.”

“That’s why I asked. Having both of us in transit to the ground would have been a momentary disadvantage that I did not want to afford the enemy.”

“Get moving, Consul. Time to impress me with your toys.”

“Challenge accepted,” the Canderian mission commander said, signing off.

Part of Kip wished he had mainline or Clan troops here, above and beyond the four warships he commanded, because the Canderians hadn’t taken standard Star Force equipment as their own. Like their unique warships and drones, they’d designed different aircraft, mechs, armor, and just about everything else, taking Star Force tech and putting their own spin on it.

That meant these troops and their equipment were green…in so far as combat with the Skarrons were concerned. A good portion of the troops down there and in the sedas had seen at least light combat against the lizards, but overall this mission was an experiment to see what the Canderians were made of, and Kip hoped the Skarrons didn’t throw down the hammer on them. So far the ground troops they were deploying were well within the ‘safe’ number that Dayna had calculated when he’d been tagged to head up this mission.

But given that they’d never gone up against one another, that number had been based off of Star Force ground battles with mechs…with the Canderians taking a slightly different approach.

Their entire civilization was based off of living in space onboard their sedas, each of which was a battle station in its own right. Because of this there were no ‘civilian’ Canderous facilities. All of them had the means to defend themselves, and so too did the people that inhabited them. Each of them was trained as a soldier from birth in their maturia, which vaguely resembled a school, after which they chose their place in Canderous society…meaning that even those who chose not to become active soldiers or security still had the basic combat skills to fall back upon in a time of crisis.

But their combat skills and overall philosophy were still space based, with them building temporary ground facilities rather than permanent bases. This aversion to the ground was omnipresent in their society, and as such their ground forces, above and beyond pure infantry, had been designed with a transitory motif.

Originally Canderous had used Star Force mechs, preferring the thor over all others, but they’d since scrapped all the older mechs and built original ones of their own, save for the starscreams, whose flight capability made them a good fit for the Canderians. The mechs were tier 1 and lightly armed, but they were able to convert to full ‘jet’ mode and fly about from location to location on a planet without having a dropship come and pick them up.

That left them with good anti-infantry and strategic reinforcement capabilities, but no hard hitters, which against the Skarrons was outright suicide. But ever since the lizard threat reared its ugly head the Canderians had been working on developing a counter to their low flying cruisers. Likewise, when the Skarron walkers emerged as a threat, they also began retooling in order to combat them, with some impressive results…in theory.

That theory was about to be tested in earnest, with Kip transferring down to the planet the next day with a handful of mechs and his handpicked mechwarriors, all of which came from Clan Protoss. He landed at firebase 3 and unpacked his voltron, assembling the 5 sections together and giving him a tier 2 mech with 5 tier 1s equipped with a hoard of anti-air weapons to knock down Skarron missiles.

His voltron also had additional anti-air weaponry located in the shoulders, a necessary redesign in previous years as the Skarrons learned that only through a huge missile barrage could they take out the biped mechs at range, often launching on a single one from multiple walkers simultaneously. Kip’s forces fighting on Protovic worlds had had several voltrons trashed in such attacks, forcing them to bring yet more smaller escort mechs with them to counter the tactic. That decreased mobility and required a redesign, with several compartments worth of intercepts shoved in, making the Mk. 2 voltron look like it was wearing football pads.

The Mk. 3 would be considerably slimmer once they were completed with the new technology that the arc elements opened up, but there were so many advancements possible that it was taking a long time for the engineers to hammer out prototypes, let alone get to the point of building production models. And in addition to that, creating the arc elements required a whole slew of new factories to be built for just that purpose, with the specialized atoms being in short supply. Already Star Force was producing 12 different elements, with hundreds more possible.

That meant that Kip had to either make do with what he had available or wait for the advancements to come down the pipe…which the Skarrons weren’t letting them do. The Protovic were putting up a good fight, and as more cleansing beam-equipped ships were coming off their lines the more they were able to hold against the Skarrons’ never-ending stream of reinforcements, with Kip believing that they’d soon have the strength to start pushing back and reclaiming territory that was lost to them…but not without Star Force assistance.

Even now, if Star Force pulled out its help, the Skarrons would eat away at the Protovic until they had nothing left to defend themselves with and were forced to run like the other Alliance races had. The balance of power was very even at the moment, with the tech upgrades they’d given the Protovic seeming to start to tip the scales in their favor, but Star Force had to continue to fight aggressively, else all that they’d gained, or saved, would fall apart.

This foothold in Gamma Region needed to happen now rather than later, so Kip didn’t feel they had the luxury of waiting. Plus, if the enemy ships and ground troops in the system had been peeled off form the reinforcements going to Protovic territory, so much the better. But if they were from an entirely different wing of the Skarron war machine, then Star Force need to push them back now before they inched their way too close to the Core Region.

That meant bringing Canderous to the forefront, for nearly all other combat resources were tapped out or held in reserve to counterattack another incursion…save for the Australians and Kiritas, both of whom he didn’t feel were ready for this level of combat. Canderous had been patient for years, waiting for this chance, and now that Star Force had a need for them, the wardogs were about to be let off the leash as they followed the trailblazer against the enemy.

The surface conditions around firebase 3 were swampy, slowing down the mechs and all but stopping the Skarron infantry from making a push. Their hobbits were out and about, but the Skarrons themselves were too heavy to do anything but plod through the grass-covered mud and make good targets for themselves, so they stayed at their landing zones, sending up huge plumes of steam as they had specialized equipment attached to their arms that blasted the moisture out of the soil.

They looked like an army of maids vacuuming the ground on the intelligence scans coming in from the circling Canderian fighters and reconnaissance drones that had slipped their way across the surface. The little probe droids were remotely/computer controlled, giving the Canderians eyes on every landing site the enemy had, though most of what was going on was being obscured by the steam plumes.

The huge, pointy legs of the Skarron Type-4 walkers and up didn’t appear to be as effected as Kip’s own mech legs were, with a convoy of the battlewagons heading out from one of the Skarron LZs towards a Canderian mining operation, which was where Kip and his star of support mechs were heading to intercept, slugging their way through the muck and hoping to catch the enemy at least a few kilometers short of their target.

Following behind Kip’s voltron were the Canderian mechs…or rather what had replaced their mechs. Floating solely on antigravs were a line of Turtle-class mechs, though Kip didn’t quite agree with calling them mechs. To him a mech had legs, with these having none. What they had were landing struts. They couldn’t propel the ‘mech’ forward, just keep its belly-mounted weaponry off the ground and give the antigravs a rest.

They had a flat underside, but the top was a modified half sphere that held a very thick layer of armor plating, dotted with shield emitters and nothing else. They hadn’t wanted a lot of weak points in the armor shell, so they’d put all the weaponry underneath the turtle, allowing it to drop out of the belly and fire ahead, then retract out of the enemy’s firing line on command.

That meant the belly was the vulnerable point, especially to infantry. Because of this the turtles always flew low to the ground and had a slew of anti-infantry weaponry underneath, so anyone who thought that they could hide underneath the turtles was in for a rude surprise. If the Skarrons chose to hit them with a missile attack they could drop all the way to the ground, without putting out struts, and let them hit the shell, over which a strong energy shield was deployed.

Short pylons could then extend out around the perimeter of the shell from underneath that held anti-air batteries that could shoot down some of the incoming ordinance, but if they were destroyed it was a minor loss, given that they were expendable and designed only to reduce damage to the shell…which carried more armor than Kip’s voltron.

The turtles were the backbone of the heavy end of the Canderian ground game, with Hive-class and Grappler-class mechs carrying lesser firepower for more specialized roles. The grapplers were essentially neos build with collapsible limbs and a heavy antigrav that allowed them to fly across the battlefield in ‘ball’ mode, then drop to the ground on legs and fight hand to hand with enemy units, inspired in no small part by the Nestafar protomechs.

Unlike the neos, the grapplers had no ranged weaponry of any kind, with most of their damage potential coming from physical, ripping/punching strength coupled with touch-release weaponry inspired by the lizards’ plasma rod technology.

There were no grapplers following Kip, nor were there any hives, which operated like a heavily armored carrier that dispersed attack drones that could swarm a single target or spread out to hit multiple ones simultaneously. Both versions were too light to hit the Skarron Type-3 walkers with in this upcoming engagement.

“Legat, you’re free to break ranks and engage at will. Good luck and don’t shoot me in the back.”

“With pleasure…and we won’t,” the Canderian in charge of the 18 turtles replied, with the single file line breaking apart and the antigrav floaters moving off with ease over the swampy muck that was holding Kip up. Ahead of them the line of 8 Skarron walkers was just becoming visible on the horizon, with a scattering of trees here or there masking the lower edge of their silhouettes.

Kip switched to his local Clan comm. “Alright fellas. Looks like their missile boats aren’t coming out to play, so follow me in and add damage where you can,” he said, accelerating his voltron up into a run…something that the Canderians, who were passing him on either side, hadn’t expected him to be able to do. He had a hard time compensating for the mud that he was sinking into with each step, but he’d run through mud before with his own feet, so he had some experience there, and with the mech moving as his body moved, the trailblazer was able to make a workable crossover.

That left him running forward at a decent pace, but the turtles still outpaced him. They knew better than to get too far ahead, for they wanted his firepower augmenting theirs, but he was still the slower, with the tier 1 mechs using their jump jets and hopping from footprint to footprint behind him rather than trying to make their own.

Kip worked up quite a sweat, glad that he’d removed his shirt before strapping into the control harness, as he fought the controls to keep the big mech from stumbling and falling flat on its face. He wouldn’t have advised anyone else to try such a breakneck pace with such bad footing, but he thought he could handle it and was proved correct when the first of the white plasma showers hit the leading turtle, instigating the first ground combat with the Skarron reinforcements.

Kip kept running, not bothering to shoot as he knew he had a better chance of taking down the Type-3 closest to him if he ran right up to it, but he held off arming himself until he started to draw plasma fire on his energy shields. He slowed to a stop, not wanting to attempt the necessary acrobatics while slogging his way forward, and detached the plate covering his back.

It fell to the ground, almost sticking in the mud before leaning forward and laying against the back of the voltron as Kip spun it around and grasped the inside handle on the huge, knight-like shield, lifting it up and around in front of him where it picked up most of the incoming plasma on its own dedicated energy shield. Reaching back with his mech’s right arm he pulled out the ‘fan’ that was imbedded in the back of the mech’s nonexistent neck and held it at his side as the sword elongated and locked into place, then Kip started walking forward slowly, unable to run as he had been with all the extra weight in his arms.

“Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” he said as a warning flashed across his HUD. “Guys, heads up. We’ve got a redeployment. Continue the attack but be ready to swat missiles.”

“Copy that,” his Protoss wingmen confirmed, still following the big mech forward in its footsteps.

“Hurry,” Kip said to himself, walking a bit faster towards the Type-3 that was starting to backtrack as it bathed his shield with every plasma cannon it had in a useable firing line. The energy shield covering the knight shield in a surface blanket shimmered its last time then breached, allowing the physical material of the shield to start eating up the plasma blasts. Kip knew it would last for quite a while, but he didn’t want to delay…and the damn walker was almost as fast as him with this bad footing.

It took him far longer than it should have to get up to the enemy machine that stood nearly twice his voltron’s height, then he swung his sword out beside him to the right and activated his antigrav jump jets. Adding the strength of his mech’s legs he launched himself up into the air at an angle, dropping his massive shield as he released the grip, and sailed up overtop the enemy walker…dropping down on its back as he took a slew of heavy lachar blasts to the chest that punctured his own shields.

The next moment his sword came down point first and sliced into the weak section of the armor that held the anti-air cannon, cutting through it and driving to the interior as the Type-3 struggled to remain standing with the voltron’s extra weight on top.

Almost as soon as he got the sword inside the armor a hoard of missile launches were detected some 100 miles away as a Skarron transport dropped off a Type-2 within firing range.

“Kip, heads up!”

“I see it,” he said, sliding his mech off the right side but hanging onto his sword and dragging the entire Skarron walker over onto its side, using it as a barricade as he popped up his shoulder-mounted anti-air pods and began pumping intercepts into the sky even as the walker he was hiding behind shot him at pointblank range with some of its plasma cannons.

8

The missiles coming towards the voltron diverted when their target became obscured, heading instead for one of the turtles as 5 of them took the brunt of the attack. Already having dropped down to the ground, their extendable pylons were peppering the missiles with plasma shards while Kip’s voltron was throwing up intercepts and sniping a few missiles on the way down beside him with his shoulder-mounted lachars. Unlike in previous engagements, the Skarron Type-2 walker didn’t hold back, choosing to empty its hold as quickly as possible, hoping to overwhelm the defenders.

Behind Kip his escort mechs lit up with the sky with their anti-air weapons as the swampy ground around the turtles lit up in huge plumes of steam as the missiles that got through exploded and vaporized the water in the muck…which worked to the Skarrons’ advantage, for the Canderian plasma shards and Star Force lachars couldn’t fire through the vapor while the missiles had no trouble reaching their targets.

Kip held his sword in the top of the Skarron walker and kept it pinned on the ground as he popped out his plasma cannon on the other arm and started popping some of the turrets that were firing at him as the missile storm continued to come down and expand its impact radius. Meanwhile the other 7 walkers maneuvered about and took shots at the mechs, with Kip’s star having to redeploy to avoid getting bushwacked. The swampy footing caused them to take some damage as they moved off, still throwing up as much anti-air as they could as the turtles got hammered.

Kip finally pulled out his sword and took a step back, then rammed it in again to the right of his original hole, pulling the walker taught to the ground again as he popped up his mauler cannon on top and took a knee, bringing it directly in line with the puncture in the armor and firing through it. Most of the energy melted the armor around the hole, but the bits that got through began slagging internal components and eventually got to the living compartment, killing one of the pilots inside.

The trailblazer kept pounding on it until he sensed all of them die, then he stood up and withdrew his sword as one of the others came around and threw a flurry of white plasma droplets at him. Not wanting to abandon his cover, he dug the sword down into the ground and opened up both plasma cannons and the mauler mount and began slugging it out face on with the enemy walker as waves of mist flew across both of them from the missile impact zone behind Kip.

Before his shield could go down the dead walker beside him exploded with missile hits, clouding his vision with debris as the Type-2 was no longer avoiding the friendly target. Kip ran over to where his shield was laying on the ground and picked it up, feeling a hit on his back as his anti-air missed one. Twisting around he dropped to a knee and hunkered down, having to use both hands to hold the shield steady against the explosions now popping up against it.

Fortunately the explosions created their own mist cloud around him, blocking the plasma from the other walker, and Kip knew he couldn’t do anything but wait it out and hope his shield held up long enough…but then after a few seconds it was over and the pressure he felt in him arms disappeared. From the battlemap data being transmitted by the other mechs he could see that the Type-2 had stopped firing, presumably out of missiles, but there was a wave of Skarron fighters on their way and he knew they couldn’t call their own out, otherwise the enemy walkers would eat them for lunch and still be hungry for more.

With the steam/mist momentarily shrouding him from the plasma fire, Kip picked up his shield and ran forward to get his sword, having to lift up a piece of the dead walker to retrieve it, then, taking plasma fire again, but this time from three different walkers, he cradled his shield over his left shoulder and ran as fast as he dared with the footing towards the original one and swung against one of its legs as his own armor began to take hits, his energy shields now down.

The swing didn’t get through the leg on the first cut, but it did on the well-aimed second, chopping off the bottom half of the front left leg as Kip’s voltron got a plasma bath. He twisted the knight shield around in front of him then ran forward and pushed into the walker, hoping it was off-balanced enough to topple.

And he was right, for the juggling act it was doing with its legs, poking multiple holes into the mud to reposition, had centered its balance again on the remaining 7 legs by pulling them in closer to the center and thus making it a bit easier to tip over…though Kip had to really leverage it hard as hull warnings began to flash in his cockpit as the enemy plasma from behind him began to chew through the mech’s armor.

Lifting more than pushing, Kip got underneath the flank with the severed leg and got 2 of the other 3 out of the mud, then used the others as a pivot point to topple the giant machine despite its desperate attempts to stick a pair out even further to stabilize, which drove the remaining two even further into the soft soil. They went in so far that when Kip finally got the thing to flip over they broke off, bent backwards farther than they were designed to move, leaving the double-hulled behemoth pinned on its side, but it was still throwing plasma into his knight shield and his right side that was exposed.

Those plasma cannons quickly came under attack, and with the walker’s own shields down Kip’s escorts picked off the batteries targeting the larger walker while jumping from point to point on the muddy terrain to get into more favorable positions to use the dead walker parts for cover. With a mix of maulers and plasma they chipped away at the downed walker as the incoming plasma from behind Kip faded out, leaving only the fallen one to try and eat through the voltron’s now pot marked armor.

Glancing at the battlemap and seeing the Canderians swarming the remaining walkers, Kip stepped away from his walker and brought his knight shield around, covering up from the additional damage and pulling his sword up level with his waist. Then he walked forward a couple of steps and jammed it into the underbelly near to the boarding ramp where he knew the crew pod was located.

When he pulled it out he fired into the slit with both plasma and mauler blasts, then jabbed the sword in again slightly to the left, making another slit that he then added the energy attack to. Reaching out with his Ikrid he sensed the minds inside the walker and their approximate locations, keeping up the slash and burn strategy until they all winked out, leaving the somewhat operational walker without a pilot to operate it.

When he pulled back and turned around he saw only two Skarron walkers remaining, and both were taking heavy plasma streamer hits from the turtles that were melting away the enemy’s armor plating. The amount of plasma they were throwing out dwarfed what the voltron could manage, though his mauler cannon made up for it as he walked within range and added the superior weapon damage to what the turtles were already racking up on one side of the closest Type-3.

Kip’s shot melted away what thin armor remained on the damaged patch, letting the next plasma streamer into the internal components of the walker. A few more shots like that, plus another pair of mauler blasts, brought the behemoth down with all its legs going slack. It crumpled and smashed into the ground, sticking in the muck rather than rebounding from the impact.

The turtles floated around it, hitting it from multiple sides as the other one went down as well, save for it locked into place on its rear legs, doing a faceplant into a makeshift tripod that the Canderians likewise continued to bombard with loads of dark green plasma…now their signature color, while the voltron and other Star Force mechs continued to use the traditional light blue.

Kip looked to his battlemap and was about to call for their own fighters, now that the Skarron anti-air threat was eliminated, but he saw that they were already on their way, having broken off their holding patterns just outside of the perimeter boundaries he’d ordered the Canderians to maintain around all Skarron walkers across the planet and throughout this war. They’d followed orders, but now that they were no longer valid they had already started heading for the turtles and the enemy fighters that were just about on them.

Kip nodded, happy to see they were on the ball, then activated his one remaining lachar to auto-target the Skarron fighters as he got a quick look at the condition of the Canderians.

The turtles were a mess, with only 4 of the 18 still with active shields. The rest had messed up shells, with huge chunks of armor gouged out and missing pylons, evidenced as they now stuck out what they had left and started to fire their anti-air plasma shards up at the Skarron fighters as they approached. Three of the turtles never made it off the ground, and were still sitting on the mud and smoking from internal damage through armor punctures.

Kip highlighted those three and sent a query comm pulse, which was essentially an electronic poke to get a response. Two responded with a status update in text, while the third was silent.

“Dayna, once we clear the fighters get to your people. I’d rather not have to call for a dropship to pick up survivors. How are you doing?”

“Still operational. You?”

Kip glanced at his status holo. “Significantly chewed up, but still mobile.”

“A significant victory then?”

“First round,” he said, seeing some of the Skarron fighters overhead try and hit the smallest of their mechs…and run right into an anti-air barrage. Two of them fell from the sky nearby and made small splash marks, one of which flipped out enough to hit Kip, though you couldn’t tell with all the other mud already on his mech. “They learn and adapt, we learn and adapt. This is a feel-out skirmish. They probably don’t have any data on Canderous since their original defense fleet bugged out and we killed all the witnesses on the planet.”

“They know better than to hit us with so few numbers,” the Canderian remarked.

“Take a look at the condition of your turtles, Legat. You’re not fit for another mission. They did considerable damage for such ‘small’ numbers,” Kip lectured him. “Do not underestimate them. What they can’t win directly they will win through attrition, and it’s going to take a lot to get your turtles back into fighting form.”

“Noted. Shall we head back or go after that Type-2?”

Kip glanced at the battlemap, seeing it standing off so far away that it would take him hours to get there in his voltron, though the turtles could fly there much faster. That was one advantage to the antigrav design, and one that he and the other trailblazers had debated initially, but they eventually chose to go with mechs rather than floating tanks, which is what the turtles really were, because of the power requirements. Bipedal motion, while complicated, required far less power than antigrav did, pound for pound. As such his voltron had significantly longer battlefield potential than the turtles did, which would have to cycle back for refueling after a period of time.

The muck was making him reconsider that logic, but he knew that legs beat tanks in most situations, though he was glad the Canderians had chosen the antigrav route. While it wasn’t for the Archons, it did have its advantages…which gave Star Force more options to fight with, and frankly the turtles were better at combating Skarron walkers than the mechs, so far as the Type-3 and smaller ones went. The Type-2s had never been hit by them, relying instead on a Hoth counterpart that also contained a tiny cleansing beam.

The planet hadn’t had any Type-1s in play when the initial invasion began and only the single Type-2, letting Canderous get some good early experience in against numerically weaker forces. Now was an altogether different matter, and Kip had to make sure the Canderians learned the enemy’s strength and tendencies without it requiring an ass kicking.

“Not a chance. Even without missiles it would tear you apart. It’s out of range anyway, and if we get that close they could drop reinforcements nearby and cause us a world of trouble.”

“If you stay behind we can attack with antigrav only mechs,” the Canderian suggested. “That would give us the mobility required, and we can call in fresh turtles to assist.”

“Possibly, but I don’t want you hitting a Type-2 without a tortoise. They can throw down far too much plasma. We have to hit them at range to own them. Don’t let them draw you in or you’ll regret it.”

“Understood,” Dayna agreed. “I’m just eager to press the attack. Where do we hit them next?”

“We don’t. Next move is theirs. They’re the invaders, so we’ll wait and see what they have planned. If we start to get bored then we’ll stir the pot and see what comes out.”

When Dayna didn’t respond Kip sighed. “Patience, Legat. They nearly killed you with that missile attack. The last thing you want to do is hit them with less anti-air than you had here. This isn’t a challenge where you want a tough opponent, it’s for keeps, and you want to hit the enemy where they’re weakest and you have an advantage…while prepping to defend yourself against the enemy’s advantage. We get to choose the former, they get to choose the latter. Make sure you choose wisely.”

“Wise words,” the Canderian agreed as their fighters appeared overhead, mixing it up with the Skarrons. “We’ll pick up the crews from the damaged turtles. Your mechs should get a head start back, unless you’re going to call for dropships?”

“Negative, we’re walking back and I’m waiting here until you get them out. I may have to lift up an edge, otherwise you’ll have to dig through the muck.”

“There are enough armor breaches that we can go in through the top as soon as the fighters clear the air.”

Kip glanced at the battlemap again, seeing that between the Canderian fighters, which were being remotely controlled from the nearby firebase, and the anti-air mech support, the Skarrons were getting eaten alive. They didn’t stay and fight it out to their deaths, but mixed it up with the Star Force fighters long enough, Kip thought, to get a decent set of battle data, then they flew off, heading back towards their own base with the Canderians nipping at their heels and making a few more kills before pulling out to avoid running into the no-go zones around the enemy walkers.

“Copy that,” he said, heading over towards the downed turtles anyway, arriving just before the fighters disappeared with his escort mechs hopping around like crickets behind him as they kept pace. He looked down on the turtles, each of which easily outmassed his voltron, and saw the holes torn through meters of dense armor by the Skarron missiles.

Those things were damn dangerous, and it looked like the Skarrons weren’t saving them up to use in small amounts anymore. That meant that any pairings of Type-2s and larger were going to be very difficult to hit, and Kip knew that they’d use that to their advantage, with the larger engagements to come featuring dozens of walkers working together across a wide area, overlapping missile ranges while preserving skirmishers to go after the tortoises when they got within cleansing beam range.

This had just been the first of many battles to come, and from the look of it the Skarrons weren’t taking the Humans for granted this time. They were going to learn about this new version of their enemy and adapt before they made a major strike, both on the ground and in orbit, meaning the coming year was going to prove to be very interesting for Kip, and he was quite certain the Canderians were going to get an education in the ways of warfare.

Kip just had to keep them alive long enough for the lesson to sink in.

9

February 1, 2506

Mden System (Zeta Region)

Nexus 4

Morgan and Davis dropped down from orbit to one of 7 Star Force mega colonies on the planet, already having visited several other systems in their unofficial tour, landing in the Mssot spaceport. They came down through an atmospheric shield that separated the landing bay from the airless world, then parked next to dozens of other Star Force dropships and exited their craft amongst a Human deck crew.

The pair didn’t see one of the Mssot until they had progressed further into the colony, coming out into extremely high hallways, taller even than what the Calavari required, where they saw a very gangly creature nearly three times their height walking past. It was covered in black, almost oily scales and had a single red eye on his head that looked down upon them as it waved a three digit hand at the pair, seeing Davis’ red Archon armor and Morgan’s black stripe, which it knew meant she was one of the elite strikers.

Morgan waved back and they passed it, heading further into the colony.

“That’s the largest yet,” Davis commented over the comm.

Not very strong though, Morgan replied telepathically.

“These are their offspring?” Davis asked as they came across another two ahead of them as they approached the entryway onto the main promenade.

Yes. The bad ones are still on their prison station, serving their penance with genetic work. The Mssot you see here have been trained by Star Force from birth.

“Are they loyal?”

I’m told so. This is the first time I’ve seen them in person.

“What are you getting from their minds?”

Curiosity and respect. They don’t get very many Archons here.

The pair walked out through the archway and onto what looked like a miniature canyon with roads stacked along the sides and interconnecting walkways…all of which were stairs, segmented into large steps and small to accommodate the mixed population.

“How long can they hold their breath without those filters?” he asked, noting the small wrap around their chests that covered their lungs vents. They breathed the nitrogen in the air, but the oxygen that the Humans required was toxic to them.

I’m told several minutes.

“Do they intend to stay with Star Force?”

You’ve read the same reports I have. And Randy hasn’t told me otherwise. I do know that a few of their individuals have left.

“Where did they go?”

Bolo, I think. Where we’ll end up eventually. They may have left Star Force space from there or remained. We can check the files later if you want.

“Where are we heading?”

Morgan pointed to their right and Davis lead the way, walking down one of the long, straight roads until they took a short staircase off and down, which lead to a road that ended in a commerce station…inside of which were a mix of Mssot and Humans conducting daily business.

Davis walked in, his hesitance gone as he saw the Humans interacting with the larger Mssot without a second thought. He headed over to the trading board and noted the exchange rates for various natural resources that the Mssot were nano-processing for Star Force. With a great deal of engineering and biotech help, Star Force had modified the Mssot’s own technology towards a mechanical foundation, in this case replacing designer microbes with biological nanites who had a controlling core of technology that then grew a ‘body’ made of organic compounds.

Those nanites could then be remote controlled in a limited fashion by a computer, with the Mssot then upgrading them heavily with their knowledge of biology and using them to deconstruct various ores that Star Force mining teams on the planet were providing them. The refined materials and various molecular conversions were then put up for sale on the Star Force planetary market, with many visiting races or alien entrepreneurs that operated within the Star Force system purchasing the materials they needed.

This made the Mssot useful to Star Force, with them acting as a subservient part of the overall empire while their future as a group remained uncertain…with their individual liberties remaining intact and with the same travel permissions as any other secondary Star Force citizen, below the tier 1 status that the Humans, Calavari, and Kiritas maintained. They could travel to any ‘open’ system, while the rest of the citizenry had a restricted list. Visitors had very few travel options, with the colony Davis and Morgan now stood in being off limits.

The market transactions took place here, but with relays up to vendor stations in orbit where the physical transactions would occur, facilitated by Humans, leaving the Mssot isolated in the colony, which most of them preferred. Also, with their future uncertain, Randy didn’t want them mixing with the general population that the Alliance was quickly forming. They could go out and mingle in the communal colony, which was located elsewhere on the planet, but no other races could come here aside from the tier 1 citizens, with no Calavari or Kiritas having reason to do so.

Do you feel it?

Davis reached out with his Ikird, trying to sense the minds of the Mssot around him and getting little but jumbled thoughts. “Feel what?”

Pride. It’s stronger here than in other places, because this is their contribution to Star Force. Some of these materials are only available here, with them being shipped out to other planetary markets. We can produce everything for our own purposes in other facilities, but as far as the open markets go a lot of these are specialties…which you already know well.

“I didn’t know they took the production so personally?”

It gives them a purpose and a leg up on the other races. They know their progenitors’ history, and how we don’t hold them accountable for it, but they still want to prove they’re different and valuable. This allows them to do that, and it’s displayed prominently here, as they earn credits that go to Star Force, whom they identify partially as their saviors. They were born into our system, so they don’t know anything other than it, but most of them realize they wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t made a place for them and they want to return the favor.

“Some of them?”

They’re individuals like all other races. There will always be rogues, and that’s not a bad thing.

“And the lizards?”

Their individuality is being suppressed, but it’s there. We just haven’t been able to reach it in an effective way…yet.

“You still hope to find a way to save them.”

We kill them because we have to, not because we want to. Those lizards being born now have no choice, bound together by a combined will woven into their genetic code. If we can break that hold we may have a chance.

“How would that work? The ones you’re fighting are still being born in a lizard lab.”

We’ve discussed that at length. Right now it’s more about not falling into the trap of disregarding them as individuals and labeling them as an automatic enemy.

“Which they effectively are?”

Yes, they are. But in a way they’re also prisoners, slaves to the collective will. We don’t want to ever forget that…but we’re not going to be suckers either. It’s a very narrow perspective to keep, and finding a way to undo the genetic suppression would help immensely, even if we never find a way to implement it on a wide scale.

“I understand,” Davis said, looking at the economic figures being displayed and updated in real time…whereas the ones he got back on Earth were delayed by more than a week. “Are there areas where the Mssot have a natural environment?”

Only their personal quarters and the lounges connecting them. That’s one of the issues on the table.

“Downside?”

If they go independent, no. If they want to remain a part of Star Force in some fashion then we lose a communal atmosphere. We won’t be able to go in there without special equipment, and if we can’t insert Archons at a moments’ notice that opens up a whole slew of defensive weaknesses.

“We’d have the same problem if the Hycre join…worse, actually. Even in armor you can’t stand their environment.”

Is that in the works?

“No…just thinking through probabilities. Sort of a habit of mine.”

A useful one.

“Can you show me the atmospheric transition point?”

Sure.

“This way?” Davis said, pointing to the right.

Morgan nodded, glad that he’d taken the time to familiarize himself with the colony map beforehand.

The next day they visited another of the colonies on the Nexus world, one of 6 that Star Force had created to house irregular populations. They weren’t refugees as far as the Alliance was concerned, nor did they contain territory slots like the Alliance worlds did. They were completely Star Force owned, with the races/groups contained within them being wards of the empire, having come to them through a variety of situations.

This one held a race known as the Zevveks, who had agreed to give up their homeworld to Star Force in exchange for a position within their society. They had been a primitive race, with only minimal space travel, similar to Earth in the early 2000s. They had managed to build three space stations and had been planning to expand to the nearby moons around their planet when Star Force had made contact with them in Beta Region.

A simple survey of their planet had showed significant corovon deposits…something that the Zevveks regarded as a worthless ‘heavy’ metal that they discarded, not having the technology to be able to mold the traces they’d mined into anything useful and unable to get at the deeper deposits within the planetary crust. When Star Force had approached them with an economic offer to gain access to the corovon, they’d responded with an atypical request…which had been to join with the Humans as the Kiritas had, for they had learned through intermediaries of the growing power in the region and they wanted to align themselves with it.

Randy had agreed, but on the terms that they abandon their homeworld entirely and relocate to a Star Force colony…which they had eagerly agreed to. Morgan and Davis were now in that colony, which housed their entire 552 million avian population.

Like the Mssot colony, this was also a mix of Humans and the bird-like creatures. Whereas the Mssot had huge road-like walkways and open air ‘canyons,’ the Zevvek colony had circular pedestals inside of large domes connected by small walkways for the Humans but allowing a lot of clear air and perches for the Zevveks, which were about the size of a dog. They had four wings and a rounded, beak-bearing head, with a flight style that mimicked hummingbirds, only at a slower wing flap.

As Davis watched his step to stay on the railless paths, he looked up, seeing a few of them flying to and fro from small compartments that looked like bird houses, not all of which could be accessed by the Humans, save for concealed ladders for emergency situations…though more often than not they’d just grab a jump pack and head up directly, and Davis could see that several of the Human personnel were in fact wearing the packs so they could move about quicker than the pathways allowed.

Davis, in his Archon armor, walked up to a booth with a blue-uniformed Star Force attendant and caught her attention.

“What can I do for you, Archons?”

“What do you do here?” he asked, keeping his helmet on just in case he’d be recognized.

“I’m one of several hundred liaisons that communicate with the Zevveks regarding their needs. They’ve learned English, but their dialect is hard to understand if you’re not used to it. So if you need a translator I’m your girl.”

“That won’t be necessary. Tell me your impressions of them. This is my first time on this world.”

“Well, they’re a bit skittish. I think they requested to join Star Force for our protection, along with other reasons. They can fight if they need to, but they’re not good at it, so their personalities have developed around evasion and caution, but they’re very industrious. Now that we’ve given them the tools…or rather created the tools for their forms to utilize, they’re cranking out all sorts of products. They specialize in foodstuffs and other organics, but they’re also making a lot of small parts and personal…um, what’s the word?”

“Accoutrements,” Morgan offered.

“Yes,” the attendant said, not sure if that word was sufficient, but settling on it none the less. “Accoutrements that go on the body. Clothing, backpacks, harnesses, holsters, and other things, not just for themselves but multiple races. They like tinkering and coming up with improvements. I’ve modeled several things for them…though they always want me nude to do it. At first I balked, but since there weren’t any Humans watching I agreed. Kind of fun, actually,” she said, winking at Morgan. “The dry air in here feels good after a long day of work.”

Beside Davis one of the Zevveks flew up and landed on the rim of the desk the attendant was standing behind, gripping the cylindrical railing with its clawed feet, which was when Davis saw that it also had a pair of small arms extruding out from its chest, much like a T-Rex from the old days, which Humans guessed to have spindly little limbs, based on the skeleton…though now they knew that wasn’t the case.

“Hello, Chaavrakka,” she said, with the Zevvek nodding its beak respectfully.

“Veeseetors?”

“Archons,” she clarified, looking back at Davis, despite the fact that he was the lower ranking of the two, but because he was the one who spoke to her first. “Is there something specific you wanted?”

“Just exploring a bit,” Davis said, looking at the Zevvek, resisting the urge to ask it if it wanted a cracker, then belatedly realizing that some of Morgan’s sarcasm was starting to rub off on him…or maybe it was a side effect of her being in his head so much.

“You nid gyd?”

Morgan glanced at the attendant. “Are there some spare jump packs lying around?”

“Yes there are. Would you both like one?”

The trailblazer nodded, then the attendant hurried off to a back room, leaving the two Archons with the Zevvek as two more flew in and landed a respectful distance away, staring at them with their three tiny eyes.

“How is your training progressing?” Davis asked him/her, for he couldn’t tell the difference between the genders, though he did know from the files that they did have them…and laid eggs.

“We arre neerin feef levl. Whin we reech seevin we git starsheeps.”

“Have any of you reached self-sufficiency yet?”

“Naht me, boot twow hayv.”

“Two people?”

“Yis.”

“Could you show me to one of them?”

“Fahr froom her, boot I can.”

Good call, Morgan agreed as the attendant came back with two bulky harnesses.

Davis took one and swung it over his armor, finding several latches that matched up with reception points on his red plates while Morgan snugged up padded straps to fit her smaller frame.

“They’re fully charged,” the attendant said as Davis pressed the on button and experimented with a small jump that took him two meters up into the air before floating him back down.

“Thank you,” Davis said, looking at the Zevvek. “Lead on.”

In the following days the pair visited all of the colonies on this Nexus world, including a well hidden group of Nestafar that had been relocated from a planet near the Calavari border that seceded when their race backstabbed the Alliance. They hadn’t broadcast that change of sides, but had quietly informed their Calavari neighbors that their tiny little colony wasn’t abandoning the Alliance. They had lived in anonymity for many years after that, but after the Calavari territory was whittled down to almost nothing their dropping off the grid was discovered and they were forced to flee their own people, originally taking refuge with the Protovic before Star Force gave them sanctuary.

Davis found them to be the most unusual of the races he’d encountered thus far…which was saying something. Not because of their flight capabilities, but because of the way their minds worked. Morgan had found that odd, for she had no such feelings regarding them, but to the Director they were the most odd, even when he piggybacked on Morgan’s Ikrid for a closer look.

After they left Nexus 4 they traveled to another system, this one containing an Alliance world that was split into 8 territorial zones, each of which was ringed with a thin strip of Star Force territory that separated the denizens. Here Star Force was not in control, merely acting as peacekeepers and providing a resource market, for the various races were essentially sovereign nations, save for the few stipulations that they agreed to operate under in exchange for the territory slots.

Morgan wasn’t allowed to visit all of them, but they did get permission to explore a newly started Urik’kadel colony…or rather the portions of it that a Human could fit inside, for a lot of the residential sections had ceilings too low for them to walk through upright.

Davis spent a lot of time on this Alliance world, not so much to explore as to investigate, for he was able to interact with the multiple races in the Star Force facilities where they mingled. He asked questions…lots of questions, getting some answers and generating even more questions. This new interracial dynamic was vastly complicated, but as he chased various society and cultural threads he began to get a sense of the various races he encountered, as well as the common ground most of them had, resulting from previous interactions that had formed a slight multi-racial culture that he was beginning to pick up on more and more.

To explore that even further, the next stop on their trek was Bolo, which held the closely compacted and most diverse interracial population within Star Force territory…which also made it the most dangerous.

10

November 30, 2506

Mensolon System (Beta Region)

Bolo

Morgan and Davis walked through the wide city streets, all of which had been built by Star Force but now customized by the various denizens into a collage of multi-cultural imagery. Both Humans wore full armor, Davis in his borrowed red and Morgan in her black, as they mingled about in the pedestrian flows that held very few Humans. There were hundreds of races present, with the majority in this sector being Critel, though they accounted for barely a quarter of the people he was passing by.

The Critel were notorious traders, with those here on Bolo acting on behalf of themselves, various corporations, or perhaps even their nation, though it had no official standing here, nor did any. All citizens of Bolo were welcomed as individuals and had to operate under a loose Star Force code as they set up their various establishments…some for industry, some for entertainment, and some that Davis didn’t fully understand yet.

Star Force owned the kiosks, but the denizens filled them with personal property and outfitted them as they liked. A very loose hand had been given to the business side of planetary affairs, and he knew that was due to a lack of oversight potential. Star Force owned the planet, but Randy didn’t want to have to babysit it, and had developed a…or more accurately had let develop a mostly tranquil commerce zone with a strong Star Force security presence to discourage the unruliness, and if necessary exile the disruptive individuals from the planet.

That had kept things orderly, but Morgan knew that there was a lot going on in the shadows, and even if there weren’t any riots or uprisings taking place that there would be more quiet dangers. The security detail wasn’t large enough to police the denizens in typical Star Force fashion, so there was a ‘wild west’ element here that was tolerated so long as things didn’t escalate.

That said, Bolo had accomplished what few planets had before in that it brought together so many races, many of whom did not like each other, and had them living side by side without any bloodbaths breaking out. That in itself was an accomplishment, but Davis feared that this ‘wild west’ environment was what the ADZ was going to turn into…or worse.

But one thing that Davis had learned in his recent travels was that as strange and varied as these races were, there was an element to them that made them ‘people’ like everyone else, and that was something he could use. Self-defense, advancement, pride…these were present in some form across the board, along with many other themes, but the trick was they were twisted by biology and culture into strange combinations, like a rope wrapped up into a huge knot that he had to patiently unravel.

Today, like yesterday, Morgan and Davis just walked through a section of the ever-growing planet. Star Force insisted on everyone using their infrastructure, but in many cases Star Force engineers would build roads, rail lines, markets, and substructures topped off by flat, ground-level clearings that they then let the denizens build their own structures on, linked into a mutual power and utilities grid. In other cases Star Force would build huge shell structures, allowing entrepreneurs from other races to construct their own facilities inside them.

Those builds were off limits to the public, but technically Star Force security and the Archons had access to them whenever they wanted. Morgan and Davis dropped in on a few key ones, but for the most part they just made themselves part of the traffic flows, losing themselves in the anonymity of the crowd as they circulated about, observing and learning. While individuals coming to and from the planet had to pass through strict security checkpoints, once they were permitted inside the Bolo network they were free to roam about and conduct business as they liked, making the planet a large, wild pool of strange alien life that Davis was fascinated with.

Not for the normal reasons, but for the economic and social ones. For most of his life he’d been schooling others in what to do and how to do it…but here he was the reverse, learning how other races conducted business and their philosophies, many of whom had been in practice for thousands of years. The economics were the easier of the two to grasp, for supply and demand were universal constants, with the societal wrinkles making for a truly eye-opening experience above and beyond what he’d had on his tour stops to date.

But not in an uplifting way. As many small things that there were that he was impressed with, the mass of what he was learning was junk. Problems on top of problems on top of problems. People clinging to tradition and beliefs and habits, all of which preserved the status quo and hindered problem solving. Most of Davis’ wonderment came from a sense of ‘how could they be that logistically stupid?’

He was also learning the various grudges between races, and who trumped who in the galactic turf…but also realizing that there were pockets of space where the rules reversed themselves, which was something that hadn’t been present on Earth. He’d had a long conversation with a particular Scionate vendor they happened across, and it dawned on him that the lack of communication, and often transit, between star systems created a sociological factor that he hadn’t had to deal with regarding the former nations of Earth, where everyone knew what everyone else was doing.

That wasn’t the same out here, with some races being the big dogs in their core systems but subservient ones on the fringes. It became clear to Davis that ‘locality’ was the driving factor, divvied up largely by star system rather than by planet. The same was somewhat true within Star Force, but due to the relay network and the way Davis had built their supply and transit system they were more connected that most of the other races appeared to be, who basically left isolated systems writing their own rulebooks.

The Scionate, by the name of Gas’para, had been a soldier prior to going into the shipping business and becoming a galactic traveler. He’d set up operations throughout 23 system before hearing about and scouting out Bolo, then deciding to move his headquarters here in order to access the hub of interracial commerce. He said many others had done the same, especially information brokers, for the traffic coming through the system was far greater than any other within the region.

He’d told Davis that wherever his shipping contracts went, they had to learn and adjust to the local culture, and as such the Scionate had got a feel for a few of the tendencies present in this part of the galaxy. Some temperaments were strict, others with a nearly total lack of oversight and control…which was bad for business, save for the adventurous sort who didn’t mind gambling their credits, and sometimes life, to exploit an opportunity.

But the biggest thing Gas’para explained to him was the naivety the local populations had regarding one another. Most people were not travelers, and with the isolated nature of the smaller systems they developed some vastly different cultures regarding trade, commerce, transit, permissions, and a host of other things a shipper had to deal with. And almost exclusively, they all believed there was only one way to do things.

Bolo was different, he’d said, being such a mix and having 10 ways of doing something sitting within 10 blocks of one another. He credited Star Force’s guiding structure within Bolo’s business society, citing that without it he didn’t think that the planet could sustain itself.

Davis had went on to have an in depth conversation regarding that point before bidding the shipper farewell and moving back out into the traffic flows and looking for a restroom with Human accommodations. He had some trouble removing his armor once they found one a couple of blocks away, but the enclosure was private and gave him a shield from prying eyes while he disconnected the cod piece and took a much needed leak.

He met Morgan outside the cubicle, with her waiting on him while several other races with similar biological needs were coming in and out of the other ‘stalls’ that, like all Star Force designs, were a private, tiny room that had no distinction between male or female…or in this case any race that was bipedal. Quadrupeds had another restroom facility, with a few others for more specialized needs.

Despite the filters on his helmet, Davis was exposed to a host of new smells that the air scrubbers were fighting to eliminate, prompting a private chuckle on his way outside, for this was an area of interracial relations that hadn’t crossed his mind before.

“Where to now?” Morgan asked via comm as she scanned the sea of irregular people through her black striker helmet.

“Security station. Let’s see if they can point us towards some of the problem areas.”

“Looking to pick a fight?”

“I need to find the problems if I’m going to fix them.”

“I’m looking forward to that,” Morgan said, stepping out into the foot traffic under the bright walkway lights with Davis following a step behind her. It took them a lot of walking until they got to the Star Force security outpost, which was little more than an emergency response firebase situated in one of the more remote regions of the city to decrease response time, but it held more than 20 staff with multiple rooms, allowing Davis and Morgan to have a private conversation with the ranking officer.

“What sort of trouble are you looking for?” she asked, wearing the light golden flex armor that most of the security division preferred, giving them adequate protection for their day to day work without the bulk of their combat armor.

“The kind that you have trouble dealing with, or can’t get at at all,” Davis said through his external mic.

“If we know of a problem we deal with it,” the security officer said, crossing her arms over her chest and tapping her upper arm with a gloved fingertip. “But there are always rumors we can’t track down. We have monitoring equipment on all public areas, but most of the activity around here occurs in private zones.”

“Any ongoing feuds?” Morgan asked.

“Nothing major around here, but the Davpz have tried to wall off a niche up in sector 831. You might want to check there. Rumors of intimidation and scare tactics. Security dealt with the obvious stuff, but there’s still a bit of a bad vibe, or so I hear.”

“Thank you,” Davis said, turning and heading for the door before looking back. “From your point of view, what’s the number 1 thing that needs to be improved on this planet?”

“On this planet? That’s a hard question to answer. Guess the biggest thing is not enough Humans around. Sometimes it feels like we’re the visitors.”

“Thank you,” Morgan said, following Davis out into the traffic flows again and over to a transit terminal where they boarded a tram that took them across the city to a rail line network that connected the entire planet. They both caught a nap on the trip across the continent to sector 831 then took some down time in the Human complex there. Davis stayed put, as usual, and dug through the local databases as Morgan got a few hours of workouts in at the local sanctum before coming to pick up Davis for his much shorter version. After they both completed their workouts they headed back out into the streets, with Davis having identified a particular individual he wanted to talk to.

It took them several hours to locate it, having to move through a large facility that was not open to the public, but eventually the two Humans found themselves in a nest of reptiles that looked to be assembling small components with their 8 digit hands…all four of them, plus using their short tails to grasp larger objects, as well as move around from various perches. Davis had to walk a zigzag course to get past them all, eventually coming up to one of the knee-high creatures that their guide lead them to.

“You wish to speak with me?” Hi’ch’mek asked in the trade language, looking up from the computer nexus cluster it was assembling from a box of components.

He’s not the one, Morgan told Davis.

“We’re looking for unregistered individuals, and we think you might have some knowledge of their whereabouts,” Davis said, looking down on the small reptile.

Good, Morgan said as the Davpz visibly flinched. Keep pressing.

“Why do you ask me? I know nothing.”

“I’ve been analyzing some of your economic figures. You’ve been consuming more foodstuffs than needed, which I suspect have been rerouted elsewhere.”

Got it, Morgan said, telepathically pointing Davis to another section of the facility.

“We eat more than we appear,” Hi’ch’mek said as Morgan walked past him and Davis fell into step with her a moment later. “Where are you going?”

“To your stash,” Davis said as dozens of the Davpz jumped down off their platforms and rushed to block their way, spamming the floor with bodies.

Morgan simply waved a hand and pushed them aside, opening up a meter-wide walkway that she telekinetically held open until they passed through, with the reptiles scrambling back into the gap behind them as more and more came into view, flooding into the area in response to a primitive telepathic call that their race possessed.

Morgan pointed to a piece of equipment, seeing below it with her Pefbar.

“Remove the concealment or we will,” Davis threatened. “No one will be harmed.”

“There is no concealment,” Hi’ch’mek denied, only to have Morgan step up and, with a thought, activated the powered attribute of her armor, sliding a hand into a small gap on the underside and lifting the car-sized chunk of metal and tubes up off its hidden railing, popping the guide wheels off track and tipping it over onto its side, revealing a tunnel hidden in the floor.

“You were saying?” Davis asked as the little aliens swarmed around Morgan and tried to block her from going down…but the trailblazer merely stood in place, waiting to see what Davis wanted to do.

“There are hundreds down there,” she said through the comm as she focused her Ikrid down further than her Pefbar would reach. “I think they’ve been digging underneath the utility grid to add unsanctioned additions to the complex. Habitats, I think, given how closely they’re packed together.”

When the Davpz didn’t answer Davis knelt down and looked Hi’ch’mek in the eyes. “I know there are more of you down there. If we check their genetic codes will we find that there is no record of them in our database. Explain why not, and do not lie to me, I can tell when you do.”

Hi’ch’mek hesitated, not sure what to say and desperately searching for some way out of this when Morgan sighed.

“It’s not what we thought. They’re being hunted and have been trying to group together for mutual protection,” she said, digging into its memories. “They’re bullying everyone around them to create a defensive perimeter.”

“Hunted by who?” Davis asked over the comm while the Davpz still couldn’t find anything to say.

“They don’t know. But there have been too many of them disappearing to be coincidence.”

“Why haven’t they reported this?”

Morgan hesitated for a moment, trying to dig into less accessible memories. “Xenophobia. They don’t trust anyone other than their own.”

Davis turned back to the Davpz. “How long have your people been going missing?”

The little alien was silent.

“How long?” Davis insisted.

“Three years,” it finally answered.

Davis knelt down again. “You should have told us. We’ll find out what’s happening and stop this, I promise you. But these people down there,” he said, pointing at the tunnel entrance, “have to be registered. We have to know who’s living on this planet to make sure we can take care of them.”

“We only trust our own.”

“Then why did you come to this planet?”

“We have no planet of our own. This world is one of few accepting people in. We have few options.”

Davis raised a warning finger, despite the fact he knew the Davpz probably wouldn’t understand the gesture. “Do not prey on others here again. If something bad happens report it. You have friends to watch your back so long as you behave yourselves.”

“We do what we have to to protect our own.”

“We protect more than our own, and we will protect you as well.”

“You have not.”

“Because we didn’t know there was a problem because you didn’t report it,” Davis said, knowing there was some blame to be had regardless. This sort of thing should not have been happening on any Star Force world, even one as loose as this one was run. “Bring your people out from below. Security is going to log them into our network and you’re going to provide as much information as you can concerning the people who have gone missing. Agreed?”

“Will we be expelled?”

“No, but you will comply with our rules from now on.”

“Agreed.”

Davis stood up and looked at Morgan. “Call it in.”

“I just did.”

The pair stayed put until security got there, then they left and continued on with their wanderings, checking back in over the following days until security finally got a lead after going back through security camera footage. They’d picked up some of the missing individuals and followed them on the old recordings, eventually finding a handful of kiosks where they entered and never came out of again.

Morgan took up the investigation from there, heading directly to one of the locations and beginning a sweep of the minds present with Davis tailing her and security waiting nearby, ready to be called in when needed. They spent the next hour wandering throughout the Chartran shopping complex where all kinds of small, technical devices and parts were available for sale. The facility had many interior divisions, giving it a close feel despite the fact that there were well over 1000 people browsing about inside.

Finally Morgan came across an individual with the memories she was looking for, and after a thorough information download she yanked the ape-like Dangon out from behind the counter it was working behind with a strong telekinetic hold and dumped it on the ground in front of her. A moment later she delivered a light kick to its thick midsection and doubled the thing over, then she stepped forward and reached down, grabbing the shorter alien’s head, whereupon she twisted it in a flash, snapping its neck.

She let go and let the body fall to the ground, and despite the lack of a telepathic link he could tell by Morgan’s body language that she was furious.

“What just happened?” he asked over the comm as the workers and customers nearby flew into a frenzy, yelling and running about to get away from the pair of Archons.

“The Davpz were right. They were being hunted. This one killed several of them, plus a lot of other smaller races. He ambushed them here, injecting them with a sedative then hiding them away in the storage area. He comes back later, kills them, and cuts them up into bits that he smuggles out as cargo to a dealer who we’re about to pay a visit to.”

Davis swallowed hard, finding his stomach unsettled. “A meat black market?”

“Yes,” Morgan said, the word dripping with anger.

“I thought we didn’t execute people,” Davis said evenly, asking it as a question rather than an accusation.

“We don’t kill our prisoners,” Morgan explained, not taking offense, knowing that Davis had never been in a battle, let alone a war, “but we choose who we take prisoner, and I wasn’t feeling generous,” she said as security came into view, running around the corner to the Archons’ location, responding to Morgan’s comm summons.

“Remove the body and explain to the locals that he was a murderer who’s been using their store as a hunting ground. Then get more boots in play, I’m going to give you a list of individuals to round up shortly,” she said, looking at Davis. You coming with or do you want to sit this out?

“Coming with.”

“Sorry for the unexpected show,” she said, switching back to their private channel.

“Show me what you saw.”

“You don’t want me to.”

“I trust you, but I need to know.”

“Alright,” Morgan said, transmitting a select few of the memories she’d taken from the Dangon. They weren’t as crisp as what she had seen, but they were mostly intact, preserving the graphic nature of the ‘work’ the now dead individual had been doing.

Morgan saw Davis bend over in his armor, then not stand back up straight for several long seconds as he fought to keep his stomach intact.

“You alright?”

“No, but I’ll live. Let’s get the others before they kill anyone else.”

Morgan clapped him on the shoulder and gave the security team a few more instructions, then Davis broke into a run to stay with the Archon as she lithely wove her way through the pedestrians enroute to a location only she knew. He stayed tucked up behind her so not to lose the clear path she was plowing for him, and as he did he came to several conclusions.

One was that if the growing population in the ADZ was left to their own ways then more stuff like this would happen. The second was that even if Star Force devoted itself to policing worlds like this in sufficient numbers and scrutiny to provide a typically safe Star Force environment to live in, that they’d never have enough people to do it. Humans accounted for less than 1% of the ADZ population, and most Humans were civilians, not Archons and security forces.

The third conclusion was that Morgan had been right to kill the bastard on the spot. When he’d seen her do it he’d questioned the move…not her motives, but the fact that word would get around that an Archon had just walked into a store and killed one of the employees. The public didn’t know about their psionic abilities, and even if they did it conflicted with Star Force’s no death sentence policy. But as Morgan said, Star Force did kill, and their military was quite experienced with it. Normally that killing happened on the war fronts, but the reason for it remained the same no matter where it happened.

Star Force was a defensive body that protected others from killers, whether they be lizard, Skarron, or a butcher like this. Morgan had talked with him several times about the Archons’ efforts to find a way to combat the lizards without having to kill them at every turn, but it wasn’t until now that he fully understood that dilemma. It wasn’t a moral conflict, but a matter of patience. The Archons, and Star Force overall, were treating their enemies with a respect that they didn’t deserve, not because of a code or a promise, but simply by choice.

Circumstances against the lizards took that choice away from them, forcing them to turn their encounters into a bloodbath. The Archons didn’t like that, but weren’t hesitant when it was necessary. In this situation Morgan could have taken this butcher prisoner and sent him to an isolation cell for the next half century…but she hadn’t, and Davis finally glimpsed the burden she and the others were under. With so much darkness in the galaxy they were taking an overly positive perspective regarding their enemies, not because they hoped they would change their ways, but to give them the chance regardless.

That allowed them to forgo the ‘gray’ areas by risking a miscalculation downside of giving them better than they deserved rather than a potential injustice. In this situation there was no ‘gray’ area, this man was a monster, and while they could have eliminated the threat he posed to others with confinement, Morgan had simply had enough with the kid gloves and fought back at the enemy.

It wasn’t until now that he realized how much she and the others had been holding back for fear of making a mistake. They’d incorporated that ‘safety net’ into their combat procedures, and had ordered their subordinates to employ them as well, but knowing that there was no ambiguity here she’d dealt with the threat how, Davis thought, she and the others wanted to deal with their enemies…fight them head on.

Taking him into custody would have been an injustice, after a fashion, and Morgan, as she’d said, hadn’t felt like it. The murderer got what he deserved, even if it was a breach of protocol. Despite how others might react, it had been the right call.

Which led him to his fourth conclusion…which was how he was going to deal with the ADZ alien population. It’d been top on his priority list ever since he’d started this tour with Morgan, and now it finally dawned on him what he had to do…not the details, which he’d work out later, but the basic premise on which the ADZ would have to be structured.

He had to annihilate the racial divides, destroying their cultures, their beliefs, their traditions, and their phobias…creating a single Alliance culture with Star Force at its core.

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_____

1

April 30, 2521

Achkor System (Skarron territory)

Zenniza

Morgan reached out with her Ikrid to sense the positions of the Engineers around her, timing her run accordingly before dropping down from her perch in the empty cockpit of the Skarron version of a forklift and sprinting across to the open side door of one of their parked transports. She kept a mental link with those closest to her, insuring that they didn’t see her and ready to make a few memory alterations if they did, but by the time she slipped her black armor inside the Skarron ship no one was the wiser.

She took a moment to make sure of that, then moved through the cramped tunnels built specifically for the Engineers who maintained these craft. This one was the Skarron version of a dropship, but far larger than Star Force’s Dragon-class…then again it had to be, given the size of the Skarrons themselves. It was parked along with some 30+ others in a semi-enclosed landing platform that sat on the edge of one of the city’s interior clusters.

Unlike with Human cities, or those of most other races, Skarron infrastructure didn’t occupy all the land space in a given area. Instead it had clusters connected to one another via strips of infrastructure. Large gaps of unused land existed like lakes in between them, save for they were nothing more than scorched earth or bare rock. From above the patterns reminded one of a bush with berries, for the clusters held a more or less circular/square geometry, while the interconnecting infrastructure resembled stalks or shoots, but again, they were also irregular.

Irregular regularity is how Morgan would have described it, but given that she was on the ground behind enemy lines she didn’t much care for how it looked from overhead. This spaceport held a tiny portion of the planet’s transports that were constantly ferrying troops and supplies up and down from orbit. The Achkor System was located well coreward of Beta Region, and was the first truly Skarron world Star Force had discovered, though there was little doubt they had taken it from someone else some time ago.

Whoever that was was long gone, with all native infrastructure erased and replaced by the Skarrons’ own construction. The planet appeared to have been geared towards resupply rather than habitation, for there wasn’t much in the way of a local population other than what was necessary to service the troops coming out from deeper within Skarron territory to the warfronts against the Alliance and others. Zenniza was one of three worlds in the system that the enemy had put down roots on, but the only one with a breathable atmosphere, which was probably why it had become the center of their operations within the system.

The other two were mining operations with additional production facilities being built up around them and even the beginnings of a full scale shipyard in orbit, currently operational and producing Skarron transports and other ‘small’ craft for them, but with major upgrades under way that would allow them to produce their Destroyer-class warships.

Or rather it had been, until they’d seen some recent setbacks. Morgan wasn’t the only striker in the system, and she knew Paul had already damaged the shipyard to some extent from the inside, much as she was about to do now with the transports. The key was to stay invisible and do damage that wouldn’t immediately give her away, for while she could control a few minds around her, if the Skarrons or their Hobbits came after her en mass she’d be forced to run, for she didn’t have enough ammunition to make a long fight of it.

Morgan worked her way through the transport using a schematic Star Force had obtained from downloading portions of computer memory from post-battle Skarron debris…after the techs had learned to interface with their systems, which had included familiarity files that the Skarrons used to train their people with. The files weren’t blueprints, but rather user indoctrination assets, allowing green crews to learn their way around the various craft they would be serving on so that they wouldn’t get lost the first day and become a problem to the existing crews.

And Morgan could understand why getting lost would be a problem. The Engineers were small bodied and apparently nimble enough to work in the tight confines she was now passing through that were designed with a similar erratic motif that the Skarron cities used. No straight hallways here, for everything was twists and turns and cutbacks, not just laterally but up and down as well, making for what seemed to be a very inefficient network of support tunnels.

Spotting a few minds enroute, she navigated around them or, in the case of one Engineer, she froze him in place and walked over him, releasing the freeze when she was on the other side with him not even realizing he’d lost 20 seconds. Morgan remained a ghost as she worked through the underside of the transport, eventually coming up into the larger areas where the Skarrons operated.

The transition was like night and day, with the Engineer labyrinth feeling like tunnels and the Skarron areas seeming as if open fields. Morgan avoided the cargo bay, staying instead in the pilot areas as she crossed them without incident. At present this transport was grounded for either storage or maintenance, with barely any crew onboard. She sensed only 9 Engineers and 4 Hobbits, all of which she was able to avoid as she worked her way through the ship to the sweet spot she’d discovered earlier in another sabotage run.

It was on the Skarron level, in a maintenance panel that she had to remove without notice. Once Morgan had it open she made several small adjustments with a plasma cutter she’d brought with her, then replaced the panel and moved on, eventually sneaking out of the transport and over to the next one…and the next…and the next, working her way through the spaceport and disabling as many of the craft as she could get to, but even as she got to more than half of them some of the others were lifting off and making room for more to come down.

Those coming down held troops, the first of which had an army of Hobbits pour out, while the second contained all Skarrons. They moved out of the spaceport straight to a processing center that got them situated on the planet where they needed to be while they waited for their next posting.

Troops transfers like this were coming in every hour of every day, with the traffic activity around the system’s star being continuous. Even now there were well over 1000 warships in orbit, with more than five times that number of cargo ships. The transports that Morgan was hopping to and from weren’t interstellar capable, but the means for the Skarrons to move cargo and personnel to and from the surface. The ones in space were downright huge, larger than even Star Force jumpships, and the fact that there were so many of them and the rate at which they were changing out was a testament to the importance of this system.

It was too bad Star Force couldn’t take it from them, for that would put a crimp in their assaults on the ADZ, but with so few ships available they didn’t have the resources for the scale of attack that taking and holding this planet would require…thus Morgan and a few of the others had decided to slow the enemy down a bit by going in on the ground and doing what damage they could in person, which turned out to be considerable.

This wasn’t Morgan’s first sabotage run, more like the 100th. She’d been on the planet for more than a month, with this being her fourth trip down. Her team had been ghosts to the Skarrons, having employed a few new Infiltrator-class puddle jumpers that significantly reduced sensor detection range. Using one of them, Morgan had come down to an uninhabited portion of the planet undetected, leaving her ship behind and crossing the varied terrain via mongoose up to the small ridge that ran north of this city complex. From there she had came in on foot, crossing some 11 miles before getting into the city.

First item of business had been to find a safe haven to stash her equipment pack, then after that she’d made sixteen sabotage runs into various parts of the city, with this being her 17th and last. Her supplies were almost exhausted, meaning she had to return to her ship for more, but she was going to cause a disruption at the spaceport first, one that was noticed before she got to the last few transports.

Thanks to her previous sabotage runs within the city, the local Skarrons were already on the lookout, so when one of the transports failed to engage its antigrav and essentially became a big rock blocking part of the platform, the area went on alert and additional security patrols popped out of the surrounding areas, heading towards the exits and each of the individual ships.

That said, Morgan took her time and disabled another of the transports, hopefully in a way that they wouldn’t find for some time. The damage she was doing wasn’t hard to repair, but it did require new components to replace the ones she was severing. If they already had some standing by it would be maybe a 10 minute fix, but then again if the antigrav simply wouldn’t engage and they didn’t know why it could be a very long wait.

She wasn’t counting on that, which was why she was quietly sabotaging other systems within the transports as well, learning with each attempt and adding more quick cuts here and there to her choreography, making her stay within each of the transports short and sweet…though the next dash between the two became much more difficult.

Rather than risking going to ground where the security troops were, she worked her way up to the top of the transport and ran over to the edge, using her powered armor to enhance her leg muscles and jump from one to another, given how tightly packed they were on the pad. Morgan barely made it across, falling onto her stomach as her legs missed, hanging over the multi-story drop, then she climbed up over the edge and out of view. She checked for nearby minds, hoping not to have triggered an alarm, then moved on to the maintenance hatch that led to the interior…where she began her well-oiled sabotage run again.

Morgan came back up to the top of the transport when she finished, seeing the next transport beside her lift off empty, for she could sense the hoard of minds below that had just came off it. All soldiers by the feel of them, prompting her to sit down on the roof of the transport and wait until they filed out before she moved on.

It was a weird feeling, for her black armor stood out against the dull white coloration of the hull, meaning that she was easy to spot from above, but fortunately all the troops around her were below eye level. It was the transports coming up and going down that could spot her…or the occasional fighter flying past. Morgan just sat there, looking up with idle curiosity to see if any of them did notice her as she waited for the floor below to clear.

Taking mental inventory of the ships she had left to hit, she picked out two more and waited for an opportunity, losing one as it took off, but able to slink back down into the ship she was on and out another of the small Engineer exits before the next one left. She hit the antigrav’s first thing, making sure she didn’t go with the ship, then proceeded to move around ransacking whatever systems she could get access to and hitting about half of what was on her normal list, for there were more Engineers about, including a ship full of Hobbits and Skarron troops ready to be transported up to a cargo ship, and from there off to the war zone to reinforce one of the numerous enemy positions.

When she went to leave her exit was blocked, so she circled back through the Engineer section in the transport to another hatch, finding it also with people outside. Figuring it was time to call it a day she mentally froze the few Hobbits outside and made a dash for the nearby cover of a stack of cargo pallets. She didn’t make it cleanly, for someone from further away raised an alarm, after which she abandoned her subtlety and sprinted for one of the spaceport exits, drawing a bit of white plasma fire that fell well wide.

After that she was inside the city interior and disappearing into the infrastructure again, eventually working her way into the less obvious pedestrian routes that she’d become familiar with, avoiding the Skarron areas entirely and working her way through the Hobbit and Engineer-sized passages, psionically picking up on the none too subtle search effort taking place around her.

With her cover already blown, she took a small detour to a power plant and easily fought her way past the guards using a combination of Fornax and Ikrid…the former to knock them down and the later to render them unconscious one by one. Once by them she moved into the power plant and carefully knocked it out of commission, blacking out the local region of the city, aside from emergency backups that gave a little light in the now dark interior areas.

Using her armor’s night vision she evaded/fought her way through the search patrols and into the clear, moving through section after section until she came back into the lit areas and on to the spot where she’d set up her temporary camp. Taking a seldom used maintenance ladder up to the top of the city, she came out into the planetary atmosphere and walked on the irregular rooftops, with jutting pieces that went every which way. There were several tower-like segments, but for some reason the Skarron structures had no windows at all, giving her a little field of infrastructure debris to lose herself in.

Finding her way back to the waypoint marked on her HUD, she crept into the narrow trench that was blocked from overhead view and retrieved her pack, finding it sitting in two inches of water from what must have been a recent rain. Morgan pulled it out and checked on the contents, taking a moment to remove her helmet and drink the last of her water bottles, as well as eating a condensed ‘fuel rod’ and an ambrosia wafer, with the former being a heavy, chewy cylinder that held a massive amount of calories in its small volume.

Getting her stomach filled with badly needed fuel, she took one last moment to relieve her bladder in the small hovel, then she reattached her armor and pack and began a light jog across the rooftop terrain, alert for low flying ships as she started a 3 mile trek across the Skarron infrastructure that eventually led her to the northern edge where she dropped down to the surface and began to run at the best speed she could manage across the band of rocky ground surrounding the city and off into the grasslands that mostly obscured her passage up to the far ridgeline yet more miles away.

Morgan had to rely on her battlemap to guide her, for most of the time the 4 meter tall grasses didn’t afford her much of a view…which was the only reason she’d been able to approach on foot in the first place. Eventually she came up to the ridgeline, unable to see exactly where it from her position, but not far down the opposite side and out of direct sensor range she found the waypoint where she’d hid her mongoose and was relieved to see it intact underneath the small grass hut she’d made to cover it.

Pushing and kicking the thick mat clear, she slid up on top and powered the awesome little steed up, then knelt low over the front as she took off, pushing her way through the grasses with them rubbing on the mongoose and her helmet in razorblade fashion as she accelerated up to speed, following the approximate path she’d taken to get here, though the grasses had long since eaten up the tracks she’d made on the inward run.

It took several hours for her to make her way out of the grasses and onto clear dirt ground, with Morgan then being able to accelerate up to decent speed and tear her way across the rolling landscape, meandering her way around hills rather than going over top of them and opening her up to distant observation, all the time loosely making her way back to the Infiltrator’s hiding spot, tucked up nicely inside one of the small valleys and covered over with a deployable camouflage canopy that mimicked the surrounding topography in both color and sensor profile.

Morgan drove up underneath the canopy along a small creek bed that had a steady 3 inch deep flow to the water that splashed up on the mongoose’s tires as the boarding ramp lowered and she drove up inside, happy to be back in Star Force territory, even if it was just the inside of a small ship. She docked her mongoose next to three others in the bay, seeing one empty slot amongst them, meaning one of the other strikers was still out in the field, though whether it was Kip or Olivia she didn’t know.

Morgan slid off the mongoose and headed for the puddle jumper’s interior, finding her way to the lounge area that had been built into what otherwise would have been the cargo bay on other models.

“Welcome back,” Kip said, sitting in one of the chairs with his feet up and looking at a datapad that held a now paused movie. “Any trouble?”

“Not much,” Morgan said, pulling her helmet off and seeing Kip wrinkle his nose. “Bad?”

“Tolerable,” he said, referencing the fact that she had been inside her armor and not showered for several days.

“Olivia still out?”

“Pilot says she came back early then went out again after picking up some special supplies. Not sure when to expect her back.”

“We’re due at the warship in 3 days,” Morgan commented, unlatching her pack and setting it aside. “She knows the timetable. What’d you get?”

Kip smiled and tossed her a different datapad. Morgan caught it telekinetically and flew it over to her hand, then began reading through the list of targets Kip and Olivia had hit since she’d last checked in.

2

“Miss me?” Olivia-051 asked, returning to the puddle jumper some 18 hours later with a nasty cut on her face.

Morgan pointed up at it, now showered and in a fresh Archon uniform. “How did that happen?”

Olivia tossed the helmet in her hand to Morgan as Kip walked into the lounge from another chamber in the ship.

“That’s how,” the trailblazer said, referencing the puncture in the tinted faceplate just above the nose piece on the left side. Morgan touched a finger to it, seeing that there wasn’t a melty edge to the fracture that would have indicated the high heat of plasma damage.

“Shrapnel?”

“No, a damn structural beam fell on me.”

“What’d you blow up?” Kip asked.

Olivia shook her head slightly, not wanting to add much movement to the already scabbed-over cut that ran a good 3 inches across her left cheek. “Wasn’t me. A whole section of the build came down and I got buried underneath it. Don’t know if they knew where I was and were trying to get at me or if something else happened. I dug my way out after a Sesspik nap, then headed back here. I expected them to be all over me, but I hardly ran into any troops on the way. Mostly Engineers and Hobbits coming to work on the debris.”

Olivia started detaching her armor and suddenly Morgan and Kip saw how much blood she’d lost. The inside of her neck collar was coated with it, but it had also seeped down through the thin line between the collar and her neck and soaked into her white uniform underneath…which had the most of the upper left torso colored deep red.

“Ouch,” Morgan said, taking a step closer to her and gently laying a hand on her head.

“I’m low,” Olivia confirmed as Morgan hacked into her nervous system to gleam some information on the state of her body…which was running low on blood, but fortunately not low enough for the Archon to pass out. “And hungry.”

Morgan stepped back and let her finish climbing out of her armor, then Olivia stretched for a moment before picking up her helmet and looking at the damage from the outside again, tapping a finger on the intact portion of the transparent material.

“I think it’s time for a design change,” she said, throwing Morgan a glance as Kip came back in from another room and tossed her a water bottle and two sealed foodstuff packages.

“Harder faceplate?” he asked.

“No faceplate,” she countered, opening the water and sucking it down inside of a few seconds, pausing only for breath before tearing open the first of the packages and biting into a dense breadstick.

“You think we should go full HUD?” Morgan asked, knowing that the suggestion had come up before. The ‘visor’ portion of the Archon helmet was the weakest point, but now that they also had an energy shield covering it there hadn’t been much discussion about that weakness…and for good reason. The material wasn’t glass, but a super hard transparent synthetic that was stronger than steel, allowing them to keep the visor thin and avoid any lensing effects that would diminish their vision and situational awareness.

“Yo…ell me,” she said, still chewing as she glanced at her helmet.

“Your head hurt?” Kip asked, noticing that she wasn’t using psionics, which could easily allow her to talk and eat at the same time.

She swallowed. “More lightheaded than pain. I’ll be alright.”

Morgan turned the damaged helmet over in her hands, looking at it again and picturing what no visor would look like. It would mean they wouldn’t be able to see out of it except for when it was powered, using sensors on the exterior to translate images inside to a vid screen directly in front of their face…or more likely a holographic version, similar to what was used in the skeets.

“We’d have Pefbar as a backup, but the adepts and others wouldn’t…and we’d have to coat the thing with microcameras, otherwise a little armor damage would blind us.”

“Make it ranger and up then, but I want it.”

“Not going to argue with you there,” Kip agreed, with Morgan tossing her helmet to him so he could take a closer look.

“Are we ready to leave?” Olivia asked, tearing open the second foodstuff package.

“Yep,” Morgan said, “unless you have something to finish up?”

“Let’s…go,” she said, abandoning her previous targets that the explosion had stopped her from getting to, knowing that they didn’t have time nor an extra helmet for her on this run.

Morgan nodded and headed aft to take care of the camouflage canopy while Kip headed forward, walking through the sections of the comfortably small ship until he came to the pilot’s quarters and knocked lightly.

A moment later the door opened and a Star Force Regular stepped out.

“We’re leaving,” Kip told him.

“Back to the ship or repositioning?” he asked, stepping past the trailblazer on the way to the cockpit.

“To the ship. Morgan’s getting the canopy. As soon as it’s secured you’re free to work your magic,” Kip said, referencing the fact that the man had a higher pilot’s rating than he did…which running blockades necessarily required.

“Alright, let me know when she’s back,” he said, moving into the pilot’s seat and beginning the power up sequence. This was his fourth trip down into enemy territory, with him knowing well that the trick to beating the Skarrons both down and up was in getting a head start on them. He didn’t know if they’d spot the ship when the canopy came off, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.

As soon as Kip signaled him that Morgan was done he kicked in the antigrav and accelerated ahead, maneuvering through the rolling terrain at low level to mask their hiding spot in case they wanted to use it again, then when he had the spot he wanted lined up with his preferred orbital escape vector, he tipped the nose of the puddle jumper up to the sky and accelerated hard, tearing a narrow gash in the atmosphere that sucked energy out of the ship’s shields from the high friction.

He kept the speed just slow enough to not breach them completely, then as the air thinned he increased speed to match, seeing several Skarron ships in orbit altering position to try and intercept them…but it was no use. The Star Force vessel had a clear patch of orbit ahead of them and the Skarrons couldn’t get there in time, nor did they want to, for the puddle jumper would have just flashed by them in the blink of an eye.

What the enemy was attempting with their smaller vessels was to match the speed and outgoing vector, essentially meeting up with the puddle jumper further out as they accelerated towards a guessed rendezvous point…but it was no good, for as soon as the ship got outside the atmosphere and up to decent speed the pilot made a course correction, using their binary drives to curve their trajectory in an arc that the Skarrons couldn’t follow.

That broke them free of their pursuit and brought them to a jumpline for a neighboring planet, which they then took…with the Skarrons following at a considerable delay.

When they arrived at their destination a few minutes later the pilot immediately moved them around to the stellar jumpline and shot them off again…but at a very slow speed. Once they were outside the effective sensor range of the Skarrons he used their binary drives to move them off the jumpline and bring them to a standstill out in extremely high orbit around the planet. There they waited until the Skarron ships made their own jump towards the star, bypassing the puddle jumper and leaving them in the clear.

It took a while to pull back up to the planet, but once they did the pilot swung them around to another jumpline, this one to one of the outer planets in the system. From there they made another slow jump out to where they rendezvoused with the warship Luigi, which had been their ride into the system and their quiet base of operations for their sabotage runs against the Skarrons, now parked in a position that the enemy couldn’t get to easily, due to their lack of binary gravity drives.

The Infiltrator-class puddle jumper showed up on the warship’s sensor at a far greater range than they did on the Skarrons’, giving the bay doors time to fully open before the pilot flew their interplanetary transport inside and gently landed it on the deck next to several others of identical design.

The three trailblazers exited the craft wearing their armor rather than carrying it and headed for their individual quarters on the ship, depositing their armor there then heading off to various locations. Olivia headed to the med bay to get her injury attended to, Morgan headed directly for the sanctum to catch up on missed workouts, and Kip went to their impromptu war room, which was an extra set of quarters the trailblazers had reworked into a private bridge where they could monitor and plan all insystem raids.

When he got there the room was empty, but as Kip uploaded the data he and the others had compiled from their most recent run the door opened and Paul walked in, having tracked him down once he heard they’d returned.

“Surprised you’re still here,” Kip said from his seated position as he walked in.

“Have to get some training in every now and then,” Paul argued, pulling up a chair and accessing one of the four terminals so he could see what his fellow trailblazer had just added.

“What’d I miss?”

“We hit three more orbital facilities and did some light damage on the ground.”

“How the hell are you getting past their sensors?” Kip wondered, knowing that he’d hit a shipyard earlier.

“Very carefully. Kara’s shadow mode is rather useful, but even she has to be cautious at close range.”

“So you’re letting her hit the orbital stuff solo?”

Paul shook his head. “No, but she’s been getting me in and out.”

“Not worth the risk, bro.”

“Well,” Paul said with a smile, “to be honest their sensors are crap compared to the lizards.”

“But their anti-air is better…and you look an awful lot like a missile floating in space.”

“I don’t do the floating thing…that’s all Kara. She’s got a way of measuring the sensor intensity as it hits and absorbs on her armor, so she can pretty much sniff around and find the weak spots without giving herself away. After that she goes in and does a little reprogramming to create a blind spot…then I come in.”

“Using what?”

“A stealth pod.”

Kip shook his head. “You’re nuts.”

“Haven’t gotten killed yet,” Paul said sarcastically.

“Yeah, well, what’s the point of saying ‘I told you so’ if you’re not around to hear it. Stop while you’re ahead, will ya?”

“You do anything on the ground other than inconvenience them?”

“Kind of hard to do that without blowing stuff up…but yeah, I managed to slow down a few of their factories.”

“Which ones?”

“The specialty kind. They won’t be making any more gravity drives for a while…their corovon stores just got significantly thinned.”

“You didn’t bring it back here did you?”

“No, way too heavy. I hid it inside their own infrastructure. I doubt they’ll find it anytime soon, if they’re even looking for it. By the way, Olivia took a nasty hit. Messed up her face when she got caught in an explosion. Leveled the building around her and a piece went through her faceplate.”

“Ouch. What blew up?”

“She doesn’t know, but she’s got a good gash across here,” Kip said, drawing the line on his own face, “and lost a lot of blood, but she made it back to the puddle jumper on her own. She thinks we should redesign the helmet to get rid of the faceplate.”

“Were her shields up when the explosion went off?”

“I don’t know, but she’s shook enough that I don’t think she’s going to let this one go…and I can’t say I disagree with her. We’ve got Pefbar to use as a backup if the HUD loses power, so I don’t see why we don’t make the change, for us at least.”

“Guess you two just volunteered to test the prototype.”

“Jason’s been the one tinkering with the armor. Why haven’t we made this upgrade already?”

“We were waiting until the neuro link became useable, but if Olivia took a hit then we probably should have come up with an intermediary before now…at least as an option. I may stick with the current model though.”

“Should we send this off to Jason or handle it ourselves?”

“If Olivia took the hit, then she’s probably the best one to design a defense against it. I’d throw what you come up with to Jason and see if he can add anything helpful, but there’s no need to shuffle it off to him if Olivia has the spare time.”

“That depends how much longer we’re going to be out here,” Kip reminded him.

“A few more runs, at least. Sam picked up something insightful on his last mission. You got an hour to spare?”

“Can…but after that I need to hit the sanctum.”

Paul nodded. “Come with me.”

“Where to?” Kip asked, following him out.

“The holding cells.”

A little over 10 minutes later the pair of trailblazers walked in behind another two sitting on the free side of the containment field that separated them from a captured Hobbit, and one that was apparently more than willing to talk, for Kip could hear him rattling off the Skarron language that the computer was translating. Kip hadn’t learned more than a few words himself, having to keep V’kit’no’sat, the trade language, Calavari, and now Protovic straight in his head…and was glad that Davis had begun implementing English as the standard Alliance language, for with the insane number of races in the galaxy, maintaining native languages was utterly absurd when the point of communication was to actually communicate with each other.

Paul and Kip didn’t say anything, preferring to stand in the back and watch as Sam and Mark-099 were having an animated conversation with their prisoner…which Paul had explained to be more of a guest on their walk over to the cell.

WE WERE A LARGE RACE SPREAD OUT TO SEVERAL HUNDRED STAR SYSTEMS WHEN THE SKARRONS FOUND US. WE COULD NOT OFFER MUCH MILITARY RESISTANCE AND THEY KILLED MORE THAN A THIRD OF OUR POPULATION BEFORE DECIDING TO INCORPORATE US INTO THEIR EMPIRE TO REPLACE THE BERULATS. THEY FOUND THEM TO BE INADEQUATE AND KILLED THEM ALL WHEN WE ARRIVED TO REPLACE THEM. WE FEAR THEY MAY DO THE SAME WITH US IF THEY ARE ABLE TO ANNEX ANOTHER RACE THEY FEEL IS SUPERIOR. IT HAS BEEN RUMORED THAT THE PROTOVIC COULD BE A POSSIBLE REPLACEMENT, BUT SUCH RUMORS ARE COMMON AMONGST THE ARONSIC.

“How long ago was this?” the ‘other’ Mark asked, for there were two of them amongst the trailblazers with the same name.

APPROXIMATELY 1500 YEARS AGO.

“How many of the other Aronsic feel as you do? How many are loyal to the Skarrons?”

ALL ARE LOYAL. WE HAVE NO CHOICE IN THAT. BUT THOSE THAT WHISPER COMPLAINTS ARE MANY ON THE WORLDS THAT I HAVE SEEN.

“How many worlds do the Skarrons possess?” Sam asked, already knowing the answer but gauging the Hobbit’s reactions to see whether or not it was playing some angle here. When it had come across Mark on his most recent mission it hadn’t fired its weapon, responding with enough curiosity that when the trailblazer had reached out with his Ikrid and accessed its mind to render it unconscious and wipe the memory of his being seen, he’d been prompted to make a different call, first engaging it with conversation then deciding to bring it back here for further questioning.

TOO MANY FOR US TO KNOW. WE ESTIMATE AT LEAST 10,000 STAR SYSTEMS, BUT THE TRUE NUMBER MAY BE MUCH LARGER THAN THAT.

And it was, for in recent years Star Force had accessed a measure of data from captured enemy ships, including a navigational map that tagged some 72,912 systems as Skarron territory, with the bulk of those in the neighboring galactic arm well over 1,000 lightyears from the ADZ.

“What about the Jenipars?”

I DO NOT KNOW. WE HAVE LITTLE CONTACT WITH THEM AND I PERSONALLY HAVE HAD NONE.

“And the Aronsic and Jenipars are the only two races the Skarrons currently have incorporated into their empire?”

AS FAR AS I KNOW, YES.

Aren’t these the same guys that were eating Kiritak a while back? Kip asked Paul telepathically.

The Word was also composed of Humans, Paul reminded him.

Not what I mean. If this is headed where I think it is, we’re going to have to distinguish between unwilling slave and willing slave.

At least we can have this discussion with them. By now a lizard would have tried to tear its own throat out.

Not my area of expertise.

But this is, Paul countered.

Prisoners are prisoners. We don’t give them a chance to switch sides after shooting at us…and by us I mean the Protovic too. We have to find a way to get to the willing ones first, if they really exist. Switching sides is easy after you lose.

Sounds like the beginning of a plan.

Down the road…after we’ve got a few more sentinels deployed. Right now I’m sticking with shooting them.

I get the feeling these two are going to want to start earlier than that, Paul said, gesturing towards Sam and Mark.

They’re welcome to try, so long as it doesn’t eat up resources.

You think it’s a bad idea?

Kip sighed. No, we just can’t fall into the trap of trying to help the guys shooting at us.

We won’t, Paul said confidently, but if we can undermine their own ranks, we might get them to hesitate before shooting us.

Kip slowly broke into a smile. I hadn’t considered that.

Being the good guys does have its advantages.

That it does, Kip said, silently walking out, having seen enough to give him something to think about on his way over to the sanctum.

3

May 3, 2521

Solar System

Ceres

Haley Somerson returned to her temporary quarters within the colony that had been her home the past 26 years, only to finish packing for the trip away from the small, icy planet to a distant star system, not even in the Core Region, but further out inside Zeta Region. She’d just said her goodbyes to her father, having spoken with her mother a week ago. She liked him far more than her, but neither were emotional affairs, given that she’d only met them a handful of times. It was her family she was having a hard time leaving, but now that she and her brothers and sisters had graduated out of the maturia they were all going their separate ways.

A lot of them were staying on Ceres, but about a third were moving on to other worlds. A few more had yet to graduate, with the first of them having tested out a year and a half ago. Since then it had been a steady progression through the 100 of them, with each completing their primary maturia training on an individual basis. Once that occurred they were given regular quarters in the city, such as Haley was now located in, and free run of the colony, having become full-fledged Star Force citizens upon graduation, despite the fact that she was only 26.

Her quarters were small, no larger than they’d been in the maturia, but the biggest change were her neighbors, for they were no longer her family. The closest member of her orisect was several blocks away and about 7 minutes of walking, making a quick stop in to catch up on how they were doing impossible. Before it was just a few steps down the hallway…now the brothers and sisters she’d trained with were scattered about the city, but at least they were still in this complex and not one of the other cities, meaning she had a few familiar faces to visit from time to time, but it wasn’t the same…not by a long shot.

Haley had been told to expect this, and that it was common. Back in the old days most people didn’t even have 99 siblings. They had one or two biological ones, at most, which she couldn’t comprehend. The other 99 in her orisect had been her closest confidants and friends, with them, more often than not, helping each other out with the tasks the trainers demanded of them, working towards this day when they would finally graduate and be free to chart their own life.

But now that she was here, she realized that freedom sucked. Some of the others remaining in the Ceres colony, which was actually a conglomeration of 19 huge cities wrapped around the low grav world, had requested quarters transfers so they could be next to one another, with those occurring as spaces were available, but Haley hadn’t gone in for that, knowing that it was going to be clinging onto something that was now lost. She’d graduated, she’d completed the quest that they’d been working so hard on since they were born. Now it was time to move on, for there was no going back.

Some of her brothers and sisters were moving on to advanced maturia training, meaning they were still housed in the maturia. Haley hadn’t considered that, because just getting through the primary training had taken all the effort and skill she had…and the thought about voluntarily going into even harder challenges was downright stupid. She’d done what was required of her, and was better for it, but the loss of camaraderie was more than she’d guessed it could be, leaving her feeling hollow inside and adrift.

But now she had a new purpose, which was what she was packing for and saying her goodbyes. Haley wanted to get the easy ones over with first, which were her biological parents. They’d chosen to remain in contact with her in the maturia, meaning they were able to monitor her progression, review her scores and achievements…and not all parents did. Being raised in a maturia, as they both knew for they had also been raised in one, as virtually everyone was nowadays, though some regions on Earth still operated under hybrid systems, meant no contact with her biological parents up until she had achieved a certain benchmark in her training, which Haley had attained at age 7.

When that occurred she was given the option of learning who her parents were, or not. Haley had wanted to know and had been given information on them. After another benchmark had been attained two years later she had been allowed to communicate with them if they also agreed, and they had. Since then they’d kept in touch irregularly, for the amount of contact was limited so as not to interfere with her training. She’d met them several years later and had liked them both, but her father more so. A lot more, but he was still a stranger compared to her brothers and sisters, and saying goodbye was really just a ‘hey, I’m leaving’ FYI, while talking to her family that was still around had got her choked up on more than one occasion.

She still had 17 more of them to meet with over the next few days, but after that it was time for her to start the next chapter in her life. There were many options for pure citizens, and even more for those who had scores gaining them access to the Star Force network…but those required the advanced training in the maturia. She could always go back and do it later, but she knew she wouldn’t. She’d had her fill of training.

Which meant she wasn’t going to work for Star Force, on any level, but there were a huge number of other jobs out there if she was interested in earning credits, but in truth she wasn’t. She had a small set of quarters to herself, a clothing and small item allowance that amounted to as much stuff as she wanted, within reason. It was said that some people tried to hoard items or use them for raw materials to construct others, which was why there were limits, but so far she hadn’t hit any of them.

She’d gone to one of the Star Force clothing stores the day after she graduated, wanting to see what new varieties she could incorporate into her wardrobe…now that she could have one. Maturia uniforms were all pretty much the same, but the civilian line of clothing was much more diverse.

She’d come back to her quarters with several boxes full, each of which deducted from her allowance account that would refill gradually, but that was really not an issue so long as she wasn’t going nuts grabbing everything off the shelves that she saw…and right now it looked like she was going to have a hard time fitting it all into the four bags she was packing, meaning she might have to throw out some of it.

Haley knew she’d get more where she was going, so she mentally prepared herself for a trip over to the recycling station tomorrow, but was still adamant about squeezing every bit into her bags that she could, along with a host of personal items that she’d never had access to in the maturia, her favorite of which was hair color. She’d been changing it up each morning, washing the gel into her hair and letting it set for a few minutes in the shower, then rinsing it out and…poof, new color. Today she had gone with a faded green, and figured she’d settle on one eventually, but right now she was a kid in a candy store trying every little thing she saw, including all 283 different color/tint varieties.

So those bottles were a must pack, along with the makeup that she was trying out. Right now she had a claw-like pattern on her left cheek, which she’d noticed was popular amongst the Ceres crowd. Maturia rules didn’t allow for such luxuries, so it was a learning experience for her, and she was dabbling in it even if she didn’t like most of the looks she was seeing in public.

One thing she hadn’t gone in for was the dating scene, which had also become instantly available upon graduation. Apparently newly graduated individuals like herself were highly sought after, and despite not having logged into the network she’d received over 100 messages from guys in the colony who’d located her somehow. A few of them she’d met as neighbors, but she wasn’t interested in getting into a romantic relationship, on any level, especially when she knew she’d be leaving soon.

Her parents weren’t together anymore either, having completed a 5-year residential coupling then deciding not to renew. That was longer than most chose to hook up, she’d learned, but after a while they’d just grown tired of each other. They’d both fulfilled the agreement and stayed together until the coupling period ended, then they went back to living in individual quarters and leading mostly separate lives, though they’d said they still interacted with each other occasionally, given that they both lived in the same city and were close friends.

Her father had chosen to stay solo, but her mother was currently in a 6 month exclusivity coupling, meaning that she and her boyfriend agreed not to screw anyone else until it expired. Most people held to the agreements, though there were some ‘cheaters’ that did not, as her mother had explained to her in one of their chats. All the ‘coupling’ protocols were voluntary, with the relationship network set up to facilitate the interactions with a measure of organization and clarity, but without enforcing anything.

Her current boyfriend wasn’t to the ‘live with’ stage yet, and she admitted he probably never would be, but she expected them to renew another 6 month stint when this one expired in three weeks. She had talked long on the subject of dating, too much so for Haley’s liking after getting her initial perspective, for while the maturia training had informed them of such things, there was no relationship network inside for them to utilize.

Some of them had hooked up unofficially, but that had always been an extra thing. Their training took priority and left them with little free time. They all had individual quarters and lockdowns in place when they were younger, so their sexual explorations couldn’t occur until later…until the official training began. If they chose, they’d been assigned their pick of volunteer trainers to mate with in order to ‘show them the ropes’ and Haley had nervously agreed. After that she’d hooked up with a few of her brothers and sisters, but that got old quick, and to be honest none of them were as good at it as the trainer had been…but then again he probably had a lot more practice.

Haley hadn’t been with anybody in years and wasn’t planning to anytime soon. Nor was she looking for any of the other bonding protocols that Star Force organized. The couplings were all sexual oriented, ranging from casual kissing to full-on baby making, depending on the level you chose, while the ‘companions’ ranged from hangout buddies to roommates of either gender. Usually cohabitation companions were older individuals who had obtained larger quarters than what Haley and the others had starting out, either by purchasing them with credits or earning them through Star Force or colony service, because the standard quarters were quite the crunch when you tried to squeeze two inside.

More often than not you’d have two, three, four or more people that were working jobs and earning credits pool their funds and rent a huge set of quarters, both for the extra living space and to have someone to go through daily life with, much as they’d had in the maturia. Companions also had different levels with varying timespans, none of which exceeded five years, which was the maximum for all relationship programs.

There were four divisions in the relationship network. Coupling, companions, partners, and adversaries. Partners was strictly for workouts, usually with someone on a similar ability level that would agree to meet up at a certain time of day and act as both motivation and workout checker as the two or more partners would, again, go through their workouts like they once had in the maturia. Solo workouts were common throughout the Ceres colony, but more often than not you’d see pairs and quartets out running because it was easier to get the work in if someone else was expecting you…whereas if you were going it alone it was all that much easier just to sleep in and forget about it.

Adversaries were the funnest relationship, by far, but also the fewest. They’d had some experience with these in the maturia as well, where one person was paired with each other for a week, during which they had to point out every flaw and mistake the other made in ridiculing fashion. Exaggerations were allowed, but there always had to be a kernel of truth to what you were saying or there was no point…for adversaries were meant to make you better by meanly pointing out things that polite people would never say.

During her experience in the maturia it had gotten particularly nasty the first day, but by the end of the second it had turned into a competition to see who could come up with the best insults, with no holds barred. The dose of harsh honesty it provided had been cathartic, and apparently Star Force had felt it important enough to incorporate into the colonial relationship network.

Haley didn’t hear it much, but every now and then she’d walk by two people strolling through the colony calmly chewing each other out in what was usually hilarious fashion. She tried not to laugh when she passed them, but sometimes she couldn’t contain at least a smirk. Adversaries were simply too much fun, though not something you’d want to last forever. Also, she’d noticed quite a few in the training areas, railing on each other as they pressed their limits, though those exchanges tended to be more yelling and aggressive than calm and humorous.

But none of that mattered now, because where she was going there wouldn’t be any relationship network. All such things were local, with Ceres having its own network, Mars its own, etc. The colony that Haley was leaving for wasn’t even finished, barely 5 years into construction and containing only one city…one populated by numerous races, with very few Humans not in Star Force’s employ.

Haley had figured that if she was going to leave the maturia life behind, she might as well go for one as distant from it as possible, and living with a bunch of nonHumans seemed to qualify in that regard. The colony was part of the new Alliance Xeno Interstellar Unified Sanctuary thingamabob that Star Force had recently created, known better by the acronym AXIUS to Haley and the others that had responded to calls for Human colonists.

She’d been surprised when the requirements were so low, or in this case nonexistent as far as skill benchmarks were concerned. The main thing the recruitment office wanted was people willing to live side by side with nonhumans in a communal colony that would be created from the ground up, meaning that she’d be one of the first ones there and would have to do absolutely nothing. She wasn’t required to work, or train, or nada. It was a Star Force colony like Ceres, except there wouldn’t be very many Humans there.

That interested her, and gave her something exciting to look forward to as she made her final round of goodbyes in the days to come, with many tears shed as she put the finishing touches on her previous life before heading to the spaceport with four heavy bags in tow, ready to set out on an adventure, being one of the first Axius colonists…and in Star Force, with so much history and protocol firmly established, being the first to do anything was exceedingly rare, and for someone like her nearly impossible, given her lack of skills.

Once her bags were loaded onto a dropship and her into the passenger section she left the thin atmosphere of Ceres for the first time, looking down on the tiny planet and feeling a mix of loneliness and the thrill of exploration as she made her way up to the waiting jumpship. Once onboard she felt very much at home, for the interior of the massive vessel looked and felt like a Star Force colony, only given entirely new faces.

A few days later and the jumpship left the system headed for Sirius, and from there Haley would make several changeovers as she worked her way through the Star Force transportation network out to Zeta Region and arrive at the planet Zastdan, which would shortly become her new home.

4

June 4, 2521

Leil System (Zeta Region)

Zastdan

As soon as Haley stepped off the dropship she felt as if she were in a truly alien place. The spaceport was built with telltale Star Force infrastructure, but the sizing and decoration was different. The first doorway she walked through along with the other Humans coming off the dropship was way over her head, making her feel like a midget. And unlike the normal whites and greys that predominated Star Force infrastructure, these hallways were a mix of grey and red.

She knew Clan colonies had different color schemes, but it still shocked her to see it, after living her entire life with one motif, so she walked through the security checkpoint far more nervous than she had anticipated, passing under the scanning arch and having it confirm her identity and credentials, allowing her access to the colony. From there she was shunted off into a smaller, yet still oversized hallway that took her away from the main traffic flow, all of which were Humans in Star Force uniforms.

Haley and a few others were escorted into a briefing room, whereupon they sat for the next 3 hours going through indoctrination lessons familiarizing them with the colony layout and protocols, after which she was given her quarters’ access code and her luggage…leaving her a full and free Axius citizen without any further fuss.

When she walked out of the processing area dragging her stack of luggage she gulped, both at the nearly empty promenade as well as the fact that the few people roaming about were not Human. This was her first time ever seeing any in person, and it was quite overwhelming…but she tried not to stare and walked out into the open, dragging her belongings on nearly silent wheels and heading through the nearly deserted city.

They’d told her it was a startup colony and that she would be one of the first citizens, but she hadn’t thought it would be this empty. Haley was used to crowded streets, making these feel ghastly huge since they were extra wide. The ceiling top was normal, given that it stood several stories and gave the potted trees plenty of room to expand upwards, but seeing all manner of creatures roaming around immediately gave her the creeps.

She saw a cat, a glowing man, a no-armed tripod, lots of quadrupeds that she couldn’t describe if she’d wanted to, and a host of bipeds that made her feel like she was in a costume party and very underdressed. It took her seven minutes of walking before she even spotted another Human not in a Star Force uniform, with him seeing her as well and waving her down as he crossed over the median to her side of the street that was bracketed by numerous kiosks, most of which were still without vendors.

“Hello,” he said, smiling beneath a mat of thin, brown hair. “My name is Arron. You look new here.”

“How could you tell?” Haley asked, gesturing to her luggage with a sigh of relief.

“Need a guide?”

“Sure, if you’re not busy?”

Arron waved her off. “Nothing that can’t wait. Where you headed?”

“EC203.”

“You’re heading in the wrong direction for that.”

“I wanted to stick to the main routes until I got used to the layout. Name’s Haley.”

“Well no need for that with me here, Haley. We can cut through up ahead on the right.”

“Lead on,” she said, with the slightly shorter man smiling as they fell into step beside one another…something that was usually hard to do in crowds, but was remarkably easy here, given the lack of people.

“What time of day is it?”

“Everything here is internal, so there’s no cycle to worry about. It’s 14:03 and everyone seems to be on their own unique sleep patterns, so there isn’t a morning or evening that I’ve found yet. Here, take this turn.”

“How long have you been here?” Haley asked, rounding a corner and coming into a narrower walkway, but one that still had a high ceiling that a Calavari would have had trouble jumping up and touching.

“A little over a year now.”

“Wow. And I thought things looked deserted now.”

“No, no…there are plenty of people here. Star Force just builds fast, and instead of cramming us all into one little section they’re spreading us out and letting the gaps fill in over time. You probably won’t have too many neighbors in your quarters block for a while.”

“How many Humans are here?”

“Quite a few, if you know where to look.”

“That aren’t Star Force.”

Arron smiled. “Well, now there’s the kicker. I know of 52 personally, not counting the new arrivals such as yourself.”

“52?! How many people are in the colony?”

“Upwards of 10,000, last I heard.”

Haley whistled.

“Not many, I know, but I think that’s the point. I’ve developed some nonHuman friends and from what I hear, each of them had to go through some pretty intense training just to get colony slots. They all know English, but most aren’t very good at it until they’ve spent some time here and get used to the various dialects. You’ll probably get some attention just because they want to practice dialog with someone who speaks it as their native language.”

“Trade language as backup?”

“Yes, but all the media is in English. It was difficult at first, but the community has adjusted somewhat.”

“What have you been up to the past year?” Haley asked as Arron pointed her down another walkway, with this one leading to a wavy path through an interior park.

“I’m a writer, so I just bum around from place to place, getting ideas or keeping up on current events…meeting new people.”

“What kind of writing?”

“Fiction. Mostly romance, but I do chime in on the news nets every now and then. People back home want to know what Axius is all about, so I do a bit of correspondent work for Jasper. What are your long hours here going to occupy you with?”

“I just graduated from my maturia and I haven’t a clue,” she said with a laugh. “Felt like having an adventure.”

“Well you’ve certainly come to the right place…though after a while you’ll get to see that all the ‘wildlife’ are still just people. Strange, odd, and sometimes crazy people, but people just the same. Have you had anything to eat?”

“Just got out of indoctrination. Three hours of indoctrination.”

“What do you say I take you around for a tour and a bite to eat after we get you to your quarters?”

“Am I to assume there’s more to that request…coming from a Romance novelist?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

Arron held up his hands in innocence. “Not today. Newbie rule is in effect. You get at least a week before I start hitting on you.”

“I think that qualifies,” she said with a smirk.

“Just a friendly offer. There’s no dating scene here, at all, so us few Humans try to stick together as much as we can, help each other out, and so on.”

“Promise me I won’t end up in one of your books…”

“I promise.”

“Alright then, friend, let me dump my overpacked cargo off and you can show me around as much as you like…with my thanks.”

“My pleasure, Haley. Think nothing of it.”

“Ok, wasn’t expecting this,” she said as they both walked into the cafeteria and saw the wide variety of foods. There were stations with universal foodstuffs, much like Star Force colonies usually served, but then some of the stuff Haley ate was located in another section. It had various tags on a banner overtop, made up of icons she didn’t recognize other than them having been mentioned in indoctrination as being warning labels. Sometime during that part of the lecture she’d started daydreaming, and she didn’t have any idea what they meant.

“Expecting what?”

“What do all these thingamabobs mean?”

“The labels?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if you see the black one that means Humans can’t eat it without getting sick. Same goes for the Protovic, Densan, and some others. The other labels are things that we can eat but other races can’t, so you don’t look for an ‘ok’ label, you look for one that says ‘not for you’…which in this case is just that one section,” Arron said, pointing to their left.

“So we can eat any of the others?”

“Well, if by ‘eat’ you mean digest, then yes, but I don’t think you’ll like the taste. Various races have various tastes, and in fact that’s one of the biggest complaints going around,” Arron said as he picked up a plain roll and put it on his plate next to a glopping of golden macaroni. “A lot of people don’t like the Star Force food at first.”

“Or ever,” a Critel said from ahead of them in the loose line that had formed along the various foodstuff displays.

“What’s wrong with it?” Haley asked, staring up at the gangly alien and its X-shaped lips.

“It’s not food,” he said in perfect English, but with an accent she had never heard before. “It’s nutritional supplements. No sauces, no meat, no smokes. It’s edible, but beyond that I wouldn’t call it food.”

Haley glanced at the station the Critel was pulling a variety of items from, and to her eyes it all looked like normal foodstuffs, just a different variety from what she ate. The mashed potatoes they had were red, the rolls and other baked goods were the same as hers, as far as she could see, and there were small pockets that contained who knew what inside. It looked alright to her, but then again she didn’t know what Critel usually ate.

“You eat meat?”

“Used to before coming here,” he said with some disgust. “But some sacrifices had to be made.”

“Excuse me,” Arron interrupted. “Smokes?”

“Is that not the right word? Things you breathe in. Inhalants,” he said, switching to the trade language.

“We don’t breathe in food,” Arron said, intrigued.

“Well that certainly explains a few things,” the Critel said, adding a blue-tinted pocket to his plate. “I still don’t see why we have to eat Human-style food when most of the population here isn’t Human.”

“What was that about sacrifices?” Haley asked.

“I don’t know what got you here, being Human and all, but the rest of us had to make a lot of changes to be allowed to live here.”

“And why do you want to live here?” Arron said. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Not for the food, that’s for sure,” the Critel said, adding one last item to his plate before giving the two Humans his full attention.

“Then why?” Haley wondered.

“One thing that Star Force knows how to do is business. I’m here to make credits.”

“And why can’t you do that outside of Axius?” Arron asked, hoping to get a line on another story.

“I can and have, but Axius is special. The rules don’t permit visitors, at least not yet. Not sure if that will change, but there’s also an embargo on outside goods. Nothing comes in except through Star Force, meaning everyone here has to buy from them or local vendors,” he said, tapping himself on the chest.

“A fresh market?”

“An unreachable market for my competition. Trouble is I have to rebuild everything here from scratch using a local workforce and supplies purchased from Star Force, but once I overcome those hurdles I’ll have dozens, if not hundreds of stores up and running, enough to make me rich enough to tolerate this food.”

“Why not make your own?” Haley asked.

“I’m not that kind of vendor, and most of the ingredients I’d need aren’t available here anyway. Most native foodstuffs require either meat, milk, eggs, or sperm…none of which Star Force will allow. Some races agree with them on part or all counts, but the Critel do not. As it is, I doubt I could do much better than what they serve here for free.”

“Sperm?” Haley asked, wondering if she’d heard right.

“Andolosian sperm is a very expensive seasoning.”

“Oh gross,” she said, holding a hand over her mouth. She’d never seen meat, and while that idea turned her stomach a bit she had smelled sperm, hence the ideas coming to mind of what it would taste like on her food.

“Seasoning?” Arron asked.

“Additions made to food. Similar to your icing paste, but in granulated form. With the consumer allowed to make whatever additions they want. That’s something Star Force is missing as well.”

Arron glanced back at the section that held pastries and the small bottles of icing that could be added on top, each of which held various nutrients and was color coded to know what you were getting. He’d always known it as simply ‘icing,’ with the word ‘seasoning’ not ringing a bell, making him wonder if the Critel had gotten the wrong word. His own knowledge of the trade language was limited, which was why he didn’t inquire further.

“What do you sell?” Haley asked as she stepped aside to let a short, rabbit-like creature move past, whereupon it climbed a mini staircase to get up to the platform that she’d just been sitting her tray on so that it could retrieve a stack of cookies on its own miniature version that was barely the size of her palm.

“A variety of things that Star Force doesn’t care to produce, mostly imitations of products unique to the various races. Things that they already know and use but can’t get here. Clothing, decorative pieces, grooming tools, knickknacks, custom electrons, software, games…whatever there’s a demand for. But all of which can be sold in package form, whereas foodstuffs would have to be served in store and fresh. That’s where I draw the line.”

“Interesting,” Arron commented as Haley started to geek out over how cute the little Urik’kadel was. “How many stores do you have at present?”

“None as of yet, but I’m renting three fabrication slots using the credits I brought with me. Star Force operates with a very low overhead. They barely charge anything on their leases, and there are no taxes whatsoever, with the promise that there will never be. I found that hard to believe until I investigated their other economic activities, but it seems they are very shrewd operators. How they manage a profit is a mystery I have yet to unlock, but with the vast amount of slots available, I’m going to sweep up as many as I can. Problem is the limited and unskilled workforce. I have found three employees thus far, and am in need of far more. I don’t suppose either of you have skills I could use?”

“I’m a writer and currently engaged with my own projects, but thank you for asking.”

The Critel looked down at Haley, who had finally turned her attention back to the conversation after the tiny alien had left with its plate full of cookies. “And you?”

“I’m new here, today actually. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing, if anything.”

“That’s another interesting facet of the Axius colonies,” the Critel mewed. “Everywhere else that I’ve ever been or heard of, an individual has to work for themselves or a collective in order to survive. The fact that Star Force is welcoming in individuals to this colony without compensation and is willing to house, feed, and otherwise sustain them indefinitely is a very odd occurrence…but one that I think will serve my business interests. I won’t have to worry about the welfare of my workers and can offer up as small of salaries as I like, so long as I can entice them to work for me. That will keep costs low, assuming that boredom and greed set in with the populace.”

“Greed?”

“Star Force may be odd, but I’ve found that they are not stupid. They give everyone what they need to survive and live well off of, as far as necessities are concerned, but they do not hand out luxuries. The want of more without the need of it is the essence of ‘greed’ and is what will drive the economy here. It’s a much more sanitized environment than I’ve traditionally worked in, and will present new challenges…but where there are challenges there is opportunity…and where there is opportunity there are credits to be made. So I will ask again, Human, do you have any skills that would be useful in my employ? Surely you have something of value, or you would not have been granted a place in this colony?”

“I’ve been through maturia training, but that’s it.”

“And what does that entail? As of yet this colony doesn’t have a maturia, but it will when the denizens begin to reproduce in sufficient numbers, I’m told. Are all Humans taken into this maturia?” he asked, looking at Arron.

“There are a few exceptions, but I’d say 99% are.”

“And what happens in one?”

Haley and Arron exchanged glances. “Well, it’s really a bit of everything,” he finally said. “Physical training, linguistics, math, science, history, games, fabrication, design…it pretty much gives you a base level of knowledge in everything, then once you graduate you can choose whether you move on to more advanced training or leave to join the general population.”

“As I just did,” Haley added.

“Do you speak the trade language?” the Critel asked.

“A bit,” she answered pithily.

“Would you care to earn a few credits?”

“Doing what?”

“I do not know, but having someone with a wide variety of skills will undoubtedly become useful as I build my corporation.”

Haley shrugged. “I’m not sure what to say. I just got here.”

“Take your time, Human. I am not in a rush. I have many people to recruit, it is true, but the bulk of my customers are not even here yet, so there is time. If you find yourself interested, seek me out. My name is Kasdema, and I have an administrative office in section 18. One of only a handful there, so I will not be hard to find. Between 02:00 and 06:00 every day.”

“That’s normally when I sleep,” she said offhand.

“Sleep cycles in this colony seem to be all over the chart, none the less, if you are interested I’m certain I could find a place for you in any timeslot. Good day, Humans,” he said politely, turning and walking off with his tray towards one of the more private tables in the pavilion-like lounge that made up the bulk of the cafeteria.

“First day here and offered a job?” Arron commented. “You certainly seem to be on the fast track.”

“Not sure I want one.”

“Could get you a bigger set of quarters.”

Haley considered that, never having had more than a small pod-like room to herself, with the ones here nearly identical to the ones on Ceres.

“I don’t know. Eat now, think later,” she said with a smile a she stepped over and grabbed a few cold carrot slices to add to her plate before the pair found themselves a table and proceeded to talk about a great many things.

5

June 21, 2521

Leil System (Zeta Region)

Zastdan

Cor’san and his fellow Scionate walked off their own transport, wearing their equipment satchels on their backs, as they met their welcoming committee…a Human ranger, the third tier of the Archons within Star Force’s military. He had been standing in his green armor on the edge of the landing pad when the Scionate transport landed and hadn’t moved since, with the 14 volunteers walking over to his position…all without their standard armor, for they’d been told it wouldn’t be used.

As soon as the Scionate departed the transport left, heading back up to a Star Force jumpship in orbit that had brought it and a few other non-Star Force vessels into the system as part of the ADZ transit network. While Cor’san knew that was strategic folly, many of the lesser races were utilizing the service that Star Force was beginning to provide in increasing numbers and focusing their resources on building smaller ships and infrastructure. That would only work so long as the Alliance defenses held out, and in truth would probably make better use of their lesser strength, though Cor’san and the other Scionate saw it as a mark of weakness.

Their transport had come through the ADZ network simply out of convenience. The Scionate had many jumpships, but for the purpose of transporting only 14 individuals it had been deemed a wasted trip, so they’d been shipped out via Star Force, though allowed to travel on their own vessel as a measure of pride…but from this point on everything would be Star Force, whether they liked it or not.

The Scionate volunteers walked up to the Archon, but he didn’t move or speak until all 14 of the quadrupeds were standing before him, with their heads coming up to his shoulder. There were many different sizes of Scionate, with all assembled here being the larger variety more suited to hand to hand combat, or in their case paws.

“Follow me,” the Archon said unceremoniously as he turned and led the group off the landing pad and into the spaceport. After a very short trip through security they were taken on a long walk through the colony, seeing dozens of different races inhabiting it, much as they’d been told would be the case.

Without a word, the Archon took them to their quarters, which were spread out in three different sections and each on different floors. Cor’san felt that was probably deliberate, but it didn’t matter. He was just glad that proper facilities had been built to accommodate Scionate, for the needs of quadrupeds differed greatly from those of the biped designers of the colony.

One by one they were given their quarters, allowed to drop off their satchels, and given a half hour to acclimate themselves. Cor’san was 5th in line, being left alone to inspect his small den. There was a single entry door, inside of which were two levels. The bottom level held a small secondary restroom and cleansing chamber with a door that opened into the small open area that contained a vid screen and cushioned reclining pedestal. Opposite the restroom door was a Scionate ladder climbing the right side wall, leading up to the second level of the den.

The ladder was a mix between rungs and stairs in a circular fashion that had his body wrapping around the central pole as he climbed…except there was no pole. Star Force had reworked their stairs to not include it, and Cor’san found it odd, but functional as he climbed up and slid into the low ceilinged top level.

It was dark until he pressed a paw against a panel on the wall, low to the floor, that turned on a series of amber light strips on the walls that revealed the shallow sleeping pit that Scionate favored. He examined the temperature controls, seeing that they were in English but otherwise structured in Scionate fashion, and set the device to his preferred setting so that it would be appropriately warm when he returned later.

Cor’san headed back down to the lower level and opened up the storage bins built into the walls and ceiling, seeing a satisfactory amount of volume despite the compact nature of the quarters. He didn’t bother unpacking, for he knew he had to rendezvous with the others shortly, so after a quick stop in the restroom and a reset to his quarters’ security code he headed out into the very large hallway and moved down to the intersection, following the route the Archon had instructed him to take.

Passing few others in the residential section, he met up with the other Scionate and waited for the last of them to arrive while the Archon stood passive once again. As soon as the last of them caught up they moved off through the unfamiliar geography of the colony to a training center where the group had exclusive access to a large chamber with nothing inside it except for padded walls and floor…and a control panel on the wall.

“I was told you all speak English,” the Archon began. “Is this true?”

“We speak your tongue,” one of the Scionate said, with Cor’san and the others having to have spent more than a year to grasp the basics of it…but it had been required prior to entry, which was one reason why there were so few volunteers. Others had been willing, but balked when they heard the traditional trade language would not be used, not wanting to learn a third tongue.

“How well remains the question, but you will learn in time. If there is something I say that you do not understand, it is best if you ask for clarification,” he said, removing his helmet and tossing it to the side. “First things first. You’re here to learn how to fight properly. That I will teach you, but I want to know why you are here and not in your own military. You first,” he said, pointing a finger at Cor’san.

“We are part of the Scionate military,” he said with a low growl, “but our worlds are not under assault and our leaders will not deploy us to the war zones. They want us as a defensive force. I want to fight our enemy before he gets to Scionate worlds. The same is true of all of us here.”

The Archon looked around as he continued to disconnect and peel off his armor. “Good. Now on to step two. You don’t think there’s all that much we can teach you,” he said, picking up on their thoughts, “and the training you’ll go through here is an annoyance that you’re willing to put up with in exchange for a chance to fight. Time to end that nonsense.”

The Archon stepped out of his boots and collapsed his armor down into a small wad that he then attached the helmet to, setting it aside underneath the control panel as he input the scenario he wanted. Suddenly wall compartments opened up and large objects came out, startling the Scionate as they floated into various positions, setting up 22 vertical pillars in a wide circle with plenty of space in between them.

“Your objective is simple,” the Archon said as he walked towards the arrangement. “Throw me outside the pillars. Organize yourselves and devote as many of you as you think it will take. Injuries are not the objective in our training, nor will they ever be. Your objective is to move me, my objective is to stay inside. Am I clear?”

“What is ‘clear?’” one of the Scionate asked.

“In this context it means ‘do you fully understand me.’”

“We understand.”

“Good. Once I reach center you may begin.”

Cor’san and the others exchange glances. Despite their reputation, the Archons were puny. This one massed less than half of what they did, and while well-muscled, it didn’t look like it would require more than two of them to remove, giving the Human the benefit of the doubt. To that end one of the others stepped forward alone and dropped into a reduced height stance as it crept forward into the circle as the Archon made it to center and turned around, starting to move a bit in response to Hra’ton’s approach.

The Scionate began with a simple jump lunge, reaching up into the air and coming down on the Archon with his front paws…but the Human deftly moved to the side and the Scionate missed cleanly. They both reset, getting a couple of meters between them, then Hra’ton jumped at him again, this time without the arc up.

With almost a comedic grace, the Archon reached out and placed a hand on his head, pushing it down as the Human rolled across the Scionate’s back and stepped off behind him…again avoiding the attack.

“You are quick, Human,” Hra’ton said as he turned around.

“It will take more than one of you to have a chance of moving me,” the Archon taunted. “Far more than one.”

“We will see,” the Scionate said, upping his game and coming at the Archon with a serious attempt, combining several movements that were meant to disguise his true angle. He nearly got hold of the Archon’s arm in his mouth, going for a hold rather than a bite, but the Archon slipped aside at the last moment, causing him to miss.

Then the next thing he knew he had a foot in his side and he was flipping over through the air as the Archon bodily threw him across the circle. Hra’ton flipped over midair and fell onto all fours, looking back at the Human and wondering how he had the strength to lift him.

“Come on, guys. This isn’t even hard,” the Archon said, waving the others forward.

Cor’san stepped up next to Hra’ton and the pair exchanged a few words in their native language. From there they split and got on either side of the Archon before moving towards him in a flash of motion. Cor’san swiped his front left paw at the Human’s thick leg while Hra’ton jumped to his head as a distraction. Cor’san got a light grip on the leg, then felt it go limp as the Archon moved it in the direction he was swiping.

Then his paw got pinned under the Human as it dropped down to the ground, causing Hra’ton to fly over his body and land next to Cor’san, missing him by a few inches…but the Archon held onto his paw and reached forward, getting an arm around his neck. Suddenly Cor’san was yanked to the side…then the Archon vanished.

Out of view the Human passed over Cor’san’s back and jumpkicked into Hra’ton’s side, knocking him down as the Human backed out from the two as they quickly recovered and got to their feet.

“I could do this all day,” the Archon mocked, “but for your sake let’s skip to the end. All of you come at me at once. You need to know how powerful I am.”

The Human waved at the others with both arms. “Come on, get in here. I’m serious.”

“You are quick, Human,” Hra’ton said, “but we won’t need all of us.”

“You won’t be able to with all of you,” the Archon responded. “But I need all of you in here and trying to prove a point.”

“As you wish,” Cor’san said, gesturing to the others just before he ran towards the Archon again. This time the Human didn’t move, and the two bodily met each other. Paws and fists flew, but Cor’san found himself without breath as the Archon palm-punched into his ribs several times. He got in at least one good swat, claws withheld, and knocked the Human aside just before he felt himself get tripped and go down.

By the time he got back up he saw the Human in the midst of the others, hitting them in very deliberate and odd ways. Most bipeds used their fists as weapons, but this one didn’t. He most certainly used his arms, but it was the side of his hands, his forearms and elbows, shoulders, head…he was using just about everything but his fists and knocking down the Scionate left and right.

That shot a bolt of adrenaline into the pack, and they no longer held back, feeling the light stings of his hits. They didn’t go for claws or bites, but they were going to knock him down and out of the circle without the restriction they had been planning on using. With that energy surging through them they started circling and lunging in coordination with one another, starting to make hits while being taken down time and again, then just as it seemed they were about to get the upper hand Cor’san’s head went dizzy and he fell.

He shook it off a moment later, only to stand up and have it happen again. His body seemed to betray him and he toppled over, smashing his muzzle into the lightly padded floor.

When it stopped he lifted his face up, but didn’t try to attack…which was when he noticed the others in the same position, all on the floor looking up at the Archon in the center.

“I love that look,” a voice said from outside the ring as another Scionate approached, this one wearing a distinctly Star Force uniform. “But they didn’t do poorly.”

“No they didn’t,” the Archon agreed as the other Scionate walked inside the circle.

“I am Ske’ro’ta,” the slightly smaller Scionate said, using a three syllable name that shocked Cor’san and the others almost as much as their mysterious ailment. “I am a Star Force Scionate, born amongst your previous worlds and unwanted, then given to them as an orphan. I spent my previous few years of life on a Nexus world, learning their ways and becoming one of them. Like you I want to fight our common enemy, but here you will not be able to maintain your previous identity. While you may keep your names, everything else has to change.”

“What you just witnessed,” Ske’ro’ta continued as he paced around the perimeter of the others, who remained sitting or standing as they listened, still wide-eyed, “is a secret known to only a few. The power of the Archons is not a myth. They are far stronger than even the rumors say, and as you felt first hand, they have special abilities. Not all Humans do, and the younger Archons don’t attain them until later on in their development, but what just happened to you, after getting your asses kicked in hand to hand, was a disruptive energy field that causes your nervous systems to malfunction, equivalent to white static in technological combat.”

“He generates it biologically, and as you have already noticed, it gives him a significant combat advantage. Do not underestimate their power, skill, or drive. They are your superiors, and from them you can learn much, but if you are to become a part of Axius then you must willingly become part of Star Force, because they are one and the same. The Alliance Defense Force is not a cooperation between the races, we are a single entity and you must join us. I will admit it is far easier for me and the other orphans. We were unwanted and discarded, but we have been trained from birth, and as such we have a head start on you.”

“It is true we have not seen combat, I will grant you that, but there is much we will help you learn and you will help us. But above all, we learn from him,” the Scionate said, gesturing towards the Archon with a flip of his head. “He is your master now. Treat him with respect, for he possesses powers that our enemies cannot contend with, nor can we. They will protect the ADZ, and perhaps even defeat the lizards in time…yes, that’s what we call the Cajdital here. But there are too few Archons to fight alone. Their numbers will never rise high enough, for they are the elite of their race. It is up to us and others to fight alongside them. They lead, we follow, and together we will prevail.”

“You will be the first ADF Scionate in this colony, but there will be more to come in time. We will learn to work with other races, combining their strengths with our own and covering for their weaknesses, as they will cover for ours. How this will all work out is unknown, for we are building the ADF at present. What it will eventually become is uncertain, but you can be assured that if we contribute what we are able, they will find a way to make the most use of us.”

Ske’ro’ta bowed his head to the Archon respectfully, then kicked one of the other Scionate that was still lying on the ground. “Get up. This is not a time for rest.”

“No, it is not,” the Archon agreed, letting his guard down as he sensed the Scionate were no longer eyeing him for a takedown. “We are all warriors here, so let us dispense with the civilities that many races have when dealing with others, Scionate included. You came here to fight, and you will, but first we must build an army. You are among the first. The example you lay down, others will follow, just as you will learn from Ske’ro’ta. Others will hear of what you do here and more volunteers will come. Younglings will be born in this colony and join. More Nexus individuals will come to us. All will remake themselves into ADF troops…or they won’t.”

“You will combine with us or go a separate way. If you want to remain Scionate military, then the Scionate military is where you belong…not here. When I give orders they are to be obeyed, not because they are orders, but because I know better than you. Compliance isn’t about position, it’s about wisdom and who is right. As we build the ADF, if you have suggestions then speak them. If you spot problems, speak them. This is a team effort, and while you have much to learn, you are quadrupeds. I am a biped. There are things you will know that I will not. We share, we learn, we rise together. Clear?”

“Is that why you didn’t want us to bring our armor?” one of the Scionate asked.

“You will receive new armor,” Ske’ro’ta answered. “Better armor, when you have earned it. ADF armor.”

“How did you do that to us?” Cor’san asked the Archon.

“Which part?” he asked, knowing what he meant, but he needed to teach them to be specific.

“The part where I lost control of my body and fell.”

The Archon nodded. “It is called Fornax. I can direct it against a single individual or release it in a limited radius to affect all that are near. My strength is limited, so I cannot hold the effect for long, but I can repeat it numerous times. Would you like another demonstration?”

“Yes,” another Scionate said, standing to his full height.

“Ready yourself,” the Archon warned. “I will hit you with a weakened version. If you focus you should be able to remain standing.”

The Scionate clenched up. “I am ready.”

The Archon stared at the cat-like alien and held the gaze…then it shook on all fours and collapsed to its knees, but fell no further.

“Good. You handled that well.”

“I do not like that,” the Scionate said.

“Nor do I,” the ranger admitted. “The others can do it to me as well, but I have learned how to minimize it. We face two very different enemies, three if you count the Nestafar. How we fight them has to be based on learning where we are weak and adapting. As unappealing as it is to be hit with a Fornax blast, I am rather used to it now, and when sparring with another Archon it is simply one means of attack out of many. We learn, we advance. Those who do not learn, will lose, and I will beat that lesson into you if I must.”

“What other powers do you possess?” Cor’san asked.

The Archon smiled. “A few, but for today your lesson is over. Now it is time for you to teach me. This room can be configured into many arrangements, including obstacles courses. Scionate are supposed to be faster than Humans, and I like a challenge. Let’s compare your speed to mine, shall we?”

Ske’ro’ta ran off over to the wall and adjusted the control panel with a claw tip, sending the pillars back up into the air and bringing out a lot more of various sizes, all of which lowered to the ground save for where the others stood. Those pieces waited in the air for them to move aside to the start area, then they settled down into position.

“I will go first,” Ske’ro’ta said. “You will watch and learn, then you will go in groups of three. The computer will record your progress and times. The Archon will go in the fourth group along with two of you. For the sake of our race’s pride, you had better beat him.”

With that little barb Ske’ro’ta toed the start line and pressed the start button with his chin, which started a three tone countdown, after which he was off.

The Scionate lined up in groups of three, with the Archon settling into the fourth row, one spot ahead of Cor’san as they all watched their fellow Scionate so they knew how to move through the course, despite the fact that it was fairly obvious, after which the first trio went, with the others following and watching, attempting to beat each other’s times.

When the Archon went Cor’san was relieved to see that he couldn’t keep up with the Scionate on the running segments, though he did pull back a bit moving through some of the obstacles…and he did appear to be trying, for he was scurrying about in a blur, with his reflexes showing to be considerably better than theirs…but overall he was the slower, so when Cor’san took off he found his mind back on firm ground. The Human might be powerful…far more powerful than he could have imagined. Scarily so. But as he had said, each race had advantages and disadvantages. Running was theirs, and it felt good to be able to defeat him in this.

When Cor’san had arrived an hour ago, he had felt superior amongst the other races, then when he’d been taken down by the Archon’s invisible attack he’d felt inferior. Now he felt on equal standing, with the inkling that the coming days of training were going to be far more interesting than he and the others had expected. The idea of becoming ADF troops didn’t seem like a procedural hurdle anymore. It felt like a very powerful team he was joining, and with his pride kicking in he felt like adding to it where he was able…and that was a sentiment the others would share as well in the coming days.

6

December 1, 2521

Kentir System (Epsilon Region)

Pollus

Chitticki woke up to his alarm, a rhythmic booming that continued to get louder until it cut out, then it began to repeat again, soft at first, until he crawled out of his sleeping tube and hit the off button. The Irondel yawned and stretched out his four legs, curling his back up into a ball then twitching all his muscles loose, finding he was still sore from yesterday’s training.

He walked over to his vid screen and input a few commands onto his keyboard, bringing up the most recent statistics from the ongoing competition and finding a few changes having occurred over the past 10 hours as he slept. Beta regiment had notched up another pair of challenge victories, catching them up to within 6 points of Epsilon, which had the overall lead in their ADF training. Chitticki was a member of Alpha regiment, which was last out of the 5 groups, but not too far behind the others…and every month that passed brought them closer to their first level of graduation.

Which was what he was working towards. The competition was just extra motivation.

He flipped off the screen and moved into the small restroom in his quarters, relieving himself before crossing to the bathing chamber and giving himself a good roll in the dust basin before getting dressed. After he stepped into the air tube to remove the lingering dust, he pulled out a fresh uniform and slipped it on, then headed out the door and down the hallway tube in his quarters complex.

When he got to the main road the tube ended and the massive walkway opened up, rising some 30+ times his height as he ran off along one of the pathways, keeping to the side as a few of the large Urik’kadel passed, not wanting to get run over. They were big brutes, but much faster than the Irondel…and they tended to want to run everywhere, which was why Chitticki kept to the side to give them plenty of room, despite the fact that the road was wide enough for more than a dozen of them to stand side by side.

Chitticki fell in behind another Irondel, watching his neighbor move forward with the distinctive hop/lurch that they used when they wanted to cover distance without running. True walking was too slow in a colony of this size, with the Irondel being the smallest denizen…and the Humans being the largest. He didn’t see any of the giants out and about today, but then again they never came to these areas unless there was a problem, preferring to keep to their own quarters and the communal areas.

As Chitticki progressed through the colony he came down a level, preferring to use the stairs than wait on an elevator…which was also a matter of pride, given that he was part of the ADF rather than just a random citizen. When he got to the next level he scurried off across the street, dodging a Gnar in its envirosuit, and got to the far side where he followed a narrow strip of street meant specifically for the Irondel, so the larger races could avoid stepping on them.

That was no small threat, which was why usually the Irondel didn’t cohabitate with other races, but the Humans had designed this colony to service their integration and so far in the 3 years that it had been operational there hadn’t been a fatality, partly due to the fact that races larger than the Humans weren’t permitted to live on Pollus, just as Irondel weren’t permitted to live in other Axius colonies.

Chitticki hurried along, not fully running, and passed through a tunnel in the wall while the bigger denizens went through an archway. On the far side he took a shortcut through another wall, turning left and arriving at the cafeteria and running up a plank to get him up to food level. He grabbed a tray and set it on a conveyor, nudging it along in quadruped mode because he didn’t feel like carrying it. Irondel could move on two or four legs as they chose, but carrying the stupid plate made walking awkward, so he just moved it along and put on his breakfast ‘pebbles’ as the other denizens referred to them, given that the smaller races had to have special portions made for them.

Save for some things. The mashed potatoes he especially liked, and he scooped out a lop onto his tray from their basin. Going up and getting some out of the main one was doable, but the last thing he wanted was to fall into it as one of his friends had done a year ago after first arriving. They’d ridiculed him for that ever since, and Chitticki knew it had taken him days to get the food out of his fur. Irondel didn’t like water, for bathing anyway, and it’d taken numerous dust baths to get the potatoes out.

Knowing not to load himself up with too much, Chitticki finished his gathering and pushed his tray along to the end of the conveyor, then picked it up and transferred it to another one that he walked out to a series of tables. He pulled it off and sat on the soft floor, nibbling away his breakfast until he was finished. Afterwards he left for the training areas, meeting up with a few hundred other Irondel for some running laps.

Their track was 100 meters long, with multiple lanes and pacing holos. Chitticki used the control pedestals and activated one for himself in the 18th lane and got going, having to pass only two others also in his lane as his marker overtook theirs. As was traditional, he got a good, long workout in, making his 16 laps/mile in 12:42. Afterwards he pulled off to the side, thoroughly gassed but looking none the worse for it. Irondel didn’t sweat like other races did, instead using their fur as heat dissipaters with varying intensities.

He shook himself once, forcing the heat out his hairs like he was pushing water out a plethora of tiny tubes, and cooled himself with the single effort. He was still breathing hard, but not as hard as he once had been. He’d gotten considerably fitter since arriving here, more so than he’d ever thought possible…leaving him with plenty of energy for his combat training.

He left the other Irondel to their running, moving to nearby chambers where he put in a half hour of hand to hand exercises before reporting to the infantry bay along with the other members of his regiment.

The bay was tall…more than twice the height of a Human, and filled with niches that held the minimechs Star Force had designed for them. Normally Irondel were useless in ground combat against other races, but no longer. Chitticki and the other volunteers were now riding mechanical steeds into combat, and training against Archons no less.

When he got into the bay Chitticki went straight for the nearest ‘Neite,’ as the Humans called them. They’d designed two varieties, one a biped auto-walker that Chitticki could drive by controls in the cockpit, and one quadruped that linked up to his actual body movements. Few Irondel had mastered those controls, making Chitticki ahead of the others in Alpha regiment. About one of every five minimechs in the bay were neites, so he didn’t have to travel far around the edge walkway before he came to one.

Taking to the ladder he climbed up to the top platform and entered through the back of the quadruped. Though the mech had a head, the cockpit was located in the body just beneath the neck, giving it the most mass around it in a defense perimeter in addition to the armor shell that he now stood within. Chitticki closed the door and triggered the armor covering to seal him in, then he got hooked up to the harness and powered up the minimech.

Tired as he was from running, working the neite around wasn’t a big deal. The machine couldn’t move as fast as he could, so he was always having to move his muscles slowly. The attachments to his body pretty much moved themselves, even though they looked heavy. All in all it was a cool way to drive the minimech, but that wasn’t why it had been developed.

With the holographic displays now surrounding him, Chitticki walked his neite out of its slot in the bay and headed towards the main doors, careful to make sure no one was out on the floor to step on. When he got into the clear he saw a lot of other minimechs out in a huge chamber, along with multiple suits of armor that belonged to an Archon and several other Humans, which they referred to as ‘commandos,’ plus there were three enormous ‘knights’ that stood taller than the biped mechs, which were little more than walking turrets.

They had no arms and backward-canted legs, with all maneuvering being done by the onboard computer while the pilot drove the mech around. Chitticki was quite familiar with their design and function, having piloted them for a long time before trying the neite in simulators and eventually qualifying to pilot the real thing. Today was just a training day, no challenges to be had for him, so he got up to speed and ran his minimech across the open area with a hop/lurch that somewhat mimicked his own body movements, but was otherwise lethargic.

He stopped short of the Archon in his silver armor and waited to be given instructions. From his position he had to look up, being about equal in height to the Human’s elbows, though if he wanted he could stand the neite up on its rear legs and get over his head…but it wasn’t designed well enough to operate that way for long, making it a truly quadruped mech, whereas Chitticki himself was bodily capable of both ‘modes.’

Future design modifications were promised to give the neite that ability, for after all, the Humans had designed it for hand to hand combat so he could protect the ‘chicken walkers’ as they handed out the majority of the weaponsfire. They were easy to tip over, and with no arms they didn’t have much more than their mass to use when an opponent got close…and the Archon had himself and the other Humans exploiting that opportunity as often as possible to teach the Irondel how to compensate for the disadvantage.

Chitticki had more options in his neite, but less weapons…all of which were nonlethal variants here in training. In the head of his neite he had a stinger weapon that fired little balls of paint laced with stun energy…but that was all, and he had a limited supply of shots. After that all he had to work with was his mechanical paws, but then again, that was what the neite had been designed for.

The Archon assigned him and two other neites to an area of the training deck that held variable terrain, where they ran through a series of obstacle courses for time before eventually getting into a training fight, whereupon he was paired up with four chicken walkers against two commandos in a series of maze-like barricades that the Humans immediately took to, disappearing from view.

“Chitticki, how do you want to play this?” one of his Irondel teammates asked.

“If you go in there you’re an easy takedown. I’ll go in and flush them out. Stay here.”

“They won’t come out.”

“We’ll see,” he said, lopping off to one of the entrances. He snaked his head to the left and went inside, knowing that to take him down the Humans would have to eliminate the chicken walkers. He was the escort, so there was no way to disable him…but the chicken walkers were being monitored, and every time they got knocked down to the floor Chitticki’s team lost a point. Lose ten and the drill was over.

Meaning that he was free to go after the Humans without penalty…which is exactly what he did. He knew they wanted the Irondel to come to them, and they weren’t going to take the bait this time. If they wanted to take down the chicken walkers they’d have to come out in the open, meanwhile he’d hunt them in the maze.

Or so he thought. Almost as soon as he entered the first mini hallway that led to the right he heard weaponsfire from outside, coming from the chicken walkers, only to find that one of the commandos had gone up over the maze walls and into view, whereupon he came down on top of the neite and knocked it to the ground.

Chitticki had all four of his legs go wide as he was smashed flat, then he heard three hard taps on the outer shell of the minimech as the Human punched its back in a rhythmic insult before jumping off and running away.

“Stupid giant,” he grumbled, getting the minimech’s feet back underneath himself as he heard comm calls from the others. By the time the Irondel got back outside he saw all four chicken walkers tipped over on their sides and the two Humans fist bumping each other as they retreated to the cover of the maze without a spot of paint on them.

Chitticki opened his minimech’s mouth and shot three stingers at them, hitting with only one but succeeding in giving one of the Human’s a limp before he disappeared from view.

“Curse them,” Chitticki complained as the chicken walkers pulled their legs up underneath themselves and wiggled into an upright position that they then stood up from. He’d planned to be the hunter, but then had become the hunted.

“I think we have to go in after them.”

“I know,” Chitticki complained. “Follow me in.”

In another section of the colony an Irondel by the name of Lissicki showed up for his daily training, already having run a half mile on their track and eaten breakfast, whereupon he entered the pilots lounge with a group of Humans, Urik’kadel, a Gnar, and a Densan. Almost all of them were Urik’kadel, for their race seemed to have an inordinate number of good pilots, and Lissicki was proud to be amongst them…and as an equal, for they all flew the Axius Valerie.

After a brief meeting they headed for the hangar and boarded their individual fighters. They couldn’t share, given the different biological needs, but Lissicki had the distinction of piloting the most heavily armored fighter of them all…for the simple fact that he required the smallest cockpit, and the extra space had been reinforced with additional armor, meaning that if he was shot down, or crashed on his own, his survival was almost guaranteed…which he greatly appreciated.

When he got to the hangar he climbed up the ladder and onto the fighter, using built in steps to finally get to the cockpit entrance, which was little more than a small hole in the port side. He crawled through it until he met up with three more tunnels. Two were to other exterior entrance points, with the third being the route down into the cockpit.

Once he was inside he hit a button and the fighter scanned the entry tunnels. Confirming that there was nothing inside, their walls collapsed until they became solid armor, sealing Lissicki in. He got into his pilot’s couch and powered up the Valerie, then floated it out of the hangar on antigrav and accelerated up into the planet’s thick atmosphere. With so many people moving into the spinward half of the ADZ, most of the best planets had already been taken, but with Pollus being located in the anti-spinward half, the Axius colony had pretty much had its pick, giving Lissicki and the other pilots a gem of a world to practice maneuvers on.

Once in the air the differences in their biology no longer mattered, and Lissicki was just as ‘big’ as the other pilots, all of whom were trying to learn the delicate operations of their Valeries in order to pass their qualification tests. So far only two had, both being Urik’kadel, but that wasn’t enough to build a unit around, so they were still training with the rest of them under Human direction, working towards the day when they’d get to take the fight to the enemy…which would come soon for the pilots. Little did Lissicki know, but barely 8 months later he and a group of the others would be leaving for the warfront to support the Protovic as they repelled the withering Skarron invasions.

So many Protovic worlds were getting reinforced with Sentinel defense platforms and newly built Protovic warships that the enemy was losing the few worlds that it had taken. They weren’t going quietly, making the Protovic and Humans work for every square kilometer of territory they had to retake and beginning new invasions on less protected worlds…some that were Protovic and many others that were not.

Lissicki and his squadron, the first ADF squadron to go into combat, would help the local Protovic and Star Force fighters clean up infantry on the planet of Chodrar, which in itself would take years to accomplish with the Skarrons reinforcing the ground troops regularly. He and his squadron wouldn’t go near the Skarron walkers, but would be used to help mop up the ‘easy’ ground targets, freeing up the veteran pilots for more dangerous missions and giving Axius its first taste of combat.

With news of their contribution to the warfront…as well as their success and unique combination of races with access to Star Force technology, the volunteer applications to the ADF and the Axius civilian population swelled, with many more colonies being constructed to absorb the inflow of those qualifying for the program, as well as expanding those that already existed, using resources harvested and produced by Axius rather than putting a drain on other parts of Star Force.

The snowball that Davis had started took a while to get rolling, but once it did it continually gained speed and prestige, quickly becoming the ‘it’ section of the ADZ where everyone wanted a piece of the action, forcing those individuals to train for and accept the Axius ways, including English, and creating a new Alliance society and culture that flew directly in the face of some of those on the Alliance worlds, starting a true philosophical war amongst the various races as they saw their own kind converting over to the Star Force way of life, whereas before they’d merely put up with the Humans as a generous landlord.

With the tiny prick of the ADZ population that Axius held being a light shining on the dark cultures of some of the Alliance races, it became clear to all those who hadn’t previously figured it out, that Star Force was going to assert itself as a dominant player within the Alliance, and not just due to its being able to hand out territory allotments. They were attempting to remake the interracial Alliance relations as they saw fit, and it appeared that the Hycre and Protovic were willing to let them do it.

That did not go over well, and set off a social civil war, fought through economics, population, and propaganda.

Fortunately Star Force had the greatest social warrior on their side, and it was deeply ironic that most of the nonHumans would never even know Davis’s name.

7

May 19, 2532

Shveda System (Zeta Region)

Wiox (Alliance World)

The jumpship A392 decelerated against Wiox’s gravity, arriving over the world that contained the standard 8 regions, two of which belonged to the Reen, two to the Gnar, and one each for the Ansp, Nabboni, Prasx, and Etti. It was a Star Force vessel, part of the ADZ transit network that had been set up to facilitate movement between the Alliance worlds and the few racial territories that had been allowed within the region. Those amounted to four, being the Scionate, Dvapp, Hycre, and Lacvamat.

The Hycre kept to themselves, given the biological differences, so there wasn’t much traffic to and from their worlds. The Dvapp were in a similar situation, except that they preferred to be left alone and traded exclusively with Star Force, using them as a medium to link in to the Alliance. The Scionate and Lacvamat were well connected, each with some original Alliance World slots that provided them with ‘neighbors’ to interact with, but they also opened up their own territories to commerce and foreign relations, seeking to exert their influence over the Alliance community as major players.

In addition to the four races given permission to establish their own, independent territories within the ADZ, there were more indigenous races that had been welcomed into the Alliance. Some had chosen to have nothing to do with outsiders, but those that did also now had a position on the transit network. Their traffic levels were variable, but they were yet more players in the ever growing ‘game’ that the ADZ political situation was developing into…with more and more refugees pouring in as both the lizards and the Skarrons continued their conquests, driving off those they would not or could not kill.

Those fortunate enough to flee in the direction of the ADZ were welcomed in by Star Force, so long as they agreed to a code of conduct. Many came in small numbers, while others moved as united factions or entire races once the word spread that there was sanctuary to be had. Wiox was the 17th Alliance world to be colonized, with far more than that now in existence. The planet was lifeless on its own accord, with Star Force having established its usual ring of colonies separating the 8 regions and facilitating their development through the availability of their resource and service markets.

The A392 was carrying both passengers and cargo to be deposited on the planet, as well as the neighboring two in the system. Star Force didn’t have a full colony world of their own insystem, but they did have the scattering of surface colonies on all three, orbital facilities, and mining sites throughout the other planets that they used to funnel resources to the ‘client’ races.

Laying claim to all systems in the ADZ, Star Force didn’t permit the Alliance races from expanding to nearby worlds without their permission, with the Hycre and Protovic backing them up on that. The Protovic already had their own territory on the edge of the ADZ that Star Force had no part of, and the Hycre likewise had worlds throughout the ADZ that had predated its inception.

That had created friction as well, for it seemed Star Force would let the Hycre continue to expand as it pleased, though it was also argued that since they colonized gas giants where the other races could not there was no reason to limit their expansion…yet as far as mining rights were concerned, they also got special treatment.

The Calavari also backed Star Force, but for most purposes didn’t interact with the other races. As far as they were concerned they now were Star Force, so they let the Humans handle most of their Alliance affairs while they concentrated their efforts on the warfront. The lizard excursion forces had finally started to probe the new Calavari borders, with the promise of heavier fighting coming in the near future. Right now there was a bit of a land grab going on between the two as the Calavari secured a handful of additional systems around them, both to deny them to the enemy and to give them room to expand as more of their now growing population coming off of HTC wanted to stake out a claim.

They had enough room on their current systems, but knowing what was coming their way and out of a sense of sentimentality they wanted to retake a few of their old worlds before digging in. That would provide them room to grow later, which was why the Archons were onboard with it, despite the fact that those new worlds would require even more Sentinels to defend.

That left the once great Calavari race squarely in Star Force’s pocket, and two of the five founding members of the original Alliance backing the Humans. That kept most of the dissenters suppressed, but Star Force’s unwillingness to budge on any of its stipulations created an enormous amount of animosity amongst the races with cultures that ran counter to Star Force philosophy.

Those cultures kept to their own territory slots, only marginally restricted by the terms of colonization that were agreed upon before they had been permitted into the ADZ, but in order to operate elsewhere in the Alliance additional restrictions and requirements were added. This meant that if you wanted to become a more predominant member of the Alliance you had to take to Star Force’s ways…if not, you had to keep to yourself and leave your fate in others’ hands.

The only exceptions to this were the systems where Star Force had no reigns. The Scionate and Lacvamat had been given systems rather than planets, meaning that aside from a handful of shared systems that Star Force used to keep a resource and transit link to them, those races had the privacy to expand as much as they sought within those systems…and invite others in as they so chose.

Travel, while now mostly facilitated by the ADZ transit network, was not restricted. If you had a jumpship you could move almost anywhere within the ADZ and come and go from it as you chose. This freedom saw many races with political and economic ties outside the ADZ on worlds yet to be challenged by the lizards or Skarrons…though they weren’t the only predators roaming about, for many other belligerent races were taking advantage of the chaotic situation and making assaults on more local levels that escaped public view aside from the stories passed on by travelers.

Outside the ADZ Star Force’s rules didn’t apply, and the ‘kids’ went out there to play and let off steam while the more patient ones stayed inside the protected borders and planned out their rise to prominence. There were many players, but one of the most determined amongst them were the Reen. They utilized the transit network and Star Force markets heavily, intent on building their way to dominance as they took the territory slots they’d been given and crammed as much infrastructure into them as they could afford.

They did this to facilitate their population, which had mostly evacuated prior to the lizard invasion of their now forfeited worlds, as they pressed their reproduction capacity to its logistical limits all the while searching out more Reen beyond the ADZ. Their race hadn’t been confined to a specific territory, but had spread out across a very wide region that went more coreward and spinward of the original Calavari territory. When the lizard front inevitably came into contact with them many fled in those directions, either in a coordinated way or on their own.

Now those populations were being sought out by Reen scout ships, which they were busy building by the dozens, as they traveled far outside the ADZ to spread the word of a safe haven and the need for numbers to increase their stature amongst the Alliance.

So it wasn’t surprising that when the A392 entered planetary orbit that it decelerated near to a large fleet of old Reen jumpships in the process of sending dropships down to their two territorial regions on the world. Their green-hulled scarabs were visible throughout the spinward bulk of the ADZ, moving to and fro as they brought refugees in and went back out in search of more, invariably bringing back more ships with them that added to the retrieval fleet they’d mustered.

That fleet was taking more than 2 years round trip in some cases, and was staggered so that Reen jumpships were a common sight amongst the Alliance, while their warship count amounted to a big fat ZERO…so far as defense fleets went. The warships they had were part of the retrieval fleet, having been restructured to haul a few additional passengers as well as to protect their civilian ships, both of which nestled up into their moderately-sized jumpships and now, for the sake of expedient transit, were disengaged from them so they could open up their individual landing bays and begin the mass exodus down to the surface.

And yet more Reen were aboard the A392, having purchased passage on another Alliance world where the retrieval fleet had dropped them off, with their government feeling that was more economically viable than delaying their own ships from heading back out again immediately. The Reen were a common sight onboard the Human-built Alliance jumpships that facilitated all the races, yet still belonged to Star Force. Their large size had been accommodated into the design, given that they were the second largest race in the Alliance, biologically speaking, after the Ikrotor.

The six-legged bluish/green giraffes were larger than the Skarrons but could hunch down and walk on their spider-like legs at low height, curling their necks low like a snake and allowing them to move through walkways and rooms that a lot of other races used, but that wasn’t an issue onboard the Alliance jumpships, for the main areas had plenty of ceiling height.

That said, with so many Reen onboard space became tight when they wanted to get out and about in the communal areas, but the crew and passengers had managed well enough. They did require larger dropships to debark upon, but most of the passengers onboard Alliance jumpships didn’t head straight to the surface. Instead they got off onto a starport that the jumpship actually linked to directly using an umbilical. That was uncommon, with the umbilicals usually reserved for emergency situations, but it had become a common enough practice with the Alliance jumpships as they found it was easier to move the Reen and other large species directly rather than sending wave after wave of jumpships across…so long as you had a good pilot to null out the drift.

Fortunately the starport was bigger than the jumpship, which also had carried a few other races’ ships inside it, now releasing them out into the system save for two that were moving on to the next stop. More ships would be hopping on for the ride out, as well as more passengers boarding, with the jumpship sticking around a few days and a second coming in before it left. As was usual, there was at least 1 insystem at all times, with certain transit routes landing five or six there simultaneously, making a lingering connection to the rest of the Alliance and an opportunity for quick departure…should you have the credits.

And it was Star Force credits that ruled the ADZ, not by the choice of the denizens, but for the fact that Star Force markets accounted for over 90% of all natural resources being consumed. Some races chose to live the self-sufficient lifestyle, but those that did saw small growth as their own industries proved inadequate to match the pace of what the markets provided, meaning that for those races vying for position, they had to deal with the Star Force markets, which only dealt in credits and raw materials, making the other races’ currency pointless outside their own colonies.

Add in that Star Force maintained fair prices and didn’t engage in gouging, and you had people actually wanting to do business with them rather than their own governments. And when they wanted to trade with Star Force they needed credits, not local currency, so they put pressure on the resistant governments to switch over to full Star Force currency…which many eventually did, though there was a considerable lag in getting the actual currency in their hands/claws/tentacles because Star Force didn’t hand it out generously.

Physical credits were still used commonly in local areas, but most transactions occurred electronically, but because Star Force wouldn’t accept other currencies it had become quite the chore for a race to switch over completely…with those that did finally achieving it through a massive game of shuffling resources, ending up with an economic boom that further encouraged others to make the switch.

The Hycre and Protovic did not, for they dealt with Star Force on their own terms, with private trade deals off the public markets. That also was a point of complaint, with it making it clear who the major drivers in the Alliance were. The Big 3, as they came to be called, were the foundation upon which all the other races built their renewed empires. Star Force was the economy, the Hycre were the navy warding off the Cajdital, and the Protovic were the army holding back the Skarrons.

That wasn’t the full truth of the situation, but that’s what the ADZ populations came to think of them regardless. Those contributing to the fighting on the fronts knew better, with the Protovic fielding a huge, well-equipped navy and Star Force being the key to everything, despite their small size. The Calavari were seen as an anomaly, with the public unsure where they fit in, and reduced to a pair of points on the perimeter, their once massive military now reduced to scraps. With their deliberate seclusion from ADZ affairs, most people forgot about them entirely, with their focus going solely to the Big 3.

The Hycre were the Hycre, virtually untouchable and alien, not having a huge influence in Alliance affairs save for where they wanted to. Most things that concerned ground-pounders didn’t affect them, so there was a disconnect there. The Protovic had their territory intact on the edge of the ADZ, with the Skarrons having been pushed out and them resorting to hitting weaker targets, some well inside the Protovic border before they were quickly met and repulsed by a combined fleet.

Further incursions continued as the Skarrons probed the ADZ, with even a Scionate world getting hit, reminding everyone of the danger and the fact that there was no ‘wall’ to hide behind. Still, the Protovic were distant from the Alliance Worlds and mostly unconnected to them, socially and economically.

That left Star Force as the only big power on the ‘inside’ that the other races had to contend with. The Reen more than others had been pushing for some level of peerdom, and as a result had received more territorial slots than others, proving that they could and would make good use of them, as well as bringing in a lot more people from outside the ADZ, increasing their need for more territory.

Others had seen this as well and were trying to outgrow their neighbors in terms of population, but Star Force hadn’t given in to that tactic entirely, favoring those who built wisely as opposed to those who scattered their territory slots with sparse infrastructure to fill it up quickly then demand more. Star Force insured they had what they needed, but they weren’t ones to be fooled. Given the Reen’s approach, they had gained considerable advantage over the others during the ‘learning curve’ that happened, upping their stature considerably.

Those Reen that departed the A392 remained on the starport only as long as necessary to arrange transit to the surface of Wiox, accomplished through a mix of surface to orbit craft of Reen manufacture, saving them the credits that would have been necessary to purchase transit down to the planet. The dropship tickets were cheap enough, requiring very little for an individual to get to orbit, or even around the ADZ transit network, but when you were dealing with the movement of billions of individuals per year even the small amounts added up, with the Reen saving credits by fielding their own craft for this last leg of the immigrants’ journey.

Once they landed at their own spaceports the Reen were taken into a processing center patterned off of Star Force’s own facilities and quickly got their people integrated into the population, with a good number of them going to supplement the mining teams harvesting resources from their territorial slots. Those resources they didn’t have to pay Star Force for, meaning the more workforce they had the more material they could harvest…and the more material they could harvest, the more equipment they could build/buy, creating a snowball effect.

That snowball effect was occurring across all the Reen territories, but not just with them. The other races that had seen the writing on the wall and gotten a head start on the others were building quickly, gaining additional territory slots and increasing their population and influence in the ADZ…with the others scrambling to catch up by following their example.

In this way, Star Force was remaking them without giving a single order or threat. Simply by setting up the playing field and letting the races do as they like, they were channeling them towards economic responsibility, proper infrastructure, and population growth…with those not getting onboard being left to their isolation as they were gradually overshadowed by the rest of the ADZ races.

But still, tricked as they were into the general direction Star Force wanted them to go, they were not onboard with the Humans’ agenda, merely willing to work within their system with the intent of walking it back later on. That approach may well have worked if their own populations didn’t see the truth of it on their own streets and how Star Force had better living conditions and greater opportunities, for both individuals and groups.

A good portion of those ‘enlightened’ individuals made their way to Star Force in one form or another, with the bulk of those who proved themselves worthy ending up in the Axius colonies, which under Star Force’s direction was growing more rapidly than most of the other races, population wise, and faster than them all infrastructure wise.

And of those people who left their previous races, few ever returned, in body or spirit, for after just a year or two living amongst the Axius interracial community their viewpoints changed greatly with the experience, no longer having to rely on hearsay or stereotypes to get an idea of what was beyond their own borders.

But above and beyond that they got to experience what Star Force really was and the genius behind every facet of it…right down to ceiling heights and drinking fountains, which were designed to accommodate all of the various biologies, not to mention their focus on individual sovereignty…something that was sorely lacking among the other cultures that predominated the local region of the galaxy and now had been brought into the ADZ.

That close proximity and interaction created a cultural war that Axius was surging to the forefront of as it siphoned off the races’ own population…and since freedom of movement was one of the stipulations for receiving territorial slots, they couldn’t officially close their borders and force people to live under their dominion.

That meant they either had to cheat or entice people to remain…and doing the latter meant becoming more like Star Force, whether they wanted to admit it or not.

8

While at Wiox the A392 also had the distinction of picking up the Omnigame delegation from the planet and those from the other Alliance Worlds in the system, which the jumpship would eventually deposit on Califret, the Axius colony near the edge of the Core Region that was hosting the biannual competition.

Each delegation was comprised of highly skilled individuals from each Alliance World and the Axius colonies, with the teams competing in a variety of competitions ranging from mathematics to biathlon to mech warfare. Prizes would be handed out in each category in the form of a small amount of credits to the participating individual/squad and a lump sum of credits accounted to the world they were representing…on a scale that would mean significant infrastructure expansion. The account was only good for local purchases, split evenly amongst the 8 territorial regions on an Alliance World, which was a significant enough reason for the various races to push participation in the games.

The biggest prize came from the overall standings, in which the top 5 worlds got a huge load of credits on top of the category prizes. With the societal war fueling a population boom, infrastructure expansion/upgrades were critical and those worlds winning the previous Omnigames had surged ahead of their completion with each victory. The trick of it was, for both the Alliance Worlds and the Axius colonies, no one race controlled them, meaning your best chance of victory was by fielding a combined team, forcing those races greedy with their own advancement over the others to seek out assistance on their local worlds in the hope of winning and splitting the prizes…for there were no participation prizes, and you had to earn your way to the credits.

With every event cycle bringing more and more people into the fold and greater pressure on them to succeed, the Omnigames became a social event across the ADZ with intense media scrutiny, broadcast out over the relay network Star Force had set up so people could follow it ‘live’ as it occurred over the month-long competition. Omnigame ‘athletes’ rose to prominent social status, with many devoting their lives to the pursuit of making their world’s team.

This cycle’s tournament held 198 events, adding 3 to the previous competition and expanding the field once again. Star Force continually grew the event, and the prizes, but always in a responsible way and not in demands to the public, who wanted all manner of things added. Simple things like running races were not included, for the simple fact that biology would win out and a Scionate vs. an Irondel would be no match whatsoever.

Also, all the events had real life applications. Even the videogame subset of the Omnigames had crossover applications to the remote-controlled drones that Axius used in the ADF, and which Star Force had begun producing in small amounts for purchase by the various races, encouraging them to move away from mass casualties military tactics and go in for more of a hardware expendability platform.

Remotely controlling various simulations essentially negated the biology differences, save for the control interfaces, but in addition to Star Force’s work in developing unique harnesses and controls for every race, those motivated races created their own upgrades, wanting the most efficient means of interface available to increase their chances of success, and with races like the Reen who had colonies on multiple Alliance Worlds, producing new tech to aid their athletes gave them more than one opportunity for gain, and the same was true of the other races, for Star Force hadn’t let any of them colonize an entire Alliance World, wisely mixing them up from the inception of the sanctuary program.

There were favorites in certain events and categories, but the competition was so diverse that there was no dominant planet or race, meaning that as much as the races were competing against each other socially, they actually were rooting for each other when it came to their local worlds, for their success would mean credits awarded to all, which encouraged a great amount of teamwork in the games and prep work that otherwise would not have occurred.

A392 wasn’t the only jumpship entering the system with Omnigame delegations, which included athletes, dignitaries, and hoards of media. Califret was one of five Axius colonies that had the facilities to host the Omnigames, with them rotating accordingly, and as had become common in the run-up to the games, orbit became saturated with jumpship arrivals, with the transit network having to reroute existing circuits and pull jumpships off others to accommodate the influx of visitors to the planet.

Califret was the only Axius colony in the system, though several other rocky planets remained uncolonized at present. That said, more than 10 million spectators arrived on the planet specifically for the Omnigames, in addition to the regular traffic flow coming off the Alliance jumpships.

But they weren’t the only ones coming. Many of the races brought their own jumpships into orbit, carrying their own media and dignitaries, such as the Scionate, who only had 1 Alliance World representation, which was Vashni, in the Lkat System, that had served as their transitional base to facilitate the transfer of their population to the systems Star Force had given exclusively to them. Those planets didn’t qualify for the games, but since they had one foothold in the Alliance Worlds they stocked it with their most skilled individuals, transferring them there for the express purpose of competing in the Omnigames and giving Vashni a favored position in several events.

Other Scionate were here, representing Axius colonies, but they were independent of the Scionate Empire, and while there might have been a little bit of racial support there, they were mostly considered to be competition rather than allies, for if an Axius colony won a prize, it went to Axius exclusively, fueling their already impressive growth and allowing for more immigration slots that were draining a growing trickle of population away from the other races, which was more of a hit to their pride than their population pools. Axius may have been growing, but the bulk of the ADZ’s population still resided on the Alliance Worlds.

New to this cycle’s tournament was the addition of the Protovic, who up until now hadn’t qualified because they had no Alliance World colonies. With their own territory now mostly intact and their military fighting the Skarrons on other people’s worlds, their government had begun to focus itself more on the political situation within the ADZ, and at their request Star Force had granted them a territory slot on one of the newest Alliance Worlds. The same was true of the Dvapp, who had also been enticed into joining the ADZ community, along with several other races that had previously been located within the ADZ without a piece of an Alliance World.

The only exceptions were the Hycre and Star Force, except that Axius was part of Star Force as well as the host of the games. No Human, Kiritas, Kiritak, Nexus, or Calavari colony took part, for they had no Alliance World slots…and Hycre couldn’t live on the surface very well, thus they had not been interested in the program or the games. They, like the Calavari, had more important things to worry about. That attitude also set them apart from the others, and further insulated the Calavari from the public’s perspective, with few realizing just how large and strong they were regrowing.

So with the influx of transit network jumpship traffic came small fleets from the major powers, showing off as much as they were coming to watch the games and support their various delegations. The gathering also functioned as a diplomatic and commercial event, with a lot of wheeling and dealing going on behind the scenes for all types of endeavors, with the influx of a wide flung populace being brought together onto a single planet for the mutual event. That alone brought more traffic into planetary orbit, with a lot of the non-Star Force jumpships coming from races who came to conduct business rather than focus on the Omnigames.

When Mark-084 arrived on a Clan Gunstar jumpship he met up with the traffic mess in orbit, but the local navigational system had it all neatly arranged into prescribed orbits, having taken a cue from Earth’s well experienced network which was far more cluttered that Califret. The trailblazer rode a dropship down to the planet along with a host of other pilots that he had brought with him from the Alliance starfighter training center that he had created on Oberon, or rather recreated after Daka had to be evacuated. A lot of his former colleagues were here, participating in the games on behalf of the Alliance Worlds, which was why he and some of his current training delegations had come to observe…wishing they could actually participate.

Those that came with him were mostly Star Force, for the elite pilots from other races were usually recalled specifically for the games, though there were a number of Scionate with him that hadn’t been qualified because they weren’t currently living on their colony and weren’t deemed as the best the Scionate had to offer, so they’d tagged along on Mark’s invitation.

But like any good trailblazer, Mark wasn’t just going to sit and watch, and as had become common, in the days leading up to the piloting competitions he and other Star Force pilots had an exhibition tournament of their own, completely prizeless save for bragging rights, in which the athletes could participate or not as they chose. It was all simulator work for the games, but Califret had a decent atmosphere and Mark extended some of the exhibition to real life, having brought with him a lot of spare and new starfighters for others to try out above and beyond the standard Valerie. He’d even brought the X-wing with him, given that he’d been tinkering with it and bringing it up to snuff…barely.

Still, it was fun to fly and see a few others he let in the cockpit have fun with it, adding to the Omnigames a pilots gala on the side, with the same being true of the mechwarriors. Not all races used mechs, and in fact most did not, but since Star Force did and others were patterning after them and creating their own versions, Cora had started coming to the games as well and schooling the other races on just how much you could do with a biped war machine.

Mark caught up with her a few days into their preview tournaments, which they scheduled to conclude before their respective Omnigame events so as not to overlap and draw attention away from the competitions, finding her having a chat in a public lounge with an envirosuit-clad Gnar. He walked up to her and telekinetically poked her in the ribs, but otherwise let her finish her conversation before saying anything else.

When the Gnar left her table she waved a hand at him to sit down, with several other onlookers frowning, wanting to have gotten a few minutes to talk with the mechwarrior legend…though when they saw the white with black stripe uniform that Mark also wore their curiosity at seeing two of the Archon strikers in the same place overrode their disappointment as they stood around trying to listen in amongst the noise in the overcrowded lounge.

“About time you showed up,” she said, poking him back as he sat, enough to see him visibly shift to the side from the invisible impact that she screwed in hard for extra effect.

“Busy busy,” Mark said, smiling as he looked at her never-changing face. “How’s business?”

“The same. Ironhold now has more mechs than any other planet in the ADZ, most of which are mine, but the more advanced ones are running short of qualified pilots. I’m having to beat the bushes to find good recruits, and most of the ones I spent so much time on in the past have retired to old age or died already because they didn’t achieve self-sufficiency…which is really frustrating. I don’t like losing friends in the first place, but to have spent so much time training these wannabes only to have them quit and go civi is insulting. You can’t train a good mechwarrior in less than a decade, and most of these jokers,” she said, pointing at the various races around them, “want it done in 2 years, tops.”

“What for, most of them aren’t fighting on the fronts anyway?”

“They want their defense forces up to snuff without actually making them up to snuff…which they can’t unless they start insisting that their troops attain self-sufficiency. I’ve added extra physical training requirements for them while they’re on Ironhold, but when they go back home I have no control. I’ve managed to grab hold of a few and make them permanent residents, otherwise I’d be pulling my hair out. It’s sad to say, but the Australians are now kicking their butt.”

“I know,” Mark said, having to endure a similar situation. “But on the up side, I recently came across a squadron of Kitot, and they’re settling in nicely for at least a century of training…or two.”

“Kitot? I thought they went with the Kvash.”

“They did, but some are finding their way across the lizard lines and into the ADZ. Not many, and they’re having to do it on their own. No Hycre help. But a combat squadron made it across in a trashed cargo ship, with them ending up on my doorstep. From the stories they’re telling, it’s gone from bad to worse over there and had they stayed they’d have been doing nothing but digging their own graves.”

“They deserted?”

Mark nodded. “A group of five ships, with no jumpship to travel on. Only the one made it across the occupation zone, and as I said, it was beat to hell when the Calavari finally found it. They sent the pilots to me, given that one of them I’d briefly met on Daka had requested asylum. Their longer default lifespans are quite a relief compared to some of these younglings.”

“I didn’t know we had any Kitot in the ADZ.”

“319, to be exact. Not enough to build a colony for, so they’re just being logged as guests in a number of facilities. I bought Ekka with me, and he’s been getting quite a few stares, which is surprising, given how many different faces are around here.”

“You got any current pilots in the games?”

“Can’t with the residential restrictions.”

Cora raised an eyebrow. “Well I do.”

Mark frowned. “How?”

“They were born on the Alliance World. Only those migrating around have the residential restriction.”

“Why weren’t they pulled off for pre-games training?”

“Because Ironhold has the best facilities for that.”

“Well not me. Anyone they want for the games they take away early and I usually don’t get them back.”

“Competition is a lot more fierce for pilots,” Cora said offhand, referencing the fact that mech combat had only been added to the games two tournaments ago. That had been encouraging the races without mechs to start experimenting with them, even if just for the sake of winning credits for their worlds…with most of their hopefuls training under Cora on Ironhold.

“So they think. The Calavari I’ve got would wipe the floor with them easily.”

“And you?”

Mark locked eyes with her. “You shouldn’t have to ask.”

“Am I to assume that means you’ve been showing off the past few days?”

“It does. And you?”

“Not yet, but I’m working up to it. The neo is too mobile for them to handle, so I’ve been going easy on them. Don’t want it to be a total trouncing on their first run,” she said with a smile, glancing at several of the mechwarriors standing around her…though in truth they didn’t truly merit that title.

“Would you like a better challenge?”

Cora’s eyes widened. “You have the time?”

“I can squeeze in one demo. That way these guys can watch and you won’t have to hold back.”

“Much,” she said with a cocky glance.

“We’ll see. I have no doubt I’m going to lose, but I bet I can make you sweat a bit.”

Cora turned to look at the others. “Hear that fellas? You’re in for a show. Archons train in all 5 disciplines, and even though this one is our best pilot, he’s also a decent mechwarrior for Star Force standards,” she said, looking back at Mark. “And if we’re lucky, we’ll be able to round up a few more Archons for a bit bigger melee.”

“I’ll see what kind of a team I can rustle up,” Mark promised.

“You do that,” Cora said, standing up and telekinetically poking him in the ribs again. “But right now we’re heading to the sanctum…unless you’re pressed for time?” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“Been there earlier, but I’m up for a second workout before I hit the sack.”

When he stood up there was a chorus of groans, with the mechwarriors seeing that the two of them were going to depart.

“I’ll catch the rest of you later,” Cora promised, “but right now a couple of old friends need to do some catching up over training drills. I’ll be back here tomorrow evening.”

“You are quite popular,” Mark commented after they’d left the table and got out the door, having to smoosh their way through a couple of clogged points. Any more bodies in the lounge and it was going to be difficult to move at all.

“Like you’re not?”

“I don’t get out in the crowds unless I have to.”

“Chicken.”

“How?”

“You’ve got psionics, so what are you afraid of?”

“Wasting time.”

“Normally I’d agree, but I’m here to meet and greet and school. Not everything can be taught from the cockpit via beatdowns.”

“Don’t they get annoying?”

“I don’t spend that much time mingling. Training always comes first.”

“Good. Thought you’d gone civi there for a moment,” Mark said, blocking her elbow as she tried to ram it into his gut as she cut across in front of him to head to an opening in the crowd that led to the main walkway. “Too slow, chica.”

“We’ll see,” she said, eager to get into a sparring match with someone that could keep up with and potentially beat her.

9

June 13, 2532

Ursala System (Beta Region)

Califret

“Are you heading to the viewing arena?” Ekka asked in the trade language, given he hadn’t quite mastered English yet, as he and Mark climbed out of the simulators in the training area along with a dozen other pilots.

The little three-legged ‘tripod’ stood next to the trailblazer’s pod, already having climbed out ahead of him as Mark briefly ran through the post-drill statistics. The Kitot barely came up to his waist, but in the cockpit of a fighter size mattered little, evidenced by the Urik’kadel who were heavily favored in the piloting events, the next of which was due to start within an hour.

“Not straight off, but I’ll meet you guys there before the first challenge.”

Ekka inclined its pointed head and shuffled off on tiny, rapid steps as it followed the other pilots out. Mark shut down his simulator and did the same, having finished yet another informal session in his school of badass. He’d asked the Kitot to join him, with the rest of the pilots being people he’d never met before, but all of which were veteran or aspiring pilots with résumés that deserved his attention. Some wanted to test the trailblazer’s skills, or just watch them in action, while others found it an honor to interact with him or were hoping to show him some sign of latent skill to get them an invite to Oberon.

As it was, he had a full slate of pilots, both from Star Force and other races that he was overseeing the training of. Now that he was in charge instead of the Calavari, there had been some changes made to the feel of the pilot mecca. There was still a looseness to it all, but what Mark provided was structure that the pilots could latch onto as they chose, jumping into challenges as well as joining training teams that progressed through very specific drills meant to home or teach a specific skill set.

It was all a la carte, but Mark was now leading the advanced teams personally, flying an Alliance Valerie as much as he was a skeet, for both the Protovic and Humans had endorsed the model for the standard aircraft for the new Alliance they’d forged…albeit with some additional tinkering. It was those Valeries that the non-Star Force pilots trained in, plus the Calavari and a handful of Kiritas, leaving the skeets as the signature aircraft for the Humans, to which Mark had added a few others.

The original gunships had been retired, replaced with three different heavy fighters. One was anti-infantry, one was anti-mech, and the last one was anti-air. Each could take on other rolls, but were specialized in those areas, giving Star Force additional flexibility and punch while the skeets remained the multitasking workhorses that they’d always been.

The Valeries that they now produced had 12 different models. The race-specific ones that the Calavari had originally designed for the Urik’kadel and others had been eliminated, with cockpit modifications for all versions becoming modular, giving the smaller races the ability to fly the same craft with the added armor protection rather than shrinking the entire fighter. Star Force produced four versions of Valerie for sale to the Alliance, while the Protovic and Calavari now built their own. The blueprints were available to all Alliance members, but most preferred the ease of purchase rather than building the necessary production infrastructure, and Star Force was happy to oblige them.

One difference from what the original Calavari had been selling was that Star Force didn’t sell starfighter models, for they didn’t want their allies wasting lives by putting them into space combat. What they did offer were attack drones operating off a small carrier, using outdated communications systems far inferior to the interlinking that Star Force used, but still more than advanced enough for the use of their allies in short range engagements. The fear of many races was the control signals being jammed, and it was a legitimate concern, but over time many got over that impediment and began purchasing them for defensive deployments around their various Alliance Worlds and for excursions beyond the ADZ, for apparently they’d gained a reputation for being good at fighting off pirates.

That was another thing that had increased in the fall of the major powers. Pirate raids in star systems had increased outside the ADZ, and those that attempted some within it were heavily hunted by both Star Force and the Hycre, ensuring mostly reliable jumplanes to travel on, but you could never know for sure, even in Sol, which occasionally had an unwelcome visitor.

Things were so bad outside the ADZ that Star Force was getting requests from races to purchase the same weapons, which wasn’t allowed. Star Force only sold to the Alliance members, and in general practice didn’t sell weapons to the public. There was no stopping the other Alliance members from doing so, and some had tried to become middle men, buying Star Force tech and then turning around to sell it to outsiders…but they hadn’t gotten far with that before Star Force security found out what they were up to and sales were temporarily suspended to those races involved.

That in turn had led to other races outside the ADZ requesting to become members of the Alliance, most of which were located above and below on the galactic plane and not directly in contention with the lizards or Skarrons…yet. Each of those requests were handled individually, with a high amount of scrutiny. Many were denied, but some were accepted, despite the fact that they didn’t plan to move their entire population into the ADZ, but rather establish a foothold there in order to join the community of races, gain access to Star Force markets, and in some cases to create a fallback location in case the lizards or Skarrons or other nasties out there moved into their territory.

It was a pilot from one of those races that was waiting for Mark outside the simulator complex, along with a host of others wanting to catch a moment with him for a question, autograph, photo or what not, though those in this area of the colony had to have special access rights, given that the training areas were off limits to most of the visiting public.

Dealing with the crowds was something that he had to get used to, so with a now practiced grace he engaged a few of those waiting outside while bypassing the others…that was, until the Voku pushed its way through the others and shoved Mark into the wall.

“Yu wil listen,” it said in crude English as the shorter Human went ramrod still and slowly turned a glaring eye on the alien with a look that would have made Clint Eastwood proud.

“Watch it, punk. Do that on a bad day and you’ll end up with injuries.”

“Yu moost listen to mi,” the thickset alien insisted, its pitch black muscles easily twice the size of Mark’s…with the trailblazer sizing him up and not really worried about a conflict. He could take him down easy enough, but he sensed the alien’s intent was not to bully. Mark didn’t recognize the race, but whatever it was, it had something it thought was important enough to say to risk the insult.

“This had better be worth my time, youngling.”

“It es impotant.”

“Follow me, then,” Mark said, forcing his way through the crowd until he came to a room in the hallway that was unoccupied. He pointed the alien inside and walked into the four-pod simulator chamber, shutting the door behind him so the crowd couldn’t follow. “Talk.”

“I am Voku. Wi are eh race noot in yur alliance. We ass, but noot allowd. We want…no, we ned to proov we can help. I am sint to proov or pilots are stong.”

While the alien spoke, Mark telepathically dug into its mood and memories, trying to piece together what it was after, quickly learning that it didn’t know the trade language or any other that Mark was familiar with, which made sense, given that it had come from a place outside Gamma Region and far down on the galactic plane…so far down, in fact, that its home was on the edge of the galaxy and well outside the range that Star Force mapping expeditions had gone.

Which was also why their request had been turned down.

“Why do you need to prove yourself to us?” Mark said, leaning back against one of the pods as the Voku stood tall in front of him.

“We are warrier. We are peece keeper. We are told by old ones to protect. We are told yu protect to. We are told to help yu.”

Suddenly a link clicked in Mark’s mind, remembering a file he’d read on their race. He hadn’t remembered them looking like this, but then again there were so many out there that it was hard to remember them all. What struck him was the mention of the old ones telling them to join with Star Force, because he had wondered at the time how their elders had found out about them, and just how far word of Star Force had travelled…and were they in danger even now of accidentally tipping off the V’kit’no’sat to their existence simply by word of mouth.

But now Mark knew that wasn’t the case at all. Reading the Voku’s mind he got an image of the ‘old ones,’ with a prickly sense of foreboding going along with it. Whoever had received the Voku request before apparently hadn’t been very strong in Ikrid skills, or maybe hadn’t been an Archon at all. Then again, the request could have come in through comm channels rather than face to face, because Mark knew that none of the trailblazers would have missed this connection, and a lot of the more skilled second gen wouldn’t have either.

The ‘old ones’ were linked to an image in the alien’s mind, a recent image, of a recording made and kept secret amongst the Voku leadership. An alien from another race, one that the Voku revered deeply, had visited them and given them the directive before disappearing again, insisting that they keep its knowledge a secret…a secret that now Mark had pulled from this one’s mind, and he sensed that letting him know would cause a heap of trouble for the alien, so he decided to play it cool.

“You’re a pilot?”

“Yis.”

“Are there other Voku here or just you?”

“I am one on tis plant. But others are in obit.”

“Did you bring your fighters with you?”

“Yis.”

Mark nodded. “I will give you a chance to impress me. Since you’re not familiar with the simulator controls, I will give clearance for you to bring your craft down to the planet and we will see what you can do in the atmosphere.”

The Voku bowed deeply. “Thenk yu. Yu wil noot be sorrie.”

“We’ll see,” Mark said, heading for the door and pushing his way through the crowd outside.

When Mark got back to his temporary quarters later he sat down at the communications terminal and went through the somewhat lengthy process of logging into his own account, given that it had extra layers of protection since it saw multiple users. What he’d just learned was that Star Force had made a mistake…a big mistake in turning down the Voku, something that he was about to fix in a hurry, sending out a message to the other trailblazers and Davis, detailing the extent to which the Voku could help them.

For starters they were excellent pilots. The one they’d sent to find him was almost as good as Mark, as were the others that had joined him in the air for maneuvers. Their technology was also superior to what Star Force was using, as far as the fighters were concerned, and after a quick visit to their ship in orbit he saw that it wasn’t a fluke. Their technology was well beyond what the Alliance had, and about equivalent to some of the upgrades Star Force was only beginning to employ…but tooled in a very different direction.

The V’kit’no’sat database had thousands of weapon systems from various races, not all of which matched up with the way they liked to fight. The Voku likewise held a very different combat philosophy from Star Force, but one that wasn’t totally incompatible. In the description he was about to write out, he was considering going with the metaphor of ‘transformers’ but was still working to find a better word. Everything the Voku used was manned, no drones of any kind, though heavily armored and protected, but they were all built…from fighters to warships to aquatics…to be components.

And by components he meant that they fit together to form larger ships. Two fighters combined to form a heavy fighter, four formed a gunship and so on, and the same was true of their warships. They had basic units equivalent to a Star Force light cruiser, which then combined all the way up into Death Star-sized conglomerations with equally terrifying firepower…for each component piece was identical, with small segments of machinery that wasn’t useable on a small scale and only came together in large numbers, literally having the pieces transform rather than just ‘Lego’ themselves together.

The Voku, based on the information they’d given him, were stronger than both the lizards and Skarrons combined, and dominated their region of the galaxy in a diameter of approximately 800 lightyears. They’d already met the Skarrons in battle, briefly, and had repulsed them easily, with their common enemy not having tried again…or at least delaying such an effort until they had more favorable terms.

The Voku weren’t interested in colonizing the ADZ, they wanted to ally themselves directly with Star Force, and given that they saw that Star Force was the controlling factor within the ADZ they had approached them in that regard, having their emissaries even learn enough English to communicate…and somehow it had all gotten mixed up between the two races to the point that Star Force thought they wanted to join the Alliance and turned them down because of their distance from them…a distance that Star Force couldn’t monitor.

Now Mark was very glad that the Voku had shoved him in the hallway…and even more glad he hadn’t kicked his ass on the spot for doing it. Their communication capability was still limited, with Mark pulling a lot telepathically to try and gain context, but he was about to assign a Star Force linguistics and tech team to the new project at once, getting them up to speed with the Voku language and computer systems, so at least they could get a translation program up and running…because they were going to need it, badly.

Mark had spent some 3 hours onboard the Voku ship, during which they attempted to give him as much information as they could, including star maps of areas that had been beyond the V’kit’no’sat survey. They contained several black hole links that the Voku had used to get here, with him identifying the ‘highways’ that would link the two races together across a considerable chasm of territory inhabited by many other races, some of which were powerful and none too friendly…as seemed to be the case across the galaxy.

The Voku were peacekeepers in their region, harboring and protecting hundreds of other races. They didn’t form an alliance with them, but looked after them more like pets or children, keeping the predators at bay…all because they had been told to do so long ago by a parent race known to them as the Fa’gon’stek, which Mark would have bet a million credits translated as ‘Keeper.’

The old one that had visited the Voku and told them to aid Star Force, the one that the Voku had in its mind and was sworn never to reveal, had been a Zak’de’ron. The same one, he believed, that they’d encountered on Daka. It had given Kara some advice when she’d interacted with it, advice that had proven to be true regarding the Calavari, then it said that their battle against the V’kit’no’sat was hopeless and that they’d never see the dragon again…and they hadn’t, for it had disappeared, ostensibly out towards the rim, after coming to Earth to unlock the database in exchange for a glimpse at the ‘updated’ records.

But it seemed that for some reason the dragon still favored them, and above that it wasn’t just hiding out in the rim either, but rather pulling invisible strings that Mark had fortuitously stumbled upon, thanks to his psionics…for he knew from the Voku’s state of mind that it would never have given him that information.

What the dragon was playing at Mark couldn’t be sure. The Voku didn’t stand a chance against the V’kit’no’sat either. Maybe it saw the threat of the lizards and Skarrons and didn’t think the Humans were strong enough yet to defend themselves against both threats…which would mean it had kept an eye on the region, which, with its insanely advanced technology wouldn’t be hard to do undetected, making Mark wonder if there were any dragons wandering around the ADZ right now, keeping tabs on them.

Mark had a lot to tell the others, plus he needed to get the ball rolling with the Voku, who had gone to long lengths to contact Star Force, and then continue to push the issue after having been stupidly rebuffed. The full dynamics of their relationship to come Mark couldn’t be sure, for he needed the others to weigh in and develop the possibilities, but he had a few ideas bouncing around his head already that he wanted to send out to the others through the relay grid as soon as possible, along with his report.

When he logged into his personal comm account he stopped short, seeing that a new message from Randy had come in since he’d last checked. It was a text message, one line only, but was marked as urgent so he pulled it up before starting writing.

The Dvapp have engaged the Borg.

10

One week earlier…

The oceanic world of Tetteras sat in the midst of 12 large moons, all of which rotated around it in erratic orbits, dismissing any notion of an orbital plane as some moved in polar, equatorial, and elliptical orbits. As it was, in recent history a 13th moon had crashed into the planet’s surface, puncturing the crust and melding with the interior, triggering cataclysmic changes across the planet and creating a hemispherical clump of matter that stuck out from what had otherwise been a sphere.

But that was in the past, and mathematical projection had the other moons’ orbits ‘stable’ for the next hundred years or so, more than enough time for the Dvapp to chorale them into more preferable orbits as they grew their colony on the 8th one, with splinter settlements heading down to regions of Tetteras to harvest raw materials and construct shipyards while their population resided safely on the moon as its infrastructure continued to grow, literally, from shipments of materials coming in from the planet.

The multi-colored cities were grown from a crystal tech, covering a wide range of functions including orbital defense. Their surface batteries had the range to reach orbit, foregoing the need for defense platforms to reinforce their fleet of warships in low altitude around the moon, which were the only spaceborne assets the Dvapp had in play. Their cargo ships were gone elsewhere, being used to ferry more survivors from their original homeland across the war zone to the ADZ, leaving only a handful here to carry resources from the planet up to the moon, though more were being grown in their surface yards to fill the void.

It was those yards that saw the first strike from the Skarrons, with their fleet of warships escorting transports down to low orbit where they proceeded to land troops within a few kilometers of the land-based settlements, taking fire from a scattering of weapons emplacements on station. Those small beams burned into their shields, but didn’t puncture those on the transports before they released their Type-3 and Type-4 walkers, at multiple sites, with following drops delivering infantry.

With the walkers taking the lead, they picked off the defensive batteries and proceeded into the crystalline settlements, heading for the shipyards and what were other key facilities that they had determined from reconnaissance in this system and others prior to launching a three pronged ‘shark bump’ attack, of which this was the first of the nearly simultaneous system assaults.

The Dvapp fleet around the moon responded instantly, dispatching ships towards the Skarron fleet and meeting them head on, despite their numerical disadvantage. The Skarrons had brought some 231 warships, with the Dvapp having 173 on hand. The Skarron vessels also outmassed the Dvapp, who also didn’t have anything of scale to contend with the juggernaut the enemy had leading its fleet. What the Dvapp had were mostly uniform cruisers and an integrated command system that let them maneuver and fight their ships as if they were one massive vessel separated into autonomous components.

As the Dvapp approached they began firing en mass before they even came within the enemy’s heavy lachar range…but they didn’t slow their approach, instead pulling right up in front of the Skarrons’ bigger warships and engaging them at pointblank range, already having taken down a good number of their shields with their equally uniform weaponsfire, all of which was topaz energy beams coming from their green, glowing warships.

The beams were not plasma, but a type of energy known as Sa’mo’shtat to the V’kit’no’sat, which was a derivative of mauler energy, save this form was less powerful and able to hold cohesion, for its repulsive nature had been stripped away. That allowed it to be delivered in beam format, but with an intensity and destructive capacity far greater than that of lachars, as well as better range.

Each of those beams were being targeted by a central control team that fed information out to all of the ships, giving them targets to hit and allowing the individual crews to pick which ones out of the possibilities given to them. As a result you saw multiple beams converging on precise points and persisting for upwards of 10 seconds before a recharge cycle. Each Dvapp ship had 12 such beam weapons, making the confrontation with the Skarron fleet look like a spider’s web of energy coming into contact with a rainfall of white plasma.

While that heavy battle got underway, for neither side blinked and redeployed, preferring instead to slug it out with their new enemies whose battle strength was untested on both sides, the ground attacks continued with none of the Dvapp ships making it down to the surface to assist, which they were more than capable of doing. Instead the Skarron walkers were free to shoot and pillage to their liking while their ground troops assembled behind them at makeshift landing zones, depositing Skarrons and Hobbits into the hot, humid, ashy environment that still hadn’t completely recovered from the moon’s impact.

The workers deployed there ran and hid inside structures, not having anything to defend themselves with aside from personal firearms and the defense turrets…which had already been smoked by the Skarrons. The ships in the bowl-like shipyards were not operational, leaving them sitting ducks for when the enemy got to them, having first to blast through the underside of the ‘bowls’ to get a clear shot at the ships. Huge plumes of liquid drained out onto the ground, covering the rocky surface with a blue/white sparkly soup that the needle-like legs of the walkers stood within as they opened up yet more holes, finally firing through them to hit the partially formed ships.

When the infantry finally caught up the liquid pools had been drained and spread out across the landscape, leaving nothing but puddles behind for them to trudge through enroute to the crystal buildings, whereupon the Hobbits entered first in search of the occupants while the Skarrons patrolled the streets, establishing a perimeter and laying claim to the structures.

When the first Hobbit team got to the buildings they couldn’t find the doors, or rather they couldn’t open them, for there were no switches or handles. Eventually they blasted through the crystalline structure with their plasma rifles and went inside single file, finding triangular hallways with the narrow peak up top, realizing there was no way their Skarron masters would be able to fit inside…but that wasn’t uncommon, for many of the races they conquered built equally ‘small’ infrastructure, which was the primary reason why the Skarrons had annexed the Aronsic into their empire.

The first of the Hobbits came through and stopped to the left, letting the next come in and join up beside him so they could form a 2-man wide column that slowly proceeded down the hallway and up to an intersection, passing by a door that was equally closed off, with some of the Hobbits in the back stopping to blast it open, knowing that they couldn’t leave any portion of the building unchecked.

When the first Hobbits moved into the intersection, the one on the right saw a giant white fist/glob swing around in front of it and smash into its face. It dented slightly as his face broke into a mess of blood and his body was knocked back into the group, bowling several others over in the process. The Hobbit beside him fired at the bipedal mass, blowing out tiny crystal shards as a plasma blast hit its midsection, making a small crater that disappeared as the thing took a heavy step towards him and punched it with the other handless arm, splattering it against the wall when the smaller alien got caught between the two.

More rifle barrels came up and opened fire, with the Dvapp screaming a high pitched sound and ducking off down the other side of the intersection and out of view. The Hobbits ran after it, turning the corner and firing as they saw it lean forward in the distance and dive onto its belly…only to melt into a long, snake-like pylon that whipped down the hall and turned the next corner, gripping the far wall and pulling the rest of its body out of firing range as quick as possible.

The Hobbits chased after it, with the third pair forward getting ambushed as a different Dvapp came out a side door that was closed until the first pair passed it, then the material melted and pulled aside, with another bipedal form stepping out and hammering both Hobbits with a massive jab that took its arm all the way across the hall and splashed its hand against the far wall…whereupon it melted and dropped to the ground in a splash, only to reach out two tentacles and wrap them around the nearest Hobbits.

With a crunch it constricted their thick chests, breaking ribs before tossing one each way to knock down the others as it took a few rifle shots. With the distractions it slithered towards the front few, of which only one was now standing, and tripped it up from underneath. The Dvapp caught the Hobbit as it fell, reforming its bipedal form underneath as it stood up, Hobbit in ‘hand,’ and threw the thing towards the others before running ahead and ducking out of sight around the next bend.

The remaining Hobbits held their ground and waited, calling for reinforcements that arrived a few minutes later. Then, as a more combined group squeezed three wide to get more rifles into play, they moved up over the bodies of their dead and down the hallways, making extra sure to shoot open any doors they came across to avoid another ambush. They got through an entire level of the building with no contacts, then came to an opening in the roof that was the Dvapp equivalent of stairs, with no way to get up…other than to stand on top of each other and lift.

The first Hobbit they sent up made it through and onto its feet on the second story, as did the second, but when the third went up the other two were missing…and suddenly it was grabbed and pulled up the rest of the way, disappearing through the hole and causing the Hobbits below to pull back, not wanting to get grabbed themselves.

They fired up into the next level, blasting out a bit of crystal around the edges and making the hole bigger, but there was nothing they could do but go up there and get taken out one by one so they pulled back out of the building and called for support…which came in the form of heavy plasma blasts hitting the building itself from a nearby Type-3 walker.

With the infantry clear the white rain fell, busting through the outer layers of the building and continuing to core into the interior without pause. There were so many plasma cannons on the Skarron walker that they continued in sequence, firing nonstop and pulverizing half the building until they finally readjusted their aim skyward as a topaz beam hit the machine.

That beam was followed by three others, all impacting on top where the anti-air cannon was blasting away at the warship descending from above. The walker’s shields went down quickly under the linked fire, with the lachar cannon getting slagged almost instantly as the glowing green warship descended out of the ash clouds at higher altitude and drew fire from numerous walkers…but other green spots appeared in the clouds, faint at first, then turning to bright crystal as they dropped down as well, crisscrossing their beam cannons, which the Archons referred to as ‘Sammies,’ and melted through the Skarron armor like a hot knife through butter.

Holes were cored into their interior in less than a minute, slagging and vaporizing internal components as the Dvapp probed their enemies, finding out where the vulnerable points were and taking out the walkers as their cruisers soaked up the enemy plasma storms with their potent shields.

The enemy infantry scattered, wanting to go back to their landing zone but it was also coming under attack, with the Skarron transports that had remained on the surface being targeted as well. Once destroyed, the Dvapp warships moved on to other targets, methodically and efficiency burning their enemies out with their sustained beams that put Star Trek phasers to shame.

When the walkers finally went down over one location, the other warships save for one moved off to hunt down other enemy groups, leaving a single cruiser behind to hit the infantry. To do that it came low to the ground, so low that the Hobbits almost felt like ducking as a number of much smaller beam weapons broke out, throwing hundreds of little streaks of yellow down to the ground and precisely targeting each enemy soldier, whether they be Skarron or Hobbit, though the Skarrons required more than one beam in most cases, especially the armored ones.

Having nowhere else to run, the Hobbits went into the remaining Dvapp structures, blasting through doors and trying to get away from the pointblank naval bombardment…but they didn’t last long inside, as the Dvapp workers stalked them throughout the buildings, killing them one or two at a time in a bloody game of cat and mouse, with only a handful of the denizens carrying their own weapons. Those looked more like a Star Trek phaser, firing a quick, continuous beam from a shard-like crystal weapon that the Dvapp carried around inside their bodies until they needed to use it, but it was quickly evident that they didn’t need it, for they were doing just fine slaughtering the Hobbits hand to hand.

Within a few hours the Skarron invasion of the planetary structures came to an abrupt halt, with their ground assault force unexpectedly annihilated and their naval force fleeing for their lives as the lesser number of Dvapp warships proved too lethal to survive. 23 Skarron vessels got away, not including transports, taking with them the combat recordings and news that this potential weak link in the ADZ was not so weak at all, and in fact was more lethal than the Protovic and Star Force had been prior to their Sentinels showing up.

But then again, there had been a reason the Bsidd had worked so hard to bring the Dvapp into the Alliance, and why the lizards had targeted them so aggressively once they had them at a disadvantage. They were a formidable race, and even given their egregious losses and having to rebuild in an entirely new environment, the Dvapp were more than capable of defending themselves against the Skarrons…and now that first blood had been drawn, the vendettive race was not going to sit back and wait for them to strike again.

The other two system assaults would end in similar failures for the Skarrons, which ultimately gave them what they wanted…an assessment of this new race showing up in droves to colonize the front lines of their widespread push throughout this galactic arm. Intelligence they’d gathered told them that the Dvapp were part of the Alliance, but little more than that. Now they knew, despite their hope they could have established a beachhead straight out.

But that wasn’t too significant, for there were lots of empty systems out there to set up shop in, despite the Alliance’s constant patrols that kept detecting them and responding with swift attacks to keep them from building up a forward base inside the ADZ. Two such attempts had been made in earnest, and repelled with hard fought campaigns, while more than a hundred smaller ‘sneak’ attempts had been made and easily driven off, prompting the Skarrons to try even more systems further out from the Protovic worlds, attempting to flank the enemy patrols.

With this latest attempt failing so spectacularly, the Skarron regional commanders called a halt to major combat operations against the Alliance while keeping up probing skirmishes, searching for weaknesses and harassing them as much as possible to gain intelligence and do what damage they could. Without having been able to secure Protovic territory and the mounting losses, the Skarrons now wanted time to reassess their enemy’s strength, for they’d been upping their attack forces in what they’d thought were conservative numbers to overcome what had previously been defeats…only to have the Alliance do the same, most notably with the deployment of the Sentinels.

With confusion over how many ships and troops would be required to secure a foothold against the Alliance, the Skarrons reverted back into planning mode, not having given up their attacks at all, just retooling their strategies as they let their reinforcements pool to significantly larger numbers.

Star Force took this as a good sign, for it gave them more time to build ships and Sentinels, and the Protovic agreed…but the Dvapp were of another mind and struck back at the nearest Skarron-held worlds with a vengeance, putting them on the defensive for a change and giving the ADZ its first good breather since the Skarron front first opened up some seven decades ago, as well as inspiring a new wave of confidence for those races who had fled to the ADZ ahead of the Skarron advance.

No longer was it a fools gambit, for now the Alliance had proven teeth, which word of mouth quickly spread through the surrounding regions as the Dvapp made no efforts to be sneaky in their attacks, preferring smash mouth tactics that just annihilated the weaker Skarron outposts then left their rubble behind for all to see as they moved onto other targets, eventually retreating back to the ADZ.

That alone upped their credibility, which invited a whole new slew of races seeking to join ranks with them or flee behind their defensive lines…as well as making other rimward races rethink the Alliance’s odds of holding out against the lizard juggernaut as it made its way inevitably forward.

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_____

1

February 27, 2534

Retari System (Alpha Region)

Atlantica

Kyler woke the moment he heard the alarm, bolting out of bed and finding his shoes before running off through Manaan. He brushed his way past a few people in the hallway, none of who had heard the alarm for it was his private link to the command center and their way of summoning him in an instant when he was on a sleep cycle. Had it been less urgent they would have used a different tone and he’d have checked in on the comm, but the dragonzord flute call meant it was a top priority and that he needed to get his ass there as quickly as possible.

When he turned out of the residential area and into the more crowded hallways within the underwater city he telepathically shouted out to everyone to make room, simultaneously giving them the location in the center of the hall where they should NOT be. It took a few seconds, but suddenly a path opened up and Kyler sprinted through, bumping into a handful of shoulders and even knocking one woman down who was so light that even a slight brush toppled her.

He couldn’t wait to see who he hit, he just had to get through the city as fast as he could and after several minutes of reckless running through the crowds that more or less heeded his call to move aside, he entered the city’s command center and saw the gigantic hologram in the center depicting the orbital traffic with a large fleet of hostiles tagged.

Kyler didn’t even pause to inquire what was going on, rather running across the command center and into the nexus.

“Out,” he said, relieving the lower ranking Archon that was already on station, who graciously stepped aside and moved back out onto the main floor as Kyler touched the control sphere and mentally linked into the equipment and brought up a slew of status displays in addition to the main one that was already circling him in holo.

A fleet of lizard cruisers was already engaging the orbital defenses, with three Sentinels chewing them up at range and a hoard of drones headed their way. Some of the enemy ships were making attack runs on the drones that had already gotten to them, but they weren’t closing on any of the Sentinels, making it impossible for the lizards to do any damage to them. Instead, they were just sitting out approximately 100 miles from the nearest one and shooting any Star Force orbital infrastructure near them, including one of the storage/repair yards that was giving them hell with its perimeter defenses.

“This isn’t right,” Kyler whispered, keying for a few additional ship movements. “What are you guys up to?”

Twenty two seconds later he got his answer as the lizard ship formation suddenly became the lead escorts for a gigantic assault pillar that decelerated directly behind them, with additional cruisers and battleships coming in in its wake to create a protective ring around it.

“Shit,” Kyler said, retasking the Sentinels to exclusively target it. The assault pillar was one weapon that Star Force knew they possessed but had never encountered. It was by far the lizards’ largest vessel, measuring in at 93 kilometers and shaped like a huge needle, for at its thickest point it measured only 8.2 km wide. It was ungainly and far less maneuverable than even an invoker, but the two types of warships were killers none the less, and where the invoker came in for close-range fleet kills the assault pillar did the opposite and hit targets at range.

But its range didn’t exceed that of the Sentinels, who started hitting it with multiple cleansing beams, including their heavy versions…but its shields held up against the incredibly powerful weapons long enough for it to swivel its nose about a few degrees and the escort fleet to break apart to give it a firing line as they actually positioned themselves around it to try and take some of the cleansing beam hits.

With the closest Sentinel targeted the assault pillar spat out a single projectile towards it at amazing speed. Kyler watched its progress across the holo and the 100 mile gap in between until it smashed into the Sentinel’s shields…which also held.

A side-mounted display of that Sentinel flashed with shield damage, and Kyler could see that it had lost more than 62% shield strength. Also, the detailed sensor analysis concluded that it had been a kinetic impact equivalent to a kamikaze corvette. Kyler could see the superheated metal spray off the intact shields like a slush-filled water balloon, glowing with radiant intensity that didn’t fade quickly. The pieces of the now shredded projectile hit several drone warships and a jumpship nearby, adding extra damage to the attack that Kyler quickly countered by creating a no-go zone around that particular Sentinel, with his fleet responding accordingly as another projectile was fired.

It shot out of the assault pillar a moment before the cleansing beams got through the enemy shields and started tearing into the hull, but there they encountered dense hull armor, melting it off in globs but unable to get full penetration and slice the ship in half like Kyler hoped they could. A moment later the next projectile hit and breached the shields, with the partial splatter of superheated metal blowing right into the armor of the defense platform like a shotgun blast.

Damage statistics flared up, and Kyler noticed that the impact had occurred in virtually the same place as the first, meaning the assault pillar was hurling rail gun slugs the size of warships at a 100 mile range and managing to hit an area the size of a football field. That was insanely precise, and was probably the source of the elongated design, with longer barrels leading to greater accuracy, so long as you could position them with enough delicacy.

The third shot that came wasn’t another supersized, super-fast slug. Instead the assault pillar began shooting out tiny ones at ‘slow’ speed, and Kyler’s gut sank even as he aligned his drones for a flanking attack against the escort fleet, using every second he had wisely as he watched the new projectiles eek their way across the holo like a dotted line extending out to touch the Sentinel.

The first one hit renewed shields and splattered, with it taking the third to bring them back down again. The fourth got hit by a well-aimed mauler blast and melted into fragments before it hit the hull, but by the time the fifth got within 100 meters of impact a bright flash occurred way back at the assault pillar and Kyler watched a chain of erratic energy arcs work its way up the line, jumping from one projectile to the other and extending out across the gap with ominous intent, not making it to the Sentinel until the 28th projectile impacted.

When it did the colored lightning that the invoker was so famous for slammed into the Sentinel with explosive results. The hull armor vaporized and the flickering crackle of energy dug into the gigantic defense platform even as its cleansing beams continued to reach out and cut into the enemy vessel, along with its two sister stations in close orbit. Kyler wished the others were within range to assist but they weren’t, spaced around orbit as they were in small clusters like this that had overlapping firing ranges.

Two of the cleansing beams on the Sentinel cut out, with the internal arrangements quickly altering to bring one of them back online with a power reroute, but the other weapon had been hit in the backflow of energy and damaged. That reduced the Sentinel down to 9 large and 1 extra large cleansing beam, with the energy being reallocated to those in order to increase firing rates.

The pale white beams continued to streak out across the 100 mile gap and tear into the enemy ship, with smaller skirmishes happening around the perimeter as Star Force drones tried to get at the gigantic vessel and the swarm of enemy cruisers moving out far enough to engagement them and provide cover. Soon another one of those beams cut out as the never ending flow of rainbow lightning continued to claw into the side of the Sentinel until one of the other two stations got a lucky hit inside the ‘barrel’ and knocked out an emitter pylon…with the lightning suddenly shutting down.

The last bit of it traveled through the relay, then only the small projectiles were hitting the charred hole in the Sentinel that now reached halfway through the massive defense platform. The projectiles coming in were doing more damage, small as it was, then the last two were actually hit before they could get to their target as a much faster large projectile came up from behind and knocked them aside before slamming into the hole.

Kyler watched as several more were fired and slammed into the Sentinel, which he already had rotating around to try and take the damaged region out of the firing line. With the shields now nonexistent and unable to redeploy over the wounded area, intact shields on the back half slowly rotated around and took one of the hits…then fell on the next, buying some small amount of time, though with a new projectile coming in every 2.4 seconds there wasn’t much of a breather to be had, with the station getting hammered and Kyler trying to maneuver it out of the way on its internal drives.

It moved slowly, but succeeded in throwing off the aim of the assault pillar a handful of times for clear misses as the trailblazer assumed priority control from its previous pilots and maneuvered it over towards the nearest other Sentinel which was also repositioning towards it. Kyler got it within 20 miles before he lost all gravity drive control, with the station now beginning to list with each additional hit.

The other Sentinel continued to gain speed and crossed the gap as quickly as it could without overshooting and deposited itself in front of the now critically wounded platform, taking the incoming hits on its shields and then suffering through the hull damage as it and its intact twin continued to unload on the assault pillar. That exchange lasted several more minutes before the huge weapon ceased firing and reversed course, making a jump ‘backwards’ without spinning about, and getting away from the cleansing beams.

The lizard battleships went with it, then the cruisers followed shortly thereafter with the whole mass of them making staggered jumps out as the two Sentinels refocused their attacks on the ‘tiny’ vessels and killed more than 2 dozen of them before the enemy could fully retreat.

Kyler stayed in the command nexus, repositioning all manner of ships from drones to jumpships in preparation for another attack while he monitored the sensor stations spread across the system, trying to get a feel for where the enemy fleet was going and where they were going to hit them next…but to his surprise they reappeared near to the star, with the escorts loading back up onto jumpships that had somehow escaped detection upon arrival…either that or someone had decided to let him sleep in.

He reviewed the telemetry replay and saw that it was a combination of the two. The enemy jumpships had arrived from an odd jumpline, coming in where their sensor stations had the weakest coverage…something they probably knew from earlier scouting runs/attacks. That had delayed their detection a bit, but when they repositioned around the star for the jump to Atlantica Star Force should have had enough time to get better set up.

But the lizards didn’t have to position far, for they didn’t take a direct line to Atlantica…instead they made a jump to another planet that sat on almost the identical line that they arrived into the system on. That allowed them to reposition their forward elements quickly, literally allowing their cruisers to make the microjump as soon as they unloaded, then from there they made two more ping ponging jumps that required little repositioning and had allowed them to get into planetary orbit far faster than normal, with the sensor lag covering their arrival by a handful of minutes.

After that there had apparently been a delay in calling him, for the enemy cruisers had been clustering in orbit around Atlantica for several minutes prior to the first salvo being fired and well outside of Sentinel firing range. They’d then moved in en mass, hitting a few stations but not really appearing to want to do much damage. After they got far enough inside range and were taking egregious hits from the weapon platforms the assault pillar had come in behind them…and that told Kyler that this whole attack had been designed to get at one of the Sentinels.

It wasn’t the first lizard attack against one, but it was the first to succeed. All across this region of the ADZ border Sentinels were going up and adding extra toughness to the front, as well as those systems further in so the enemy couldn’t just bypass the defenses and hit ‘soft’ targets inside the ADZ. That said, those closest to the lizards were in the most jeopardy and had been reinforced heavily with fleets and new colonies nearby, creating a web of reinforcement potential and an ever growing thorn in the lizards’ side as they pushed their territory forward, with it now seeming to wrap itself around the ADZ as the Alliance defenses held firm and the surrounding systems did not.

There were no Protovic or Hycre here. It was all Star Force, with a few other races deciding to chip in and help out on this part of the border so long as they had Sentinels overhead. The addition of the extra fleets backing them up was useful, but that still left the bulk of the defensive effort to Star Force in those systems.

The Irondel were the most helpful, with most of the others just placing a few assets this far out for pride’s sake. The Reen had recently offered to help in exchange for a significant chunk of territory amounting to half a planet, with more requests starting to make their way out to Kyler, who now held primary responsibility for this line of defense now that Paul had moved on to other assignments. The aquatics specialist had elected to stay on Atlantica and organize the warfront from here rather than moving to Namek, given that this entire world had pretty much become his home and he’d been responsible for every structure and ship built here.

And it was also closer to the lizard lines than Namek was, especially given the expansions that had been made since their first days out here. Namek was almost an interior world now, with many formerly lizard systems now in Star Force possession and undergoing heavy construction, protected by both Star Force and Hycre fleets, the latter of which had become rovers, moving about to attack or defend where needed, leaving the lizards guessing as to where they were and in what numbers.

Kyler knew that some of those worlds only had a single Sentinel set up, with more coming down the pipe from Earth, and even if the lizards wanted to avoid the Hycre fleets, hitting Atlantica wasn’t exactly an easy feat. The fleet Kyler had here was more than capable of handling the escort fleet the lizards had brought with the assault pillar, and even with it there was no way they were going to take down all three Sentinels, though Kyler was pretty sure they could have gotten at least one more if they’d truly wanted to.

A lot of the planet’s drone defense fleet had been spaced out around orbit, unable to get to the enemy fast enough to do anything…which Kyler felt had been their plan as he ran back through the battle records again. They knew the position of the Sentinels, the planetary alignment, and the approximate location of the defense fleets…and not from any recon on this trip. They’d come here through a backdoor jumpline in order to set up the rapid arrival at Atlantica, which would avoid the bulk of the defense fleet for a short period of time and give them an isolated run against the Sentinels…and Sentinels as in plural. If they’d wanted to hit just one they could have picked another system, but three was the minimum number in the defense clusters here, of which had at least 50 miles of separation between each station.

That looked like nothing on the replays that Kyler was watching, for each of the Sentinels was 16 miles long and the lizard assault pillar, while 100 miles away, measured more than half that distance in length, making the battle look like a close up brawl from a distant observer, underscoring just how gigantic the chess pieces were that either side was fielding, with the cruisers and drones looking like lethargic insect swarms moving about around them.

Kyler ran through the sensor records of all monitoring stations within the system, making sure the lizards hadn’t deposited any ships on planet, then had his command crew do a headcount to ensure that all the enemy ships had left and they hadn’t dropped off a few out of sight…which they had. Kyler sent out several hundred drones and a handful of warships after them, which resulted in 3 kills and 4 escapes, though those escapes were slow affairs, with the cruisers having to make jumps on their own, meaning a very long trip between stars without a jumpship.

Those ships Kyler was sure were simply an afterthought, trying to gain some extra intel and not the focus of the attack. The Sentinels were Star Force’s major defensive piece in the ADZ puzzle, and a major deterrent to any race that wanted to attack them. Star Force had held the lizards at bay in this region for so long because they had been persistent and the lizards had been focused in other areas. Now that wasn’t so much the case, but the increased defenses were still holding them back.

Now, it seemed, their enemy was ready to flex some more muscle, here and on the Calavari border which had its own Sentinels set up and was warding off some light lizard attacks…probes, Kyler knew, sizing them up for the hammer blow to come.

This wasn’t it. Not by far. The fact that they’d left the system as quickly as they arrived said one thing and one thing only…they needed to test the strength of a Sentinel cluster, and this attack had been designed exactly to do that. They didn’t want to lose the assault pillar, but they had succeeded in trashing one Sentinel and damaging another, and based off the battle data he was reviewing, Kyler guessed that the assault pillar would be back to full offensive capability with only a light refit. The barrel shot they’d scored had been fortuitous, and he expected the lizards to back off the range a bit more to decrease the odds of it happening again.

Yes, Star Force had just driven off an assault pillar and its escort fleet, but the lizards had just proven to themselves that they could still hammer Star Force if they wanted to, and it wouldn’t require sacrificing hundreds of thousands of cruisers to get the job done. They’d wanted to test their big weapon and that test had been well executed and invaluable in determining what strength was necessary to make a serious attempt at breaching the ADZ defenses.

Kyler didn’t know how many assault pillars they had back in their home systems, but he got the feeling they would be making a whole lot more in the coming decades, for now they knew that their boomsticks could get the job done, and Kyler suspected that the stronger Star Force and the ADZ became, the more attention they were going to draw.

And from the look of things, the lizards weren’t considering them to be a minor threat anymore.

2

April 2, 2534

Solar System

Earth

Scrolling down through the list of battles, Paul mentally chose the one he wanted and the V’kit’no’sat hologram shifted to the file in less than a hundredth of a second, giving him the post-mission statistics, sensor records, and analysis of the Hjar’at’s assault on the world of Daspoelna. It was one of thousands of high level battles that the pyramid database had logged inside of it, with Paul growing more intrigued with those records as the years passed. Star Force’s technology wasn’t close to catching up with the V’kit’no’sat’s yet, but the more they advanced the more relevant these records became, and he needed to understand their ultimate nemesis long before they encountered them face to face.

The Hjar’at were the most militant of the V’kit’no’sat races…and that was saying something. All were highly skilled and aggressive, but the Hjar’at more so than the rest with a biology to match. Their Saroto’kanse’vam were not natural to their bodies, rather a genetic upgrade that gave them the powerful plate/spikes that ran from their necks down their back and all the way to their tail tip. They’d been given permission for the upgrade by the other races because of their affinity for hand to hand combat, and the transformation had suited them perfectly.

They were deadly on the ground, combining their body armor with the Saroto’kanse’vam into a living, breathing mech that was far more agile than anything Star Force had constructed. Most of the time they ran around dominating their foes with discharge attacks or used the weaponry built into their armor, allowing them to act as a mobile turret while their Zen’zat handled the smaller threats. It wasn’t until they faced a truly dangerous foe did their full range of skills become evident, even above and beyond what Paul had seen in their training vids.

The battle records he was looking through now contained one such instance, dated some 439,826 years ago, that occurred in the densely populated core of the galaxy. The star systems there were so packed together that a region a few lightyears in diameter would hold more systems than Star Force’s Core Region did, which made navigation far more tricky, often requiring a lot of short jumps to get through an area. Only once you got further out into the galaxy did the spacelanes open up and you could make longer jumps.

The V’kit’no’sat had such good navigational capabilities that they would actually surf the gravitational eddies and travel on curved jumplines when they moved through the core, which required very precise charts and a level of technical skill that Star Force didn’t currently possess. This allowed them to have a much greater freedom of movement through the core than other races did, meaning where others hid away from the galaxy the V’kit’no’sat had an easier time finding…though there were so many systems and races in the core that it made the rest of the galaxy seem sparsely populated in comparison.

It was that densely packed population that the V’kit’no’sat dominated over, and Paul could see why they spent their time there and not expanding out towards the rim. There was so much density that there was no reason for them to look outside of it…save for they’re being the badasses that they were. That also explained why the V’kit’no’sat were only interested in colonizing worlds with a very specific set of qualities, which in Earth’s case included the water to land ratio along with other concerns. The water dwelling races held considerable sway over the V’kit’no’sat and when they colonized new worlds it was usually a shared endeavor, so landlocked worlds were out of the question.

The world that Paul was looking at now was the reverse of Earth, with more land than water, but still sizeable oceans that the V’kit’no’sat had wanted…trouble was it was inhabited, meaning they were going to have to conquer the indigenous races in order to claim it. Normally that wasn’t a problem and the V’kit’no’sat got what they wanted, but in this case they had to fight exceptionally hard to claim it.

There were many races on Daspoelna, such as on Earth, but only two that were advanced enough to cause the V’kit’no’sat any concern. They had no names in the records, for they were not a spacefaring race with relationships in the surrounding area…and the V’kit’no’sat had wiped them out before learning their language or even what they called themselves. Normally any race worthy of the V’kit’no’sat’s attention garnered an evaluation team that would investigate, learn, and catalog information about their subjects, which was why the pyramid database was so massive, containing files on 1.2 million different races…and those were only the ones that had drawn their interest.

The core was full of races that the V’kit’no’sat simply didn’t wish to conquer and they ignored them up until they had reason not to. Daspoelna had been one such world, but when the light assault team comprised of Rit’ko’sor and Zen’zat they’d sent to the planet subsequently got massacred on the ground, that drew a very serious response, for the V’kit’no’sat were not accustomed to losing…at all.

Paul found it odd that they hadn’t used their fleet, which sat in orbit and simply monitored the ground war. At first he thought that was out of pride and that the V’kit’no’sat wanted to beat the enemy on the ground rather than admit they were inferior and just blast away from orbit…but then later on in the battle record he saw that the natives had some incredibly powerful anti-orbital ‘guns’ that shot down some of the V’kit’no’sat transports as they tried to land too close to a particularly sensitive region of the planet.

That really perplexed Paul, but as he dug through the records…which were not indexed well…he discovered a surprising fact. Whereas the V’kit’no’sat were a technologically advanced race with genetic engineering, these two races on Daspoelna were biologically advanced races that accomplished everything they needed without what would traditionally be considered technology, right down to the beefy ‘lightning’ weapon that was throwing up what the V’kit’no’sat had tagged as Icara’moson energy.

It was a very high end weapon, and one that the V’kit’no’sat couldn’t fully defend against with their smaller craft, for it seemed to have a shield penetrating capability. A side note in the records indicated the necessary shield matrix to defend against it, which had been added as a post-battle entry after the remains of the natives were studied and cataloged.

It appeared that the two races on the planet had not colonized space by choice rather than lack of means, and were more than capable of defending themselves against the V’kit’no’sat. Why they didn’t fire on the ships in orbit he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was their pride working against them as well, but whatever the case there was one continent on the planet that had to be approached by land, otherwise whatever came into it would get toasted by mountain-sized turrets that dotted the landscape, which forced the V’kit’no’sat to ground their troops on the far side and work their way around in a major ground campaign.

Which is what the Rit’ko’sor had done after losing transports on a direct approach, then when they encountered the natives they were beaten handily by the giants, which were the size of a 2-story building and bigger for the land race, with the swimmers being even more monstrous.

Paul ran through several more reports, trying to piece together some sort of summary that the records lacked. It seemed an enormous amount of data had been cataloged, but was then never organized afterward, like a stack of papers on a messy desk. Everything was there, but if you hadn’t been the one doing the writing then you were going to have to piece together everything on your own…which was typical V’kit’no’sat thinking. If you needed the data then you’d understand it already…and if you didn’t, then you’d have to suffer through the learning curve as penance.

Which Star Force and the trailblazers in particular had already been going through. The way the database was ‘organized’ was less odd now than it had been in the beginning, but there was still a lot of searching that had to be done, without any ‘google’ function to use. But being self-sufficient had its advantages, one being an abundant amount of time to do some digging, which eventually led Paul to realize that of all the various races on Daspoelna, none were wild. They were all biological constructs or hybridizations created by the natives to serve a particular function.

That hadn’t occurred to the V’kit’no’sat until the later days of the brief war, when the forests and oceans suddenly seemed to come to the aid of the two races with the lesser ones going kamikaze and throwing themselves at the V’kit’no’sat, sometimes just latching on to slow them down while the combat-capable ones made the kill.

The entire planet of beings belonged to the nameless races, which resulted in a second major defeat for the V’kit’no’sat, and one of the few in the Hjar’at’s personal history.

That didn’t stand, as more reinforcements were called in and a huge offensive began, both on the land and in the water, with the water war seeming to be the more savage, improbable as that was. The natives didn’t wear armor like the V’kit’no’sat did, but instead they grew it on their bodies, both the water race and the land race, with the later having very thick, rock-like plates that reminded Paul of dragon scales a bit, though they were much larger.

But despite their bulk the giants were faster than the Hjar’at…which was what prompted the V’kit’no’sat race to show their full power in order to try and counter them.

Paul didn’t believe what he was seeing at first, then began to reconcile a few facts as he went along. The Hjar’at were jumpers, and impossible ones at that, which he guessed, no, he knew had to be due to the antigrav properties within their armor. The Zen’zat armor that had been left in the pyramid had the same design for drifting and dropping applications rather than flight, but Paul had been able to use it to jump really far when he and the others had messed around with it initially. Their Archon armor was still wholly inferior to it, but they were steadily closing the gap with every revision that they made.

That said, the Hjar’at had to be doing a lot of the jumping off of muscle in order for the armor to amplify it such. He had seen training videos of the Hjar’at outside their armor, moving, running, and jumping, but nothing to this extent. Now he wasn’t sure if they’d just been taking it easy in the training vids or they really needed their armor to escalate their battle abilities…and he was starting to think it was the former, for all of the other Hjar’at battle records he’d studied had them in armor as well, and none of them showed the huge dinosaurs to be moving with this much agility.

There were different sizes of Hjar’at, just like there were different sizes of Human, but those deployed into battle were not young ones, meaning they all had sufficient size…equal to a small house…yet they moved with reflexes that more befitted a cat. And still the giants were faster than them, and capable of throwing off energy attacks of their own from some of their armor plating, or what looked like it, with Paul identifying the places on their arms, chest, and head where they could release their various bioweapons from.

The fighting got intense even before the ‘wildlife’ came to the giants’ aid, with the giants having a slight advantage…and Paul was keenly interested in the fact that the giants were bipedal and not quadrupeds like the Hjar’at. As he studied their interactions he had the feeling, or more accurately was hoping for the feeling, that bipedal combat was somewhat frustrating to them, for that was what Star Force mechs were patterned on, and if they were ever to go hand to hand with the Hjar’at in the future it would be in a bipedal mech, for there was little chance of doing it in their Archon armor…though he knew Morgan would argue that point.

Though it was hard to believe, the Hjar’at could run faster than they could, and their maneuvering capabilities in close range were astounding. Paul thought he could dance around one with effort, but with their ability to simply shoot him with their armor’s cannons or their Saroto’kanse’vam he didn’t think they’d last long unless they gained access to the higher level psionics…and even then it’d be dicey.

The trailblazer was still in awe at how easily they moved. It seemed one of their favorite attacks against the giants was a blindsided run-up, with their target’s attention elsewhere so it couldn’t evade, whereupon the Hjar’at would sprint forward and transition into a bit of a hopping gait, then plant its face into the ground just short of the giant and use it as a pivot point as it brought its Saroto’kanse’vam to life with a neon blue glow, then flipped over onto its back into a lightning fast roll. The first few back spines imbedded into the ground, with the larger ones in the center of its back cutting the giant and sticking into it as the Hjar’at’s tail came up and did the same.

With the Saroto’kanse’vam melting through the bioarmor and digging in deep, the Hjar’at would either knock it down from the impact or twist it down from its new grip points, then flip over and right itself with several very damaging thrashes that would leave the giant either dead or heavily wounded. Paul saw the Hjar’at try this multiple times, but with the giants’ speed they had to catch them off guard or they’d evade easily and catch the Hjar’at with its belly exposed. Paul saw several get pinned to the ground that way as a giant dodged to the side then moved back in as the Hjar’at flipped, landing an arm on its armored underside to pin it to the ground with its primary offensive capability dug into the dirt and unable to fire.

Several Hjar’at died from such a maneuver, but the rest didn’t seem to hesitate to try when they thought they had a chance at it, for it was a very quick kill if they executed it properly, and they could recover and get back up on their feet literally as fast as a cat or dog could, making Paul reassess Star Force’s limited hope of battling them with mechs. The V’kit’no’sat word for the technology was ‘Kelzat,’ which loosely translated meant ‘strong war,’ but oddly enough they never used the technology themselves, though many other races did…and now Paul knew why.

The Hjar’at, when in armor, were far superior to any mech and made the neo look like a plodding rock in comparison…underscoring just how far Star Force had to go to find a viable counter, aside from orbital bombardment, which Paul still favored when there weren’t bystanders or his own troops to get hit.

Paul spent several hours going over that one battle record, seeing that the V’kit’no’sat eventually overwhelmed the natives with a combination of greater numbers and the addition of three other races to the assault force…as well as a handful of Hjar’at ultras. Those literally were walking buildings, far larger and stronger than their smaller kin, enhanced to massive size by V’kit’no’sat growth enhancements so they could drop the hammer on the bigger races, and this situation definitely qualified.

Still, they didn’t dominate, and had to fight a very long and hard effort to beat their way into the central zone of the native civilization and end their land-based resistance while a group of V’kit’no’sat swimmer races did the same in the oceans. Both assault groups came out of the attack with heavy casualties, but above all else the V’kit’no’sat ego had to be satisfied and they finished off their opponents hand to hand without resorting to any sort of naval activity other than shipping in more troops and ensuring that none of the natives fled into space…though none actually tried, preferring to slug it out on the ground to the last man.

Which is exactly what happened. The V’kit’no’sat were not interested in taking prisoners and went about exterminating every living thing on the planet that moved, then burning the vegetation and everything else off the land and introducing a biological ‘destroyer’ to the oceans that likewise purged them over the course of several months as the microbe multiplied and erased everything from the waters.

After the planet had been thoroughly cleansed, the V’kit’no’sat terraformed it to their liking and moved in, claiming their prize after eradicating one of the strongest races in the galaxy…and who knew how many more of them were out there, spread across the galactic arms or buried deep in the core with too many systems to count.

Checking the time on his watch, Paul bookmarked that particular battle record for later review, then headed over to the training areas in the pyramid, needing to meet up with Ben-044 and Wes-049 at 4:30 for a challenge run.

3

April 4, 2534

Sevvna System (beyond the ADZ)

Outer Asteroid Belt

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” a Regular commando said softly, walking in on Bri-921 as she held a splits suspended with her feet on small padded blocks so she could get a few degrees past 180.

The Archon ranger looked up at him, holding her stretch. “It’s alright. You have news?”

The commando nodded. “Scout just came back. We’ve got a probable location.”

“Good,” Bri said deeply, her voice laced with a bit of lingering anger. “Tell them to get my ship ready. I’ve got a workout to finish, then I’ll be up to command.”

“As you wish, Archon,” he said with an abbreviated bow, then turned to walk back out the open doorway he’d entered through.

“Don’t say it like that,” Bri complained, prompting the man to turn back around. “You make me sound like Vader.”

“Who?”

“Never mind,” she said, rolling her eyes and waving him off with her left hand, careful not to throw off her precarious balance. Her hand came back down and rested on her leg as the commando left, with Bri’s eyes glancing at the clock on the wall. It read 4:21 and was counting up, meaning she had another 39 seconds to hold this stretch before switching to another.

Back in the day she’d been accused of being inflexible and never being able to change that, then when she’d gotten to Archon basic training Wilson had taught them how they could customize their bodies however they wanted with time and proper training. Since then she’d proven her former naysayers wrong and had become quite flexible, gradually extending her range of movement as she lightly pressed her current limits and caused her body to add additional material to her ligaments, lengthening them and other tissue. She’d had to build her flexibility whereas others had been born with it, though now she surpassed the people she’d gone to school with that had been deemed with ‘natural’ talent.

Unfortunately they weren’t around to gloat over, and not because Bri wasn’t on Earth. Everyone she’d known growing up, friends and family included, were all dead now, failing to reach self-sufficiency and dying from attrition damage. Bri couldn’t imagine doing that, after all, how could one just sit on their ass and let their body fall apart?

Then again, how could one think someone was permanently inflexible? Bri realized there had been a lot of ridiculous ideas on Earth back in the day that seemed to be common sense, and even though her friends and family hadn’t lived to see the changes to the planet she was glad that most of those stupid ideas had been burned away by Star Force, with the Archons being the prime example of what one could do with proper training…not in theory, but in practice.

It galled her even more to think that people once thought that sugar was bad for you. It and the ambrosia flowing through her veins was what gave her the energy to train at such a high level, and she’d remembered Wilson’s words on that too. ‘Sugar is rocket fuel. If you’re not a rocket you probably shouldn’t eat it.’

Simple wisdom like that was ahead of its time, and she was very grateful to have been selected for Archon training and being able to learn from men like Wilson and Davis. They’d shown the light on so many lies that they’d basically given Earth a sunbath, cleansing it of most societal stupidity after a long, hard fight…and now that fight continued in the ADZ and beyond, with Bri heading up one of Davis’s many swords that he was using to hack down the forest of stupidity that most of the galaxy sat within.

But in this case she and her team, designated Gamma 6, were dealing with more than stupidity. They were dealing with bad people doing bad things, and whom were trying to hide their actions from Star Force, knowing well how Davis’s clandestine teams and the trailblazers had dealt with their previous violations of ADZ rules.

The wall clock hit 5:00 and switched over to a 10 second interim before starting another 5 minute segment, allowing Bri time to lift up on her hands and out of her side splits, only to rotate her torso around and ease back down into a forward splits with her right leg forward. She adjusted her position a few times, getting a good feel for the support blocks, then lowered down until she felt sufficient tension, settling in for another good, long stretch.

She went through three more, finishing with a handstand set of pushups before hitting the showers and heading up to the command center. The base she was currently residing in wasn’t on a planet, but a planetoid-sized chunk of rock that most likely had been part of one. It was surrounded by a swarm of other asteroids that had stretched out into a 1/3rd orbital arc around the system’s star and far outside the only planet in the system, which was a blue gas giant in very low orbit, making it far too hot for Hycre tastes and virtually unusable to anyone else.

The asteroid field held plenty of resources, but it was virtually impossible to get to with differential gravity drives. There was literally nothing to brake against save for several large chunks like this one, but to do so meant you’d have to fly through the other, smaller asteroids, practically insuring that you’d kill yourself in the process.

One could make their way out on thrust engines, but given that the system was uninhabited there was little chance that someone would go to that much effort, giving Star Force a resource base to draw off of without anyone else’s knowledge that they were then using to expand the hidden base that was one of some 7 currently built in the Clan Neon Squirrel circuit. Liam’s Clan had three bases within the ADZ and four outside it reaching into what had once been Calavari territory and below it, putting this system far beyond Protovic space and out of the way of anyone’s attention.

What Bri was using it for was a way station, allowing her ships to refuel and otherwise resupply without having to return to the ADZ and an official Star Force colony. The scout ship the commando had mentioned was one of 18 tiny jumpships designed as a personnel transport. They couldn’t carry anything other than passengers and some small amount of cargo, but they were the fastest ships that Star Force had and Bri’s fleet was out scouting nearby systems trying to track down activity that some of the ADZ members were conducting out here in the ‘wilderness.’

And there was a lot of activity going on, not all of which was coming out of the ADZ. The region of space they were currently in was sort of a no man’s land in between the lizards, Nestafar, and Skarrons, with no controlling faction and a very lawless, panicky environment. Bri didn’t land on planets regularly, nor did her scouts, but what they were observing from orbit or deep surveillance points in the systems they scouted was disturbing. There was a lot of nastiness going on that she didn’t have the power to stop, and a good amount of it had ties to the ADZ.

The trick of it was, with so many star systems, literally in the hundreds of thousands around the perimeter of the ADZ within easy access, there was no way to monitor it all and the ADZ members knew it. They might behave themselves inside Star Force’s domain, but beyond it they reverted back to their bad habits, some of which Star Force wasn’t going to stand for.

Others chose the more clandestine route, using intermediaries to do what they wanted that couldn’t directly be attributed to them. As such, a lot of smugglers, mercenaries, and other forms of pirate were working for some of the ADZ races outside the ‘safe’ zone, with most of them based out of Scionate space.

Though not an outright defiant member of the ADZ, the Scionate clung to their independence and allowed their systems with no Star Force presence to act as bastions of unmonitored activity. Bri and the others still had transit rights through their systems, meaning they could drop in and take a look, but they didn’t have any Star Force infrastructure there, making those systems the inroad for the people that Gamma-6 and others needed to monitor.

That actually worked to their advantage, because the smugglers would use predictable routes, allowing scout ships with good pilots and a bit of luck to track them through interstellar jumps, though they rarely were able to follow them through more than one before losing track of them. You had to be right on their heels to remain in contact and get a good jump measurement to know where they were going, and then get yourself aligned and off at a precise speed, otherwise you’d fall behind or overshoot your target.

Bri’s pilots knew what they were doing and had been tracking a number of ships and plotting their preferred routes. The ones less frequented were harder to find, with this latest attempt apparently paying off as her ships had been visiting every star system within 10 light years of the last known jump point.

When Bri got into the command center and pulled up the recent reconnaissance data she concurred with the assessment. Distant scans showed considerable infrastructure on a planet that was supposed to be uninhabited, as far as the charts that Star Force had compiled from a number of sources said. The scout ship had also captured sensor data for one known ship interacting with the surface via a slew of dropships, either unloading or taking on cargo. It wasn’t broadcasting an IDF so they didn’t have conclusive evidence of what ship it was, buy they’d pulled enough of a sensor profile off it to identify it as a Lemickas-made transport.

It was a design that they didn’t use themselves, but manufactured exclusively for sale. The stubby little race of bipeds were rather industrious as well as unscrupulous, not caring who they sold their ships and other products to and not looking beyond their own borders to see what they are used for. That wasn’t a problem with Star Force, for the Lemickas were just doing business, but it wasn’t uncommon to see their transports used by private enterprises that were trying to avert Star Force’s notice.

One noteworthy feature of the design was that it doubled as a slow jumpship, meaning that those who couldn’t afford to purchase a convention one could buy their own interstellar transportation for relatively low price…if you didn’t mind the long haul between systems. Privateers and independent shippers swore by the craft, and a number of the ships that Bri’s fleet had been monitoring were of this design.

Bri contacted her warship, stationed on the dark side of the base so it wouldn’t be visible on sensors to any ships passing through the system who happened to look in their direction. They’d have to be looking very closely to notice anyway, but since the base was intended to remain a secret they weren’t taking any chances. She checked in on their status and informed the captain that they’d be leaving the next morning, then she headed off elsewhere in the base that housed some 50,000+ personnel, most of whom were not under her direct command.

They were a mix of Clan Neon Squirrel personnel and a few other Clans plus mainline troops, techs, and other useful individuals. There were no true civilians in the base, with everyone being here for a purpose. As it was, most of them were engaged in other circuit activities, scouting missions and construction, while Bri’s fleet had just made the base its temporary home, same as Beta-4 had done two months ago.

The planetoid chunk was still being expanded into, keeping the surface features ‘natural’ and all the infrastructure interior. Likewise the mining ships roaming the asteroid field were drilling into other large chunks and hollowing them out, both to keep their activities all but invisible, as well as to build structures inside. Right now only the main base was inhabited, with the few others that had been constructed to date being used primarily for storage.

One of those held a fuel reserve that had topped off Bri’s warship immediately upon arrival in the system, meaning that they wouldn’t have to worry about doing it now when they needed to leave in a hurry. There were still some other supplies that needed to be transferred over, but those would be finished within a few hours. It was Bri’s crew that was currently in the base that she had to get over to the ship.

Most were techs and pilots, which would be recalled via the comm system, leaving only a handful of Archons that Bri needed to track down, knowing that most of them would probably be in the sanctum and off comms. She managed to contact 3 of them remotely, then headed over to the base’s sanctum and interrupted them during the workouts, knowing that some would need a few hours to deal with side projects before they left.

Bri politely butted into several intense sessions, waiting on a few to finish and just telepathically telling the others while they were in action rather than stopping them to deliver the message. The last two she found in one of the small sparring rooms, sitting crosslegged on the pads facing each other and levitating a weight between them.

The ranger reached out telekinetically and grabbed the weight, suspending it herself and grabbing both of their attention…which apparently had been so focused on the task at hand that they hadn’t detected her approach.

“What?” Karen asked, glancing over at her in sync with Travis.

“Ready for some action?”

“Please,” her brother answered.

“We got a hit. I need you both back onboard, we leave in the morning.”

“What’s morning?” Karen asked.

“3 am.”

“Morning morning,” Travis clarified.

“Yep,” Bri said, floating their weight over to her and grabbing it in her hand. “You guys can lift this?”

“Battlemeld Nemsa. We can’t do it stacking.”

“Not even close,” Travis agreed regretfully.

Bri raised an eyebrow. “Not bad. Wish I knew how to do that,” she said, floating it back out between them and letting the two acolytes get hold of it again. “Carry on.”

About time, Travis told his sister after Bri had left.

What do you think they found?

I say base of operations.

My money’s on a meat farm.

Yuck…I hope there are at least some mercenaries. I want a challenge for a change. Smugglers are too easy.

We’re not there to have fun, Karen corrected him. That’s just bonus.

You want to finish here?

No, might as well switch sanctums before we get into the heavy stuff.

Right, Travis said, using their battlemeld link to pull the weight over to where he could reach it, though technically they were both moving it in sync, only he didn’t have to ask his sister to help him. She was in his head and him in hers, with movements like this occurring without conscious thought or request.

The level 67 acolyte carried the weight with him as they left the room, then deposited it in the nearby lifting chamber where he’d grabbed it from. After that they both headed over to their temporary quarters in the base, which were situated next door to one another, and packed a light duffle with their personal belongings. A few minutes later they met each other outside and headed over to the hangar bay, tagging a dropship pilot to haul them over to the GameRay.

The Mk. 26 warship was one of the newest in service, with an enhanced gravity drive that gave the ship quicker jumps and more range, letting them be the hare to the smugglers’ tortoise. It was as fast as a Hycre jumpship, which was still too slow for Karen, considering how much unused tech they had waiting in the pyramid to unlock. She didn’t see what was taking so long, but was glad they hadn’t been assigned one of the clunkers for this mission…and very glad that they weren’t stuck with training or ‘residential’ assignments.

These intercept missions might be easy with a lot of downtime in between, but they were live combat, which was what both of the twins wanted. They would have preferred a front line post fighting lizards, but that hadn’t been an option, though the trailblazers had saw fit to allow them to stick together. Splitting them up would have been downright stupid, and even though they didn’t get along with one another she was glad that they’d respected them enough to keep her and her brother together as a pair…sort of a super Archon, for most typical assignments were all individual, save for a few exceptions.

After getting off the dropship and letting it return to the base to wait for other passengers, Karen and Travis dumped their duffles off in their normal quarters and headed over to the ship’s sanctum, grabbing an open sparring chamber and proceeding to enter into a game of ‘twister’ wherein they helped each other stretch out in two person holds, both to increase flexibility and warm themselves up for the agility challenge they were about to get into before Bri had arrived.

Downtime or not, the twins were leveling up faster than any other acolytes and they intended to keep it that way, knowing that they’d have to get much higher in rank before they got to start choosing their own assignments, as well as stay ahead of the other Archons coming out of basic training, let alone catch up to those ahead of them. Paul and Jason had accused them of being lazy numerous times, and both Karen and Travis still felt the burn from that, with them deciding to work their asses off that much harder in order to prove them wrong, and to date they were catching up to and passing Archons older than them by the droves.

4

April 18, 2534

Xaxe System (beyond the ADZ)

Unnamed Planet

The GameRay came into a high orbit, braking heavily so it could avoid the normal parking lanes. As the sensors caught up to the transition Bri had 4 ships pop up on orbital scans…all cargo ships based on the designs and no threat to her warship, though what was on the other side of the planet was unclear. It could hold more ships in orbit, which was why she’d wanted a high observational position, allowing the jumpship to sit and watch to see what came around. While it was possible to hover on antigrav, doing so was simply too much of a fuel burner, which meant ships would sit in orbit and coast around a circular or elliptical path, eventually revealing themselves to a fixed position.

The GameRay was slowly falling into the planet rather than putting itself into an orbit, but being so far out it wasn’t a concern. The surface infrastructure that the scout ship had detected was currently out of the line of sight, and Bri was going to wait until it rotated around before sending anyone down…which would occur in 36 minutes, according to the mapping data that the scout ship had brought back to update their records with.

The infrastructure the scout ship had detected from range had been little more than material readings differentiating from grass and dirt in geometric patterns. That basic outline had told them where it was on the planet but not what it was. Now that they were much closer than the scout ship had been, that weak schematic began to fill in as the planet rotated beneath them and exposed the construction to a more revealing scan.

Bri watched as a far greater region was detailed, with small structures and what looked like walls outlining large tracks of land around the heavy infrastructure…at which point she immediately knew what they had here, based on her previous knowledge of Earth before the ‘golden age’ had begun. These were farms, and even though the sensors couldn’t pick out life forms from this distance, she was sure they weren’t growing plants down there, save for maybe foodstuffs for their ‘livestock.’

Whoever they were had a meat farm set up out here, risking attack from the lizards, Nestafar, pirates, or any of the other threats in the area in order to get outside the ADZ’s legal restrictions…then to smuggle the meat back inside, probably through the Scionate worlds, or maybe even selling to them directly.

Bri flipped her earpiece on with a telekinetic button press and cycled through the various options until she got the pair of IDs she wanted to contact.

“Meet me in the hangar, full gear, scout protocol, stun weapons. We’re going down for a closer look.”

Ready sis?

Always, Karen replied, standing in the rear of the dropship that was descending into the atmosphere over the western side of the surface complex in a none too subtle nose dive. Bri was standing in front of them as they looked out the rear hatch into the sky, seeing a few stars hanging onto view as the atmosphere thickened under the morning sun, into which she ran out, jumping the last step in the artificial gravity to get some separation speed.

She shot off out the back, but didn’t fall ‘down’ given that the dropship was technically below here. Karen and Travis followed her out, passing through the inertial dampening field and into freefall as the dropship seemed to be heavier than them and continued to fall faster. That was an illusion, for in fact it was simply holding its line while the three Archons were caught up in the atmospheric friction and pulled backwards, though they too were still falling at a high rate of speed.

The two specs of silver armor adjusted their fall rate and angle by altering their body positions, using their arms and legs like rudders and flew after the green spec that was Bri, coming up behind her in a wide-spaced triangle formation as the dropship began to pull up out of its dive and shoot farther north, leaving them behind.

The atmosphere on this world was thick, thicker than Earth’s anyway, and they’d come out at significant altitude, giving them a long way to fall. Their armor blocked the wind from their eyes, with them seeing through the faceplate and on the HUD where they were headed to, with the Twins following Bri’s course corrections as they descended over one of the many hexagonal fields below.

They had detected a single anti-air turret on the trip down, hence the off-center drop. They estimated the range of the weapon to be about 2 kilometers, maybe 4, given that it was a plasma design and the atmosphere was going to mess with the trajectory. The Archon armor could take a hit on its shields if it was just spit, meaning they were good to drop so long as they didn’t get too close.

The fields below stretched out for some 30 kilometers to the west, and once the trio descended down to 5 km Bri gave them a telepathic heads up, then angled her body and started to bring herself out of the fall, using her momentum and the friction of the air to start creating lateral speed towards the complex. As she did she monitored her altitude closely, adding a bit of antigrav from her jump pack later on to further stall the fall.

By the time the Archons reached 500 meters they were moving almost full lateral and hung onto it with a combination of aerodynamics and jump pack until they came down to within a handful of meters of the grassy fields and moving at well over 100 miles per hour. Bri adjusted her body line out of ‘bullet’ shape and feathered her arms and legs while pulsing the jump pack, forcing her up into the air again in a skid that slowed her down and regained some altitude…but hopefully low enough not to attract the attention of the turret which they were still outside the prime range of.

“Bri, how are we supposed to stop?” Travis said as they mimicked her maneuver, trailing some 20 meters back and losing speed, but still traveling quite fast.

“Run or roll rookies,” Bri said, finally dropping to the ground when her jump pack capacitor exhausted itself. She managed to come down feet first, with the trickle of recharge energy being fed into the antigrav to cushion the drop. Her first foot strike she managed to turn into a jump. The second hit and stuck, flipping her over but she managed to jump it into an aerial flip and land on her feet again at a sprint as the twins flew past her overhead.

Her long, awkward strides smoothed out as she slowed down to an easy 30 miles per hour and had to start working to maintain the speed rather than just peg legging it to keep up with the terrain. The ranger continued to slow down, settling in at 20 miles per hour and huffing it across the grasses as she followed the others, watching them come down in a similar manner some 300 meters ahead of her, except that they weren’t fast enough on their feet to match their landing speed…with both of them tripping into falls.

Bri saw them tumble violently, flipping heads over heels until the combination of armor and ground finally bled off their speed. She continued to run forward, letting her run continue to slow until she finally came up to them at a 10 mph jog.

“You guys alright?” she asked over the comm.

Karen looked up at Bri from her sitting position, seeing that the green armor didn’t have any dirt/mud marks on it, whereas hers and her brother’s were covered in abrasion grime. “You didn’t fall?”

“Almost, but I stuck the landing and ran it out.”

“Wish I’d been able to do that,” Travis complained as he stood up and felt around his back rack. “I lost something.”

Bri pointed ahead of him.

“Thanks,” he said, walking over and picking up the stun pistol that had dislodged when he’d hit. Apparently it had better aerodynamics than he did, for it had traveled further on impact.

Karen also retrieved of a couple pieces of gear that had got knocked off their attachments and stretched her neck, feeling a bit of a crimp from when she hit her head, but her armor had protected her from snapping it or anything else by not mechanically allowing any abnormal bends.

“You guys need a minute?” Bri asked.

“We running?” Travis asked.

“Yep.”

“How about a minute or two of jogging?”

“Deal,” the ranger agreed, taking the lead at a very slow pace with the twins dropping in behind her and moving a bit awkwardly for the first few steps. She gave them some time to get the wind back in their lungs then accelerated up to a decent pace that she thought they could handle over the slightly rolling terrain. There was nothing but grass around them, all of which was knee high and flowering with tiny seeds that broke off as they ran through. It wasn’t until more than a mile later that they came up on one of the captive herds.

Bri avoided the thickset quadrupeds that looked like they couldn’t run if their life depended on it. They had narrow heads and a huge chest that tapered back to narrower hips and no tail.

“Bernen,” she identified as they swung around the herd of 200 or so that was chewing on the grass in a small hollow that also had a tiny pond at the center.

“Never heard of them,” Karen commented as they ran past.

“They’re not very intelligent, but they are strong. They’re also burrowers.”

“Those things go underground?” Travis asked, looking to his left at the hippo-sized creatures.

“Hence the leg strength,” Bri added as they passed them by, with two more herds visible within a kilometer, the furthest one clustered up against one of the boundary fence/walls. “They’re a favorite foodstuff of several races.”

“Let me guess,” Karen said. “Kitty food?”

“There are Scionate here,” Bri confirmed.

Travis frowned inside his helmet. “How do you know that?”

“Ikrid. These bernen have seen them.”

“You pulled a mental download on the run?”

“Not hard when you go to what they fear the most. Spread out for the jump and let me go first. I’ll let you know what’s on the other side,” Bri said as they came up to an empty area of fence. It was a solid wall of synthetic construction with a flat top some three meters high with periodic spikes spaced out several hundred meters.

“Are those cameras?”

“Maybe,” Bri said, knowing that meant the owners were going to be able to keep track of them as they ran across the fields. “Can’t be helped,” she said, motioning for the three of them to split up.

Bri kept running on a straight line, ready to activate her jump pack but taking a moment to look at the wall with her Pefbar from range. As it turned out it was quite thick, actually wider than it was tall. Then in the last few steps she pushed her Pefbar ‘cone’ down through the ground and saw that the wall extended into the ground further than she could see, possibly built to keep the bernen from burrowing out rather than a concern about them going over top.

The ranger released the effort when she jumped, sailing up easily to the top and choosing to land on the wall for a single foot hop with a second floating jump bringing her across and down to the other side.

“Clear,” she told the others, seeing a herd nearby but not close enough to give them landing problems. The two acolytes came over a few seconds later, one to either side, then they sprinted to catch up to Bri as she continued to run on, diverting to her right about 15 degrees as she headed them towards the buildings that were barely visible in the distance over the next wall…still multiple kilometers away.

“Company,” Travis said, seeing a hover vehicle whipping across one of the walls ahead of them and dropping back down to about a meter above the grass as a huge fan blade on the back encased in a ring provided propulsion, signifying that the antigrav was probably basic and not able to do more than provide vertical lift.

“I see it,” Bri said, slowing down just a hair so the twins could regain some strength. “Time for meet and greet.”

“Orders?” Karen asked.

“I’ll disable it. You stun everything in sight.”

“It’s armed,” she pointed out.

“I know,” Bri said, launching into a sprint at the top of a small rise and surging out ahead of the twins as the vehicle redirected its line and came to a halt with its side facing her. On top of it she saw two small tripod-mounted guns swivel towards her as the armored bipeds behind them took aim.

The next thing she knew they were firing some form of bullets at her, not the traditional plasma that almost everyone seemed to use.

Bri caught a round on her leg, which deflected off her shields and caused her to trip. She landed face first on the ground but managed a somersault roll and came back up on her feet and resumed her run at a much slower pace. She took three steps then juked left, with a spray of bullets passing by her with only two hits to her torso. Those didn’t take her down but they did drop her shields under 50% and she was still well outside her Ikrid range.

Knowing that she sprinted hard, attempting a few Fornax blasts and missing badly, then got clipped again by a three round buzz saw on her left shoulder that flipped her around and took her to the ground again. This time she rolled out of it to the side, staying low to the ground for an extra turn before getting her knees under her and sprinting out again…now at an angle so the gunners would have a harder time shooting what had previously been a more or less stationary target from their point of view.

A few seconds later she saw the right-side gunner twitch when she threw a Fornax blast at him, meaning she was getting close…but then the vehicle accelerated slightly, allowing it to move and shoot and keep some distance between her and them as they quickly saw that she wasn’t going down like they’d expected.

A telepathic message from the twins told her that they were moving the opposite way, so Bri continued to sprint forward, feeling the strain in her muscles as she fought her armor to get up over 35 mph. She could go faster than that on the track for short periods of time, but the footing here was crap and the grass was slowing her down too…whereas the hover truck was gliding along easily, with her only gaining a handful of meters on it.

She caused the gunner to twitch again, throwing off his aim, and she started throwing out Fornax blasts at where she felt the driver was sitting inside a concealed cockpit. It didn’t seem to help, but the vehicle wasn’t getting away either, making her think it was just going to play with them and keep its guns out of her range while they chewed her up.

Bri adjusted her line, seeing the vehicle likewise adjust its, then she took another hit and her shields dropped to under 20%. She slowed her run as she came to a downhill section that would cause her to temporarily disappear from view in a small hollow. When she hit the bottom she went back into full sprint, climbing up the far side and coming out the top with greater speed, catching the vehicle off guard and allowing her to get some 20 meters closer before it adjusted.

She hit the gunner with another Fornax blast and saw his hands slip off the tripod as he pitched forward onto it. The ranger hit him again and again, taking him down and keeping him on the deck of the vehicle until the range increased and she lost her ability to keep him there. He got back up, clearly shaken, and reclaimed his weapon…only to have the vehicle lurch to the side violently, knocking both gunners off their feet as it turned towards Bri’s left.

She continued her sprint, now closing distance on it as she saw the twins much closer. Apparently they’d gotten to the driver, and as Bri got within range she reached out to the mind in the cockpit and linked in to it, unable to do little more than cause it some grief at this range, but a few more steps closer and she was able to freeze it in place, with the vehicle drifting lazily across the grass.

Bri held that mental link, ignoring the gunners and trusting the twins to get to them…which they did soon after, knocking down both with Fornax blasts before they jumped up onto the flatbed section of the vehicle and shot them unconscious with pink energy blasts at pointblank range. Karen disappeared from view for a moment, then Bri felt the driver’s mind drop out of her vision.

She released her attempts to reacquire the connection and scanned the rest of the vehicle as she approached, finding no other minds there and only barely picking up the three unconscious ones. When she got up to the vehicle and took a jump pack-assisted hop up on top, Karen had already pulled out the driver, also a biped, who wore a hodgepodge assortment of armor and trinkets similar to the other two but not identical.

Travis pulled the helmet off of one of the gunners, revealing a glowing purple/green face.

“Protovic,” he said, pulling a pistol and a bandoleer of ammunition off the man and tossing it to the side.

“This one’s Gnar, I think,” Karen said, lightly kicking the stubby driver, but knowing better than trying to remove its breather mask.

Bri knelt down and pulled the helmet and scarf off the other gunner, seeing that it was a race that wasn’t part of the ADZ.

“Drepwen,” she said, recognizing the race notorious for generating pirates.

“More where these came from, I assume?” Travis asked.

“Give me a moment and I’ll find out,” Bri said, pulling her green armored glove off her left hand and pressing her smooth, lightly colored fingers up against the burnt red of the Drepwen’s neck and hacking into its nervous system directly to increase her Ikrid efficiency as she searched its recent memories, made all the more difficult by the fact that it was unconscious.

That said, this wasn’t her first unconscious interrogation. It would take time, but she’d learn what they needed to know.

“Keep watch,” she told them, focusing all her attention on the task at hand.

5

Bri tapped her jump pack, getting a small boost to her leap and sailing up over a stack of compressed cargo pallets. She landed knee first on the other side on the back of a Scionate, knocking him to the ground as she pumped two rounds from her stun pistol into the thin shirt covering the quadruped’s back. The pink energy soaked through it with ease, saturating his body and causing it to go numb a moment before he blacked out.

Bri rolled off his body as it collapsed and ducked to the side as a pair of plasma orbs came her way…one red, one orange, and coming from two different shooters. They were both Critel wearing partial armor and firing at her with beefy rifles that were spitting out plasma rapidly…along with several other shooters spaced around the bay trying to keep her from getting to the transport that was about to take off with the bulk of the compound’s key personnel on it, or at least the leadership, for most of the ‘farmers’ were spread out elsewhere as Bri cut to the heart of their operation.

She’d gotten the location of the bay and the command wing from the interrogation of the captives that they’d dumped in the fields, then they’d taken the hover vehicle all the way up to the complex before splitting up, with Bri heading straight to the big wigs…who were now trying to flee after seeing the ranger tear through more than 20 heavily armed mercenaries with ease. These Critel and others were merely delaying tactics, meant to slow her down rather than stop her, and she knew she had to get to the transport within the next thirty seconds, for the bay roof was already opening up and the whine of inefficient antigravs was filling the air.

Bri sprinted forward a few steps, then ducked right before sprinting again, getting within her preferred range before releasing a Fornax sphere that caught both Critel and a couple of other shooters behind a barricade. All four dropped to the ground, momentarily incapacitated as she held the effort while running over them. She stunned both Critel with her pistol, but didn’t turn to get the others. When she released the effort they both got up, one of them clueless as to what had just happened and disoriented from it, with the other taking the opposite approach and seeming to forget it entirely, for he rose up and fired at Bri’s back, hitting her with one of five quick shots.

The plasma abated against her shields, draining them of more energy that her small power source tried to replenish as she ran. More incoming shots hit her, even as she moved about with random adjustments, throwing off additional plasma orbs and a few lances. The races and equipment here were all hodgepodge, coming from a variety of sources, but effective none the less and the Archon knew that these men had had some type of formal training, for they were maintaining cohesion well and forcing her to run the gauntlet in order to get to the transport…which fortunately her armor allowed her to do.

As her shields finally popped she tapped the charge button on her pistol and headed for the largest cluster of the mercenaries, having to make only a minor detour to her right. She hopped over another crate and landed in a dive roll, causing a salvo of shots to miss her high. When she rolled back up onto her feet she fired at the group of four bipeds nearest to her, sending out a conical blast that expanded to hit all of them plus several crates nearby. The intensity wasn’t enough to knock them out, but their return fire stopped momentarily, allowing her to run up on them and stun two with pointblank shots before launching herself up and over the crate wall behind them as the roof door finally locked itself open with a loud clank, fully exposing the sky.

“No you don’t,” Bri said, taking more hits and getting melty spots on her armor, some of which she could feel a little heat from as she sprinted underneath the transport as it began to rise up. There were no open hatches or doors for her to get in through, and trying to hang onto the landing gear was a bad idea, for she would be crunched the moment it retracted.

That left her one option.

Skidding to a halt she reached out with her mind, sensing those inside and guessing where the cockpit was before it was out of her range. Several plasma blasts hit her but she ignored them, focusing on sending blast after blast of Fornax energy into the large ship. Five seconds later she almost gave up the attempt, getting warning lights flashing in her HUD as her armor was taking serious damage, then the transport, now halfway up through the open doors, lurched to the side and hit the rim.

There was a loud groan as metal pressed against metal, but the small bump escalated into a full blown crash as the transport inexplicably accelerated into the contact, breaking through the roof like it was tearing a piece of paper and forcing the transport back down inside at an angle.

Bri sent out one last blast then ran out of the way as the right side of the ship hit the deck, forced down as the roof thickened, tipping the transport onto its side. She took the moment to shoot another of her attackers and diminish the plasma coming towards her as she ran behind the cover of some more crates, most of which were empty and compacted down into storage mode…dozens of which crunched loudly as the transport edge landed on them, sounding like a billion twigs snapping under a Dino foot.

Bri circled around and got closer to where she thought the bridge was and resumed throwing Fornax blasts inside, aware that her head was starting to protest the continuous effort. As she did she worked her way further around, trying to find a route inside while dodging the mercs still on the deck who had not given up their attempts to slow her, and probably now emboldened by all the surface damage her green armor was showing.

It was a sticky situation, but she wasn’t about to let the ringleaders get away if she could help it, and at the moment it was a draw. They couldn’t leave and she couldn’t get inside, with the Archon not knowing which direction the deadlock would break.

On the outskirts of the complex Travis and Karen hopped over several of the bernen that had been corralled and entered through the loading dock, wide enough for just one at a time, and came into a horrific scene. The line of ‘livestock’ were being separated into four chutes by a worker with a pain-inducing stick of some kind, where upon each bernen was separated from the others by two paddles…one in front and one in back that forced it to move slowly down the processing line.

At the end of that line there were shrieks of horror coming from the bernen as they were forced into a tight chamber smelling of the blood of the ones that had gone before. The high pitched squeals turned Karen’s stomach so much she almost hesitated, but thanks to the battlemeld link with her brother they kept each other steady and stunned the handler corralling them just as they’d done the ones outside, then both twins split up and launched themselves up and over the death chutes via jump pack.

They came down on the far side, seeing one of the corralled bernen trapped between the wall and a large mechanical hand that had more than a dozen arm-sized fingers wrapped around its thick chest. Those fingers were pinning it in place, then with a flash a blade jutted out and decapitated the creature, with a blood spill equivalent to a small tidal wave that fell into a grate while a second mechanical hand picked up the head and placed it on a conveyor that disappeared into the nearby wall.

The body followed, dropping into a chute that disappeared into the floor as the next panel came forward, with the bernen behind it freaking out after hearing and smelling what had just happened ahead of it. The mechanical hand came in and pinned it against the wall just as Karen got to the control nook, dropping in over the short wall and kicking the operator in the head.

She reached down and grabbed him by the throat and tossed the spindly Karsek off the elevated platform, pumping two stun rounds into it as it fell, then she jumped up to the top of the wall and leapt off it to the next station, coming down on the Critel there as Travis took care of the other two stations.

Karen wanted to snap the man’s neck, but orders for this mission were to take prisoners for interrogation, so she settled on a very hard kick to the ribs followed by a pair of stun shots. The acolyte pulled the man’s body off the platform and dumped him to the floor before hopping over to the nearest bernen in the kill slot, looking for a way to rip apart the machine and free it as Travis found what she needed.

Karen retreated over to the control platform and hit a specific button that her brother had discovered that retracted all of the paddles. The bernen were still in the chute but could see one another and, more importantly, could backtrack. It took a while to get them back out into the exterior corral, but Karen and Travis felt it necessary to get them away from the blades and the gore that had just been their living kin before moving further into the facility.

They locked the exterior doors so that the bernen couldn’t wander back in, not that any looked to be wanting to get near the building after they set them loose, and proceeded further inside, hunting down more personnel but finding only a handful. Some were fleeing ahead of them, but they managed to bag a few on the level below, cutting up the bernen corpses in a display that made Karen puke in her mouth…which caused Travis to do the same.

She held it in as they took care of them, then they left the gore behind and Travis covered for her as she removed her helmet and spat out the vile liquid. When she locked her helmet back in place they switched, allowing Travis to spit out what they fortunately had both held inside their mouths, otherwise the interior of their helmets would have been a mess. Once he’d resecured his helmet Karen followed him into the next section of the complex, still feeling an unsettled stomach.

Grotesque as it was, they were both Archons and knew how to steady their nerves from many high pressure situations before. Right now she forced the thoughts of the carnage aside and focused on eliminating targets…something that had been ingrained into every Archon since the beginning of basic training.

The twins proceeded to clear out the processing and packaging subset of the complex, finding only light resistance. Eventually they made their way to the residential areas that held a variety of chambers, some that looked like for sleeping and others for business. Karen and Travis were scouting out one of the ‘office’ complexes when Bri finally caught up to them, with Karen giving her the ‘wait’ finger as she entered.

A split second later Travis, some 10 meters ahead and around a corner, fired off a stun blast…followed by a struggle that had Karen running after it and disappearing around the corner. Bri followed her several paces behind, but got a sneak peak ahead with her Pefbar, looking through the walls and seeing Travis kicking the crap out of three people. When Karen got to him that number increased greatly, with more coming out from somewhere beyond her vision.

“Stand down!” she heard Travis yell in the trade language, then as she got around the corner and up to them the ranger saw dozens of people clustered together in the room, now kneeling on the ground with their hands in the air…save for those that were lying unconscious at the twins’ feet.

Bri reached out to the conscious ones with her Ikrid, quickly discovering that these weren’t combat trained. “Service personnel.”

“Service?” Travis asked.

“Cooks, whores, and whatnot,” she said, turning over one of the unconscious ones with her armored boot.

“Ouch,” Karen said, looking at Bri’s armor. “You get your ass kicked?”

“Necessary damage,” she said, looking at the fearful looks she was getting from the mostly female group three meters in front of her. “How many did you take down?”

“At least thirty,” Travis answered. “You?”

“126. Do you feel like babysitting these?”

“Not really,” Karen said, feeling Travis’s dread simultaneously.

“Then stun them.”

Karen shrugged. “Works for me.”

In sync the two twins raised their pistols and unloaded on the group, which was terrified, thinking they were about to be killed, but after a few seconds all of them dropped to the ground unconscious, though one Bivor hit its head on a countertop on the way down, proceeding to bleed heavily onto the floor.

“Damn it,” Travis said, seeing the wound.

“I’ll take care of it,” Bri said, glancing at Karen. “Call down a pair of dropships. We need commandos, techs, and medic. Enough to set up a makeshift prison. Techs will administer the farm until we decide what to do with it.”

“Copy that,” Karen said, using her HUD to link into the small ergonomically shaped cylinder located across her lower back. Using the comm booster she got a link to the GameRay and began organizing their support team.

Bri hadn’t carried one, preferring instead to carry extra weapons. One of her pistols had already run out of charge, but she’d brought four, plus some extra power packs, though she hadn’t changed any out yet.

The ranger pulled off her left glove and knelt down next to the Bivor, tipping him over onto his back and moving his tiny arms aside. She reached up and swiped away the blue blood, seeing how big the gash was, then she let it swell back up again and continue to run in a rivulet across his wide face and onto the floor as she looked down at her hand, with smoke rising up as the blood on her fingertips began to boil off.

Using her Rensiek, she gathered a great amount of heat on the surface of her fingers and contained it there, mostly, then carefully reached down and pushed them against the wound. When she lifted them back off the unconscious alien the blood flow had reduced to a trickle, with the skin over the wound having been cauterized.

“Ouch,” Travis commented. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Toasting marshmallows,” she said deadpan, switching over to one of the guards and pressing her now cool fingers against the Critel’s head. This one was a merc, apparently having been caught off guard getting a meal and deciding to take refuge here while the others fought…up until Travis had got to them and he’d decided to try to fight it out hand to hand with a fully armored opponent. Not the brightest move, but at least she appreciated the effort, for she would have done the same.

“Reinforcements dispatched,” Karen reported. “You looking for something specific?”

“Yes.”

“Mind sharing?”

“Kayate.”

Travis raised a mental eyebrow, with Karen returning the sentiment.

A moment later Bri released contact and stood up. “You guys talk too much…and splitting up the questions between the two of you doesn’t help. Hacking into the minds of races you’re unfamiliar with is hard enough for me without your distractions. So when the fingers come out,” she said, holding up her slender digits for emphasis, “your mouth closes.”

“As you wish,” Travis agreed.

Bri pointed her armored finger at him. “And don’t flirt with me,” she said, pulling her other glove back on. “This one was recruited in Scionate space. Same with two others I checked earlier. That’s where they’re shipping the meat.”

“To the Scionate or just through their territory?” Karen asked.

“Good question. Hopefully one of the others will know. I didn’t have time to check them all.”

“Flirting how?” Travis asked naively.

“Movie. Princess Bride. Watch it when you get back. Right now, we’ve got bodies to drag…or rather you guys do. I’ll take a couple, then I’m going to start mind scanning while you bring the others.”

“Where to?” Karen asked, not really interested in watching a chick flick now or ever.

“Cargo bay is a mess, so we’ll use one of the rooms on the other side. Not sure what it’s for, but it should be big enough.”

“What’s wrong with the cargo bay?” Travis asked.

“I broke their ship. You can check it out when you’re pulling the crew off, there’s at least 20 still in there,” Bri said, lifting the largest unconscious alien in the room up and over her shoulders. “Bring them all to me and I’ll put them in a deep sleep so we don’t have to keep wasting ammo. When the dropship arrives tell it to set down as close as it can.”

Karen nodded and let Bri walk out with her cargo before she knelt down and picked up one of her own, with Travis doing likewise.

Princess Bride?

Not watching it, Karen said, following Bri out underneath a very smelly alien.

6

May 12, 2534

Solar System

Earth

“You son of a bitch,” Alden-031 said in dismay. “Do that again.”

Paul smiled. “Happy to.”

Alden pulled an apple up out of the bag the trailblazers had brought with them then telekinetically sent it flying through the air towards Paul, who was standing in the middle of Balboa Lane, which the 6 trailblazers had commandeered for this little endeavor.

The apple sailed on a straight line towards Paul, who stepped a few inches to the side as he brought his right arm up and held his hand flat like a blade. As the apple got to him he chopped down on it, missing by half a meter.

None the less, the apple split in two, with Alden sailing both pieces on past him, whereupon he circled them around and back into his hands, staring at the cut Paul had just made as the trailblazer kicked the other pieces further away from where he stood.

Jack-020 walked over and looked at the apple slices with Alden. “Just like a knife.”

“That is scary,” Alden agreed, looking at the larger piece. Paul had sliced it in half, but he’d missed dead center by a hair.

Wes-049 yanked the smaller half out of Alden’s hand and flew it over to his own, studied it for a moment, then took a bite. “Alright…moving target,” he said as he chewed.

“Allow me,” Ben-044 offered, pulling out another apple from the bag with an invisible hold, but instead of shooting it straight at Paul he sent it in on a curve, then looped it around his fellow trailblazer out of reach before sending it in towards his back.

Paul spun around and missed again…but this time the apple didn’t cut in two, it juked up as Ben moved it just in time to miss Paul’s extended ‘hand.’

“Gotta be quicker than that,” Dina-077 teased. The six trailblazers on Earth were all in the pyramid for advanced training, and they’d taken an hour out of their time to see Paul’s new trick that he had been boasting about.

“Unless you want me grabbing it, get it back down here,” Paul warned as Ben floated it over his head.

“I thought you could hit it at range? Wes asked.

“Not when it’s moving,” Paul clarified.

Dina smiled as Paul’s back was turned to the group, his eyes chasing the apple above him. She telekinetically picked up another apple and shot it towards him, giving him two targets to hit as Ben simultaneously brought the high apple down towards his head.

Paul saw the second one coming on his Pefbar and extended his other hand into a flat pose, then whipped both arms around in slashing motions. It took 5 attempts over the timespan of 2.3 seconds, but he managed to hit both apples, though the upper one only got a small nub cut off. He telekinetically grabbed all four pieces and tossed them back to the group, a proud smirk on his face.

Jack shook his head. “I still can’t believe you’re doing that with shields.”

“Believe me, it’s harder than it looks. I have to concentrate an awful lot of power into a very small space, but I can get an impossibly sharp edge if I do it right.”

“How sharp?” Dina asked.

“I haven’t been able to cut metal yet, but only because I’m not strong enough.”

“Damn,” Wes said in a whisper. “We can’t even see the blades.”

“I can fix that,” Paul said, mentally making an adjustment with his invisible knife blades extending out beyond both hands’ fingertips suddenly becoming translucent with a blue tint, looking for all the world like short swords floating an inch beyond his fingers.

“Better,” Ben commented, pulling out another apple.

“Not if the Zen’zat keep them invisible,” Wes argued.

“He has a point,” Dina agreed, feeling her braided ponytail.

Paul raised an eyebrow. “Need a haircut?”

She eyed him firmly. “Don’t…you…dare.”

“Ok,” Jack said, picking up a few of the already cut pieces and floating them in front of him like a rack of ammunition. “Splatter time. Everybody get one.”

“Hey…” Paul complained as they all pulled apples out of the bag, with Alden taking two.

“Here’s how we’re doing this,” Jack explained. “You stay put, we throw at you in straight lines. No switchbacks except to recycle ammo,” he said, mentally telling the others to spread out. “And no blocking shields.”

“You’re going to get me so sticky,” Paul complained, setting himself with his arms going low and wide.

“I think that’s the point,” Dina said, shooting her apple at him far faster than the previous ones had flown.

Paul twisted his torso to the right and brought his left arm up, bisecting the apple but getting hit in the cheek by half of it, leaving a wet streak there. He didn’t have time to swipe it away as more apples and apple pieces came in at him. The full ones he managed to hit, but every time he made a cut they got smaller and kept recycling back around, with all five trailblazers eventually telekinetically juggling 5 or more pieces each.

Those Paul couldn’t cut well, because his siblings were peppering him with them far faster than he could handle and enjoying every moment of it. He knew he could have thrown up a defensive shield to cover his skin, but that would be cheating and they knew it, meaning he had to flail about trying to hit pieces or admit defeat.

Neither happened, with everyone eventually laughing as Paul kept getting clobbered by the little bits, many of which ended up on his clothes and in his hair.

“Guess this is what I get for bragging,” he commented, releasing his shield blades and having them dissipate into nonexistence…then he concentrated for a moment and formed a shield along the skin of his head and hands. With a slight effort he pushed it out, straightening his hair as all the little pieces and liquid blew off, though his uniform was still covered.

“Quite the mess,” another voice said from the doorway. Paul had seen him come in a few moments ago, but the others had apparently missed it, having their backs to him.

Jack and the others turned around, shocked to see Davis standing there. “When the hell did you get here?”

“A few hours ago. I didn’t want to disrupt your workouts,” he said, walking up to the group as Paul likewise came forward to join them…stepping on apple bits half the way up.

“If you needed something why didn’t you call?” Dina asked.

“Same reason,” he said, standing eye to eye with the others and looking nearly identical to them, save for a less sculpted body and a different uniform, his being a plain black while the trailblazers all had on their white with black stripe striker versions.

“What’s up?” Paul asked as he stepped up beside Wes.

“Trouble that we have to deal with immediately. Gamma 6 found a meat farm outside the ADZ that has been making shipments into Scionate territory and distributing it from there. It’s a purely independent operation, comprised of a number of mercenaries and freelance shippers, but under Ikrid interrogation Bri discovered that they were commissioned by the Scionate in order to create plausible deniability.”

“Meat shipping in the ADZ is still illegal,” Ben pointed out. “We can nail them on that, regardless of whether it’s their territory or not.”

“We don’t need proof,” Davis said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “We know they’re responsible, and they know it. I’m not playing any games with them, but if they want to shrug it off and dare us to make an issue of it, I need options.”

“Have you informed them?” Dina asked.

“No. We’ve confiscated the facility, taken the workers prisoner, and are in the process of sending ships to evacuate the herds. The Scionate don’t know anything yet, nor does anyone else.”

“What kind of a response are you wanting?” Paul asked.

Davis sighed. “I’m guessing that the Scionate will double down, expecting us to not be willing to start a war over this, which we can’t, I assume?”

“Well, we could…” Jack said halfheartedly.

“Their fleet is larger than ours and mostly deployed in defense of their own words,” Paul differed. “Our tech is better, so I wouldn’t count us out, but we’d have to pull our fleets in from other deployments and leave the frontier vulnerable. That’s something we cannot do, and if the Scionate know that then they probably think they’ve got us pinned to a rule we can’t enforce.”

“Which is why I need other options,” Davis concurred. “I can throw a host of economic trouble their way, but if they’re willing to violate the agreement we had, I wouldn’t consider them to care much what we do to them. They’ve got their worlds now, behind our defenses, and they, like many others are probably considering, might be thinking that they can just do as they please without regard to the colonization agreement that they entered into in exchange for those worlds.”

“We have to drop the hammer,” Dina said without hesitation.

“Short of using the fleet,” Wes added.

“To what end?” Ben asked. “Are we bluffing or ready to take them out if we have to?”

“That,” Davis said, holding up a hand, “is what we need to impart to them. Killing for food isn’t something that we don’t like seeing, it’s something that we won’t tolerate in the ADZ even if we have to fight every single one of the races here to stop it. I’d prefer not having to fight a war to prove it, but I fear talk at this point isn’t going to be effective unless they know it’s backed up with power. I don’t want to involve the Hycre or Protovic in this, this is our edict that they’ve broken and it’s our place to enforce it. Tell me how we can do that.”

“Go in and trash their meat distribution network,” Dina suggested. “Did Gamma 6 backtrack it?”

“They uncovered some leads that Beta 3, 4, and 8 are following up, but I won’t know for more than a month.”

“I agree,” Jack said, crossing his arms over his chest as he thought out loud. “Target their illicit activities and tear the crap out of them…and do it under the radar. That way they’ll know we know and that we’re pissed, as well as shutting them down.”

“And if they have more than one of these shell suppliers?” Wes floated.

“We have to track down them all,” Paul said firmly.

“That means trashing their stuff and sticking around long enough to ask questions,” Alden continued the train of thought.

“What if they’re smuggling more than meat?” Dina asked. “What if we find farms inside Scionate territory?”

“We’d have to confiscate and evacuate the herds,” Paul said offhand.

“Easier said than done…plus that leaves us just cleaning up their messes. If they do it again we confiscate again and the cycle continues. This isn’t contraband we’re talking about, it’s lives. We have to take care of this now, and permanently.”

“Permanently is unlikely to happen,” Paul disagreed, “but if we are going to have chance of it we have to hit them hard, and in a way that is going to make them remember…plus anyone else who learns of it.”

“Without the fleet not sure how we do that,” Wes said, hoping the others would have suggestions.

“We need a beat down,” Alden said, his eyes closed to near slits.

“That’s what the fleet is for,” Wes reminded him.

“No, we need to make it personal. Find the meat network and smash it, but also find the Scionate leaders and beat the crap out of them, in person, fist to claw. I think that will send the message we need.”

Davis considered that. “How difficult would that be?”

“Very,” Ben emphasized. “We’d have to get past their defense fleet to get to the surface, avoid any anti-air defenses they might have set up, go by foot through the city, find the bastards, say hi, then get back out again.”

“So what’s the hard part?” Paul asked.

“Sounds like you’re volunteering,” Dina said, glancing at him.

“If you guys can handle the network trashing, I’ll play meet and greet with their leaders…along with an assistant or two.”

“Don’t look at me,” Jack said, putting his hands up in front of him as if to ward off the selection finger. “Fighting a few dozen kitties is fine, but bringing an entire planet full down on your head…a bit out of my league, and yours, by the way.”

“We’ll make it work, and I wasn’t referring to any of you here. I do think extraction will be the hardest part, for both missions, especially if they have smuggled herds to their worlds. We’d almost definitely have to use the fleet to get them out.”

“Unless you made their leaders say uncle,” Dina pointed out.

“Perhaps you should hit their meat network first,” Davis suggested. “That way you know what to talk about when you say hi later.”

Ben thumbed towards Davis as he looked at the others. “Someone been giving him sarcasm lessons?”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Davis said genuinely. “And whatever you arrange, I need to know the timetable so I can coordinate diplomatic elements from my end. I’m going to make sure everyone else knows what’s happening, even if the Scionate try and cover it up.”

“And if they get pissed and feel like attacking us?” Wes asked.

“Then they’re going to incur the wrath of the ADZ…as well as our new allies.”

Paul locked eyes with Davis. “That’s our ace in the hole?”

“Even if it wasn’t we’re not going to tolerate a meat market, even if we have to wage all-out war with our former allies. Make sure they understand we’ll escalate as far as necessary to stop this.”

“I’ll deliver the message,” Paul promised.

“I trust you all will handle the rest and keep me informed,” Davis said, looking at each in turn then focusing on the bag behind their feet and telekinetically bringing up his own apple from the few intact ones that remained. He grabbed it out of the air and held it up in his hand for emphasis. “But before you get at it, explain to me what you were doing with this…and how.”

Three weeks later…

Morgan’s warship jumped into a system just inside the ADZ border that held 6 planets, all uninhabited and uninviting. With scans of the system being clear, as far as their limited sensors could determine, she ordered her ship out to the 4th planet, then over to its 18th moon. The tiny pebble of a planetoid was only 300 miles wide and covered in water and moss beneath an unusually thick atmosphere for such a small gravity well…yet it was still too thin to breathe, meaning that Randy’s base hidden there had to be completely self-contained.

It was one on another of the clandestine networks, this one running throughout Beta Region, and Morgan’s drop off point for the Aronsic passengers she’d been collecting from behind enemy lines. Sam and Mark were doing likewise, with their expeditions using one of the three drop off points that Morgan had available to her. Neither of their ships were here, for such drops occurred only rarely. It wouldn’t do to advertise the location of the base, plus it was hard finding enough of the Hobbits willing to switch sides to fill a jumpship.

That said, it was getting easier now that they knew where to look, and Morgan quite liked plucking new allies out from under the enemy’s nose. The Hobbits she would be dropping off here would eventually make their way back through the circuit via cargo ships until they reached a Nexus world where they’d be making their new home under Star Force training and control, with the Skarrons not knowing what had happened to them.

When Morgan’s ship established contact with the base they exchanged message packets, passing along whatever updates either party had come across last, and in this case Morgan had a message from Paul waiting for her. After overseeing that the transfer of her guests got underway without incident, she retreated to her quarters and began going through her mail and status updates, pulling up Paul’s message first.

After reading it she contacted the Captain and gave him new orders. They wouldn’t be returning to enemy space, nor any of their Beta Region colonies. She was needed for a much more important mission and the warship was going with her, it being the fastest means possible for her to return back to the Core Region and rendezvous with the others. It seemed there was a bit of a trailblazer reunion going on, and given the party itinerary she didn’t want to be late.

7

July 17, 2534

Corvio System (Scionate/Star Force territory)

Admat

Morgan was sitting quietly on the couch in her quarters, legs folded up into a crosslegged pose doing some light psionic drills meant to increase her Ikrid sensitivity as well as probe for new abilities when she felt Paul arrive outside. Without a word she telekinetically pressed the open button on her door and let him in, slowly opening her eyes and ending the drill.

Her fellow trailblazer walked in, his eyes a bit more intense than usual, and stopped a couple of meters in front of her. “Just got word.”

“And?”

“They busted up the hub and exposed a huge network. They’re going after the other pieces, but there are no interior farms, so we’re good to go.”

“I’ll meet you two in the hangar,” Morgan said with a nod as she stretched out her legs. Paul nodded and walked out, closing the door behind him as Morgan walked over to the spot on the floor where she’d left her clothes and pulled them back on, then made a quick stop in the restroom before opening her closet. She brought out her striker armor and stepped into it, fastening the various clasps starting at her slender legs and working up to her neck before finally sliding the helmet in place and hearing it click into its atmospheric seal.

She breathed normally through the mask/grate, open to the outside air as it was, and left her quarters enroute to the hangar with a quick stop off at the local armory. The Star Force colony wasn’t her normal home, but as per protocol all of them had Archon supplies on hand should they be needed, which in this case was a jump pack that she attached to her armor. The harness-like device was neutral gray, clashing with her black motif but that didn’t matter. On top of the jump pack she attached an equipment rack that snugged up to the new outline perfectly, and on top of that she added various weapons, all of which were stun.

Morgan also swapped out her armor’s power core with a fresh fuel rod, one of three that the striker armor ran on, opposed to the normal two that the other variants used. It was rechargeable, both in the field and in the colony, but she needed to go in with full power and not have to worry about how much juice she had, for the gloves she’d brought with her were stun equipped as well, and would draw off the armor’s power source rather than an energy clip like her weapons did.

Once fully geared up she left the armory enroute to the colony’s hangar bays, heading for a small, private one reserved for their exclusive use. When she got there she passed through a pair of Knights guarding the entrance so that no one could get inside and sneak a peek at their ride.

It had been Paul’s idea, and she’d agreed, breaking standard protocol but given the situation it was a good call. The star system they currently were in held 1 Star Force planet and 6 Scionate ones, including their new capitol. Some people had been surprised that they’d located it in a system that had an outside presence, but all of the other Scionate systems held 2 inhabited planets at best, with those here being amongst the most preferable…which was also why Star Force had claimed one for themselves in order to put down roots for the ADZ transit grid, making this not only a major system for the Scionate but a link for them to the rest of the ADZ through Star Force if they chose to use it.

And they did, somewhat, but there was far more traffic here coming from other races, making Corvio an economic hotspot, but oddly enough not the meat market entry point. Apparently the Scionate hadn’t been stupid enough to put it right under Star Force’s nose, but she was sure some of it was getting here through other means, undoubtedly being smuggled on other vessels not originating from outside the ADZ.

Getting over to the Scionate capitol wasn’t going to be hard…getting down to the surface undetected was, and while Star Force had a measure of stealth technology, getting through a cluttered orbit and into the ruling city would have been damn hard to do unnoticed, and Morgan knew the key to this mission was surprise. Paul had given them a 50/50 chance of pulling it off before suggesting an alternative…which sat off to the side in the hangar bay, outside of which Paul was waiting fully armored.

Morgan walked over to him and the V’kit’no’sat gunship just as the third person in their little raiding party came into the hangar behind her, running to catch up.

“Sorry I’m late,” Kara offered, wearing nothing but her standard uniform whose cuff draped down over her wrist, partially covering her clear Vorch’nas.

“You’re not,” Paul said as he turned and walked into the side access door.

“Still going with the faceplate?” Morgan asked, following him in as Kara brought up the rear.

“It’s what I’m used to.”

“Not going to get used to the new one unless you use it,” she pointed out.

“I’ll wait for the new armor before I make the change,” he said, hanging a left and walking down between the two rows of seats and over to the lower cockpit.

Kara closed the door with a thought and followed the other two up to the cockpit, but rather than sitting down in one of the three seats she climbed the small ladder up to the command post. It was a single seat with a ring of holographic controls, all of which were instantaneously familiar to her. She pulled up several specific diagrams, one detailing sensor beam intensity/reflection, knowing that even with the sensor stealthing that all V’kit’no’sat craft seemed to have they were going to have to be sneaky…which was her responsibility while Paul flew the ship.

“Ready up here.”

“Did you bring them?” Morgan asked, suddenly remembering one important item that she didn’t have with her.

Paul stood up and reached into the pack on his back, pulling out a small sack with a flip-lid mouth. “Didn’t think you’d want one until we got there.”

“I don’t, I just wanted to make sure you brought them. What’s the dosage?”

“Each bean is 200.”

“Ouch,” Kara said from above. “That’s one hell of a headache.”

“You’d be surprised how much the shields eat up,” Paul said, activating the gunship’s antigrav…which like all other advanced versions was silent. “Anything we need to do prior to leaving the bay?”

“Just come out slow so I can get a reading.”

“Slow sounds bad,” Morgan commented, sitting in the seat to Paul’s left and looking at her own holographic displays along with a handful of physical buttons.

“I just need to see how this responds to the local sensors. I don’t need altitude, just stick our nose out.”

“Will do,” Paul said, activating his helmet comm and linking in to the colony bay control. “Open the door, we’re ready to leave.”

“Doors opening,” the controller replied.

Paul waited while the ceiling door irised open, revealing blue sky and open air. He flew the ship over to the center of the hole and raised it up evenly, stopping once it cleared the roof by a meter or two.

“I’m good,” Kara said, shunting a course plot over to him that she would update enroute. “Let’s go.”

Paul zipped the ship up about 100 meters then pointed the nose at an angle and accelerated hard…harder than any Star Force fighter could move, with barely any drop in shield power when they auto-activated to cut the wind when reaching a certain speed.

“Easy,” Morgan said calmly.

“Less time visible the better,” Paul replied in kind.

“That’s not why you’re rushing.”

“Don’t worry. You can fly on the way back if you want.”

Morgan whisper laughed, but intended to hold him to that on the return trip.

Paul accelerated the gunship up at an angle, following a wavy course plot that was wagging like a dogs tail on the far end as Kara made adjustments based on the position of orbital ships and Star Force’s own sensor beacons, trying to keep them in the least intense sensor ‘beams,’ which was a misnomer because most of them were transmitting in a spherical, or at least hemispherical radius.

The hull of the dropship registered the hits, including the visible light coming from the star, and dampened them, meaning that very little reflection occurred that also cut off any possibility of a sunlight glare coming off the hull for anyone looking up at the sky to see as the tiny ship left the hangar. Portions of the colony were open air, but like most Star Force colonies the bulk of the infrastructure was indoors, leaving only a scattering of people on the surface of the buildings to see the gunship rise up and disappear in the distance…whereas several dropships coming and going from the various spaceports could be seen like tiny stars, brightly shining from the reflected sunlight.

Kara led them on a very loopy course up to orbit and around to a non-standard jumpline to get away from the traffic, then Paul made a high power jump pulling/pushing against 6 different gravity wells in order to get the proper line to set them into the coast phase over to the 8th planet in the system that the Scionate had located their capitol on.

The gunship wasn’t designed for interplanetary trips, used primarily as orbit to surface transport akin to a dropship, but the gravity drives were more than powerful enough to do so, making the craft very useful for such travel…but lacking that oh so important restroom that starships required.

That wasn’t going to be a problem, for with the V’kit’no’sat gravity drive it was a short trip, with Paul decelerating them on another non-standard jumppoint and having to yank on multiple gravity wells to get them decelerated out in a fairly high orbit, whereupon Kara started to work her magic plotting them a course down inside the Scionate sensor grid.

That grid amounted to stations in orbit that were monitoring the traffic, most of which was not Scionate, but visitors to the system conducting a variety of business. No Star Force vessels were here, requiring individuals who wanted to access the transit grid to come over to Admat, as well as for market activity. That gave the Scionate the privacy they wanted while allowing them the linkage to Star Force, though there was no official restriction on Star Force ships entering orbit or even coming down to the planet. It was simply a matter of respect, which left thousands of alien ships traversing orbit around Vaadsip that Kara had to plot their way through.

Fortunately a planet was huge and there were plenty of gaps to shoot through, the trick was avoiding the sensors, meaning she had to pick areas where they were weaker, with Paul taking a cautious pace forward that had them spending more time in orbit than they had been in making the jump between the two planets.

With Kara monitoring the sensor reflectivity and keeping it within ‘ghost’ levels that wouldn’t return enough signal for them to be detected, Paul followed her directions and they got down into the atmosphere, further shielding them from sensors but also creating physical disturbances that could be tracked, requiring that Paul keep it slow and not produce a fireball upon reentry.

The last hurdle was the city sensors. The planet was a large grassland with multiple cities, the largest of which was the ruling city, which like the others had sensors to detect and monitor ships on approach…meaning they couldn’t come right down on top of them and into the infrastructure, though there was some debate about that, given how well the gunship’s hull was holding up against the ‘crappy’ Scionate technology. Funny thing was, from the V’kit’no’sat’s point of view, this wasn’t a stealth craft at all, nor were most of their ships, which their sensors could detect just fine.

To play it safe Paul brought them down well outside the city, all but landing on the surface and allowing Kara to determine the minimum height of the sensors…which came in at 34 meters. She had Paul fly about side to side around the colony giving her a slice of the radial pie, allowing her to map out the differing heights and create a basic map that would allow them to come in under the sensor beams.

She picked out a sweet spot where one of their buildings had raised the ceiling to 56 meters and Paul flew well under that all the way up to the perimeter defenses and stopping far enough out to give Kara time to plot a course in. They waited there some 20 minutes before Paul accelerated the ship ahead in a flash, visible to anyone that was looking as a blur that crossed into the city structures and decelerated so rapidly that it would have looked to collide with the buildings.

Paul took it to a spot that Kara had found for them and parked it in a nook that gave them partial visual cover from above and no windows around the immediate area…and to top it off there was a shadow forming that covered half the gunship as it hovered in place four inches above the rooftop.

“Any activity?” Paul asked up the short ladder to where Kara sat as he abandoned the pilot’s seat.

“If they saw us I see no immediate sign of it. We can wait and watch or deploy now and deal with problems as they arise.”

“I vote for option 2,” Morgan said, standing up and stepping ahead of Paul out into the walkway between the rows of seats that were two stories deep, making for four rows with a catwalk over her head to service the top two.

“Ditto. Keep us updated with any activity, but stay low unless we need you.”

“I admit I have mixed feelings about that,” Kara said, dropping down the ladder and following Paul and Morgan over to the door.

“Says the girl who’s used to going on one man missions behind enemy lines,” Morgan lightly complained.

“Is that a touch of jealousy I hear?”

“Yes,” Morgan said honestly, opening the door and dropping down to the rooftop with a muted clank.

“Same here,” Paul agreed, hesitating a moment. “Hopefully we won’t need you to go all badass on them, but if we do remember this is a zero casualty mission. Don’t get carried away, because we still like these guys…mostly.”

“Understood.”

Paul stepped out and dropped down, already seeing Morgan on the edge of the nook and looking out, plotting their first leg. He walked over to the other side of the ship and checked the opposite way as Kara followed him out and stepped down, her red scales covering her foot a moment before her toes hit the roof. She reached back towards the ship with her mind and mentally closed and locked the door, leaving the ship essentially sitting out in the open and counting on the manic nature of the city to cover their presence.

She set up a link with the ship, with her being able to monitor its sensors via her Vorch’nas so she would know if indeed it was discovered and be able to return to deal with it promptly. The shadow creeping across it would help obscure the view from above, which had numerous dropships flying high overhead at a regular pace, but none of the hovering vehicles were passing over this location, constricted to specific routes throughout the city.

When Kara stepped out of the shadow a piece of it went with her, the red scales on her body now appearing like a dull spot that seemed to defy shape…less of a blackness than a lack of light, with her body more fading from prominence than standing out against the lightly colored buildings.

That spot took off, running across the rooftop then dropping over the edge and disappearing from sight as she began scouting out a route for the pair of top ranked trailblazers who were now tied at striker level 93.

How’s it look? Paul asked Morgan as he circled back around the ship through the shadow and came up behind her.

A lot of jumping…not a lot of windows. I think if we keep moving we’ll be alright even if we’re spotted, no waiting on Kara for directions. We just take what she can offer us on the fly.

Agreed, Paul said, seeing the distant waypoint on his HUD that was their eventual destination…the central den of the Scionate race. After you.

Morgan ran forward two steps and leaned forward, jumping off the edge and shooting herself on a more or less flat trajectory over to the next building some 25 meters away with the help of her jump pack. Paul followed two seconds later, giving her plenty of a head start so he could just match her pace and leave her room to navigate without him running up on her backside.

Per typical Morgan, she took off and didn’t let up, making Paul work to keep pace and the two of them on a quick transit across the city, two black specs jumping like fleas from building to building enroute to a diplomatic session that would be long remembered throughout Scionate history.

8

Dor’wan looked up from his sentry position outside the main entrance to the ruling bloodline’s den, hearing a disturbance in the crowds of Scionate that were, as usual, wandering the open ring-shaped plaza surrounding the habitat and administrative complex of their leaders. This wasn’t the first time there had been a ruckus, with the moving of all Scionate to the ADZ having caused considerable dissent, but the ruling bloodline hadn’t been overthrown and in recent years such disturbances had been relegated to a few discontented skirmishes, which is what he assumed this to be.

Dor’wan sat in his ceremonial combat armor, looking out through the crowd but unable to see what was happening, though he quickly perked up as the din escalated. There was genuine alarm in the thousands of Scionate milling around the den, and soon he finally saw why when the crowds nervously parted as two black-clad bipeds walked through them up towards the main doors. They were a considerable distance away, but behind them he could see several Scionate laying on the ground, indicating that some sort of combat had occurred.

The other guards rose to their feet with Dor’wan, knowing full well that outsiders were not allowed in the city, meaning whoever these two were they had come here either by secrecy or combat…with the bodies in the crowd behind them attesting to the latter.

Then one of the unarmored Scionate in the crowd ran out towards the pair and executed a well-formed lunge jump towards the one on the right…but was inexplicably repulsed by a raised hand. Dor’wan didn’t even see the Scionate make physical contact, nor did the biped even turn towards the attack. It just raised its hand and the Scionate bounced backwards, landing hard on the ground and not getting up for several seconds.

Dor’wan mouthed the controls in his helmet and popped out his armor’s weaponry, as did the other 15 as they came off their ceremonial pedestals and onto the hard, jeweled surface that surrounded the den. It had been polished to perfect smoothness, with each stone matching up seamlessly with the others, and was not meant for any footfalls other than Scionate.

The leader of the guard trotted out towards the bipeds as Dor’wan moved to the left to flank them, with more security assembling inside the den and coming to the doors at their request, which he monitored via the comm chatter. How these two had gotten here no one knew, and the security footage of their walk across the ring was causing those monitoring from inside to declare these invaders extremely dangerous.

Dor’wan already knew that much, but what weapons they were using was another matter…though he could clearly see handheld firearms held in slots on the back of their armor as the lead guard and one other approached the pair.

“Whoever you are, stand down…now,” he growled in the trade language through the speakers in his armor. “Or we will make you.”

“You’ll try…” Morgan said, raising a hand in front of her and unleashing a wave of concussive energy that knocked both Scionate off their feet and back through the air several meters. Before they landed both Humans split, taking a hit each to their shields from the plasma weapons the Scionate had in the head section of their armor as they ran towards the closest guard and engaged them in hand to hand combat.

Morgan punched one so hard it flew backwards into another, knocking both down and partially stunning the first, while Paul wrestled with his and got a hold on one of its paws…after which he spun around and threw it across the plaza, jumping into an attack on another before it even hit the ground.

Dor’wan backed up immediately, firing off shots whenever he could without hitting the other guards or the crowd behind that was thankfully running away rapidly. Still, he had to get low to the ground so in effect he was firing upwards to avoid hitting Scionate in the background. He made several hits on one of the attackers before his head suddenly got dizzy and he lost all bodily control.

Next thing he knew one of the black intruders was over top of him and he felt a hit to his ribs, after which he was tossed into the air before a massive blow sent him to the ground. The impact didn’t do more than jar him, given the armor he wore, but a moment later he blacked out none the less.

“That was easy,” Morgan said as she casually walked over to the center of their little skirmish and met up with Paul as they continued past the guards to the main doors that were locked tight.

“More where those came from,” Paul said, sensing a host of minds on the other side of the doors.

“Guys, heads up,” Kara said over the comm. “Valeries are headed your way, not to mention a lot of guards coming from everywhere in ones and twos. Some armored, some not. I think you’ve hit their fanatical sweet spot.”

“We’re not even warmed up yet,” Paul replied, knowing that they had to get inside before the fighters got here. The infantry they could handle easily enough.

“Want to knock first?” Morgan asked sarcastically.

“Happy to,” Paul said as he walked up to the control panel as she bit down on the two senzu beans that she’d cheeked just before they’d dropped down from the rooftops onto the plaza. Each contained 200 doses of ambrosia, with her currently daily intake at 94. Any more than that and she’d overload from saturation headaches, meaning she was going to have one monster one coming her way that would potentially cause her to black out, but since it took a few minutes to get into the blood stream she had a window of opportunity…and by the time that happened, her body was going to be screaming for more ambrosia.

Using Pefbar, Paul saw the internal components of the door locking mechanism and how they were configured within the wall, then made quick work of the control panel…tearing it out and disconnecting the physical locks so that the massive doors would move on their tracks when pulled. That said, they had no power and the seam between them was nonexistent, leaving a six inch wall between the Archons and the interior of the den that had to be gotten through.

Pull stepped back, tossing aside a few components that he’d ripped out with his armored hand. “All yours.”

Morgan summoned up a continuous wave of tingles, bringing the energy up and out into her arms and then passing it through her armor into a holding aura where it manifested into the concussive energy. She dragged more and more of it out and condensed it down into an invisible ball that she held cradled in both hands beside her…then she launched it forward towards the seam in the doors in a Kamehameha motion.

The impact made a very loud boom, but other than slightly denting the doors it did no good, leaving the heavy barriers in place.

“Nice,” Paul said, walking up to the now visible crack where the two met and digging his fingers into the gap. He activated the powered movement that his armor was capable of and pulled hard on his narrow grip point, moving the door another inch that let him get his fingers in all the way. Once he did he was able to slowly walk the right-side half of the door open as the Scionate on the other side froze in place thanks to Morgan’s Ikrid.

She held them inert until Paul had widened the gap enough for one of them to go through, then Morgan ran up and mentally released them a moment before releasing another concussive wave through the opening and blowing aside those standing closest to it. Paul followed her in and the two cut loose on the 50+ guards, with Morgan doing the heavy lifting and Paul cleaning up after her. The Jumat ability that she was using was fueled using ambrosia…or more accurately could be refueled using ambrosia, and with each blast she fired the saturation level in her bloodstream diminished.

The senzu beans were going to make up for that, but she had to keep launching attacks or risk an overdose, so Paul let her take the lead and blast aside whoever she wanted, with him taking the rest hand to hand and stunning them, either by Ikrid suppression when he had the opportunity or by using the stun rifle he had brought in on his back. The Archons no longer used stingers, having left those to the security forces and general populace as they’d upgraded to pure energy weapons, now that they’d developed a decently sized clip and a bolt of energy that could travel more than a few meters.

That bolt, looking like a condensed marble of pink energy, soaked through the Scionate armor once their shields were breached…and a lot of the guards didn’t have armor with shields. With Paul blacking out those who Morgan knocked down, the pair proceeded through the outer area of the den complex, coming up against more and more Scionate that were unarmed and unarmored, literally throwing themselves at the Humans to try and stop, or at least delay them as they fought their way inside towards the central chambers where the royal blood made their home.

The den was huge, but Star Force already had a blueprint on file so Paul and Morgan knew where they were going and didn’t bother making any detours to find Scionate ass to kick. They all seemed to be coming their way anyway, and the trailblazers knew they had to get to the leadership before they could evacuate, prompting a run and gun assault that the Scionate simply could not stop. Whenever they massed plasma fire on the Archons they’d absorb a few hits with their shields before the Scionate would either get knocked down by invisible energy blasts or drop to the ground unable to make their own bodies function.

Halfway into the main chambers an elite guard unit caught up to them, wearing full armor that they’d only just now put on. They didn’t bother trying to shoot at the invaders from range, but ran and jumped at them, intending to subdue the smaller Humans in hand to hand.

Paul, now linked to Morgan via battlemeld, stepped in front of her and raised a forearm…then the two Scionate midair rammed into an invisible wall and bounced off, with Morgan coming forward a moment later and throwing back the next three with a concussive blast. Those that went down didn’t stay down, and both Archons silently agreed not to hit these guys with Ikrid. They were clearly better trained and equipped than the others, and since they were here to make a statement they decided to take the 9 of them hand to hand.

Without using Bioshields or Jumat again, Paul and Morgan jumped after the Scionate closest to them and proceeded to beat the crap out of the quadrupeds without even having to use their powered armor. Their opponents were good and got a few hits in…even managing to take down Paul’s shields as three of them pinned him down momentarily, but the Human was simply too fast and skilled for them to subdue, with him punching them into a haze before pulling out a stun pistol and finishing them off.

Morgan did likewise, only using her stun gloves, finishing off her fifth a moment after Paul returned his pistol to its slot on his back rack, sensing more Scionate lurking around the corners, both ahead and behind them. He stretched out his Ikrid to its maximum range, getting a feel for how many there were and where they were, picking up on a large group moving through another area of the den. As Morgan joined him he isolated one of those minds and was able to pick up a flicker of emotion…fear and haste, meaning this wasn’t a combat-oriented mind.

Paul pointed out the location through their battlemeld and they both took off running, with Morgan knocking the next two armor-less Scionate into the wall with a wave of her hand as they jumped them at the next corner. Six more after that and they had a clear hallway that the pair sprinted down, not bothering to render the two behind them that got back up unconscious.

Morgan continued to battle those they came across as Paul tracked the ‘civilians’ as they were moved about trying to get them to an auxiliary entrance, of which there were 13 possibilities, none of which was a hangar. Despite encountering fanatical and extremely pissed Scionate throwing themselves at the Archons at every turn, the pair was rapidly closing on the closest group of evacuees. When they did get up to them Paul had already identified who they were, so as Morgan took care of the guards accompanying them he pulled out his rifle and stunned the younglings, not letting any get away but doing no physical damage to them.

The trailblazers moved on in a flash, darting here and there inside the massive den and laying waste to all those who challenged them…but they still hadn’t found the ones they were after, prompting Paul and Morgan to split up, with him going out to the auxiliary entrances and Morgan staying more in the center, given how little real opposition was being thrown up against them.

Paul got to one of the entrances and engaged a dozen Scionate coming in from the outside, none of which were armored, jumping into the center of them and emitting a Fornax field. He held the effort long enough to stun them all then ran on. He had a senzu bean in his cheek too, holding it back for when he needed a recharge, though Fornax didn’t eat ambrosia, so he had to be careful not to drain his mental power reserve there, and same with his Ikrid. Neither would completely extinguish, but it’d get to a point where they’d be laboriously hard to use.

That wasn’t going to happen for a while, given how advanced both he and Morgan were and how much time and training had gone into developing their skills and increasing their mental reserves, but his bioshields were a different matter. They did eat ambrosia, but unlike Morgan he wasn’t pre-dosing, instead monitoring his current levels by feel with the senzu bean there to start replenishing his saturation level when needed.

That moment came a few minutes later when he ran up against a group of Scionate armed with heavy plasma weapons. He put up a bioshield over his armor’s shields that were still recharging in order to avoid taking damage, and the invisible wall blocked the plasma easily, allowing him to close with and disable the Scionate hand to hand, but getting there had taken an enormous toll on his shield. He’d learned how to continuously recharge it, or nearly so, meaning that the longer he held it the more ambrosia flowed into his biological emitters.

If enough plasma hit it the bioshield would breach, but it had avoided that fate this time by a narrow margin. As he knocked down and stunned the last of the group, Paul felt the first twinges of ambrosia depletion, prompting him to chomp down on the senzu beam as he ran off down the far hallway. It wouldn’t work as fast as a DBZ senzu bean, but he knew from training that it wouldn’t take long for the first of it to hit his blood stream…after which he was going to have an overload if he didn’t keep using the bioshield, which was less handy than Morgan’s Jumat, for she could just fire it off as many times as needed to keep from overdosing.

A minute later and another 37 Scionate down Paul sensed Kara entering the building, with her explaining why a moment later as he came up on another group of 5 unarmed Scionate.

“These guys just don’t quit,” he whispered to himself just before he punched the first one so hard he actually lifted it up towards the ceiling. He felt/heard ribs crack, but he was fairly sure that it wasn’t a lethal blow.

“Paul, I’ve found the leaders,” Kara said over the comm. “They were heading for an exit and I just turned them back. Looks like they’re heading for the audience chamber.”

“Thanks. What’s it…look like outside?” he answered as he took down the last Scionate with a kick that launched it into the wall.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Sounds like fun,” Paul said, heading towards the waypoint that Kara sent him and Morgan.

“Where do you want me?”

“Can you give us a few minutes alone?”

“I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t cover all the angles simultaneously.”

“I know, just slow them down,” Paul said, ducking under a running paw slap and coming up with a reverse right elbow into another Scionate’s back as it tried to reverse course and nail him from behind. That dropped it to the ground then Paul ran on, coming across 8 more in three separate hallways before he finally got to the audience chamber, which had a single entrance that he saw Morgan knock down with her Jumat as he approached.

The small double doors flew inward, both of them dislodged from the doorjamb and trailing electrical wires as they hit the ground and skidded a few meters towards the 18 Scionate assembled inside the large chamber. Two of them rushed the Archons, with Morgan letting Paul take both guards down hand to hand as she looked at the others, searching their minds and confirming that they were in fact the Scionate leadership…or rather 16 of the 21 on their ruling council, with the other 5 having been outside the city at the time being, but these would do just fine.

“Who are you?” one of them asked, a mix of anger and fear as Morgan and Paul casually walked towards the group as they retreated back towards the ornate pedestals on which they normally sat during official sessions.

Linked together as they were in the battlemeld, the trailblazers combined their Lachka and lifted the Scionate that had spoken up into the air and held him there as the others recoiled in sheer terror. Paul walked up underneath him and removed his helmet.

“Human…” the Scionate growled, unable to move aside from flailing its paws.

Paul reached into his pack and pulled out the bag of senzu beans and tossed another one to Morgan, knowing she was getting low again, then he turned and lightly punched the Scionate in the underbelly before letting it unceremoniously drop out of the air as Morgan turned back towards the doors to deal with another pair coming in at them.

9

As she ran back Paul moved forward and emitted a Fornax field that took the others to the ground, holding them there for several seconds before letting them up and running forward three steps into a light jump kick that sent one of the younger Scionate leaders toppling several meters across the floor. Paul then proceeded to work his way around the group, hitting or kicking them all at least once while Morgan caught the few that tried to make their way to the doors.

Like Paul, she kept them conscious and with light injuries, considering that some of them were very old and decrepit… though they were all younger than the pair of Archons calendar wise.

Paul finished off with a punch to one, then he picked it up by the front two paws and spun it around him in a circle before throwing it through the air towards the middle of the audience chamber where it smashed into another that Morgan threw at the same time. The two collided with a ricocheting thump and dropped to the ground, one of which managed to land on its feet.

“Do we have your attention now?” Paul growled as both he and Morgan came to a standstill, with her still blocking the door and staring down several nearby Scionate that wisely backed away towards the others that were taking cover amongst each other behind the lounging pedestals, most of whom were showing teeth and other gestures of anger and pain.

“If not we can continue with the lesson?” Morgan added when none of them spoke.

“Why are you here?” one of the old ones finally said, walking forward with a limp. He was both angry and curious, as to how they had managed to make it this far and how they were doing what they were doing with these invisible powers.

“We are here because you violated the terms of colonization,” Paul said, pointing a finger at the Scionate and seeing him reflexively flinch backwards. “You’re killing for food and running an underground meat market…which we are in the process of dismantling,” he said, pulling his helmet through the air with a gesture and landing it back in his hand, sending yet another shock through the Scionate.

“Not only is it a violation of your word, it is behavior that Star Force will not tolerate in the ADZ or anywhere else,” he said loudly, with considerable steel in his voice. “You thought you could hide your meat farms outside the ADZ and smuggle it in through dummy organizations and get away with it. Well, you’re wrong. And if you think that because your entire race is already set up in the ADZ that you’re too numerous or powerful to remove…you’re also wrong. I don’t care how many ships you have or how it’ll weaken the front, we will not allow this to continue, and we will do whatever has to be done to stop it, even if it means destroying your empire.”

“But it won’t come to that,” Morgan said, walking up to join him and pulling off her helmet so they could see her face…as well as the recording devices in the chamber. “Because you’re going to stop, now and forever. Isn’t that right?”

“We don’t take orders from Humans,” one of the Scionate in the back half whispered.

“But you will honor the agreement you signed,” Paul responded. “Else you will be punished…and when I say ‘you’ I mean those of you right here, plus the few that are elsewhere. You are the leaders of your race and responsible for its actions…and by responsible, I mean responsible. We can show up on your doorstep with a war fleet if necessary, but like Morgan said, it’s not going to go down like that, because we know where you live, and now you know that we know.”

Paul let that sink in for a moment.

“We haven’t killed any of you,” Morgan continued, “and let that be a lesson. Star Force doesn’t kill unless necessary, and it is not necessary to maintain a food supply. It is dishonorable and downright sick. I don’t care if you personally knew it was happening or not…you are responsible, and let your current injuries be a reminder of that. This ends, now…or we’re coming back and removing you,” she said, pointing in one long arc to include them all, “from power. I’m sure there are other bloodlines that could do a better job of running your empire, so I doubt Star Force would have to actually take full control, but that’s still an option.”

Paul abandoned Morgan and walked up to the Scionate group, with those closest dropping to the floor in a preemptive crouch ready to defend themselves…but it was no use as the pair of Archons telekinetically pulled the one Paul wanted up off the ground and over to him.

The trailblazer punched him in the side of the head, spinning him around as he landed on the floor.

“No you will not,” Paul said coldly, having read his thoughts just a moment ago. “You will not hide this from us again, and you will not be able to negotiate your way around it. The terms of the original agreement are firm, and if you doubted out willingness or ability to enforce them, I can beat you as many times as necessary to get the point across.”

Paul flipped a hand in his direction and telekinetically pushed him back across the floor to the others.

“Note that we’re being far kinder to you than you were to the bernen we rescued from your farms. You’re fortunate you didn’t set up any on your worlds, else our fleet would be over your heads pounding the crap out of your defenses in order to rescue them. You do not and will not subjugate another race, no matter how ‘inferior’ you deem them…which is fortunate for you, because as you can see, I’m far superior to you.”

Another Fornax field went up and knocked them all to the ground, with Paul flinching slightly as he felt the effects from Morgan as well. Once she released it he walked up to one that was starting to stand up and took it back down with a second Fornax blast, then held its head down with a telekinetic hold unaugmented by Morgan.

“This is how Archons file a diplomatic protest,” he said, focusing on the one individual with the others bare meters away staring him down with looks more of anger than fear now that it appeared the Humans weren’t going to kill them. “Which means this is also your warning. Break the terms of colonization again and we’ll be forced to take action, because we would not allow you to colonize here otherwise, and now that you are here going back on that agreement is not an option. You will acquit yourselves with honor or you will be removed, one way or another. There is no middle ground.”

Paul pushed the Scionate’s head back down into the floor with a pop of its jaw before releasing it and walking through the others, daring them to strike him, and he could tell that some were eyeing his helmetless head for such an attack, but they wisely backed down and retreated a few steps to give him room.

“You can tell your associates in the meat market that we will deal with them in the same manner. What you have been doing is an abomination and we will not permit it in any form. If you go outside the ADZ and keep the meat out there…we may stop you. If you bring it in here, we will stop you. If you kill for food you are an enemy of Star Force. This we explained clearly before, if you did not listen that is your problem. We will not permit this…not now…not ever.”

Paul walked out the far side of the knot of Scionate and pulled his helmet back on as he got a telepathic update from Kara, indicating that heavy ground troops were massing outside.

“Remember,” Morgan reiterated before putting her helmet back on as well, “we know where you live, and if we have to come back we’re coming for you first.”

Both Archons walked across the chamber, turning their backs on the Scionate but watching them with Pefbar just in case they were stupid enough to try and jump them…then when they moved through the doors and around the corner they took off running, with both of them pulling their helmets back off and Paul digging out the senzu beans again. He took and cheeked two of them, with Morgan wanting three, then he secured the pouch and his helmet before Kara caught up to them, with the three Archons skidding to a halt facing each other.

“I think they want us pretty bad,” she said, sending both Paul and Morgan a mental image of what was gathering outside. “They’re already in the building and sending more, but I think they’re waiting for us to come out.”

“Let’s not disappoint them,” Morgan said as she crunched down on one of the oblong spheres that felt and tasted like jelly beans, this one with a purple flavor.

“They’ve got tanks on the way too…and plenty of fighters in the air.”

“Hang back and go out a side entrance while we distract them,” Paul said, feeling multiple minds approaching from both directions in the building. “Get clear and get our ride. We’ll meet you part way.”

“You’re going to need my help,” Kara insisted.

“We’ve got this,” Morgan said confidently. “Go.”

Kara nodded, then disappeared into a shadow that held next to the wall as the first of the Scionate caught up to them from behind.

Morgan turned and knocked them back with a concussive wave, careful not to hit Kara, then she and Paul took off running the opposite direction and met up with three Scionate coming towards them, taking them hand to hand just enough to knock them down and get by, finishing them off with a Fornax blast each to keep them down long enough to get a few meters ahead of them.

The pair kept up the same tactic as they worked their way back towards the main doors, with almost as many Scionate trailing them as there were ahead. Morgan had to blast their way through a crowd of 30+ just to get through the doors, throwing off wave after wave to plow them aside…then they were through into open air, with hundreds of armored Scionate soldiers waiting for them.

Battlemeld linked, both Paul and Morgan knew they couldn’t stay put or the Scionate would overwhelm them with both plasma and muscle. As they came out the doors the yellow-armored Scionate fired a slew of plasma blasts at the Humans, with Paul stepping in front and forming a shield wall just small enough for the two of them to hide behind, then as he got a few steps away from the nearest of the quadrupeds he reached his right arm back and linked it to Morgan via a Repulsor conduit as she jumped forward up over his head.

Paul used it to wheel her over him, aided by a boost from her jump pack, with him throwing her through the air over the Scionate’s heads some 50 meters as he chewed up his pair of senzu beans, knowing he’d need the ambrosia overload soon.

Morgan landed in the midst of the Scionate, with 50+ around her falling to the ground as she emitted a Fornax field. She kept it up and reached a hand back towards Paul, throwing a concussion wave into the backs of the Scionate near to him and knocking them down enough for him to punch and kick his way through back to her, having to concentrate as he hopped over the downed Scionate while feeling the effects himself.

More plasma came in over the heads of the downed Scionate, with Morgan releasing the field so they could stand up and block the shots as Paul got to her. He put a bioshield around the both of them as their armor shields dropped low, literally feeling the ambrosia draining out of him as he fought to constantly replenish the shield. Linked as they were, Morgan could ‘see’ the shield aside from the impact points, with Paul forming small holes in it large enough for her to stick her hand through and release a concussion blast ahead, bowling down even more Scionate.

The pair ran together in sync, staying as close together as possible so Paul would have less surface area to protect, with Morgan blasting aside the yellow-armored cats, some of which they stepped on as they passed with her adding a Fornax blast to keep them down. The trailblazers held that formation all the way across the plaza and through the mass of soldiers…running right up against one of their tanks.

Both Morgan and Paul split up as a large plasma splash hit between them, each taking small plasma hits from anti-personnel turrets on the tank until Paul managed to freeze the minds inside, cutting off the return fire.

Morgan ran to the tank and slid underneath it, crawling through the gap between jeweled surface and tons of machine that could drop down on her at any moment, but Paul had the pilot’s mind firmly held, which Morgan could feel through the battlemeld, prompting her to take the unconventional route to the far side, eventually coming out next to Paul as the pair hopped up on top of the more or less rectangular vehicle and got to the top, then jumped from there via antigrav to the nearest rooftop with Paul blocking for both of them with his bioshields as another two tanks targeted them with anti-personnel fire.

A moment later they were both out of the firing line, running across the building and hopping across to the next…which was when a Valerie swooped by overhead so low that it nearly hit their helmets. It didn’t fire on the first pass, wanting to intimidate them as well as watching where they went…which was nowhere in particular. Paul and Morgan had to put some distance between themselves and the den so Kara could pick them up more or less unnoticed.

That wasn’t here, for beyond that Valerie there were at least 5 more, each taking turns in buzzing them, with the third being the first to open fire.

Paul and Morgan didn’t try to evade, instead they both huddled down together making a small black dot on the roof underneath Paul’s shield as Morgan reached out to the mind of the pilot…not to freeze him, but to align herself for a Fornax blast that she let loose a moment later.

The scattering of shots that missed them both ended quickly, with the Valerie losing its line and dipping slightly before the pilot recovered and got more altitude, passing the two by as they got back on their feet and ran to the next gap between buildings…this time jumping down in between where the fighters would be hard pressed to find them.

More troops were there, apparently having been running at street level parallel to the Archons with the Valeries telling them where to go, for as soon as they hit the pavement they were in another battle against dozens of the Scionate. Yellow armor flew in all directions, with the trailblazers resuming their dual formation and pushing off to the right down the street before eventually hanging a left and getting further away from the den.

Trouble was, the Scionate troops were faster than them, with more and more closing up and choking off the streets. Before too long they were being cut off from ahead, forcing the Archon pair to head back up to the rooftops and deal with the fighters.

After the third pass and Paul’s shields getting hit again, this time badly, Morgan’s frustration won out and she summoned up a large Jumat blast and nailed the next fighter to come through on his lazy assault line. It hit on the top side, forcing the nose down as Morgan simultaneously reached out and froze it’s mind, resulting in it impaling the top of the building and sinking in a couple of meters.

Releasing contact she and Paul moved on, with more fighters circling around at a now greater height, unsure of what had just taken down the one.

“You guys ready for a lift?” Kara’s voice asked over the comm.

“Nah, I thought we’d stick around and play a while,” Paul said sarcastically. “Where are you?”

In response he got a waypoint on his HUD.

“On our way,” Paul said, ducking down and forming another shield as Morgan spotted a fighter on a quick attack line. The plasma hit him in two spots, the second one breaching and nailing his armor’s shield, sucking it down to 36% strength. On past them the fighter lost control and nearly rammed one of the buildings before pulling up and missing by 10 meters as it regained altitude, flying up over top the largest building in the area, with Paul and Morgan headed down to an even lower one, trying to get as much aerial cover as possible while staying off the streets.

Through their link Morgan knew Paul was going to take his helmet off before he even got his hand up to the neck, with her turning and becoming a psionic turret, throwing out Fornax blasts to every fighter nearby, even if she wasn’t sure she could affect them at that range. Quickly Paul slipped two more senzu beans into his mouth and got his helmet back on, then the two of them linked up an Ikrid attack on one of the fighters, giving them more range and control, and froze the pilot’s mind, making it continue in its straight course over top of them and unable to attack…leaving the pair an opening to sprint over to the next building on their right and hop across, with plasma coming up from below from the infantry still tracking them.

Two more buildings over and they came to their destination roof…which had multiple protrusions coming out of it. They ducked behind one as another Valerie passed by firing in their wake, then they ran around another blocky mount and dropped off an edge, falling through the door of the gunship as it floated on its side in the depression between two building segments.

Paul felt the gravity change as soon as he hit the threshold, with it slamming him down on his butt, only to have Morgan come crashing down on top of him as she followed through. Her legs pushed down on top of him, pinning his chest to the ground, then she was up and moving forward, leaving him to stand and get the door as the view outside spun around as Kara lifted them up out of the little artificial ravine and righted the gunship before accelerating away skimming the building tops enroute to the edge of the city and outpacing the Valeries with ease.

From there they disappeared out over the grasslands, getting out of Scionate sensor range and becoming ghosts once again…leaving the kitties furious.

10

July 17, 2534

Corvio System

Vaadsip

Chieftan Pra’nom looked up from the medical slab as one of his warriors came in, waving off the attendant who was taking an excessively long time wrapping his chest in a healing sleeve with a painful flick of his paw.

“Where are they?” he demanded.

The warrior held his head low, growling in disgust. “We do not know. They have disappeared.”

Pra’nom roared and stood up despite the broken ribs flaring in protest.

“The last we know,” the warrior continued, averting the leader’s gaze, “they were being pursued through the city. Eyewitness accounts state that they escaped via a small aerial craft they had hidden somewhere within the city, but we were unable to track it and our fighters could not pursue. What became of it is unknown. No orbital tracking has detected it.”

“Nor did on entry,” one of the other Chieftans said, walking up behind the warrior and gesturing at his peer with his chin. “I have just finished reviewing the sensor logs. They have come and gone undetected. Star Force has been rumored to have impressive technology withheld from the knowledge of the ADZ, and I would wager we have just seen an example of it.”

“And what of this invisible hand of theirs…” Pra’nom sneered, “is that technology too?”

“I do not know, but it is none the less impressive.”

Pra’nom growled so low that the warrior next to Tem’lan retreated a step. “This is not funny.”

“I never said it was,” the Scionate responded evenly, walking past Pra’nom and looking at one of the other injured Chieftans. “But I do admire their boldness.”

“Boldness? Have you lost your pride! We have been assaulted and you lay praise on our enemy.”

“If they were our enemy they would have killed us,” Tem’lan said, his own voice growing harsh. “I’m more interested in the accusation they made.”

The Scionate walked up nose to nose with Pra’nom. “Have we violated the terms?”

“It does not matter one way or another.”

Tem’lan moved a hair closer, so much so that he could feel Pra’nom’s breath. “Do you know of what they speak?”

“Yes,” Car’sem said, breaking the visual deadlock between the two. “We are no longer honoring their colonization terms, nor should we. We outnumber them and these worlds are no longer theirs. They are ours and we will do what we like with them.”

Tem’lan turned away from Pra’nom and walked over to the other Chieftan, limping slightly from the injury he’d sustained to his right rear leg, but it had been far less than the others had suffered…or so they said, for he felt many of them were simply too unaccustomed to pain.

“Then we have violated our word,” he growled angrily.

“We honored their pact for many years, more than enough to satisfy the bounds of honor. We will not be bound by it for all of time.”

“Where are these farms?”

“Outside the ADZ,” another Chieftan said, walking up beside him and shooing the medics away. “It is a private meat supply. Some goes to us, the rest is sold to generate funds to expand the farms. All is accomplished by outsiders so as not to link back to us. In this way we honor the pact made, though I agree with Car’sem that we are not bound to the Humans’ will permanently.”

“Enough!” Pra’nom said, fuming. “They are in the wrong, not us! Are you blind?”

“There will be an accounting,” Car’sem agreed.

“Later,” Tem’lan said dismissively. “I have issue with this deception. If we are not going to honor the terms then let us state so plainly. Hiding the action is that of a coward…and hiding it from me is a mistake that you will regret in the coming days, I can promise you that.”

“Do not make threats you cannot back up, young one.”

Tem’lan swatted Pra’nom, his senior, so fast that the old Scionate didn’t even see it coming.

“Tem’lan!” another voice shouted from behind. Tem’lan took a step back and turned to face Ura’bor as he joined the group, staring all the others down.

“He had that coming,” another Chieftan said as an impromptu assembly meeting formed. “I wasn’t informed of these farms either.”

“They are a side project,” Ura’bor said dismissively. “Whether or not we implement them with our own people and resources is a subject we’ve not yet broached, thus you did not know. That is immaterial. The Humans have gone too far, and they must learn their place.”

“And what of their abilities?” another Chieftan asked. “I saw what they did to our troops. If you have not you need to take a look at the recordings. Two of them blew through hundreds of highly trained, heavily armored warriors. These are not the Humans we are used to dealing with. Something is seriously amiss here.”

“That may be,” Ura’bor granted, “but we do not have time to investigate prior to a response. We must act before the deed grows cold.”

“Agreed,” Pra’nom huffed, as did several others.

“Agreed,” Tem’lan echoed, his voice turning icy. “Then we will discuss this farming matter.”

Ura’bor looked back and caught the eye of the warrior who was standing on the other side of the room. “Marshal the troops.”

The Scionate bowed respectfully, then loped off out of the chamber to carry out the order.

Paul, wake up.

The trailblazer blinked his eyes and sat up in bed, wondering if he’d really heard someone’s voice or not. He’d been asleep for a good…two hours after a long run with Kara, and he’d nodded off deeper than he’d expected. Maybe the aftereffects of so much ambrosia coursing through his body earlier.

Hey, sleepy, her telepathic voice clarified. You up?

I am now.

Planetary sensors are showing a Scionate convoy arriving in orbit, all warships and they don’t look too happy.

Paul frowned as he threw the covers off and slid out of bed. Why didn’t I get an alert?

You probably will in a minute or two. I’m tied into the live feeds.

Where are you at? Paul asked, getting changed out of his sleeping clothes and into a fresh uniform as fast as he could reliably manage.

In the shower. You’ll beat me there. Figure I have a few minutes at least to finish up so long as you’re in the nexus.

What…oh, Paul said, remembering her Vorch’nas as the sleep cleared from his mind. Didn’t know your toy could do that.

It can do a lot. I can’t find Morgan, so she must not be in her quarters.

Finish your shower, I’m on it, he said, pulling his shoes on and heading out the door. Kara was only three rooms down, but he wasn’t going to wait on her, knowing that he had to get to the command center as quickly as possible.

“Report,” he demanded, turning on his earpiece…with it taking a moment before anyone responded.

“How did…I was just about to call you,” the on duty Archon said, with his ID flashing up as Samli-8388. “We’ve got Scionate warships entering orbit, a lot of them.”

“Get the Sentinel powered up, the drones free of their berths, and all civilian traffic out of the way. Have they hit any ships?”

“No, they’re literally just getting here now. Staggered arrival coming in from Vaadsip.”

“Raise surface shields and prepare for ground assault.”

“They don’t have any transports.”

“Yet,” Paul said, jumping up and over a knot of people in the hallway when they didn’t move in time, capping it off with a full flip that nearly lost his earpiece. “Find Morgan and tell her to get her ass in gear. Kara already knows. I’ll be there inside of 5 minutes.”

“Copy that.”

Paul ended the conversation and made his way over to the city’s command center, it being the primary for the entire planet…which was why he had his quarters next to it. He always did, wherever he went, or at least some place with a command nexus nearby to access if need be.

He knew that it would take time for ships to assemble in orbit, but he wanted to get on station as quickly as possible and start tweaking their defenses. He hadn’t thought the Scionate would just tuck their tails and admit they were wrong, so he’d been expecting some type of reaction…though the speed of this one suggested they were really pissed.

When he got to the command center he didn’t bother asking any questions, going straight to the command nexus and linking in with Morgan arriving a few seconds behind him. Instead of going to one of the monitors or work stations out on the main floor she stepped up onto the pedestal with him, wrapping an arm around his waist for balance and reaching out to him mentally.

Paul felt and accepted the battlemeld prompt, allowing her to think as he did as well as accessing the same telepathic controls, essentially doubling up their mental processing power. It wasn’t something that he’d practiced with anyone before, but as soon as they both got to work on remotely controlling the planetary defenses he realized that had been a mistake, for together they could do a lot more, as well as troubleshoot each other as they went along.

Morgan smiled as Paul’s mind brought up an old term to coin the new skill…Fusion, which was apt enough even without the DBZ reference.

They both could ‘see’ all their assets in orbit and on the ground, even without the holographic displays. Mentally linked in as they were, Morgan could access information from any of them with a thought, though ‘reading’ it mentally was more difficult than pulling up a status hologram. She pulled up one on her left for the lone Sentinel in orbit, seeing that it was nearly ready for combat. Some operations within it were push to fire…while others needed a bit of prep time to cycle up, and given that this was ‘safe’ space the Sentinel had been in partial power conservation mode.

The Scionate fleet wasn’t anywhere near it, on purpose she assumed, because they knew what it could do. That meant the shipyards in orbit were also out of the fire, given that they were located relatively close to the defense station, as were several other installations placed at a distance so they didn’t crowd the firing lines and minimize the Sentinel’s coverage zone.

As Morgan checked on it and a few other smaller defense platforms, Paul was reorganizing their defense fleets, breaking them up into smaller groups and moving them around like chess pieces as the incoming Scionate fleet started showing transports mixed in with the warships.

“They’re going to ground,” Morgan said even though she knew Paul knew that she knew, but she felt like announcing it anyway. “Guess that means we hit the button we wanted,” she added as Kara walked in behind them.

“Getting kind of crowded in here,” she commented, staying a few steps back but joining in on the battlemeld, making it a three-way and getting up to speed with their plans quickly by drawing off the others’ thoughts. A moment later she broke contact and left, knowing what she needed to do.

Kara walked out of the nexus nook and jogged across the command deck, smelling fresh and clean and knowing that wasn’t going to last long. As soon as she got outside into the hallway she jumped up to the ceiling and flew over the heads of the people passing through, zigzagging and running on the walls as she hung from her left wrist. She kept that up until she eventually got to an exterior exit, then flew up into the open air above the city, but keeping under the hemispherical bubble shield now covering it.

She glanced to the west, seeing the gap near the surface where it didn’t touch the ground, and flew off over there, relishing the wind blowing through her wet hair until she got down to the barrier and ducked underneath, then she donned the red scales and shot up high into the sky like a missile, joining the skeets already coming out of their hangars and assembling in holding patterns.

Kara held there for some time, seeing the first of the mechs start to walk outside the shield barrier as well, then through the battlemap she saw the Scionate fleet descend to low orbit well outside the range of the Sentinel, but they did have to go through a smaller defense platform that had a single cleansing beam.

They sent several dozen warships after it, firing the first shots of the battle without hesitation. The defense station responded in kind, skewering one of the warships on the first shot, but unable to slice it in half before it had to recycle. Mauler cannons opened up at shorter range as the Scionate warships swarmed it, getting many of them killed before they managed to eliminate the platform and clear the sky for the transports that began heading to ground while the rest of the attacking fleet spread out to cover them and engage the Star Force drone warships that were now coming in from multiple angles…with the larger controlling jumpships not far behind.

Kara could see the approach the transports were making through the battlemap, and realizing it wasn’t near the city she was hovering over she took off, flying through the air slowly at first but gaining speed rapidly as she left the skeets and mechs behind, intent on getting to at least some of the transports before they made it to ground.

Back in the command nexus Morgan released Paul, physically and battlemeld, and headed out as well, knowing that he had the naval engagement well in hand and that the battle now was going to occur on the ground. The defense platform that the Scionate had destroyed had been unmanned, but the kid gloves were now coming off regardless. They were firing live weapons at them and there was no indication that they were here to do anything other than harm to Star Force and the Humans living on this planet.

With that thought foremost in her mind she headed off to grab her armor and some more senzu beans before catching a dropship out to wherever the fighting was about to go down.

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1

July 18, 2534

Corvio System

Admat

Kara spun through a corkscrew zigzag, throwing off the golden plasma orbs coming her way from the Scionate Valeries that had broken off from the transports they were escorting. They missed easily given the range, then one of the fighters fired its scattergun as she neared it, catching her shields with a few pieces.

They held, but the Valerie’s did not as Kara delivered a green/white orb the size of an apple that punched right through and exploded inside the pointy nose of the fighter. She zipped past it as it began its fall to the ground, giving the pilot at least a 50/50 chance of surviving the crash. Had she wanted to, she could have shredded the entire fighter with a larger orb…which she began summoning up once she was past the Scionate fighter screen, with the other Valeries circling around to chase her as she angled in towards the nearest transport as it descended down through the atmosphere heading towards the surface.

Checking her power gage and seeing that her Vorch’nas was nearly full, she unloaded the first orb at range, sending the watermelon-sized Dre’mo’don glob of energy shooting out from her extended palms at incredible speed. A split second later it hit the distant transport, sucking most of the energy out of its shields at the point of impact and Kara could see the matrix react with her enhanced HUD as energy flowed from other portions to fill the breach.

With that one test she determined the shield strength and matrix type of the transport’s shields, which were decent for Alliance standards but nothing compared to the V’kit’no’sat. As she approached anti-air fire from both the transport and the fighters trailing her filled the surrounding area, but very little of it even came close given the wavy approach path she was taking as she split her hands apart and summoned up two orbs, one in each, from the small addition the Vorch’nas had made to the armor over either palm.

When Kara got close to ramming the ship she decelerated a bit and fired the first orb off, hesitated a split second, then fired the second before decelerating heavily and landing on the burnt hull of the transport. She ducked down as the Scionate shield reformed over her back, ironically giving her protection from the fighters as she crawled/flew across the hull in the 1.3 meter gap between shield and ship.

Scurrying like an ant, she moved around and blew apart two anti-air batteries and a conventional plasma cannon before she came across an airlock and blasted her way inside. From there she tore through the hallways on foot, mowing down every Scionate she came across with an adjustment to her forearm weapons. The plasma orb emitters were now gone, retracted into their holdings as nubs formed on her wrists that shot out pale green stun energy, but that was Kara’s only consideration for the Scionate as she busted through the crew and every sealed door she came across enroute to the bridge.

With a stun weapon on both wrists she entered and unleashed a fury of blasts, some hitting individual Scionate multiple times. After three seconds the bridge crew was down and she had a moment of peace as the rest of the crew struggled to figure out what was happening and send reinforcements to the bridge…for what little good that would do.

Kara ran over to what looked to be the most intricate control panel on the otherwise unfamiliar bridge and raised her right hand, fingers spread wide and firm, then rammed it down into the machinery, breaking through the outer layer and into the guts of the interface. From there she switched over to a different HUD, setting up a proximity alarm function while focusing on the specialized hacking program her armor used.

Little mechanical tendrils, not unlike a regenerator, extruded from her fingers and created a hardline access to the ship’s computer system, with Kara mentally controlling the interface without having to do any manual hacking. The protocols were already in place, she just had to choose which to use and how, with her Vorch’nas doing all the legwork itself. Within a number of seconds she had helm control and sensor interface, allowing her to see from the ship’s perspective as she turned the transport to the left and accelerated it faster than normal…causing it to close range with the transport coming down just below it.

With the blue grasslands below them only a few kilometers away, all the transports were decelerating as they headed towards the grid that Kara also saw tagged in the navigational computer. Each transport had already been assigned a position, with the first one just now setting down on the wide plain that ran north and south for some 170 miles, bisecting two large forests and several Star Force cities.

Flying the transport over top the one beneath it, Kara played bumper cars and rammed the two ships together, forcing the one below her down faster than it wanted to go as well as heading towards the right and the one already on the ground, nearly missing another that just managed to veer out of the way as the tangled pair passed it in their uncoordinated fall.

Kara kept the pace heavy, adjusting the ship as much as she could to stay on the back of the other as it tried to maneuver aside, resulting in a partial pancake on the surface. She pulled out of the control console a couple of seconds before impact, letting physics do the rest, as the rectangular transport twisted to the left with only the right side coming down on the other ship.

Both vessels smashed into the ground hard, digging in and throwing up a huge plume of dirt that rolled out and showered the other transport, missing a second collision by a mere 148 meters. Hulls bent and beams burst, but more or less the ships were intact, just buried in the ground and pinned on top of one another…which Kara made sure would stay that way, taking a little side trip to the engine room and disabling the gravity drive before exiting the ship and flying over to the undamaged one as more came down from above, though relocating around the perimeter of the wreck and off their original landing pattern.

Kara zipped over low to the ground and came around to the rear boarding ramp that had not yet lowered. She waited a few seconds, then got tired of it and flew up to the ‘door’ and started blasting a hole through it. Half a meter of melted metal later and she slithered inside, dropping in on a tightly packed army of armored Scionate clustered around and under 18 hovering tanks.

“Killing spree,” she announced, seeing so many closely packed targets as she popped out her wrist bumps and unloaded hundreds of tiny Dre’mo’don shots, her own version of a scattergun, on the assembled troops, blasting through their shields and damaging their armor by the dozens. She followed that up with stun blasts, now that their shields were down, dropping them by droves as the bay doors finally started to open.

A few plasma blasts came up at her, but most of the troops were too close together to avoid shooting each other, which was why she kept low and just tore through more than a thousand of them before pivoting around and chasing after the first tank to get out, with it not even waiting for the boarding ramp to lower completely. It pushed itself out the moment the upper gap looked large enough, then got a little distance and spun around, but not before Kara got up to it.

Like the transport she knocked down its shields with a single orb blast, then used the scans of the tanks from yesterday to place three smaller orbs through its armor and into key internal components before zipping up into the sky for a quick loop-over, coming down on the next tank as the first dropped to the ground, its power systems now trashed.

By now the Scionate commanders knew something was going terribly wrong, so Valeries from the other landing zones began to redeploy, crossing the miles in between quickly and filling the sky over the crash site as they saw a tiny red spec jumping about from tank to tank and hitting them with some kind of green energy weapon…with very little infantry resistance around her.

That they used to their advantage, picking open areas and laying out assault strikes, often firing own on their own tanks’ shields to try and make a hit, but Kara managed to dodge most of it until a pair of Valeries flew in and hovered twice the height of the tanks and started blasting away at her with their scatterguns…no matter that they were also hitting some of their own infantry in the process.

Those Scionate scattered, losing their shields and chunks of their armor while Kara ducked behind and underneath a tank, then shot out like a bullet and came up on one of the Valeries from below. She fired into the underside, easily penetrating its shields and knocking out its antigrav with the single shot, then zipped out from under it as it fell.

The other Valeries swiveled backwards, swinging around and firing another scattergun blast at the Scionate fighter, knowing it wouldn’t kill it but hoping to nail the enemy…whatever it was.

What the Scionate didn’t know was how good Kara’s shields were, and that she could take several direct hits before they breached, meaning she took one full scattergun shot face on, with most of it missing around her tiny form, then she rammed the nose of the Valerie and emitted an orbit that literally vaporized that section of the hull. As it fell she climbed forward, pulling open the canopy and ripping the Scionate pilot out of his bathtub-like cockpit, then flew him down to the ground beside where the fighter crashed and pinned him there with a forearm as she stared into his muzzle.

“Did not know who you were messing with,” she said slowly in the trade language before slapping him half-unconscious and flying off towards the other Valeries streaking through the air. On her sensors she saw a plume of them rising up from some of the now grounded transports, coming out of tightly packed racks and reinforcing the few that had been on escort duty.

Kara took after the ones above her, knowing that she only had a slim window of opportunity before the others arrived to take them down. She tore after one of them, using her superior speed and maneuverability to get on top of it before it knew what was happening and rip it in half, now very angry. She’d been deliberately avoiding targeting the cockpits, wanting to disable the craft rather than kill the pilots, but as more and more transports came down and began to unload infantry, tanks, and fighters by the hundreds of thousands she pictured the Star Force troops they were about to go up against, and some of whom were likely to die…which quickly diminished her compassion.

She took down the next fighter in a similar manner, then the others began to space themselves out and treat her more like another fighter than a flying bug, meaning she couldn’t get to them as fast and they could set up attack runs and blanket the area with scattergun fire that would eventually wear her down…and as soon as the reinforcements got to her that was almost a certainty, which made her even more mad, knowing that she needed to take down as many of the enemy now as she could before they got fully deployed.

Then a squadron of skeets flew in, taking on the Valeries and strafing the transports and the ground troops coming out, with some of them taking hits by the anti-air on the transports. Kara saw one fighter go down, ramming kamikaze into a transport, but knowing that it had been a drone controlled by a more heavily armored fighter still in the air.

That was the last straw, now that her own people were taking hits, and she flew back down to the ground level, letting the fighters deal with each other. The Scionate shouldn’t have been here and even though these troops were only following orders she no longer had the luxury of treating them as misguided allies. They were here as enemies, and if that’s what they wanted to be…then so be it.

Kara zipped across the ground, barely a meter over the blue grass all the way up to the nearest intact transport as it unloaded in excess of 1000 troops, with more still pouring out but no tanks in sight. The little armored cats were loping along with shallow hops as they ran out and formed into tendrils that began running across the ground faster than a Human could move, enroute to what looked like staging points where the tanks were forming into anti-air groupings and leading the way towards the nearest city, which was only a 22 mile hike away…but with the way the Scionate moved that wasn’t very far at all.

The honorary trailblazer turned into the back of one of those lines and popped up her Dre’mo’don nubs on either wrist, jacking up the intensity to 55%, which she calculated would be more than enough to penetrate their infantry shields, armor and flesh, then she flew directly over them and fired down one shot into each as she passed, melting through their armor and wounding/killing them on contact.

She didn’t slow down any more than necessary to maintain her accuracy, running up the line and mowing them down before swinging around and over to another line and pushing all the way back to where they were exiting the transport…all the while moving quick enough that the infantry couldn’t mount any considerable return fire, though she did take a few lucky plasma hits on her shields.

The third time through the line finally broke and the Scionate scattered, followed by a Valerie strike at nearly the same altitude. Kara took several hits while bringing down two of the fighters that bowled over more infantry as they crashed, then to recover some shield strength she dropped down to ground level and flew/ran into a knot of the Scionate, taking it to them hand to hand so fast that they couldn’t get a shot off at her and their fighters couldn’t target her without hitting their own.

That little ‘respite’ resulted in dented armor and several dozen Scionate unconscious on the ground before a pair of tanks dispersed them and hit her with a wash of their own anti-air…with one of them managing to land a plasma cannon shot on her.

That shot melted through the armor of the two Scionate next to her, killing them on contact while her shields, weakened as they were, canceled out the entire blast, but the anti-air following it got through, starting to absorb on her armor and actually give her a bit of a recharge…but doing tiny bits of damage in the process.

Now enraged, Kara shot off towards the nearest tank and flew underneath it, then put as much thrust up under it as she could, flipping it over and shoving it onto the other tank, catching it partway across and pinning it to the ground. Before either could even attempt at righting themselves she popped out her orb launchers and skewered both of them, hitting some of the crew in the process and no longer caring.

She ducked underneath the top one as another Valerie shot by and peppered the area with plasma orbs and scattergun fire, then blasted into the tank again to make a hole it the armor that she climbed in through. She punched the toppled Scionate back, knocking them unconscious with a single blow each, then she tore into the section of the machine that held the power conduit to the main cannon.

She reached in and grabbed it, siphoning off energy to recharge her capacitors while giving her shields time to reform their intricate matrix. She didn’t linger there for long, pulling only a ‘small’ amount of power from the now wrecked tank before moving back to the hole and dropping onto the grass underneath her impromptu lean-to and looked out the opening…seeing a sea of Scionate infantry and tanks moving across the landscape.

She checked her battlemap, seeing that the Star Force fighters had already pulled back to the city…save for one, which was showing as having crashed. Kara’s jaw clenched and she shot out from under her cover and fired indiscriminately into the ground troops underneath her as she flew over their armored heads towards the fighter, knowing/hoping that the pilot was still alive inside the protective cocoon.

When she got there enemy infantry were all around the crash, but not paying it too much attention save for a few that were climbing on top and trying to figure out how to get inside the grey T-shaped craft. Kara killed them on the spot and threw their bodies off while the plasma fire from the infantry around her increased rapidly now that she had given them a more or less stable target to fire at.

She ignored them and pried open the canopy, having felt the pilot inside and given her a telepathic heads up to release the latch. The top part gave them a bit of cover to hide behind, with Kara wrapping her shields around the Regular’s flex armor as she grabbed her and flew them both up and into the sky, accelerating as hard as she could in a curve that brought them onto a trajectory towards the nearest city. It took less than a minute to get clear of the Scionate army, with a few Valeries tracking and giving her trouble, but when she got near to the city defense shield anti-air lachars took down one of the Valeries, causing the others to fall back and leaving her in the clear to drop down to the forming rows of mechs and stop just outside the shield.

Kara dropped the pilot off without a word on the pavement surrounding the outer ring of buildings, then leapt back into the sky while searching the battlemap for any weak spots in the Scionate’s developing formations that she could exploit without getting herself mauled by their now swarming air cover.

2

Outnumbered more than 10 to 1, Paul kept his drones hitting the edges of the Scionate fleet in coordinated attack groups, picking on one ship at a time and killing/disabling it before moving onto another, with damaged drones pulling back to recycle and potentially lure more of the blocky Scionate ships out away from the orbital zone they were aggressively defending. Technology wise Star Force’s ships were better, but with their capitol in this system and six worlds to draw off of the Scionate had more military might to call on than they thought they needed…though Paul was about to make them recalculate those numbers.

The Scionate’s strategy was clear…screen for their transports to get to ground, which was taking a long time considering how many of them they were bringing into low orbit. Their defensive fleet was holding position just above the atmosphere, which Paul was currently chewing on, while escort groups were meeting the transports at their jumppoint and shepherding them down with a third set of attack groups roaming the perimeter and meeting up with anything that dared to get close to their vulnerable ground troops. The Scionate had devoted so many warships to this attack that they appeared unbeatable…but looks could be deceiving, and speaking candidly the Scionate naval commanders were rookies.

They were set up for a slugging match, which Paul denied them. Using the binary drives that his fleet had he chose when and where to strike, pulling back when he wanted with the enemy unable to match the curved trajectories down towards the planet, with Paul sending the drones into the upper atmosphere and underneath the Scionate on more than one occasion to target some of the bigger ships with pointblank mauler strikes. Already the Scionate had lost a battleship to those tactics and they weren’t adapting well, allowing Paul to strike and kill the bigger ships that were out of position.

Meanwhile he had the smaller drones harassing the Scionate attack groups, outmaneuvering them and nipping away at their shields until one or more would get wounded, then swarming and eliminating it before retreating and repeating the process again and again. The remote pilots in the system were proving quite adept, despite their lack of combat…which Paul could see via icons describing each one’s current level and combat history at a glance, with most of them having decent training scores but little real experience.

Training was everything, and Star Force was putting that point to the Scionate in a very destructive way as their dominate fleet was getting chewed up and reduced in size while successfully screening for the ground transports. Paul didn’t like killing so many of their supposed allies, but this was a fight of their choosing, and should they turn around and run he’d let them go…but so long as they were attacking one of his worlds and potentially going to kill his people on the ground he couldn’t afford to cut them any slack on the naval front.

Which was why, when their formation split a crack in response to yet more probing action around the perimeter of their main fleet, he sent in the most advanced drones he had. Most of the ones in action were equipped with the standard plasma/mauler/rail gun trio of weapons, with the heavy cruisers carrying small cleansing beams. A few of the drones were missile boats, while a handful were special varieties, custom configured by the local commander into what he’d wanted on deployment.

But one warship in orbit, the one Paul had arrived on, came equipped with their most recent tech upgrades. Those ships he’d kept back, hovering behind the others and waiting for the proper moment to send them in…with his eye on the flagship of the Scionate fleet, a huge Dreadnaught-class warship that was nearly the size of a jumpship. It was sitting dead center in their formation, with the incoming transports flying within a few kilometers of it as they moved down into the atmosphere, insuring that no one was going to follow them from above.

The dreadnaught was covered with plasma cannons, nothing special in their design but in sufficient numbers that they would eat apart any drones that got close to them, meaning Paul couldn’t send in the mauler-equipped ones without suffering huge losses. That would be a mistake, for the dreadnaught was so massive that it was going to take a lot of pounding. The next best option would be to hit it with cleansing beams from the heavy cruisers at range, but the Scionate fleet was spread out enough to keep those attacks down to a handful, with very little hull damage being inflicted on the massive ship.

That said, Paul had already weakened its shields prior to the formation split occurring. When the moment of opportunity arrived he sent a single mental command to the remote pilots while assuming direct control over one of the cruisers. His perspective in the nexus shifted to the view from that individual drone as he flew it, maintaining control over the main weapon while leaving two remote pilots to handle the other weapons and another two for shields and anti-air, for the Scionate were spitting missiles out like crazy trying to hit and kill the resilient Star Force drones.

Paul executed a short jump towards the planet, something the Scionate couldn’t do off the local gravity well, and pulled an atmospheric slide/bounce to redirect underneath the enemy fleet, coming up the ‘safe’ conduit the transports were going down with several dozen Scionate ships dropping into the atmosphere to stay below them and block any run against their boxed-up ground troops.

Paul ran his cruiser in between those ships and the main fleet at high speed, avoiding most of their plasma fire before hard breaking directly underneath the hourglass-shaped dreadnaught as a wave of yellow plasma came pouring down on his ship while the other advanced drones followed him in. Mauler blasts shot out immediately, pounding what was left of the dreadnaught’s shields and penetrating the local areas, doing massive hull damage on the surface but failing to penetrate very deep.

That said, a swath of plasma cannons got hit and slagged, reducing the amount of return fire and prompting the dreadnaught to spin about to get a better firing angle on those ships beneath as the rest of their fleet repositioned as well, coming down on the sneak attacking drones.

Paul had planned for that was well, signaling a predetermined attack run up top while he aimed the primary weapon on the cruiser and fired a translucent shield column up at the dreadnaught. It hit the hull and crunched a few battle plates, almost like the ship had physically punched the other, but the damage was superficial and a moment later the emitter on the cruiser released the Ta’lin’yi energy that crackled like a fireworks display down the length of the containment shield, sucking energy out of it enroute to the dreadnaught and unleashing against the hull.

The white/gold prickles that looked like a billion tiny fairies gorging themselves on pixie dust blew through the hull armor like it wasn’t even there and blasted like a torch into the dreadnaught’s interior, exploding everything they touched on contact. The Ta’lin’yi was so destructive, in fact, that Star Force had lost several prototype weapons from backfire, requiring the most advanced shields built to date to hold and channel the weaponsfire to target…which they now had thanks to the arc elements, with those shields also temporarily protecting these drones from the dreadnaught’s plasma fire.

Paul kept the continuous Ta’lin’yi, which they simply referred to as a ‘Talon Torch,’ or just ‘Torch,’ firing nonstop so that he could eat well into the interior of the dreadnaught while the other cruisers and destroyers fired theirs off in short bursts, targeting key points on the hull that the maulers opened up. Trick of it was, the Ta’lin’yi lost most of its effectiveness against shields, making it about 3 times effective as plasma and useful in assaulting shielded ships, but it didn’t get its big bang until it hit physical matter…which was why the shield disrupting nature of the maulers was so critical, allowing them to punch at least small holes it the protective barrier to deliver the torch lances through.

Paul kept his attack up until the drone’s shields eventually went down and the main weapon was hit and destroyed, but he didn’t retreat, instead pulling in closer to the dreadnaught and letting the maulers eat away at surface targets, thinning the plasma cannons that were hitting his other ships until a coordinated salvo from the other Scionate ships eventually killed the cruiser and his display reverted back to ‘Admiral’ view…where he saw the rest of the new drones finishing the work he’d started and tearing the big ship apart via deep core damage.

The dreadnaught itself was too big to blow apart, at least not all at once, but huge conduits of damage were being poked into it along with the exterior looking like a person that had been burnt so bad they’d lost all their skin. As the big ship began to list the surviving drones turned their weaponry on the surrounding ships, with Paul instructing the pilots to fight it out to the last functioning weapon. He didn’t want to lose them, but he would gladly spend them in exchange for the damage they were doing…plus the disruption they were creating in the rest of the Scionate fleet that he began exploiting with the conventional drones.

The debris from the destroyed ships on both sides fell into the atmosphere, given that they were hovering on antigrav rather that actually sitting in orbit…or rather a lazy orbit so the Scionate could remain overtop their ground troops at all times. That was a mistake as huge chunks of ships fell down into the atmosphere, partially burning up from the friction but also reigning down meteors on the Scionate’s own troops…most of which were deflected by the transports’ shields, but some were coming down as far off as the neighboring cities, making the Star Force personnel there having to shoot them out of the sky in the case of small ones and run away when larger ones hit, with the advanced comm system and battlemap they shared proving invaluable as the meteor strikes were calculated and warning areas were flashed as no-go zones, allowing the mechs and fighters in the area time to maneuver out of the way.

The same wasn’t true of the Scionate, who lost several hundred troops to the meteor strikes…but then came the dreadnaught hulk, unable to maintain its orbit, and now guided down to the surface with a few Star Force drones equipped with IDF tugging it on a more preferable course directly down onto a cluster of transports.

One managed to lift off and fly away, but even it got caught in the impact concussion wave and knocked into the ground, skidding in the dirt before righting itself and gaining altitude again, but once it came up out of the dust cloud and looked back down on the area with its sensors there was nothing but sheer destruction in its wake. 19 transports were now gone, along with thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks, with the airborne tsunami pushing all the way up to the nearest city’s shields and bouncing off them like a gentle wave, tugging at the mechs waiting outside for the ground troops to arrive…but they never did.

Those Scionate around the impact point that survived redirected and abandoned the attack, now in too few numbers, not to mention utter shock, to mount an assault. They redeployed towards another of the multiple landing zones, abandoning their target city to support the assault on another…with the herding drones staying down in the atmosphere and targeting a few of the transports before the Scionate warships caught up to them and had a brief fight over the surface. Three enemy warships fell, then the drones pulled back damaged towards the nearest city, firing as they fled.

The Scionate warships, now 8 in number, followed them, killing one before they got near the city and dropping it to the ground where it dug out a long furrow, but avoided hitting any ground troops.

Another kilometer closer and a tiny white beam struck out from the nearest city, slicing into the Scionate shields and penetrating them a moment later as the defense turret cleansing beam began providing cover for the drones. The Scionate pressed the attack a few moments longer, enough to lose one of their ships to a well-aimed slice from the third cutting beam shot as it hit the ship’s gravity drive…then the others pulled off as fast as possible, getting outside the preferred firing range of the small caliber CB and allowing the surviving drones to get some distance and redeploy back up to orbit.

Paul didn’t try to drop ships down into the ground campaign again, needing all he had for the naval fight. As it was he was having to pull back to more hit and run attacks, for he was losing too many drones compared to how many ships the Scionate had…and not just the ones involved in the attack, but the numbers he knew they had on their six worlds insystem, and if he let his planetary defense fleet get thinned too much he’d be at a disadvantage, no matter what their technological edge was.

Without any more deep thrusts into the enemy fleet the transports continued to flow down the ‘safe’ zone to the planet, landing well away from the dreadnaught wreck and deploying more and more troops to the assault lines heading out to the nearby cities. Paul brought up side displays in the nexus of the first ones to engage, seeing that the city defense CBs were angling down to hit a few tanks at range, but once the troops got within a certain radius the angle wouldn’t work, leaving it to the mechs and perimeter defense turrets to fight them off, with the Archons, Knights, and other commandos waiting to dual it out in the city streets and knowing not to venture out into what was going to become a massive kill zone.

Manually tinkering with the raiding drones, Paul continued to rack up kills along the perimeter, exploiting minor and a few major tactical miscues on the part of the Scionate, essentially playing ADC and running in to hit and pulling back out before shield strength went down, doing the enemy damage while taking none yourself…other than power loss. It was amazing how much he and the trailblazers had learned from playing video games. They literally were a form of training, and League of Legends had been one that he’d cut his teeth on as a youngling.

It was a winning strategy, given a long duration, and Paul continued it while the Scionate landed the last of their transports…but even then they didn’t abandon their orbital position, with Paul suspecting that they knew of and feared Star Force’s orbital bombardment capability. Pull their fleet back from the skies overhead and Paul could use his drones to pummel their landing zones with rail gun slugs, or even reposition the Sentinel in orbit and attack the surface with cleansing beams.

That would be risky, because it would expose the orbital infrastructure it was currently defending, but either way he could rack up considerable damage to the Scionate ground troops while they were clustered together on the surface. Once they moved into the cities it would be another matter, assuming their transports didn’t stay on the ground. If they did the defense fleet would have to stay in orbit and protect their flank, in which case Paul was going to continue to nibble it to death.

The Scionate could bring in more ships, and probably would, but the tactical situation would be the same until they started hitting Star Force positions in orbit or coming out after the drones in swarm tactics. Paul would make them pay a heavy price if they did that, but knew he couldn’t afford to lose the drones he had left. If the Scionate forced his hand he’d have to wait for the reinforcements that he’d already called for, which would be days away even after the relay network delivered the message to the neighboring systems.

Or so he wanted the Scionate to think. In reality he had a number of warships waiting on the edge of the system outside of sensor range that he could call in if badly needed. One other thing he’d learned from video games was that the enemy tailored their assault to the forces they thought you had, meaning if you held some back or hidden away from their view you could often turn the tables on them…and even if you didn’t, if you had a reputation for doing so you’d ward off a number of attacks just because of that uncertainty.

Which was why Paul hadn’t called them in. He was going to fight this battle with what he had in orbit and wait to see what the Scionate decided to do, but right now all they seemed to care about was grounding their insane number of troops. Star Force colonies were far from unprepared for this type of assault, something the lizards had taught them the hard way, but troopwise the Scionate far outnumbered them, from infantry to tanks to fighters.

It was about to start going down heavy, and Paul wanted to be out there with Kara and Morgan mixing it up hand to hand or at least in a mech, but he knew the ‘Admiral’ was needed here leading the naval front, and with the city he was currently in not appearing to come under direct attack anytime soon, that wasn’t likely to change.

Combat, aside from when dealing with rookies, was a team affair, and today his role was clear…with him going to press every advantage he had to take out as many of the Scionate ships as he could. He didn’t like slaughtering their enemies, but in this case it had to be done. If they didn’t choose to retreat, well, he couldn’t do anything about that, so he set himself to the task at hand and kept his attention on orbit, with only an occasional glance at the status of the emerging ground battles, leaving them to Morgan to work her magic on.

3

When Morgan got to the mech bay half of the walking machines were already gone, transitioning to the landing field outside where they were boarding dropships to be taken over to the Scionate invasion zone. She tagged one of the remaining ones for herself, depossessing a lower ranking mechwarrior and claiming one of the neos. Once onboard and strapped into the control harness she followed the others out, assuming command of the cluster and its 100 mechs. Admat had 2 galaxies of mechs, which totaled 1000 units, but they were spread out through the various cities, meaning it was going to take time to redeploy them to where the fighting was going down.

The heavy walkers were another matter, and not included in the ‘galaxy’ grouping, which had 5 clusters, each of which contained 20 stars, with a ‘star’ of mechs being a unit of 5 that worked together to take on/down targets. Already two Mk. 1 Hoths were moving outside to load up for transport, and Morgan knew the faster they got those into the field the more trouble the Scionate tanks were going to have. She didn’t know a lot about the enemy’s fighting tactics, but she’d studied what data files Star Force had, as well as the combat potential of their tanks, which essentially operated like the Canderian turtles…heavily armored hovering weapons platforms.

But she knew they only operated with plasma weaponry, no missiles or beams, meaning that a Hoth at range would eat them up before they could even get within firing range of the big machines…which were now much faster over ground than their predecessors had been, not to mention they’d been upgraded with a cleansing beam, now that the techs had figured out a way to miniaturize it even further. That said, her neo was still going to be the fastest mech on the field, but as she walked it out of the enclosed mech bay she felt the movements to be extremely sluggish, forcing her to reset her mind to ‘mech’ mode rather than ‘commando.’

She boarded a dragon along with a number of other mechs, then with fighter escorts they flew out to the edge of the battle zone, with the Scionate already having reached the target city’s edge. Battlemap data suggested they were going for at least 5 different cities, with Morgan opting to tackle the biggest assault she could find.

The dropships landed in a wide grid, giving the mechs plenty of room to exit several kilometers away from the nearest troops, though there were already enemy Valeries overhead strafing the dropships as several squadrons of skeets tried to keep them at bay. As soon as a few anti-air equipped madcats took to the field and downed a handful of fighters the Valeries backed off, with the Star Force pilots taking the initiative and pursuing them, leaving Morgan’s cluster a moment to itself as she handed out combat assignments.

She took 9 neos into her personal ‘binary’ and went to the head of the formation, with it splitting into two stars that kept close to each other, with Morgan at the point of hers. They ran as quickly as they could manage, with the other mechs trailing behind in a long column towards the edge of the engagement zone before splitting up to go after individual targets. On the march over to the enemy Morgan got a good look at what they were up against…and she wasn’t disappointed.

The fields of short blue grass were covered in Scionate yellow, both from their tanks and their personal armor, with thousands upon thousands of infantry storming the city’s outer walls and overwhelming the defense turrets that were chewing up everything within sight with lethal precision. The defending mechs had been forced to flee to the edges and fight around the city, drawing off tendrils of the enemy troops in order to avoid being overwhelmed with plasma…which added to the yellow motif that was drowning out the blue landscape and now encroaching on the white/greys of the city.

The city gates were raised, matching up with the underside of the bubble shield that was still holding. Valerie attacks on it were light, given the anti-air turrets raising up and popping through tiny holes in the energy barrier. Same with the primary turret that was roasting distant tanks and infantry with its single cleansing beam, but most of the enemy hoard were now below its firing angle, up close against the city walls, which in some cases were only lightly armored building exteriors.

That said, there was no way for the enemy infantry to get inside the perimeter without blasting a hold in either a building or the gates that had risen up to cover the gaps in between the structures, making for a crude, jerky line rather than a curved exterior, given that this city and others were constantly expanding. Morgan was glad they’d included the permanent defense protocol in the colony mandates, giving them a way to shut off access to the city from the ground at any stage of construction.

As she was running forward, now about a kilometer away from the nearest Scionate a pale white beam shot over her mech and hit one of the tanks ahead, moving down slightly as it fired and bisecting the rectangular slab with little effort while also vaporizing a few infantry on the far side where the beam sliced a narrow trench into the ground that erupted with a backblow of soil and moisture.

That meant the first hoth was finally unpacked and into play, something she was grateful for as a large group of tanks and infantry began turning towards her mechs, with them soon to be overwhelmed.

“Alright guys, this is it,” she announced to the cluster. “Don’t dig too deep or you’ll be toast. Hit and fade and pull them away from the others. Fighting retreat if possible. They’ve got the numbers, so we have to split them up…and remember to give the hoths some clear firing lines. Watch my back and shoot targets of opportunity, we’re about to bust them up and I’m not sure how they’re going to respond. Play it conservative until we get a feel for them.”

There were no responses from the other mechwarriors, given that none of them knew her personally. They were all acolytes and lower, mixed in with a lot of Regulars that also weren’t very experienced. Those that were were either fighting on the fronts or positioned to more valuable worlds. Admat was low priority, but per Star Force protocol they didn’t underdefend any world, meaning these mechwarriors had decent skills but were nowhere in Morgan’s league and they knew it, preferring to keep a respectful quiet as they headed into battle…though that wouldn’t last long before they started chatting at each other coordinating attacks.

Morgan used her superior skill and familiarity with the neo to goose her speed, running faster than the others could do without tripping over their own mechanical feet and pulling ahead of her star slightly as she popped up both mauler cannons on her mech’s arms and started firing at the nearest tank…completely ignoring the infantry until they got underfoot. She haphazardly punted one of the armored cats that didn’t move out of her way as she tore through the shields and armor of one of the tanks that couldn’t quite manage to keep her in its primary sights, giving her the opportunity to kill it quickly without having to suffer a main cannon strike to her shields.

Her neo was covered with hundreds of infantry blasts, which she knew would add up eventually, but right now, at the beginning of battle, it was the tanks that were the most dangerous so she swerved to her left and attacked another one from the flank, melting it with her maulers rather easily, taking only 9 hits before she dropped it to the ground unpowered with large chunks of the machine dripping in molten globs onto the grass and setting it on fire.

Soon there was smoke billowing up in multiple locations as she and the other mechs hit the tanks, all the while the now two hoths were sniping more further back in the lines on a regular basis as they slowly walked forward. Morgan watched her shield strength closely, backing off twice for a run through open field before circling back at a different point and hitting a strategically placed tank that further opened up the infantry to slaughter by some of the heavier armed Type 1s in her cluster.

The Scionate didn’t blink, pressing their losses by diverting more troops Morgan’s way, so many in fact that the armored kitties started jumping at and on her mechs, knocking over several before others came in to help shoot the cats off. Small as they were, the quadrupeds were heavy enough in numbers to make it difficult for the mechs to get up and move around, with her seeing a pair hanging onto the leg of a starbright whose shields had already gone down. They were latched on and firing their tiny plasma cannons into the mech at pointblank range before Morgan got to it and latched her mechanical hands around both and pried them off…then pitched them each baseball style back into the hoard.

After she threw the second one a few more infantry tried to jump on her mech…only to get a rude awakening as she maneuvered it around more like a giant suit of armor than a walking machine, punching and kicking the Scionate into mangled pulp inside of what felt like tin cans from the neo’s perspective.

They were not back down though. It was as if the more troops they lost the more committed to winning the Scionate became, with Morgan’s cluster eventually having to retreat back to the hoths to avoid being overwhelmed. They all made it out, but a few had taken significant hull damage and had to be rotated to the rear of their ever changing formation that she kept modifying with the flow of battle. Her own neo was showing light damage in places but mostly for her it’d been shield damage that she’d suffered, though she had taken a square hit from one of the tanks that left a melty patch on her chest.

She’d berated herself for walking into that for some thirty seconds afterwards before letting it go and adjusting. The Scionate where now coming after the mechs in tank groups of no less than three, making assaulting them more difficult because at least one of them would usually land a direct strike when a neo approached, and multiple ones for the less agile mechs. Morgan began hunting those personally, with the others supporting her when she busted up their formation.

With the retreat they’d stretched out the Scionate lines…but their infantry was actually surging ahead of the tanks and running suicidally right into the mechs around the hoths’ feet. Morgan knew this was their chosen tactic, no matter how many they lost they were going to swarm the mechs, meaning they had to make a stand here or abandon the hoths, which no matter how heavily armed and armored they were, the hundreds of tanks coming their way would eat them alive given enough time.

Morgan ran the numbers through her head, sizing them up visually rather than trying to count as she considered having to do just that and evacuating the pilots by some means, perhaps right now before they were swarmed, but that would mean taking the hoths out of the fight and they badly needed their firepower…not just the cleansing beam, but the auxiliary weapons that were only now coming into play and firing own on the infantry with numerous plasma cannons designed for just this purpose, along with a quartet of maulers to deal with larger, close-in targets.

It was going to be a tough one, but the more they killed out here the less there would be for the infantry within the city to deal with, so Morgan decided to make their stand, sort of.

“Alright, we’re digging in here. Don’t get sloppy and keep cycling out as needed to recharge shields, but we’re holding position on the hoths, and the big boys aren’t going to be standing still. You’re going to position 400 meters apart, side by side, and casually advance. We’re going to work around you, but we are not going to get stuck in one spot and become turrets. That’s what the Scionate want, and we’re not going to give it to them. We’re mobile, so fight mobile. That order goes to everyone.”

“Keep clear of the hoth feet and let them clean up the infantry that gets to them. We break up the chunks ahead and they sweep, got it? If we go down, stay down and inside your mech. Don’t try to evacuate or you’ll be target practice. Anybody with missiles left unload them now…all of them, hit the isolated tanks. I’m going for the groups,” she said, running in a long circle to turn around, then accelerating to breakneck speed and trampling a few Scionate that got in her way, trying to trip her up.

Morgan shot several with her maulers enroute, but as she zigzagged heading towards one of the tank groups a white cleansing beam passed through it and cut two of the five tanks in half, greatly increasing her odds. She wanted to say thank you but knew there was no time, firing four shots against one of the intact tanks as a second group not far away also targeted her.

Knowing she had to get some cover she dipped her arms as she ran and popped out the underside sword blades, jumping into the air using her antigrav and landing on top of one of the bisected tanks. She slid off it and skewered one of the intact ones, punching through its shields and then its armor with the corovon alloy blades. She wasn’t able to cut sideways, so she pulled them back out, one at a time, and jabbed them back down in, going for both the cockpit and power core, eventually hitting which one she wasn’t sure, but the tank suddenly stopped shooting her with its anti-personnel turrets, signaling to the trailblazer that it was dead.

A plasma shot hit them both, washing against her shields and taking them down a chunk as the other Scionate tank group fired on its own in order to hit her, committed to defeating their enemies no matter what the cost or sacrifice. She knelt the neo down then jumped again, this one mostly going sideways and got to another of the closest tanks and began hacking it apart, knowing that properly used the sword blades would kill faster than her maulers.

Doing her best Optimus Prime impression, she finished off that tank and ran across the burning ground to the third as another hoth cleansing beam hit the other group, taking one of their tanks out of the fight…with hundreds more approaching on the cluttered horizon.

“Not going to make this easy, are you,” she whispered, running three steps before soccer-style kicking a Scionate that didn’t move fast enough. It bowled over three others, which she proceeded to try and step on as she ran past, managing to put foot to only one and bury it into the ground on impact heading towards another tank, this one smoking from previous missile damage but still firing its main weapon.

She took it out with her maulers from range, then knelt down with its hulk to her back, gaining some cover as she targeted the nearby infantry behind her with her maulers, resetting them for quicker, smaller bursts…with the energy expanding rapidly enough to turn the weapon blasts into mini shotguns at range. Normally that wouldn’t have been effective against a tank or other heavily armored target, but the infantry was another matter, with her lining up shots with many targets down the line and hitting them with ease given the dispersion.

As she fired she also got a visual look at the rest of her mechs…which were not in good condition. Some still had shields up, but most were taking some level of armor damage. In the corner of her eye she saw a madcat with multiple Scionate hanging on it, then under their combined firepower the left leg broke off, sending the mech to the ground as it was no longer able to stand. To the pilot’s credit it moved itself around enough with its stubby arms and remaining leg to get its weapons pointed towards the enemy so it could still fire in a straight line whenever an enemy crossed it.

Her battlemap tagged the mech as down a moment later, with the infantry around the area all turning and swarming the injured target.

Morgan clenched her teeth and sprang up from her cover, sprinting back towards it as one of its weapons was ‘chewed’ offline by the tiny yellow plasma blasts. She didn’t dare use her maulers with a friendly underneath, so she popped her blades back out from underneath her neo’s wrists and went in hacking and kicking as more and more infantry poured in to replace the ones being lost.

Midway through that frenzy her battlemap pinged a warning…indicating that one of the city’s gates had been breached.

4

When Kara got the breach warning she wasn’t even fighting in that city, but she knew that was where she had to go and took off like the flash, flying low to the ground and shooting a few more Scionate infantry as she got up to speed…then she was over the blur of blue grass below with a moment of calm that she used to check out the situation on the battlemap.

It wasn’t good. The sea of Scionate was even larger around the city that was showing Morgan’s ID tag. The trailblazer was in a neo and a tough fight herself, but the enemy troops were now pouring through the breach in one of the city gates, with the surrounding defense turrets all showing to be offline…meaning they were probably slag by now. That left an undefended side that the Scionate were grouping around and sending a small, but constant stream of troops through, including tanks by the look of it.

She pulled up a side diagram on her HUD that showed camera footage of the breach with measurements overlaid. It was wide, but narrow enough that she thought she could clog it up. That wouldn’t prevent the Scionate from poking another hole elsewhere, but it would buy the city some time and relieve the ground troops already fighting off the enemy infantry in the streets. They appeared to have them somewhat contained at the moment, including a couple of ravens to add firepower, but the Scionate, the big ones anyway, appeared to be just as strong as the Knights, for she could see some of them going at it hand to paw in a wrestling match where the enemy had rushed several defensive barricades and leapt over.

The bodies were starting to pile up too…all Scionate. They were running right into a Star Force buzz saw and attempting to overcome it with numbers, armored and very agile numbers, but numbers none the less, and Kara knew she had to cut off or at least disrupt the flow before the good guys started to go down.

The back lines of the Scionate hoard became visible ahead, a growing mass of yellow that Kara didn’t hesitate for nor slow down, passing over the rear tanks too fast for them to target her and firing down on the infantry randomly as she made a straight line to the gate breach. When she neared it she arced upwards and came down on top of those passing through like a red bullet, landing on the back of one of the Scionate so hard she heard its armor crunch…then she brought up both arms and fired her Dre’mo’don at those outside, mowing down a dozen of them before turning around to fend off a lunge/jump from those just inside the gate.

An easy spin kick sent that one flying backwards, with her shooting it out of the air and nailing three others below it before it even hit the paved ground. A cartwheeled roll to the right got her out of the firing line of one of the tanks that landed a huge plume of plasma on the ground where she had just been standing, melting the pavement into a brief-lived puddle of molten goo that resolidified within seconds.

Kara’s palms morphed and produced the orb emitters, then she summoned up and fired a green/white glob of energy and sent it directly into the tank, knocking down its shields and melting through the armor plating before detonating inside and blasting it apart like a child’s toy that had broken, though the heavy parts didn’t fly far, more like they just fell apart from the green glow that flashed inside.

Kara shot down another two dozen infantry before summoning up another large orb and killing a second tank, with the remains of both now sitting just outside the gate breach and becoming impediments to the oncoming flow. Doing so was creating a significant power strain on her Vorch’nas, but she didn’t have time to poke the tanks to death with so many enemies around her, not to mention the hundreds of plasma blasts coming her way that her shields had to deal with.

To ease that burden she retreated a few steps and swung around behind the edge of the hole in the gate, shooting some more infantry on the inside then laying in wait for the next ones to come through…whereupon she mowed them down easily, with the rim of the breach now superheating as the tanks outside tried to expand the breach and get to her position.

Kara backed up, then flew/jumped across the gap, killing two more infantry on the pass and took up refuge on the other side, simultaneously getting a glimpse of the enemy troops on the interior that Star Force was managing to thin out and overcome. A line of blue plasma even shot through the breach and held steady for several long seconds as one of the ravens took aim at a tank outside, meaning that Kara had succeeded in giving the troops a breather, even as more Scionate rushed through the gap that she diligently mowed down into a growing pile of bodies.

A large bolt of yellow plasma came back through and hit the distant raven, impacting on its shields and not getting through, with Kara having a moment of epiphany that she thought Paul would be proud of. More for the sake of the other troops fighting and only a little for her own amusement, Kara opened her comm for wide broadcast, knowing that everyone would hear it, and jumped out onto the top of the pile of bodies, ducking as another blue continuous plasma beam shot by over her head a couple of meters and two yellow ones returned, also missing her as she summoned up another large orb.

She held it up over her head like a mage and stared at the enemy troops outside, picking the closest tank, and yelled with as much confidence and bravado as she could muster.

“You…shall not…pass!” she said, augmented by the armor’s vocal programming to sound as close to Gandalf as she could get without prep work, as she launched the orb and blew apart the tank outside.

Standing behind a barricade further back, commando level 36 Colt Harrison was firing his plasma rifle at the enemy infantry needing, he guessed, about two or three shots to get through their shields, then another 10+ to get through their armor, so long as you fired on the same spot. That meant the Scionate weren’t going down quickly, with him and the other commandos around him team firing on individual targets that one of the others were highlighting on the battlemap so they would know who to shoot without the delay of talking.

He had a trio of Knights standing behind him that had four times already taken on Scionate that had leapt over the barricade, leaving Colt and the others free to keep shooting, but the stupid cats were proving too tough a challenge and he knew it was just a matter of time before they were overrun, with him thinking more about where to flee to than holding his position.

When he saw the red something or other ahead of them kicking the crap out of the enemy in the brief gaps of vision visible through the infantry directly ahead that he was having to quickly shoot down, he wondered who it was and what the hell were they wearing, figuring it was an Archon of some sort but never having seen that variety of armor. The red was too deep and the figure too slim, with the Archon helmets being distinctive in shape and size, while this one looked like he was wearing a skin-tight hat…but whatever, he had aliens to shoot and keep from getting hit, having already taken a plasma blast to the face that luckily his armor’s shields held up against.

Then the enemies in front of him thinned out considerably, enough for him to see the strange armored fighter climb out on top of a heap of the dead cats with what looked like a funky plasma orb forming in his hands. Colt had definitely never seen anything like that before, but then his comm opened up and he heard a deep, powerful voice bellow out a movie reference that he hadn’t heard in a very long time, with his HUD tagging the strange warrior as the one speaking.

He threw the plasma orb at one of the tanks outside and it exploded on contact, sending a chill down Colt’s spine along with a resurgence of confidence…along with a laugh. Whoever that was, they had a sense of humor packed in with those crazy weapons, and suddenly Colt was no longer thinking about where to flee to. With half an eye on the combat occurring at the breach, he and the other commandos and Archons took careful aim and killed the last of the Scionate infantry between them and the wizard they’d seemed to have picked up.

Colt didn’t have a clue who he was, but with his assistance it looked like they might be able to hold this position after all.

“Did you hear that?” one of the other commandos asked.

“Yeah I did,” Colt said, keeping his sights focused ahead as he reloaded his rifle with a spare clip.

“Who is it? They’re not showing up on the battlemap.”

“That’s the Queen of Diamonds, you rookies,” one of the Archons nearby answered. “Otherwise known as Kara-317.”

“What type of armor is she wearing?” Colt asked.

“Something alien that she picked up. One of a kind. I didn’t even know she was here, but count yourself lucky. Rarely do you ever see that amount of badass,” he said as the raven standing a few dozen meters behind their barricade line fired another plasma streak out the gap as a wave of infantry ran forward, which Colt and the others couldn’t see.

“Heads up,” the Archon warned, just before a sea of Scionate came over the mound of their own dead in lemming fashion…too many for Kara to shoot down at once, meaning Colt and the others were about to get busy again.

“You heard her,” the Archon reiterated. “They shall not pass. First five of you that get killing sprees get 10 credits.”

Despite the wave of powerful aliens running towards them at superhuman speeds Colt laughed, his fear of them gone, now replaced by gritty determination as he started placing shots on the leaders tagged in his HUD. He and four others nearby him took one down within 3 seconds, then moved onto the next as a few of the Scionate got through the initial plasma fire and jumped over the barricades with the Knights swarming them instantly.

The raven fired all its weaponry down into the hoard ahead of them, busting up the wave and giving Colt and the other ground troops a thinned group of enemies to target.

With the Scionate fleet continuing to succumb to Paul’s hit and fade attacks, they eventually called in reinforcements from their six worlds insystem, despite the fact that they already outnumbered the Star Force defense fleet. When more warships began arriving Paul brought his two warship/jumpships forward and into the fray, both as bait and to include their bloon launchers in the battle. Previous to now they had been sitting far back, remotely controlling the drones that had come from them and assisting with others as their pilots were freed up when their vessels got taken out.

Paul tagged the remaining battleships for their attack, with the two big ships heading straight into the enemy fleet and drawing an immediate response. The enemy fleet pulled up towards them, exposing a gap between the atmosphere and their fleet that the trailblazer had been hoping for. As the remaining Star Force drones formed up around the two warships and took it directly to the enemy fleet, even as its reserves were pouring into orbit to supplement them, Paul plotted a course diversion for the Sentinel, time stamped to begin a drop towards lower orbit in a few minutes.

Before that transition could begin, for it would draw immediate attention from the Scionate, he called for his ace in the hole, knowing that he had to bust up this fleet before the enemy got majorly reinforced. As the battle with the two warship/jumpships continued in earnest, with their massive hulls eating up a lot of weaponsfire that otherwise would have been targeting the drones, thus extending their battle life, another warship pulled an insanely difficult jump into the gap between the enemy fleet and the planet, braking so hard that Paul could see the stress levels on the ship’s status display when it finally popped up.

That warship immediately began to release drones…new drones, for it was a new warship, fully equipped with not only bloon launchers but cleansing beams, maulers, and even its own Ta’lin’yi. The Mk. 32 variety was the most lethal yet, and some 21% bigger than previous models. That cut down on its available jump speed, but with progressively better gravity drives being developed it nulled out the disadvantage, leaving a ‘normal’ warship with a much larger carry capacity.

It disgorged 126 drones in a plume falling behind it as it too dove into the enemy fleet targeting their battleships, simultaneously with a second warship jumping into the planet on the topside of the enemy fleet…a much easier jump to accomplish, with the now four warships bracketing the Scionate on three sides and putting them in a momentary disadvantage that Paul pressed. He had more warships to call on if needed, for he’d brought a lot into the system in case the Scionate didn’t respond well to their diplomatic complaint, but he didn’t want to show his full hand yet.

That said, he needed to take advantage of opportunities when they arose and take as many enemy chess pieces off the board as possible, which the torch-enhanced drones were beginning to do in earnest.

The four warships were manned, of course, meaning this ploy was a bit of a gambit. If those ships were destroyed, tough as that was to accomplish, he’d be losing people, and that was something that Star Force abhorred. But with him monitoring the situation on the planet below, he knew he had to aid the ground troops…which was why as the Scionate were suddenly getting more resistance than they could handle in orbit he sent a third warship in to the planet at a location some 1000 miles off, having it brake not far above the atmosphere and send its drones skimming across the top and over to the engagement zone.

There they made a dive into the planetary gasses and headed towards the surface, with only a few Scionate warships moving to intercept them. Some of the drones pulled back up and intercepted the enemy warships in a high altitude brawl with the others moving down to surface level. Paul watched all three fleet engagements closely, but knew that he had to get to the Scionate ground troops before they got safely inside the cities…with a tone sounding that informed him that the Sentinel was now repositioning. It wasn’t a warship, and couldn’t move all that fast, but putting full power into its gravity drives would allow for some slow jumps between planets.

So with its drives cranked up as high as it could manage, it sucked itself down towards the planet and put itself on a descending track that would bring it towards the enemy fleet in approximately 27 minutes. That was slow compared to what the drones and warships could do, but it was going to be enough. Now the Scionate had a choice to make…wait and fight until it arrived, or leave now and try to hit somewhere else in orbit.

They decided to fight on for several more minutes…then they took an approach that Paul had thought was of low likelihood, but none the less effective in the short term.

With the Scionate fleet beginning to even out its disadvantage with the influx of a lot more ships, they suddenly broke off…not leaving to a higher orbit or going after Star Force’s shipyards or other facilities, but moving down into the atmosphere, passing the warship Paul had positioned there and moving towards the surface to engage the drones that had slipped by them.

Morgan’s neo was all but trash, having lost her shields more times than she could count and now down 3 emitters, leaving her left leg permanently exposed. Her left mauler was gone, with the sword blade in that arm locked into deployed mode. She could still use it, but couldn’t retract it, meaning her hand in that arm was now useless for the blade stuck out from underneath the wrist.

Her armor had damage everywhere, but none had gotten below 25% in any spots, though there was a deep cut in her back that was registering at 34% thickness. She’d gotten that damage running away from a group of tanks that otherwise would have killed her, given that there had been some 22 of them that she’d felt like trimming down to 20. Now that kind of seemed like a bad move, but it had provided a distraction for two trios of other neos to take down some smaller groups, all the while wading through the suffocating, self-sacrificing infantry that was constantly trying to slow them down.

Morgan had stepped on more of them than she cared to remember, not liking to kill enemies that way but they were giving her no choice. Even one of the hoths had taken a leg hit that made it unable to walk, but it was still standing and fighting…forcing her and the others to change their tactics to fight around it or leave it behind. She’d chosen the later, pushing forward with the still working one while leaving a pair of madcats behind to assist the hoth with the infantry that kept trying to overwhelm it.

Morgan hadn’t had time to think about much else, let alone look at her battlemap, which meant it was a huge surprise and relief when the sun was suddenly blotted out by a rectangular cloud that started firing down into the tank formations with mauler blasts that literally melted them on explosive contact.

It wasn’t until a bright torch beam swept across the infantry hoards that she realized it was coming from a warship overhead…with her amending that sentiment as she checked the battlemap and saw multiple drones coming down from orbit and beginning to annihilate the enemy troops. She wondered how in the hell Paul had managed that with the enemy fleet sitting up there…which was when she also saw on the battlemap that they were coming down into the atmosphere by the hundreds.

“Oh shit, Paul,” she whisper swore. “You better know what you’re doing.”

5

One of the remote pilots stationed on the planet, situated in a city that was currently under attack, was flying one of the drones sent to that location. It was odd for her to see where she was from above, not to mention he hoard of enemies outside and now in, given that the city wall had just been breached. Her corvette was descending rapidly through the atmosphere, now only a handful of kilometers in altitude as she and the rest of the fleet had been given orders to engage the enemy ground forces directly.

That was an unusual order, but one that they’d trained for extensively…and given the current situation one that she agreed with wholeheartedly. There were Knights guarding their building in order to keep the enemy from cutting off their control of the drones, and given dire enough circumstances they would tell them when to evacuate, so Kaleigh didn’t have to worry about looking over her shoulder, but she was apprehensive and being able to contribute to her own defense was immensely helpful. That way she could actually do something rather than sit and wait to be shot or blown up.

“Assuming direct control,” a deep, dark voice said into her earpiece and suddenly she no longer had helm control of the corvette. In fact she wasn’t linked to it at all, now pushed into a waiting cue to be placed somewhere else within the fleet remote systems.

“What the hell?” she asked, feeling like the universe was just plain being unfair until she saw the ID tag on the top of her primary screen that had bumped her from priority control. It wasn’t a higher ranking pilot, nor even an Archon…but the Admiral himself, bringing a confused frown to her face as her display shifted to a targeting program for a weapons battery on a cruiser that was just now engaging a trio of Scionate warships of equal tonnage in the upper atmosphere.

She didn’t have time to think, dropping into her new role on cue and controlling the single battery, as opposed to the 3 or 4 that a gunner would usually control. Being given one meant that there were a large number of pilots to a small number of ships with the duties being split up for greater efficiency.

Kaleigh sighted her mauler cannon on the position of a targeting tag and fired, opening up the enemy shield for another mauler blast that hit a moment later. Together she and the other unknown gunner chewed a hole in the side of the cruiser along with a lot of others before the ship finally lost power and began to fall towards the planet…with Kaleigh mentally crossing her fingers and hoping that it wasn’t about to come down on her head.

From the command nexus Paul took control of the closest warship to the second city breach, dipping it into an even steeper nose dive as he passed out targeting orders to the pilots handling the weapons. He assumed control over the torch along with the helm, but left the secondary weapons to the others, knowing they could do a better job with them than him trying to mentally control them all…which he was capable of doing with ships far larger than a corvette.

The Scionate were taking a big gamble bringing their warships into the atmosphere, and Paul knew that regardless of how that turned out he had a small window to target the ground troops without immediate reprisal. He was going to make use of that then turn his attention to the Scionate warships that, for the most part, were not configured for atmospheric flight.

But that didn’t matter at this particular moment, because the second city breach had just occurred and there was only one Queen of Diamonds around to plug holes with, so as he brought the rectangular cube of a warship down over the city its knife blade-shaped shields reformed into their normal blocky configuration and he drifted the corvette down past the curve of the bubble shield and directly over the heads of the enemy infantry and tanks outside…with the latter turning their weapons skyward and blasting into the underside of the warship.

It blasted back, with Paul using the torch as its namesake implied, targeting the tanks like a painter making long brushstrokes, punching right through the shields and armor on impact as if they were little more than plastic toys. With the remote pilots hitting the others with maulers and the anti-air chewing up the surrounding Valeries, the corvette made its dominating presence known as more and more tanks turned their weapons on it and covered its shields with plasma.

Paul watched the shield strength closely, knowing that with enough hits the tanks would get through, given that the corvette wasn’t all that much bigger than them. Still, it had superior tech and could take a beating even after it lost shields, and Paul knew he had to take pressure off the troops inside the city fighting the enemy infantry…which was being ravaged by one of the mauler cannons that he had assigned to that task.

It was coating the area outside the breach with its destructive blue energy, vaporizing the ground and creating huge plumes of moisture and dirt littered with bits of Scionate. The pilot kept pouring more mauler blasts on the area, effectively creating a wall of destruction that kept additional infantry from getting past…though he couldn’t target inside the city without lowering the bubble shield, and doing either one was fraught with problems.

With the corvette’s shields near to breaching on the underside Paul shifted energy from the top to reinforce them, then informed his gunners to target the infantry exclusively while he continued to pick off tanks with the torch. All the other weapons onboard, including the anti-air lachars, began picking off the armored cats by the hundreds, then Paul moved the warship out into the midst of the formation before drifting left, cutting a path towards the edge were a group of mechs were fighting.

With the corvette’s shields finally going down the ship began taking light armor damage, but the weapons batteries themselves were now exposed, save for small redundant shields covering them when they weren’t firing. Those shields would delay the weapon strikes but a smart enemy would shoot the weak points and clip his offensive capability rather than trying to burn through the thick armor first. Knowing this Paul drifted the ship over the mechs, helping them out while simultaneously gaining escorts to protect his underside, though the warship was still the primary target of the tanks.

That took pressure off the damaged mechs, allowing them to start fighting more effectively as they gradually thinned the enemy troops…but it wasn’t nearly enough, for more were still coming in from the grounded transports until more of Paul’s drone warships arrived and started blasting them to bits as well.

The free shoot didn’t last long, with Paul eventually relinquishing personal command of the corvette and returning his nexus to fleet view, seeing that the Scionate had now brought down several thousand warships into the atmosphere to combat the drones and protect their troops…but Paul knew they could also be used to hunt his mechs and pound the city shields if uncountered, no matter how ungainly they were in the atmosphere.

And that ungainliness is what Paul had to exploit. The air itself was aiding Star Force, because it wasn’t allowing the Scionate to maneuver as quickly as normal. They did have their Valeries to aid them, adding weaponsfire where able, but the anti-air batteries on the drones made such efforts risky for the pilots who, like all the rest of the Scionate, seemed to be in a fury that pushed aside reason. That saw swarms of the fighters running against the smaller drones and laying down considerable plasma, despite the cost to them in losses.

Those fighters could maneuver quickly in the atmosphere, but the warships couldn’t. Star Force’s were a bit different, however, because Paul had designed them for atmospheric combat, though they didn’t look it. The plain bricks didn’t have a lick of aerodynamic design like the Hycre had, but they made up for that with shield geometries that did. Invisible as they were most of the time, the drones became pointy aerodynamic needles or knife blades when needed, allowing them to outmaneuver or outrun the Scionate warships, making it almost impossible for the enemy to make a kill if the drones didn’t stand toe to toe and slug it out.

Which they didn’t. They employed similar tactics to those used in orbit, cycling in and out of the hot zones to recharge shields. Problem was that the area was clogged with ships fighting in a much smaller region than before, meaning Paul had to have his ships eating away at the perimeter of the Scionate fleet…but he couldn’t, for they were coming down on top of the ships fighting the ground troops, meaning that for several minutes all hell broke loose as ships vied for position and Paul manically reworked their fighting position at a speed no manual interface could handle.

Using the Ikrid interlink he became the fleet, issuing orders like pressing buttons on a video game controller and doing so many so fast that there was a blur of commands coming out of the nexus to the fleet that 10 controllers out in the main room behind him couldn’t have matched in volume or skill.

All the while the debris from the fighting was falling like rain over the ground battles, with many pieces hitting the city shields and sliding off down to the edges to land in a ring of trash that the mechs, tanks, and infantry had to dodge.

Morgan’s view caught the sight of half a Valerie smashing into the topside of the hoth she was pacing besides, hitting it on the head and smashing through its shields. The impact came so fast that it off balanced the big walker, forcing her to scurry out of the way before it fell on her…but the driver was good enough to maneuvering the legs around quickly to catch itself, though the big machine did drop to a knee like a dog taking a drink of water, only to come up firing its cleansing beam again at a none too distant tank.

There was debris everywhere, mostly in little bits no bigger than a trash can, but if those bits were chunks of warship armor they could do a lot of damage to the mechs…not to mention the enemy troops. Morgan didn’t like it one bit and kept waiting for a ship to fall down on their heads, but there was nothing she could do about it now so she embraced the moment and tried to use the chaos to her advantage, as well as assigning a person in each of the hoths to keep an eye on the sky and mark approximate landing positions for the big pieces coming down to alert the mechs to stay out of the way just in case the main battlemap controllers in the cities missed something.

That wouldn’t work for the hoths, for they were too slow to move much, but it did give the Tier-1 mechs a chance, with Morgan already having missed three large strikes thanks to the heads up. They basically had to whistle through the graveyard and hope not to get hit, or at least hope the hits were survivable, like the broken fighter that had left a nasty scar on the top of the hoth’s head, digging into the armor and scraping it up something fierce, but the heavy walker was still in the game, now pushing far ahead of the other that was pinned in place, with its two escorts using it as an umbrella and hiding underneath as they shot incoming infantry.

Those three were far behind the rest, with the walkable hoth now having pushed far inside the enemy swarm and Morgan’s mechs eventually meeting up with another group that had originated from within the city outside the breached gate. They combined what numbers they had left, with Morgan assuming command of the others, and did not hold position. They cleared the entrance that Kara was still clogging up with bodies then turned and headed in the direction of the enemy transports, walking over the carpet of infantry and fighting their way through with what little weaponry they had left intact, with the hoth being responsible for most of the carnage.

They got about a third of the way out into the enemy formation before the tide suddenly turned and the infantry reversed course, sprinting away from the city with their tanks doing the same on a delay, forming a rear guard that kept firing at the mechs and covering for the infantry as they began to retreat towards their distant transports.

“Morgan?” one of the mechwarriors asked.

“Let them go,” she said, relieved. “Get into the city through a working gate and see if you can help out with the cleanup. We’re too chewed up to pursue anyway. Take two stars,” she said, tagging which ones had the most armor and weaponry still working, not including hers. “The rest are on recovery op. Let’s get our people inside before the Scionate decide to come back for a second round.”

A moment after she said that a pair of tiny white beams struck the surface on the horizon, with barely any longevity. They were little flashes, like straight line lightning. She adjusted her gaze and followed them up into the sky, gulping when she saw the thousands of dark shapes with tiny flashes occurring between them that were the battling fleets. The cleansing beam strikes weren’t coming from them though, they were coming from higher up and another small shape, this one looking like a cigar.

Morgan checked her battlemap and blanched, seeing that the Sentinel had somehow repositioned directly over them, just holding outside the atmosphere in a geosync pseudo orbit…meaning it was sitting there mostly on antigrav, something that was hard for a mass of that size to do, let alone have enough power left for weapons.

But firing it was, sending down what appeared to be 6 or 7 different beams in rotating cycles and skewering the enemy warships with small bits of the energy punching clean through their hulls and falling to the surface. She hoped like hell the gunners were back checking their targets, not wanting one of the beams to hit a city…or her, but still the Scionate fleet didn’t run.

A warning popped up on her display, and she ran her mech off several hundred meters to the north ahead of a chunk of warship falling nearby. In fact it was heading very near the hoth, which was accelerating as much as it could to get some distance, now pointed back towards the city and nearly galloping, or at least as much as it mechanically could, with Morgan watching the falling object in its last stages on the battlemap and visually, guessing that the hoth wasn’t going to make it in time.

But then at the last second the bubble shield that was still deployed and touching the top of the perimeter wall expanded, maintaining the shape it was locked into but growing in size and expanding out over top the hoth like an umbrella at the last moment. The Scionate destroyer, or rather most of it, hit the shield and deflected, coming down on the ground some 100 meters past the hoth and creating one hell of an earthquake on impact.

Dust and debris flew everywhere, with a Scionate corpse bouncing off her neo as the cloud consumed her mech, with her losing her balance and falling forwards onto the ground. Morgan caught the mech with her hands forward, digging her stuck blade into the ground like it was hardly even there and waiting out the torrent while watching the battlemap for more falling pieces. The bubble shield shrank slowly as the hoth got closer to the city and Morgan followed it in, glad to have the cover and cursing Paul for his sloppiness. What the hell was he thinking bringing the orbital fight down into the atmosphere?

She knew it had been to slaughter the ground troops, which she was thankful for, but this debris dodging was downright insane, and she doubted the city shield could take a second hit like that without breaching.

As she was mentally cussing him out the battlemap saw the first of the enemy transports begin to lift off, apparently fully loaded. It wasn’t targeted by Paul’s fleet, which Morgan knew was probably by design. With the enemy retreating last thing you wanted to do was smoke their getaway car and force them back into combat against the cities…or at least she hoped that was his plan, though she didn’t want to interrupt him now to ask what was up, given the ruckus going on overhead.

It took a long while for the troops she’d just been fighting to make it back to their transports, but eventually they lifted off as well, with the enemy warships, or rather those still left, finally pulling back to cover the transports…with the Sentinel standing down along with the remaining drones as they allowed the Scionate survivors to pull out and leave uncontested.

After finding two of her mechwarriors buried under debris and recovering them, Morgan brought her mech inside the hold of one of the dropships that came out to retrieve her and the others, leaving the debris pickup to different teams. Once inside she tapped into the dropship external cams and got a good look at the once blue grasslands…now afire in multiple locations and dotted with what looked like chocolate chips that was ship debris, or in some cases entire ships.

It was a ghastly sight, but they’d managed to hold. Question was how much damage had been done inside the cities and what the Scionate were going to do now after this ass kicking, for they had far more troops and ships insystem than they’d deployed here.

6

July 19, 2534

Corvio System

Admat

Morgan picked up Paul’s mental signature a couple of hallways away before she crossed paths with him, her coming back into the command center and him coming out.

“We going back?” she asked, with the two of them stopping for a chat in the middle of the pedestrian traffic flow.

“As soon as you can pack. We have to take care of this now. We can’t wait on the others.”

“I agree. Just the three of us?”

“No one else can keep up.”

“Unfortunately,” Morgan echoed. “Grab plenty of senzu beans and I’ll meet you in the hangar in an hour?”

“Deal,” Paul said with the pair splitting and going their separate ways. He had to find Kara as well as do a little more homework. He’d already spent a few minutes running through their files on the Scionate, but he needed backup options and hadn’t gotten enough info for that so he eventually stopped by his quarters and downloaded what he needed on a datapad and brought it with him later when he went back to the hangar, this time allowing Morgan to drive while he read up.

“It seems we’ve greatly underestimated the Humans’ power,” Tem’lan mewed angrily in the audience chamber from his reclining pedestal as he and the other Chieftans watched the battle reports coming in via holo, with each using their own interface and screens to monitor the data streams they wanted with a single large map of the engagement zone displayed in the center where visitors normally stood. It was replaying various points of the failed assault as the Scionate leadership tried to comprehend what had gone wrong.

“You are repeating yourself,” Pra’nom said dismissively as he studied a personal display.

“I am reiterating the obvious. We cannot and should not launch another attack until we know the true strength of the Humans, no matter how wounded our pride is.”

“I concur,” Yen’sor said from Pra’nom’s left. “We lost so many in this attack and their Sentinel still stands. If we escalate this, even if we win we may suffer horrible losses.”

“And risk starting a full scale war with Star Force,” Jasnet added. “It’s not just the Humans, the Calavari are allied with them now. Our attempt at teaching them a lesson has failed, let us not make more of a mess of this.”

“What course of action would you suggest?” Ura’bor asked halfheartedly.

“I do not know the temperament of the Humans well enough to answer that.”

“Fairly stated,” Ura’bor conceded. “They have hidden many secrets from us, but this supersoldier of theirs concerns me the most,” he said, shifting his personal display to the main holo, showing crude images captured from afar of Kara fighting on the ground and attacking the transports in the air, plus a few images from when she was inside one laying waste to the troops waiting within.

“Note that,” Tem’lan interrupted before Ura’bor could continue, “this one stunned the troops initially, much like they did when they came here. It was we who escalated this to killing. We made a grave mistake in misreading their intentions. Their hesitancy was not weakness. I believe they were trying to teach us a lesson that we failed to grasp.”

“Which was?” Car’sem asked.

“They were warning us, and delivered the message personally so we would feel the effects and remember. We struck back like an arrogant child, not knowing who it was we were dealing with.”

Ura’bor growled. “I would dispute that if I could.”

“I still dispute it,” Pra’nom said, unrelenting. “The Humans are stronger than we thought, but their world is still ours for the taking if we act before they can draw reinforcements from other systems. We have far more troops here than they do, we simply need to send them and end this before it can escalate further. Honor demands that we finish what we started.”

“No matter the cost?” Tem’lan countered.

“It would be far worse not to,” Oru’ven said gravely. “We will lose the respect and fear of the other races if we walk away from this now.”

“We will lose millions of soldiers if we press this,” Tem’lan growled. “And I am not confident that we can even take their world. I believe we have been outplayed, and any further hasty action will only make the situation worse than it is now.”

“We cannot back down,” Ura’bor hissed as if Tem’lan was talking treason.

“We need a victory,” Tem’lan explained. “If we are unable to achieve one it would be best not to waste resources. What if they invade here after we bleed our defense fleet dry to take their world?”

“Tem’lan makes a good point,” Car’sem agreed. “They only struck us here to send a message. Now we have split their blood, though very little of it. If they react to that as we would, we may see a Human warfleet overhead in the coming days. I would not waste our defenses trying to destroy their Sentinel, which we will if it can move to intercept our ground troops. If it can hold the Cajdital at bay, we will be blooded taking it down.”

“Then we should recall more of our fleet to this system, regardless of what transpires,” Pra’nom suggested.

Several others nodded, seeing the wisdom in that.

“Agreed,” Ura’bor finalized. “Send courier ships while we study our new enemy in more detail. Our decision on what we do will wait until our blood is less hot with the sting of defeat. If we are to defeat this enemy, we must not underestimate them again.”

“Wise words,” Tem’lan agreed. “But there’s a possibility that we might not be able to defeat them at all.”

“We can,” the elder Scionate said confidently. “It’s simply a matter of discovering how best to do it.”

“A lot of movement,” Kara commented as they quietly reentered high orbit of Vaadsip, seeing warships moving about with a lot coming into the planet from the other Scionate worlds in the system.

“They’re not used to losing,” Morgan commented from the pilot’s seat. “I think we spooked them. Paul, you have a location for us yet?”

“Somewhere on the large southern continent.”

“There are no continents,” she said, referencing the obvious fact that there were no oceans to outline any.

“Look at the city distribution. They’re clumped into what look like continents.”

“Well that’s something then,” Morgan said, glancing up at Kara who was once again seated above them. “Is that enough for you to give me an approach vector?”

“Give me a minute, then I should have something.”

“Crowded?” Paul asked.

“Very,” Kara emphasized, “but there are always holes. It’s just a matter of finding them.”

Paul nodded, understanding her challenge as he turned his attention back to the datapad in his hand. They weren’t returning straight to the ruling den. Had they been out for blood that would have been the obvious place to go and just kill all the leaders, but that wasn’t the mission here and pissing off every single Scionate in the ADZ was a really bad idea. They needed another option, which Paul was currently searching for.

It took him another half hour but he was finally able to give Morgan and Kara a destination city situated a third of the distance around the planet from the capitol and only half as large. It took them a few hours to get through the traffic and down to it, once again coming down over the grasslands and creeping up on the perimeter detection sensors, limited as they were. Kara was able to sneak them inside rather easily, with them finding another parking space in the cluttered roofline…but even by then Paul wasn’t finished with his research.

“What’s the holdup?” Morgan asked after they’d set down.

“I’ve narrowed it down to two bloodlines, both of which have their central dens here. Picking which one is the problem, along with finding the right contact.”

“So you’re saying we’re not busting down the door this time?” Morgan asked sarcastically.

“Knocking gently, then picking the lock,” Paul responded, still scouring their records on Scionate society.

“Why not pay a visit to both?” Kara asked, coming down the ladder from above and standing on the small lower deck behind their seats.

“Because they’re drastically different, and I’m not sure which way we should go.”

“Enlighten us,” Morgan said, swiveling her seat around and leaning back.

Paul sighed. “The first is Wennitan. They’re very militant and have been at odds with the ruling bloodline over their reluctance to claim a place on the front lines fighting the lizards, Skarrons, or anyone else threatening the ADZ. We just killed a whole lot of their kin, so not sure how happy they’re going to be about that.”

“The second is Grisst. They’re brokers, playing Davis’s game and playing it well. They’re in agreement with the defensive assist policy that the ruling den has been using, preferring to wage war in the ADZ economically and keep their military as an ace in the hole. They’ve been an ally of Vensiol for several hundred years, but they’re considered to be the wisest and most farseeing of the bloodlines.”

“And the others?” Morgan asked.

“Less viable candidates, in my opinion, but you’re free to look through the data yourself.”

“I’ll take your word for it, but just remember that our files aren’t going to be the best.”

“I know, we’re going to have to play this by ear and possibly work through several bloodlines before we find an acceptable one. I’m just not sure where to start.”

“Start with the ally,” Kara suggested. “That way we can gage the level of discontent.”

Morgan shrugged. “Sounds fine to me. I just don’t want to waste time sitting here discussing it.”

Paul set the datapad down and pulled back on his black armored gloves, clicking them into the arms of his body armor before grabbing his helmet and sending Morgan and Kara the waypoint he’d already stored. “Let’s go.”

The three of them left the V’kit’no’sat gunship in the middle of the city’s night cycle, making it much easier to move around without attracting notice as they jumped from rooftop to rooftop with Kara keeping pace with them rather than flying off to do her own thing. The trio quietly made their way across the city to the location where the Grisst den was located…which was a good hike away from where they’d landed, for it was located in the densest part of the city and they’d had to park in a more industrial section with less eyes around.

The Grisst den was completely different than the ruling one. Instead of a sprawling, low level facility this one was a thick tower rising up above all the other buildings…save for three other similar towers marking rival dens, none of which were built directly next to one another. There were thousands of Scionate bloodlines, with most having their central dens on the capitol world, so there were plenty of options for the Archons to pick from, with Paul knowing they needed to talk to one that had roots and a powerbase on planet rather than one of the more powerful rivals/exiles that dominated other worlds in Scionate territory.

“Kara?” Paul asked as they stared at the far building across the city lights.

“I see several options. My choice would be a window two thirds of the way up.”

“Not exactly a quiet entrance,” Morgan commented.

“It will be,” Kara differed, “if you wait here for a few minutes.”

“Go,” Paul said, with her flying off across the night directly towards the building with the other two Archons following her with their HUD. She shrank to a dot that disappeared from view save for the zoom function that Morgan was using to follow her, though Paul knew Kara’s handiwork enough that he simply watched her tracking icon while keeping his focus on the surrounding cityscape.

“Sneaky little second gen, isn’t she?”

“No need for insults,” Paul countered dryly as he saw Kara starting to come back towards them. “She knows what she’s doing enough that I occasionally take notes.”

“High praise.”

“You’re just jealous she’s not part of your Clan,” Paul teased.

“About that. If you really want to make her a full trailblazer you need to give her her own Clan.”

Paul half choked. “Like hell I am. She’s a Saber and staying a Saber.”

Morgan smiled. “Like I said…second gen.”

“Alright, shut up. Don’t give her any ideas.”

Morgan laughed. “Has this come up before?”

“Not from her, no. But she’s too valuable to lose and you’ve got a perfectly legitimate point. So zip it.”

“We’re giving her one eventually then?”

“Honorary status has its limitations.”

“You’re so screwing her…or, are you screwing her?” Morgan asked curiously.

“Nah…I’m just interested in her jewelry,” he mocked a few seconds before Kara landed next to them.

“All set,” she reported. “You riding single or buddy?”

“You can handle both of us?” Morgan asked.

“I can carry a skeet if I have to. You guys weigh far less than that.”

“Let’s not waste time then,” Morgan said as Kara turned around and spread her arms out into a ‘T’ with each trailblazer grabbing hold of one of them at her elbow and reaching around with their other arm to get a double wrist lock that they held at a 30ish degree angle down, giving Kara two passengers, one on either side of her that kept her balanced.

“Ready?”

“Good.”

“Good,” Paul echoed, with Kara connecting to both them via battlemeld to enhance their balance and grip as she lifted up into the air a meter or so feeling their weight drag her arms down slightly, but her own strength was supplemented by the powered nature of the Vorch’nas armor, allowing her to remain in the ‘T’ as she started to fly them across with both trailblazers holding on with her elbows buried in their chests and their legs dangling freely.

Kara couldn’t fly nearly as fast, but the trip across the sky wasn’t painfully long. They got across without drawing any alarm and came up on the window that Kara had previously cut open with delicate ease, leaving it in place but still severed. When she got within a dozen meters of it she reeled back her right arm and threw Morgan towards it, pulling the pane out telekinetically a moment prior to the striker ducking through it and landing inside, falling into a somersault and coming up in sentry position, heading for the nearest door in the empty and unlit room.

Kara got a bit closer then tossed Paul through, coming in last herself while hovering the two meter wide circle of clear polymer back into position, with the seam nearly disappearing given how fine of a cut Kara had made. She walked up to it and welded it back in place at a couple of spots to make sure it wouldn’t fall out, leaving their entry point nearly undetectable…at least until someone came around to wash the windows and saw the small crack.

“Where to?” Morgan asked when no new waypoint popped up in her HUD from Paul.

“Kara, find somewhere to hack in. I need you to get a building layout and search for a few names.”

The red scale-clad Archon looked around, seeing through the walls with her Pefbar and sighting a fiber bundle. She walked over to that portion of the wall and punched inside it, grabbing the comm/computer fiber in her armored hand and linking into it with the tiny hacking tendrils.

“I’m in.”

Paul responded by rattling off a list of names from his HUD, with Kara throwing up waypoints for each one as she found them, giving the trio potential locations for them to be found, some being personal dens and others work areas.

“Hold on,” Kara said a moment later. “Number 1 on your list just logged onto a terminal,” she said, isolating the location within the building and throwing Paul a priority waypoint marked as 62 levels below them in the same quadrant of the building.

“There’s timing,” Morgan commented.

“Best route,” Paul asked, with Kara giving them three options with one highlighted, indicating a vertical shaft buried within the walls.

“Nice,” Morgan said, walking to the door and taking a look outside with her Pefbar as the trio got ready to move. “Looks clear, but let’s let the shadow go first just the same.”

“My pleasure,” Kara said, her scales disappearing into a null void shadow that really did disappear within the dark room, then became ‘visible’ again as she opened the door and walked out into the hall, more optical illusion than silhouette.

7

Ken’slan pawed the button, scrolling to the next report on the fighting on Admat, limited as they were. He had access to more information than the news kiosks, but still he was getting an incomplete picture of what was happening. Suddenly the Scionate had decided to invade the Star Force world, and from the pieces that he was pulling together the leader of the Grisst bloodline was coming to the unlikely conclusion that they had actually lost…and lost badly, but no official reports had made their way to the public as of yet, which was unusual, for as a race the Scionate fiercely supported one another. When one went into combat, all did, at least from a moral standpoint, thus news of battles was not meant to be suppressed.

The news Ken’slan was getting was fresh, but something of the launch of the attack should have been made public, with all the notice he got being a copy of the military orders forwarded to him by members of his own bloodline on the ships and in the ground forces that had been hastily dispatched.

The quadruped went to step on the button again, but suddenly his limb froze up, as did the rest of his body as he went stiff and unable to move. A sickly feeling crept through him as he was paralyzed, then panic broke out as he saw a biped figure walk into his gaze, recognizing the telltale Archon armor that Star Force used.

“Calm yourself,” Morgan said, taking off her helmet as she stood in front of him a couple of meters and stared down into his fixed eyes across the console. “We’re here to talk, not to fight…at least not yet. I will release you, but if you flee or attempt an alarm I’ll immobilize you again. Understand?”

Ken’slan couldn’t answer, but a moment later his body returned to his control and he took an involuntary step back into a combat crouch…which was when he noticed two more Humans behind him. He half looked back at them, then eased up slightly, but he was still ready to pounce if needed.

“What did you do to me?” he growled.

“We have abilities that others do not,” Morgan said evasively. “Get used to it.”

Ken’slan’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you here?”

“Vensiol has to go, one way or another. We’re offering you the chance to do it yourselves before we’re forced to do it.”

Ken’slan didn’t reply, but just stared into the Human’s pale face. “Tell me what has happened on your world. I only have pieces of information.”

Morgan crossed her arms over her chest, black armor rubbing against itself with a whisper of a scrape. “The Scionate violated the terms of colonization. Meat farms were established outside the ADZ and you’ve been smuggling it in trying to avoid detection. We found out and are even now putting a stop to it on other Scionate worlds. The three of us came here the other day to deliver a message and a warning to your leaders that such violations would not be tolerated. We delivered it personally to the Chieftans, leaving a few injuries as a reminder but killing no one. I doubt you missed the spectacle?”

Ken’slan growled again, more at what the Human was saying than as a threat. “I am aware that there was a disturbance, but nothing has been said of it officially. Our troops were summoned to battle and little has been mentioned of it since.”

Morgan looked to Paul. “So much for our big demonstration.”

The other trailblazer sent her a telepathic question, letting her handle the meet and greet.

“Your troops,” Morgan continued, “were sent to our world where they launched an invasion and subsequently got a lot of themselves killed. We lost some people, which is something we cannot let pass. We’d prefer not to have to conquer your entire civilization, but we will if we have to. We’re here to seek another option, one that has your bloodline replacing Vensiol.”

Ken’slan wanted to hiss in defiance of what would essentially be treason, but he held his composure and considered what the Human was saying, still unnerved by its ability to take control of his own body away from him, but with a growing anger at the leading bloodline if the Human’s claims were even half true.

“If you have slain Scionate blood, you will have blood in return.”

Morgan pointed a finger at his blunt muzzle. “We came here to break bone and flesh, but we did not kill. We also wanted to show you that we are not incapable of enforcing the terms of colonization,” she said, hacking into his mind again and forcing the Scionate to sit on the floor and look up at him, unable to do anything but watch. “Your leaders didn’t get the message,” she added, finally releasing him.

Ken’slan stood up again, angry, but wise enough to continue to listen. “There were rumors floating around from the incident at the den, but we dismissed them as the ravings of those who had failed to acquit their duties.”

“Not rumors,” Morgan said, telekinetically lifting him into the air on her own accord without having to link with Paul for extra power. Ken’slan’s eyes went wide with shock and horror at his own helplessness, and Morgan let him paw the air for several seconds allowing that to sink in.

“If we wanted you dead, you would be,” she said simply, then lowered him down and released her grip. “You’re supposed to be our allies. It’s time you started acting like it. Either you fix your empire or we will, and we don’t have a lot of time to offer you. We have to deal with Vensiol quickly before an interstellar war erupts between Star Force and the Scionate. You would lose that war, but it would be costly enough to us that it could jeopardize the safety of the ADZ…and if we have to go to those lengths to rectify the situation, your race will lose your sovereignty as a consequence.”

This time Ken’slan did growl reflexively, then thought better of it and began thinking…hard and fast.

“Are you certain that we spilt blood first?”

“The first blood was on our world when you invaded it, though technically Scionate died before Humans did because your people fought stupidly. We were forced to slaughter hundreds of thousands of them in order to defend ourselves, perhaps millions. The actual number we are uncertain of, but it was on our world that your people were assaulting. Your fleet began by destroying a defense platform in orbit. It was unmanned, though I’m not sure if they knew it or not. We didn’t start this fight, but we did finish it…and now we have to truly finish it before it escalates. If your bloodline is unwilling to take the lead then we will find another, and another, and another until we run out of candidates or simply grow bored from looking and decide to do things the hard way.”

“You keep repeating that threat as if it is your preferred choice.”

“No, I keep repeating it because we said the same thing to your leaders and they ignored it. This is the Scionate’s last chance to regain their honor and fix their own problem before we have to do it for them…and on our terms, which I can guarantee that you will not like. You are independent, and with that privilege comes responsibilities.”

“So it does,” he finally agreed. “But you will find that Scionate do not respond well to bullying.”

“Humans don’t respond well to oathbreakers.”

Ken’slan hissed. “Nor do we. If your claims are true then there is an accounting that must take place here, but I will not take your word for it. I must see it for myself.”

“Kara?”

Ken’slan turned when he heard the faint whisper of footsteps behind him. The one Human that wasn’t dressed in traditional armor walked up next to the Scionate, seemingly unphased by the combat threat that he was, and nudged him aside to get her arm to his console…whereupon it began to malfunction, shutting off and reactivating with new displays and a wealth of information.

“See for yourself then,” Morgan said, pointing down at the images as Kara retreated back to her waiting position with Paul as the two made sure to keep any visitors out with subtle Jedi mind tricks being played on anyone that approached in the exterior hallway to keep them walking past and forgetful of the door that led to this chamber. “Data from the meat farm and the interrogation of the pseudo-independent group running them, their link to the Scionate, and a full copy of the battle data from yesterday.”

“Your technological edge has been severely underestimated,” he said with annoyance as he stepped forward and started looking through the images, statistics, and reports written in the trade language, knowing that this might be part propaganda as well, but he was curious and the Humans didn’t seem to be in a mind to take ‘no’ for an answer.

Still on edge with the Humans’ presence, Ken’slan searched through the records from the farm, seeing that most of the individuals involved were not Scionate, as the Human had indicated. A few were, but they were rogues and not part of the empire’s forces…but it was the linkage between the organization and its employers that was damning, as was the records of where they had been shipping the meat and to whom.

The Scionate had not liked the meatless edict that Star Force had imposed on the ADZ originally, but they had agreed to it like the others and now their youngest generation had lived their entire lives without eating meat, which was becoming the norm even for Ken’slan. Though he still craved the taste of it, even he now admitted it was a dishonorable practice. That hadn’t always been the case, but since it had been forced on them he’d gained a new perspective and was now in agreement with Star Force…though not nearly as passionate about it.

What their records indicated was that the Scionate leadership had organized special privileges for favored individuals to get the meat shipments. While the Humans were probably unaware of the significance of the locations the meat was being shipped to Ken’slan was not, and right then and there his allegiance to Vensiol ended. Grisst had reluctantly worked with them in the past because they appeared mostly level headed and honorable, but the kind of backroom dealing these records implied…and there was no way the Humans could have faked them without knowing the inner relationships between the bloodlines…was dishonorable.

If one had a dispute then one aired it out. Likewise, if one made a pact, they didn’t do so in secret…let alone say one thing to one group and say the contrary to others. Truth, forthrightness, and leadership went hand in hand, with Vensiol now leading the Scionate down the path of dishonor along with several other bloodlines that Grisst vehemently hated…and to top it off, they’d offered them the meat and not Ken’slan. Perhaps they knew he would have objected to it or the betrayal of the oath they took when moving their race to the ADZ, but regardless these records showed that Vensiol had made a number of secret pacts, ostensibly to keep themselves in power when their leadership ability became insufficient.

An honorable bloodline would have stepped aside and let another with more skill tailored to the present challenges their race faced take the lead…but this farming activity was incontrovertible proof that they’d become greedy and disrespectful to the duties of leadership, and for that alone they had to be removed.

Ken’slan kept that revelation out of his face as he shifted over to the battle records, seeing the sudden and violent assault on Admat unedited and reconciling the disparate reports he’d been getting in. He saw his people attacking with great power and forthrightness, as was proper, then, like a giant beast waking from its sleep, Star Force rose up to meet the challenge and slew them with such efficiency and ease that it galled Ken’slan to be standing next to them now.

What made it worse was that they were in the right. Many of his brothers and sisters had died in an unjust battle that the Vensiol had ordered simply to assuage their own pride, which Ken’slan also saw, from the Human’s perspective, as there was helmet cam video from their ‘warning’ to the leading bloodline.

The way these two, for he assumed they were the same pair, had gone about it had been greatly insulting to the Scionate there…and he wholeheartedly agreed with their approach, and their restraint. Had Ken’slan done the same there would have been deaths involved, but that was different, considering it was an internal matter. For the Humans to come here and physically assault the Scionate leadership, well, they had done so in an honorable manner. In fact, they’d done it perfectly, given that they were in the right, and Ken’slan now saw that they’d done so as a favor.

Star Force was their ally, and they’d dealt with the Scionate in a friendly manner. Warrior to warrior. They’d given them a chance to make amends, and what did Vensiol do? They’d doubled down and increased their dishonor…and in the process had gotten many loyal Scionate soldiers killed in a battle that should not have happened, and one where they were in the wrong.

That ate at Ken’slan more than anything, and even though he hadn’t personally taken part in the battle he felt just as guilty.

“How many of your people were killed?”

“A few hundred,” Morgan answered.

“You have my deepest apologies,” Ken’slan answered genuinely. “We were in the wrong, and Vensiol is to blame. You are correct, they must be removed.”

“Glad we’re in agreement,” Morgan answered, already having known what he was going to say, having been snooping on his thoughts the entire time he was reviewing the records. “Now how do we go about doing it?”

“We shall handle this ourselves,” the Scionate said with a growl so deep Morgan could literally feel his shame. “It will be bloody, but that must be our penance. We will make amends with your people at a later time, if you will allow it.”

“Let’s do so right now,” Morgan offered. “This is personal for us as well, in so far as the Chieftans are concerned. We’re going back there and taking them down personally…and we can do it without a bloodbath. Same way we did the first time. But we need you to step in and take over control immediately,” she emphasized. “And we don’t need your permission to do so, but you can make amends by giving us your blessing.”

Ken’slan and Morgan stared at each other for a long moment, then the middle-aged Scionate bowed his head respectfully. “Your wisdom is as sharp as your martial skill. I agree and give you my blessing, but to do so it cannot be done with a simple word. I must accompany and fight alongside you.”

Morgan frowned. “No offense, but you’ll slow us down.”

“I am not helpless,” Ken’slan growled, his pride pricked.

“If you come with us,” the other Human spoke from behind, “who will lead your bloodline in the takeover that follows?”

Ken’slan turned to face the other in identical armor, though his helmet still remained on so he couldn’t see his face, but he knew it from the recording he’d just watched none the less.

“How much time can you give me to prepare?”

Paul considered that, discussing it with Morgan briefly though a telepathic link.

“At most two days. We have to settle this soon before another attack can be launched.”

“I will not require more than 5 hours,” Ken’slan said stoically. “You may remain here until then if you wish, as our guests, or go on your way. I will inform security of your presence and they will shield you against outside aggression…on their lives if necessary.”

“Kara?” Morgan asked.

“Right, I’ll grab the car keys and be back in a flash,” she said, walking out the door and disappearing into shadow.

“We will bring our small ship here,” Morgan said. “I assume you have a hangar?”

“I will make arrangements.”

“Just make sure they don’t touch it. It’s kind of sentimental to us,” Morgan warned.

“As you wish. With your permission I will leave now?” Ken’slan asked half serious, half sarcasm…with Morgan appreciating the second.

“So long as you are honorable, you have no need to fear us,” she said with double-edged meaning.

“That I shall remember,” Ken’slan said, turning around and walking out the door that Kara had left through quickly, leaving Paul and Morgan behind.

“If he’s faking he’s doing a remarkable job of it,” Paul commented.

“We got through to him,” Morgan said confidently. “I just don’t like the idea of fighting with him alongside. We’re going to have to protect him, and that’s going to slow us down.”

“Or…” Paul said with a smirk.

Morgan didn’t catch his drift immediately, but when she did she couldn’t help but smile. “Let Kara do it?”

“Exactly.”

“I like it…but she won’t.”

“I’ll trade off with her when she needs to do some heavy lifting. Shield boy and all.”

“So I’m free?”

“To constantly kick ass, yes.”

Morgan shrugged. “Works for me then. Just make sure grampa kitty doesn’t get smoked. He is going to wear armor, I hope.”

“We’ll insist that he does,” Paul said as he sensed a flurry of minds approaching, none of them Ken’slan’s. “Company?”

Morgan stretched out and searched one of their minds. “Anxious, not angry,” she said a moment before the Scionate security came through the door, all of which were wearing ceremonial armor in their bloodline colors, which in the case of Grisst were a combination of orange and yellow, whereas total yellow was reserved to represent the Scionate as a whole.

Six of the cats came into the room and looked the two Humans over, half encircling them before respectfully sitting on their hind legs. “We have been assigned as your escorts,” one of them said.

Paul glanced over at Morgan. “Nice to have friends.”

8

“Are you certain?”

“Yes,” Ken’slan said, pressing a button that he’d previously configured to send the data given to him by the Humans in a single packet form. “You may see for yourself, but there is little time. I have told them that we will be ready within hours.”

The Scionate on the other end of the private holo transmission glanced at something off screen, then looked back at his peer. “I trust your word, for I do not think this is something you would fabricate. I will have the data analyzed later, but if what you say is true then there is no dispute from us. Vensiol must be removed. The question that remains is who is to replace them?”

“Grisst will not seek that placement,” Ken’slan said stoically. “We have wronged the Humans greatly, and must pay a penance. They are honorable warriors, and I concede that we were wrong in not supporting them to a greater degree. I believe we are honor-bound to do so now and take up a significant role on the front lines of the ADZ. Since we have been one of those arguing against such a move, it would be improper for us to lead such an effort.”

Jen’ton raised his head slightly, clearly taken by surprise. “That I did not expect to hear from you. Are the others of your bloodline in concurrence?”

“I have not had time to inform most of them, but the key members are in agreement. We have little time and must act quickly, and Grisst will support Wennitan as ruling bloodline so long as you remain honorable, abide by the Humans’ terms of colonization, and aid in the defense of the ADZ militarily…much as you’ve already proposed.”

“I am humbled by your wisdom, Ken’slan, and your willingness to put the needs of our race above the ambitions of your bloodline.”

“I expect the same from Wennitan.”

“And you shall have it,” their bloodline leader growled anxiously. “But I do not know how many troops I can assemble within hours. I need at least a day, if not a week, to make the necessary preparations in order to assure a quick and effective transfer of power. If we move within hours we risk a failed coup.”

Ken’slan shook his head. “That will not be necessary. The Humans are going to assault the ruling den, with my blessing. We need only to secure the transition of power.”

Jen’ton seemed taken aback. “This is an internal matter. If blood is to split it must be by our hands only.”

“They have assured me that their efforts will be bloodless, much like a similar assault they mounted the other day. Information about such has been suppressed considerably. If you look quickly, you will see visual recordings from the Humans’ armor included in the data packet.”

Jen’ton frowned, pulling up and opening the packet file and searching for what Ken’slan had mentioned. He’d heard rumors of an incident at the ruling den, as well as getting a few firsthand accounts from members of his bloodline that had been highly exaggerated, but this was the first he had heard of any Human involvement.

“Mother of all youngbloods,” he said, seeing the combat recordings of the battle in the plaza first.

“These Humans with me are far more powerful than we have ever encountered before,” Ken’slan explained as the other bloodline leader was glued to the footage. “And they demonstrated some of their powers on me, here, not long ago. They are either concealing abnormally advanced tech or are some form of witches. I do not know which, but they were able to take control of my body, imprisoning me within it as they began to explain the situation. I cannot tell you how they accomplished this, but I am convinced that they are here for honor’s sake and have the means to breach the ruling den’s defenses at will.”

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing…or seeing, but I know that you are no liar. Is this how they were able to slaughter our people on their world?”

“I do not know, but I get the feeling that only their advanced warriors have these powers. Otherwise our ground troops would have been frozen in place unable to fight…which is a terrifying thought going forward.”

“Unless they can do this to the Cajdital as well,” Jen’ton commented, thinking of various applications.

Ken’slan bowed his head. “It is for reasons such as that that your bloodline is better suited to lead us given the present circumstances.”

“Assume I agree to the Human assault. What exactly are you asking of us in the coming hours?”

“Both our bloodlines must have people in place to secure those the Humans’ render unconscious. I would prefer not to kill them, but we cannot let them rise or flee to begin a larger conflict. This must be done swiftly and be contained. I need your security, ours, and as many other bloodlines that we can muster to surround the ruling den while we fight our way inside and deal with the Chieftans.”

“You are personally fighting with the Humans?”

“Just myself. The rest of my people will be waiting on the perimeter. As you said, this is a Scionate matter. I cannot let the Humans act alone, nor will I send a subordinate.”

“I envy you that,” Jen’ton said candidly. “If my body were not so weakened with age I would very much like to accompany you. I will send a surrogate if you will allow it?”

“I will not,” Ken’slan said firmly. “Our bloodline’s alliance with Vensiol was a mistake. It is only right that we should be the ones removing them. That way there can be no rumors suggesting that we are working on your behalf. Grisst will remove Vensiol with the Humans, then we will step aside for Wennitan to rule.”

“Bold for a Grisst.”

“We are not so stagnant as you imagine. We simply prefer to make sure a fight is righteous before we show our claws.”

“Well stated, my old adversary. I am pleased we are finally in agreement. I will round up as many of my kin as I can. How long do I have?”

“3 hours before we depart.”

Jen’ton huffed. “Not much time, but I will not waste a moment of it. We will be ready,” he said, signing off so he could get to work immediately.

Ken’slan remained at his private comm terminal, opening up another line to the next honorable bloodline on his short list while his own people were hastily making preparations for the assault, with Grisst’s other leaders handling the various aspects in his stead to maximize time. They had been reluctant and even disbelieving two hours ago when he’d woke them and brought this to their attention, but between his assurances and the data from the Humans they had consented to the overthrow and were now working hard to make it happen before Vensiol could discover the plot and take action to thwart it.

Six hours later a Grisst transport rolled up to the edge of the plaza around the ruling den but stopping short from driving out onto it. The doors opened up and Ken’slan jumped out, wearing full combat armor, and sniffed the air through his helmet vents. He drew immediate attention, for the armor was in Grisst colors and not the yellow of the hundreds of troops surrounding the den in a permanent, yet relaxed defense deployment amongst the milling crowds.

Passersby immediately took notice, then even more did so as he roared, amplified by the speakers in his armor, drawing the attention of everyone on the street and those closest on the plaza. He took three steps forward and stood staring at the ruling den complex ahead as the three Humans stepped out of the transport behind him…to the dismay of those around. They walked up and flanked him, one on the left, one on the right, and the oddly armored one behind, then Ken’slan began walking forward, with the crowds and other traffic vehicles giving them a very wide berth, but not willing to take their eyes off them.

The guards around the den immediately went on alert, for most of them had fought the Humans the other day and knew what threat they posed…despite the news suppression Vensiol had worked to keep the rest of the city and planet in the dark as to what had truly happened. Some of the surrounding denizens also knew the truth and took up safe perches wherever they could, wanting to stay far away from the Humans but also wanting to know what was happening…and why one of their own was leading them here, which also forestalled any attacks from the crowd, futile as those would have been.

When Ken’slan stepped onto the outskirts of the plaza the onlookers had already pulled back, letting the troops form a solid mass ahead of the foursome, blocking their way to the den while calling for more reinforcements. Ken’slan knew not to waste time, so for a brief moment he retracted his helmet so everyone could see who he was, then spoke as loud as he could without it becoming a scream.

“I am Ken’slan of Grisst. Vensiol has acted with dishonor and must be removed!” he said, running forward as his helmet reformed over his head and dropping into a combat sprint headed towards the nearest of the troops.

Morgan and Paul flanked him, with Kara running behind a few steps before launching herself up into the air and hanging some ten meters above Ken’slan while traveling in a forward arc, whereupon she opened up her wrist weapons and rained down two conical jets of tiny Dre’mo’don blasts, showering the troops ahead of him and ripping off their shields before switching over to the pale green stun energy and doing the same. 40+ of the Scionate dropped to the ground unconscious as Ken’slan got to them, with him lithely hopping over the fallen and heading towards the nearest one still standing.

Kara zipped forward and repeated the process from the air, mowing down the mass of guards while leaving Paul and Morgan to pick up the pieces, with Paul sticking close to Ken’slan should he need assistance.

Once the large groups were incapacitated Kara dropped back down to the ground and took it to the scattering of troops hand to hand, punching/stunning them into submission along with the other two Archons while Ken’slan seemed content to beat his own kin hand to hand without using his plasma weapon, and was doing a fair job of it so long as Paul kept them from ganging up on him.

Within 2 minutes the mass of troops was subdued, leaving an awkward moment of silence as the surrounding crowds looked on with a mix of shock, horror, and confusion as Ken’slan roared again and Kara flew up into the air in front of the main doors, pausing momentarily to summon up a small green/white orb that she then sent into the seam between them. It melted a hole straight through, which she flew over to and pried open by hand, finally using her shoulder and legs to force the doors apart, breaking the repaired components that were keeping them locked into place as a hail of yellow plasma blasts hit her from the infantry inside…ineffectually.

Morgan came through and bowled them aside with a concussive blast, clearing the way for Paul and Ken’slan to enter while she pushed ahead. Kara dropped down behind them and pulled the doors back together as much as she could, leaving a 4 inch gap where she could no longer get a fingerhold and following Ken’slan from behind as an honor guard while Paul ran ahead and took down what little Morgan dropped enroute to the first main intersection in the hallways.

There the two Archons split up and went on a stunning spree, leaving Kara with Ken’slan as they worked their way through a different section of the den, taking down all those who they came across with the Scionate being little more than a tagalong…though Kara did let him beat down those that weren’t much of a threat to give him something to do.

The three Archons kept in contact via battlemeld and comm when they were otherwise out of range, intent on keeping the Scionate away from the exits and confined to the den while they worked through their stun slaughter, though they did have to rush to various points to head off several evacuation efforts, forcing the leadership to flee once again to other areas, trying to avoid the Humans that they knew were coming even as they called for heavy reinforcements on the outside.

Some of the Vensiol bloodline managed to make it out of the building through the back entrances, all lower ranking members, who fled across the plaza ring and ran into a barricade of multi-colored armored security forces from a number of different bloodlines.

“Stand down and surrender,” one of them demanded of the three unarmored Scionate skidding to a halt on the street ahead of them as they met up with the line of armor not allowing them to pass. One of them froze in place as ordered, but the other two turned and ran, with four of the armored Scionate jumping out and sprinting after them, setting up a chase that went across half of the plasma before one of the armored ones fired a tiny needle/dart into the back of the neck of the slower of the two. It injected a numbing agent on contact, taking a number of seconds to enter the bloodstream but almost immediately slowing the fleeing Vensiol and allowing a takedown to be made.

With one of the armored Scionate standing atop the now disconcerted one and claiming it as a prisoner, the others tracked down the second and fired a similar needle/dart with identical consequences. Gripping either one by the neck, the bloodline security soldiers pulled their captives over their backs and walked off with them, clearing the plaza and taking them to nearby transports where the dopey prisoners were properly restrained and shipped off as soon as each hover vehicle was full, clearing out the Vensiol opposition a few at a time as their military reinforcements began to arrive.

Those few that came by street were stopped by the security, resulting in some nasty fighting that ultimately saw the overthrowers winning out, but the bulk of the reinforcements came by air in the form of transports flying in over the courtyard and landing hundreds of fresh troops that moved into the den, having been kept on standby for just this sort of situation after the first attack that had thoroughly overwhelmed their defenses.

This time though they had Kara to deal with, which kept the perimeter guards’ attempted delay at a minimum, meaning that once again the Humans had managed to get inside and the reinforcements would have to go in after them. When they landed there was no hesitation, despite what they knew of the Humans’ capabilities. They eventually managed to pull open the main doors despite Kara’s handiwork, as well as moving in through the auxiliary entrances, flooding the den with troops outfitted with heavy weaponry and accoutrements…basically anything and everything they thought they’d need to counter the Humans, including grapple nets and other nonlethal gadgets meant to at least slow them down long enough to shoot them.

That gave Morgan and Paul more than enough targets to satiate the two Archons, who were both eager for a personalized beatdown after fighting the recent battle from afar…more so for Paul, but Morgan being confined to a mech cockpit just didn’t have the same satisfaction as taking it to them commando style. Fueled with plenty of senzu beans between them and an understanding of the layout and the Scionate combat preferences from the first assault, the pair wove their way around the complex solo, mowing down the opposition like they were hunting targets in a videogame for points, actually going after the reinforcements as they came in rather than playing defense and trying to avoid them.

All the while Kara stayed with Ken’slan as they did their own fair share of the takedowns, with her stunning those that he beat into submission while slowly working their way around a different section of the den from the other two and eventually ending up at the audience chamber…which they found empty. The Chieftans had been smart enough not to try and hide here twice, but Ken’slan suspected he knew where they were and led Kara across the complex to a ladder shaft that led down to the lowest levels where a sacred display of relics from Scionate history resided…and a place that was off limits to combat in any form.

Ken’slan wasn’t about to break with that tradition, but suspected the cowards were hiding there and led Kara down to it, electing to stay outside the entrance when the Human told him that there were indeed people inside, somehow having scanned the interior with her formidable, yet tiny armor.

“I cannot go in. There is too much history in that place for combat to occur. No Scionate will enter, if they have their honor, and risk the relics…or the affront.”

“I’m not Scionate,” Kara pointed out.

“Exactly,” Ken’slan said with devious pleasure. “But please, try not to break anything. Drag them out here and I will deal with the Chieftans personally.”

“Easy enough,” Kara said, quietly pulling open and slipping through the doors as if she was a patron at a museum rather than a goddess of war pursuing enemies.

9

When Kara walked inside she saw a long hall with statues and other displays along the walls, as well as a few running down a center aisle. She took the left side and walked ahead, sensing where the various minds where and seeing that they’d split up and were hiding in different locations, spread around a large ring. That ring turned out to be a square of hallways that connected to the entrance corridor forming a large key shape with rooms on the interior and exterior.

It was in those rooms that the Scionate were hiding. When Kara came up to the first one she opened the door, mentally freezing the one inside that was ready to pounce and casually shooting it with a stun blast. She walked over and picked up its limp body, swung the big, unarmored cat over her shoulders and walked out, made a right, walked some more, made another right, and headed back up the entry corridor to the entrance.

She stepped outside and walked over to where Ken’slan was waiting and dumped Yen’sor at his feet. “One down, 35 to go.”

“35?” he asked, none too gently poking a paw into the unconscious Scionate’s ribs.

“I did a quick head count. There are no other exits, correct?”

“Not that I am aware of, no.”

“Good,” she said, turning around. “I’ll be back with more.”

“Thank you, Human.”

“My pleasure,” Kara said from behind her armor’s scales that covered her face as well as the rest of her body. Then she ducked inside again to fetch another one.

Ken’slan looked down at Yen’sor, a Vensiol he knew well from previous dealings, and whispered at his unconscious face. “You are lucky the Humans took you alive. Had we done this ourselves, you and your kin would most likely not have survived.”

He reached down as he retracted his own armor’s helmet, then bit Yen’sor around the neck in a carry and dragged him over to the side just before Kara brought out another.

“Place him here,” he instructed, with her tossing the heavy Scionate to the ground as if he weighed nothing. How someone so small could exude so much strength was awe inspiring, though he guessed it had something more to do with technology than muscle.

He reached down and bit Har’man, dragging him over to the position he wanted as Kara retreated inside to get the next one, which was when the Scionate heard sounds of combat nearby. He reactivated his helmet, which extended out from his neckline and wrapped around his face, then he ran backwards a bit to see what was happening and encountered a pair of soldiers coming his way.

He growled and leapt at them, firing a plasma blast into one’s shield to weaken it before he head-butted the rest of the defensive barrier into shambles. With it down and the soldier disoriented he pawed his face aside so hard that the bigger cat bounced into the wall as he turned on the other. Those two went at it for several seconds before the other one got himself on his feet and lunged at Ken’slan, knocking him down and shooting him in the chest.

The Grisst reactivated his shield just in time to catch it, then turned it off again so that the paw blows to come wouldn’t drain energy…and old tactic that these young ones apparently had never been taught. Next thing they knew Ken’slan was back on his feet, crouched low to the ground, then he waited for them to move. When one jumped on him he leapt up towards it, attempting an undercut, but a blur of red passed him and punched both soldiers back down the hallway so hard and fast that they were immediately stunned and crumpled on the ground, unresponsive for a long moment.

Kara raised an arm and shot both of them with the stun energy, letting it sink through their shieldless armor and into their bodies, putting them out for at least an hour, if not more.

“I am glad we are not facing off as enemies on the battlefield,” Ken’slan said graciously as Kara came back to him…then she did a double take and turned the other way with little more than a nod of response.

She ran around the far corner, turning right and flying down a few dozen meters to where she kicked into a mass of Scionate heading their way, sending one of them back like a bowling ball through the others before going Neo on the rest of them and physically beating their shields down before landing punch/shots of stun into the 26 of them…with Ken’slan coming around the corner to witness only the last few before it was only her remaining standing.

“Come on,” she said, bypassing him and heading back to the relic chamber. “These guys are just a distraction.”

“For you, perhaps,” he said, following her back with lopey strides but again refusing to enter the chamber, instead turning about and playing guard should any more soldier make their way to them.

When Kara entered again she noticed that some of the mental positions had changed, and so did she…intending to just stun them all with one go-around then haul them out one by one. She headed for the closest one on the left and began to work her way around the square, eventually coming to a group of five hidden within a small room on the interior 90 degrees around the square. Freezing five minds at once was tricky, so instead she just hit them all with a Fornax field and walked in to find them lying on the floor, maintaining the field while she stunned them all.

On the way out she paused, noticing a particular relic that she could have swore was Cloud’s sword from Final Fantasy VII. She shook off the notion, realizing that some of these relics must have been trophies from past conquests, for that sword thing definitely couldn’t have been used by a quadruped with no hands.

Kara made a right and continued around the square, coming across a pair of armored guards along with one of the Chieftans, all three of which she left where they lay until she’d finished with the rest. When she came back to pick them up, she took the unarmored one first and dumped him outside at Ken’slan’s feet, with the Scionate recognizing Ura’bor and pulling his counterpart off to the side, separate from the others.

Kara eventually finished bringing them all out, with Ken’slan dismissing a pile of them as not being Chieftans, which the Human then moved to another area as Paul came up to them.

“Tag,” he said, mentally transmitting an image of hundreds of troops pouring into the complex.

Kara reached out her hand and fist-bumped Paul as she passed, knowing that she was better suited to dealing with such large numbers than he was.

Paul walked over to Ken’slan and inspected the haul of prisoners.

“Did we get them all?”

“There are 2 missing. I do not know if they are in the den or not, but their leader is here,” Ken’slan said, motioning with his nose to where he had Ura’bor laid. “How long will they remain unconscious?”

“Depends on how much stun Kara gave them. I would guess a few hours, but we need to restrain them before that.”

“We will need my security for that.”

“They’ll have to wait a bit,” Paul said, flinching as he sensed another group of soldiers moving nearby. “There are too many troops around for them to get through.”

“Can you handle them?”

“Given time, yes.”

“Then go…I will remain with these.”

“Alright, I’ll go hunting in the immediate area, but I’ll stick close in case a few slip by.”

“I can handle a few,” Ken’slan said stoically. “Help the others.”

Paul nodded and ran off, extending his Ikrid range as far as it could go and keeping it there like his personal radar, striking out towards the nearest minds while staying close enough to keep a lock on Ken’slan. It was tricky to do while fighting, but he’d had enough practice in training that he could now slip into that mode without much conscious effort.

He didn’t like the limited range he had to fight within, but it was much better than standing next to his ward while the other two fought the Scionate troops, though he had to be careful to stay within sprinting range to get back to shield Ken’slan in time, barely making it twice and intercepting the enemy infantry before they got to him…both times in which the troops had approached from the opposite side where his detection range was shorter.

Paul continued his hunter runs, clogging up the hallways with stunned troops and nearly running himself out of replacement clips before Morgan signaled that the counterassault was over. He returned to Ken’slan, informing him of the temporary cease in fighting, whereupon the bloodline leader called in his security and those allied with him using the comm in his armor…with hundreds of multi-colored armored cats arriving and taking custody of the prisoners, most of which they had to strip out of their armor.

Paul stuck with Ken’slan the entire time, making sure nothing happened to him, with Morgan and Kara patrolling the interior of the ruling den without going outside it for fear of drawing unwanted attention. Those security inside had been informed of their presence and purpose, but the rest of the city would still probably consider them to be enemies.

From there on there was a flurry of activity. Transports rolled/floated in to take away the soldiers and civilians while leaving the Chieftans behind, whom they took to the audience chamber in manacles that only allowed them to walk with short steps, unable to run or fight. A large number of other Scionate without armor joined them inside, with Ken’slan eventually deploying guards at the entrance and asking for the Humans to come inside with him.

The Scionate was still wearing his armor, helmet retracted, making him the only one in the chamber so adorned. The rest wore clothing of various colors, most symbolic of their bloodlines, but their feet were bare, as was normal for Scionate. No one was situated on the lounging pedestals, which signified the Chieftans of the ruling bloodline, while their former occupants now sat before them on the stone floor with the others grouped into clumps representing the various bloodlines, each with 3 or 4 representatives for those that Grisst and Wennitan were favorable with, and a single individual for the others that had been fortunate enough to be given invites, most of whom were powerful rivals, leaving the lesser bloodlines out of the transition entirely.

“I trust that all of you have been informed of the facts surrounding this debacle?” Ken’slan asked the crowd, getting various nods from the bloodline leaders. “Very well. Vensiol has been deposed, bloodlessly so, for the most part, and I intend to keep it that way. The former Chieftans will not be harmed, so long as they relinquish their positions within their bloodline. Their stupidity cannot be left to taint their bloodline any further. If they refuse, they will remain prisoners of Grisst…or perhaps of the Humans, given that they have suffered most from their misdeeds. What say you, Ura’bor?”

The deposed bloodline leader looked up from the ground as Ken’slan walked up to within a handful of meters and glared down at him. “You dishonor us all with your collusion. They have killed over a million of us, and yet you stand here with them as allies. I will not grace your treasonous question with a response,” he said, spitting at Ken’slan and having the sticky liquid fall a meter short.

Ken’slan turned to face the three Humans. “Do you want him?”

“We’re not in the habit of taking trophies,” Morgan replied.

“As you wish. Ura’bor, you will remain a prisoner of Grisst, and you have the Humans to thank for your life. Were this overthrow at the expense of great blood, yours would have been spilt as well. Think on that in your seclusion. You will be released when you choose to abdicate your leadership. Take him away.”

Two unarmored Scionate walked up next to Ura’bor, but he wouldn’t move until one of them punched him in the side, prompting him to lazily get to his feet so he could be nosed ahead towards the door, flanked by the guards as he was forced to walk through the other bloodline leaders in shame. When he was gone Ken’slan turned his attention to the other Chieftans.

“Abdicate or imprisonment. Which do you choose?”

“I will not taint my bloodline further with this failure,” Tem’lan said, his pride not lost. “I rescind my position so that another more worthy may lead.”

Ken’slan huffed approvingly. “Remove his restraints.”

Tem’lan stood up straight as he could as another Scionate came forward and unlocked the four tethers from his ankles, allowing him to move freely and leave the chamber under his own power to return to his bloodline and disappear from the political arena…with the unspoken ban preventing him from ever returning to a position of prominence.

Car’sem and three others followed him but the rest did not, choosing imprisonment with the hope of being freed by another coup or through trading, but Ken’slan was going to ensure that the latter did not happen. These dishonorable traitors could not be permitted to rule again, in any form.

When the last of them was removed Ken’slan walked up to the central reclining pedestal and stood beside it, with most of those in the chamber expecting him to claim leadership for Grisst, but true to his word he did not.

“What was done today was necessary, on the grounds of honor, to right a terrible wrong that has cost us many lives. The Humans are our allies, not our enemies, and they have proved far more honorable than I had previously given them credit for. That was my mistake, and I am glad to admit that I have learned from it. While capable of ruling, Grisst is not the best suited bloodline to that task given the realities of life within the ADZ. Perhaps someday when war does not cling at our throats like a constant noose we will lead, but now, when war is upon us, we must fight the enemies at our doorstep.”

“Prior to now I believed that meant hoarding our forces here, to defend our own worlds when the Cajdital broke through into the ADZ. I was wrong in such thoughts, and it is only proper for those who had more clairvoyance than Grisst to lead. With our blessing and support, Wennitan will ascend to leadership and make this den their own.”

Paul could clearly feel the shock in the other Scionate, with a lesser version mirrored in himself. He hadn’t expected Ken’slan to choose a rival bloodline, but fortunately it was the one that Paul had guessed to be on par with Grisst. Still, he was seeing some aspect of the inner workings of Scionate society that he didn’t yet understand…and that intrigued him. Not to mention the fact that Wennitan were supporters of front line combat.

Jen’ton walked out of the crowd and stood beside Ken’slan for a moment, exchanging gestures of respect, then the Grisst stepped away from the pedestal and Jen’ton climbed up on top of it…with the rest of the Wennitan leadership doing the same and assuming their positions as the new Chieftans of the Scionate.

“War Chief Paul,” Jen’ton called out with a high pitched voice…for a Scionate anyway, “please come forward.”

Paul raised an eyebrow inside his helmet and walked through the various cats, who parted to give him a direct line to the front, whereupon he removed his helmet and stared eye to eye with the Scionate, given that it sat on a pedestal and that Humans stood taller than the quadrupeds, giving them an equal eye level and an unexpected symbol of parity, whereas the other Scionate were lower to the ground, even as they stood.

“On behalf of my wayward kin, I apologize deeply for the affront we have committed. Not just the most recent attack and those few lives that it cost your people, but by our reluctance to do our part in the defense of the ADZ. We have lived in safety for many years thanks to the efforts of Star Force, the Protovic, and the Hycre with little in compensation. With your permission, the Scionate would like to colonize a handful of worlds on the border to further strengthen our perimeter, as well as to be included in ongoing combat operations effective immediately.”

Paul didn’t smile, though he was pleased with the turnabout.

“As you said, you killed some of my people. That we cannot and will not forgive. Even though you have deposed those responsible for ordering the assault, your troops willingly carried it out. Loyalty is valuable, blind loyalty is dangerous. It is clear that the Scionate do not see Star Force as an inherent ally, otherwise your troops would have refused the attack order and spared their own lives in the process.”

“There is a rift between us that has grown larger,” Paul continued with an even tone. “Words cannot heal the wounds of battle…only further battle can. Given time, effort, and execution we may one day grow into true allies, but that is not by any means a certainty. I will, however, grant you the opportunity to try and forge that bond. Your request for worlds on the border is granted, with specifics to be arranged later. Your request for inclusion into ground operations will have to be approved by the Protovic, for they are leading many of those campaigns, but I grant you permission to fight in conjunction with Star Force on ours. You will be given the opportunity to regain your honor and one day call yourself our ally…if you prove worthy.”

“Stern words,” Jen’ton said with an equally even tone, “but those of a warrior who does not have time for games and respects us enough to give us the blunt truth. We welcome the chance to prove ourselves, and will atone for our dishonor in Cajdital and Skarron blood…or Nestafar, if we should get the chance.”

“I believe there is a line forming on that last count.”

“As there should be, though your Calavari have priority rights after what they suffered. As for your loss of lives…that is something we cannot compensate you for. Your ships and other machines are another matter, and we will supply you with 10 times the resources necessary to replace them.”

“And the meat market?”

“I will send out couriers within the day instructing that it be dismantled and those responsible apprehended. You need not continue your clandestine attacks. If we do not locate them all, point out to us what we have missed and we will eradicate them ourselves. We made a pact with Star Force, and Wennitan will see that it is honored.”

“So long as you are true to your word, consider this to be the official end of hostilities on Star Force’s part.”

“And likewise for the Scionate, again, with our deepest apologies.”

“Rule wisely,” Paul said before putting his helmet back on and turning to leave, with Kara and Morgan falling into step with him and leaving the audience chamber enroute to their gunship, which they then took back to Admat directly.

10

July 23, 2534

Solar System

Earth

Davis sat in his office reviewing the report that Paul had sent him, detailing the resolution to the Scionate problem with better results than he had hoped for. Their military, while not as well equipped as Star Force’s, was far larger and adding them to the front would add another level of stability to the ADZ. As it was most of the ‘front’ was unoccupied by either friend or enemy, given that it was a spherical perimeter. The more dots on that shell that they could fill, the more secure the sphere would become, if for no other reason than to have secure bases to strike back from should, or rather when, an invasion occurred.

The Scionate had also agreed to end the meat market and vigorously pursue any violations that they found or that Star Force pointed out. Because of that last caveat Davis guessed they were being genuine, which Paul also echoed, but only time would tell on that point. The teams out dismantling the meat market through special ops action were being called back temporarily to allow the Scionate to take care of it themselves, but Paul and a few of the others were sticking around to make sure the job got done properly.

The other trailblazers were heading off to other assignments/training as was usual, with Davis’s part of this endeavor now coming into play. Paul had sent along a copy of both raids on the Scionate den, along with their own security recordings, detailing the Archons’ strike and how effective it was in cutting right past their defenses. Those records he was going to edit a bit, maybe cut out some of their psionics, but otherwise he was going to distribute them to the various news agencies within the ADZ so everyone could see what had happened and how Star Force could and would come after them if they violated the terms of colonization.

There would be a secondary reaction, he knew, to how powerful the Archons were, but word of that had already begun to spread of its own accord from various races’ troops that had gone into battle alongside them. Davis knew well the risks in tipping off the V’kit’no’sat to their existence, but at this point there was little they could do to stop the information from spreading…so he might as well use it to his advantage.

He believed, and hoped, that the V’kit’no’sat were too far away to notice. There were potentially millions of races within the galaxy, and if the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t returned to reclaim Earth by now then it was probably in a region that they cared little for. They were almost outside the V’kit’no’sat maps anyway, but bottom line was that Star Force had to be Star Force regardless of what happened…though there were plans in the working should/when they came back. They were far from complete, but Star Force couldn’t wait a few centuries to get them established. They had two warfronts to deal with that could end them before the V’kit’no’sat even glanced this way, making dealing with those the top priority.

The trailblazers had already set a no-go line on the edge of Beta Region, which Davis concurred with. Hopefully that would keep word of Star Force local, but at the end of the day the future was uncertain and there were no guarantees, no matter what they did or didn’t do. The ADZ was Davis’s immediate concern, and releasing this information would go a long way to heading off a list of problems before they arose. Fear of retribution was an effective weapon when coupled with justice, so that your allies didn’t fear you but your adversaries did. It was a delicate balance to maintain, but one that Davis and Star Force had already mastered.

Included in the news release he was compiling was footage from the assault on Admat…which Davis was furious about. Paul’s calming wisdom had kept him from going through the roof, but in no way, shape, or form could killing people ever be construed as a legitimate form of diplomacy or airing of grievances. By including those data records…which he was going to leave Kara out of…Davis intended to show everyone else the foolishness and price of attacking Star Force, for Paul, Morgan, Kara, and the rest of the Star Force troops there had pulled off a victory that Davis was still having a hard time understanding given the numbers that had been thrown against them.

Their losses should have been far worse, but those people they had lost were still eating at him. He was pleased with the resolution the trailblazers had managed to accomplish, but something still felt wrong about the Scionate avoiding responsibility for their actions. Them joining the warfront was meant as a form of penance, and Davis could appreciate that, as well as the fact of them losing so many lives in the attack, but still their empire was intact with only a change of leadership as a result…a tactic that had been employed in democracies on Earth back in the day to avoid responsibility, preserving the nation through blaming and discarding a few individuals.

Paul’s report indicated that wasn’t the case here, and while Davis trusted his judgement he still had misgivings, though he was going to let them pass and watch how things played out. The victory on Admat and the two successful raids into the Scionate capitol gave him plenty of social ammunition to use in the cultural clash that was ongoing, and putting the Scionate in their place was going to be part of his efforts. If they were admitting responsibility and altering from within, so be it, but he wasn’t counting on that good of luck, so in the news release he made sure to detail the events truthfully, but with an emphasis on the Scionate biting off more than they could chew and getting their asses kicked.

That was the message the ADZ needed to hear, along with various other threads. It also doubled as Davis’s personal jab at the race, for he could not and would not ever tolerate his people being killed, and there was no way the Scionate or any other ADZ race was going to spin this to their favor. He was going to make it crystal clear what happened and where the blame lay, then let the threat of the Archons and Star Force’s military might speak for itself. Stating a ‘this is what will happen to you’ boast would work contrary to the intended point, with letting the truth work its own magic being, Davis had discovered over the centuries, to be the most effective way of convincing someone of something. Push and they got defensive or disbelieving.

Davis was just going to make sure they had more than enough data to squelch any spinning before it began, as well as to make it clear that Star Force was capable of defending the ADZ against the lizards, Skarrons, and others…something that was still very much an active question floating around. Up until now Star Force had been seen as a tech guru, building the Sentinels and aiding the Protovic and Hycre in the fighting…but now the races would see just how much teeth Star Force had for a conventional fight, given that the Scionate had always been assumed to be the stronger head to head.

Several hours later, when Davis sent the packet off for final review by his staff to make sure he hadn’t missed or messed anything up, he was still fuming over Admat. The equipment destroyed could be replaced, but the lives lost couldn’t…and they hadn’t been lost fighting an enemy. They’d been killed by a so-called ally, and that just left Davis with a very wrong feeling tugging at his gut.

Unable to shake it, he left his office and went down to the gym for a workout, hoping the effort would help to clear his head and feeling the incessant need to hit something.

On the planet Rassakatt, far outside the ADZ and on the very edge of Nestafar space, Sarrew woke to an alarm, bolting out of his hanging sleep pod and pulling on his clothing before flying up the ceiling exit and through the narrow tube-like passageway that curved over into a tunnel that led to a nearby prep room where he and many others were hastily pulling on combat gear.

Sarrew grabbed a pair of hand blades, not expecting to need them but always carrying them in a sheath on his small belt just in case. He added a pistol and some extra gear in a ready to go utility harness that he pulled on around his back and clasped in the front, then headed out another tunnel that lead to the ready bay where he took to the air and flew across the vast chamber to the waiting transport, ducking inside a few minutes before it launched through a topside door the size of a grain field.

As the transport took to the air Sarrew moved about within the ship, coming to the internal hangar bay and climbing aboard his walker and joining the other crew assembling inside. Normally they would have boarded the walker prior to its being put into the hangar, but this particular military base was for fast response, with the machines being preloaded so they could leave in a minimum of time. The troops were the same way, having been kept nearby and on alert, rotating out in cycles, to maintain constant readiness.

Sarrew had been on call for some 3 years now after returning from the successful yet bloody Calavari campaign, but this was the first non-drill call he’d responded to, given that Rassakatt was a secure world far from what had previously been Calavari territory. In fact it was on the coreward edge of Nestafar territory, making it about as safe of a backwater world as you could get.

The planet was well established and boasted a large population, so it wasn’t some dinky outpost and undefended, but these types of military positions were for the young soldiers who needed experience and the old veterans that needed a breather…both serving a purpose in the defense of a world that probably wouldn’t need defending.

Yet now here he was, being called out to fight who knew what. Perhaps the Alliance had found them…the thought of which terrified him. The annihilation of their capitol system and all its worlds still haunted the Nestafar, and if they had come here with similar intent he could be facing overwhelming numbers of troops as soon as they dropped out of the transport.

Sarrew didn’t get an intelligence report until two minutes prior to drop off, with him unable to read more than ‘unidentified foe’ before he was actively walking the super dragon out of the transport with smaller walkers skittering out ahead of the giant machine. He got a heading from the regional military commander and set the Ho’shemon on its course, forming into the echelon typical of Nestafar walkers when traveling towards a target.

Sarrew was piloting the machine while the rest of the crew were handling weapons and other systems, and it didn’t take long before their enemy appeared on the horizon…for their own version of walkers were huge. Never before had he seen an enemy with something bigger than the Ho’shemon, which among this region of the galaxy was considered the dominant ground assault vehicle.

As they moved forward he could see weaponsfire ahead, with red plasma exchanging with white amongst many targets. Normally Sarrew would have been tasked with heading towards the biggest and strongest enemy to counter and usually kill while the smaller walkers engaged the others, pulling the heat off them and putting it on the beast that he was driving, but today wasn’t the case, with him being tasked with heading towards the nearest of the enemy walkers as a hoard of four-legged Nestafar Urriak were engaging the large, almost floating masses that moved about on impossibly thin legs.

But there were smaller ones yet, each bipeds with thick legs that were running forward into flanking positions. Sarrew saw the main plasma battery fire a spurt of red at the orb-like top of the enemy walker, splashing over it and impacting some type of shield before melting into the armor…but it didn’t go down as he expected. Instead it took three hits before the plasma melted all the way through and the burnt out hulk came to a rest…then slowly tipped over as its legs weren’t quite in the proper position to maintain balance.

From there he kept the super dragon on its original course, with the targeting head moving independent from his leg motions unless otherwise directed. He saw one of the big walkers go down ahead under a coordinated attack from the smaller Nestafar walkers, then his went into combat with another to its right, with Sarrew setting them in place and adjusting their standing angle to assist the gunners in case the spindly-legged thing tried to run.

It didn’t, and the two machines exchanged direct fire, neither doing as much damage to the other as they expected. Sarrew knew the Nestafar armor would protect them against all but an overwhelming onslaught, but the enemy shields and armor were serving them well and kept them alive and fighting far longer than he was comfortable with.

Once the big machine collapsed and crushed its own legs, Sarrew moved them on towards the next one, taking down three more before they met up with an even larger enemy walker and the odds became a bit more even…but with time and the assistance of his escorts, Sarrew’s super dragon downed it as well, beginning to put some order to the ground battle.

That was when he got orders to travel to another location as quickly as mechanically possible. He responded appropriately, turning the super dragon to the right and walking forward as he saw a plume of missiles streak across the sky and land on another super dragon ahead, blasting into its armor so badly that when the smoke finally cleared the impact divots were obvious…meaning significant damage.

That super dragon fired back on its target…only that wasn’t what had fired the missiles at it. As Sarrew brought his super dragon into play and assisted the other with the takedown along with hundreds of plasma orbs and streamers from the smaller walkers, he finally saw the missile firing target on the horizon, far outside their current range and to which the military commander was eventually working them.

The machine was monstrous, and for the first time in his military career Sarrew felt the inferior inside the Ho’shemon.

But he pushed the thought aside. The other drivers out there had less protection than he did, and a lot of them were less experienced. If he was going to give into panic what hope did they have?

So Sarrew set himself to the task at hand and continued downing targets all the way up to the Type-2 Skarron walker that he eventually assaulted along with six other super dragons and their escorts…with him eventually dying as the wash of plasma eventually burned through the stubborn Nestafar armor and disabled the Ho’shemon. He and the other crew attempted to play dead, but the Skarrons didn’t relent and burned through the interior compartments until the plasma eventually reached the command cockpit, ending Sarrew’s military career and life without him even knowing the identity of the attackers.

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1

May 2, 2536

Gwet System (Delta Region)

Inner Zone

Riona-111 read the message from the Hycre on her command chair’s personal display then nodded to the Admiral, indicating for them to make the jump. Her warship and the others in the assault armada leapt off the largest of the three stars at system’s center and crossed the short gap to the desert world of Leonis where the Hycre fleet was just finishing up with the lizard incursion, tearing apart what looked like three battle stations in low orbit while chasing dozens of other ships as they fled down towards the surface.

Like the message had said, the road was plowed…now it was time to bring in the convoy.

Riona searched the updated map, receiving new data from the Hycre as well as from the Adamant’s sensors as the Melee-class warship led a handful of Star Force Warship-class jumpships into planetary orbit ahead of the troop transports that were to follow a few minutes later. The warships moved out into escort positions for the incoming ships while the Adamant moved down to low orbit as Riona quickly picked her position.

Three months ago a routine scouting expedition through the ADZ had picked up lizard activity in this system, which was on the very edge of the upper curve of the sphere that made up the Alliance Defense Zone. It was an uninhabited system, but it lay inside their ‘line in the sand’ and signaled that the lizards were attempting to bypass existing strongholds and make a push towards the nearest Alliance worlds, though none were close to Gwet. Greg had assumed it was an attempt at creating a stepping stone in closer to the prime worlds, and one that had to be gotten rid of.

How many other incursions there were Star Force didn’t know. They could only patrol so many, with the lizards having had at least a few months head start setting up here before they’d been discovered…and had they not had scout ships out and about in the ADZ the incursion could have gotten considerably more advanced prior to their finding out. Greg had counted them lucky that they’d picked it up when they did and assigned Riona to taking care of it while he and the trailblazers mounted other assaults outside the ADZ ‘encouraging’ the enemy to fight them there rather than inside their borders.

Underscoring the importance of this mission, Greg had loaned her a Melee-class…something that Riona had never had the privilege of commanding before. It was here, not to cleanse the lizard fleet from orbit, for the Hycre were just finishing up that, but to protect the ground troops and secure the system while they fought on the surface…though in point, that was going to be Admiral Bocco’s job, for she was going down to the surface with one of the teams for cleaning duty. Which one yet was still to be determined, with Riona assuming she’d end up wherever they encountered the most trouble.

When the ship settled into low orbit it decelerated into a temporary hover, something the big ship wasn’t well suited for, nor had it been designed to enter the atmosphere…though Liam had assured her it could do so in a pinch if necessary. She hoped that wouldn’t be necessary, but a piece of the ship was going down and Riona was riding it all the way to the surface drop zone.

The armor plates on the center underside of the huge warship began to peel back slowly like a metallic ripple, exposing the armored hull beneath that eventually began to detach once the opening was clear. The 2 mile wide center ‘plug’ of the ship pulled out from the giant donut and began to descend into the atmosphere as the Adamant then accelerated laterally to get itself back into a proper drift orbit.

According to sensor reports, mainly comprised by the Hycre but now being backed up by Star Force’s own, there were over 1200 grounded lizard cruisers in some 833 surface facilities that were busily recreating the sandy landscape into infrastructure. A few of those facilities already had full-fledged bases set up with defense shields, while most of the others were either still under construction or building underground where orbital bombardment wouldn’t reach. Riona had ordered assaults on the exposed ones from orbit, with her taking the Adamant’s ‘TF’ dropship down into an open area of the surface situated between three of the largest bases.

It landed on hundreds of thick leg-like pylons, sinking down into the sand and requiring some finesse by the pilot to get the ship to sit level. Once it did doors opened up all around the exterior and troops began to pour out as anti-air batteries all over the dropship began shooting down the lizard fighters coming out from their bases to engage the dropship.

Riona left the ship in a skeet, zipping out of a special aerial bay and into clean air a moment before she saw an approaching enemy cruiser on the horizon get skewered by a cleansing beam from orbit. The ship listed to port and smashed down into the sands, taking one of several out of the sky that were approaching as rail gun rounds began to fall on the others and would continue to do so until they got within the perimeter line…after that it was up to the dropship and its defenses to keep them off the ground pounders, which is why Riona had decided to go pilot today rather than sit on the ground and hope not to get shot.

She flew the neutral grey skeet away from the dropship as fast as she could then dove into a cloud of approaching wisps along with two other pilots, unafraid of the mass of 200+ fighters. They peppered her shields with tiny green plasma blasts, but the advanced matrix that protected her tiny craft absorbed all of the plasma fire that hit it and was thirsty for more. After a long time trying, Mark had finally got the techs to work out a plasma resistant shield setting, allowing the skeets to transition back and forth between ‘normal’ shields and the anti-plasma variety, and with it Riona felt very safe amongst the enemy that relied almost entirely on plasma.

Their warships were known to carry some missiles at times, but the fighters only had plasma weapons. Combined with her craft’s maulers and hyper lachar, the skeets were clearly the superior fighter, so much so that they literally gobbled up the lizard wisps, leaving Riona with a target rich environment that she eagerly dove into and began racking up kills with ease, for the maneuvering capability of the skeets were also greater.

Riona was in a standard fighter, but coming out of the dropship were also anti-air versions specifically designed to shoot down missiles and other fighters, with those pilots heading directly for the swarms along with her while the anti-infantry and anti-mech versions held back as a secondary screen around the dropship, also capable of eating up a lot of wisps if needed, but without that being their intended purpose.

A train of equipment poured out of the dropship at ground level behind an army of mechs, bringing the base assault gear out and getting it moving towards the nearest target some 28 miles away. It was going to be a long hike for the mechs, during which they’d be picked at by the enemy, but they were ok when dealing with airborne targets on their own and this time they had ample fighter cover so Riona assumed they’d get to the shield perimeter intact, though when going up against the lizards you never truly knew what to expect.

Riona was going to get to the shield far sooner than they would, with the defensive barrier being a flat circle riding high above the base rather than the bubble shield that Star Force used to protect its cities. The lizard version was designed simply to protect against orbital or aerial bombardment, leaving its ground troops able to fight it out against whoever dared hit them up close and in person. Creating a flat shield like that allowed for more matrix strength, maximizing the lizards’ limited technology and making for a potent deterrent. That said, Star Force knew it could breach the defenses from orbit if they spent enough time pounding,

With so many bases to take out Riona wasn’t going to waste time and ammunition hitting them from orbit…at least not all of them. Even with cleansing beams the shields would hold up for a long time, and the largest cleansing beams she had available were the medium grade on the Adamant, which could only target one base at a time if it got really close and the weather was favorable, otherwise the beam could be scattered, reducing its effect.

So the navy was going to pick at the surface targets while the mechs, aerial, and commando divisions did the real house cleaning. This opening gambit was all Star Force, intended to hit the strongest lizard targets as well as probing to see what kind of reaction they were going to get. What they couldn’t have was this invasion being a multi-year affair. They had to take the lizards out quickly before they had a chance to resupply and reinforce, otherwise this could become the beachhead for a new offensive corridor if the enemy chose to devote enough materiel to it.

Riona didn’t know what their plans were, but the more she could destroy before their friends had a chance to react the better, so it was full on assault after this opening move, with the rest of the fleet waiting in orbit for her staff on the Adamant to assign them landing zones and targets…and for her to give the final word.

That fleet wasn’t made up of Star Force personnel. 42% of it was Axius, with the balance being Scionate. Only the ground troops she’d brought down on the dropship were Star Force, given that they didn’t have so many to go around…but they were the best by far, hence she was using them in this initial assault to test the waters.

Riona chewed up some 6 wisps before breaking off and making an attack run on one of the lizard cruisers that was getting a bit too close to the TF, pulling a lot of pursuing fighters in her wake. She saw several hits on the underside of the kilometer long yellow/tan warship from mechs, along with a bit of mauler fire coming from other skeets as they dove into and out of the plasma shards, able to survive short runs then circle out and recharge their shields…allowing the skeets to literally pester the big ships to death and the enemy knew it, hence the fighter screens that were doing their best to overload the little fighters.

As the Archon made her first pass over top landing some 19 mauler hits to the upper side of the hull she immediately lost her good mojo. She’d made a run from aft to fore, with something on the ship not looking right. Riona turned around and flew high, looking down at the top of the ship and seeing an unfamiliar bump in the hull that had otherwise been burned into her memory given that the lizards had used that exact design for centuries…but now something was different.

A minute later she got her answer as to what when a solid green lance of plasma leapt out the front of the now burning hull and shot into the shield covering the dropship…and didn’t let up for some 13 seconds.

“What the hell?” she asked, immediately refiguring strength numbers in her head and opening the ‘all’ comm. “Heads up, looks like the bad guys have got some new toys. Cruisers have plasma streamers now. Keep them off the TF, I don’t want it taking hull damage. Ground convoys increase your spacing. I don’t want them laying that streamer down on several of you at once. Make their gunners earn their hits and maintain evasive weave to target until we knock them down.”

Riona adjusted frequencies to a secure line. “Admiral, get a few drones in atmosphere. I need them nearby just in case.”

“Already gave the order, Archon. They’re heading to atmosphere now.”

“Thank you,” she said, signing off and heading back at the cruiser again. Its shields were more or less down, with small segments coming back online with minimal power, one which she targeted and knocked down again before peppering the hull plates with mauler fire and vaporizing more divots into it along with toasting one of the few anti-air batteries remaining. Between her and the other skeets it was nearly plucked of its anti-air defenses, making their survival a bit easier even with the hundreds of wisps circling the big ship in a desperate attempt to fend them off.

All the while the green plasma streamer was pounding the side of the dropship. She was about to inquire why there was no return fire when she saw several small explosions on the front end from lachar hits eating into it like a rapid fire chain gun…but the cruiser didn’t continue to move forward, wisely keeping out of mauler range as it continued to deliver plasma at a greater distance than lizard weapons were typically effective from.

That said, the ship’s other plasma cannons weren’t firing, which suggested it was only the streamer that had the extended range. That was good to know, but it was still hammering the shields on the dropship along with four other cruisers…make that three, for one had just gone down on the north side, but there were still 17 more enroute and only so much she and her air cover could do to hold them off if they didn’t get close enough for the TF to eat them up with maulers.

Riona knew the dropship’s shields were solid, but there were gaps where the troops were still coming out. Fortunately those hadn’t been hit, but land a streamer into one of those and it’d mess up the interior bad…not to mention killing any personnel out moving around the deck.

No, they had to keep them back, and if the lizards weren’t so inclined then she had to take them down before they could overwhelm the shields or go kamikaze against them.

“Damn it,” she said, seeing one of the cruisers coming in at higher speeds than the rest. Not an obvious ramming effort, for the lizards were coy, but her gut told her it was going to hit or at least get close enough for a few sucker punches before it went down.

“Mechs, I need you,” she said, tagging the cruiser on the battlemap. “Hit this son of a bitch at range before it can get to the TF. I think it’s a kamikaze.”

“Copy that,” Hammer-521, the Archon leading the ground assault said as Riona saw immediate movement on the ground. A few moments later she saw a missile launch from one of the mechs, then another, then hundreds of them turned into a firestorm of smoke and flashes that shot out towards the north and on the long haul out to the incoming cruiser.

It opened up with all of its plasma shard anti-air, knocking down plenty of the missiles but there was no way for it to get them all. The bombardment hit and penetrated the ship’s shields within seconds, then began ravaging the hull inside the cloud of smoke and debris.

Riona made another pass on the cruiser she was engaged with, then as she swung around to recharge her own shields she saw the Kamikaze cruiser in the distance emerge from the cloud of smoke in a graceful downward arc, eventually falling into the sand dunes and breaking in half as it caught and tried to roll over, snapping at the midsection from the torque and cutting a huge gash into the landscape as its momentum dragged it forward, eventually settling at about 6 miles out from the huge dropship.

“Whoo, nice one, Hammer.”

“Can’t do that very many times,” he warned.

“I know. We’ll have to do better up here. Thanks for the bail out.”

“How about some close in naval support?”

“On its way. Keep an eye out for more kamikaze cruisers until it gets here. I’m kind of busy at the moment.”

“Will do.”

Riona clicked off the comm and made another attack run, this time melting through the armor and opening up a vulnerable section of the hull which she tagged as a prime target. The other skeets with her adjusted their own attack runs and pounded that section, eating down into the unarmored interior and opening up an opportunity for one of the anti-mech fighter squadrons to come in and deposit some missiles into that hole.

The resulting explosion ripped through the interior, but only blasted out through a few of the wounds on the ship, with the armor acting like a cage to contain and enhance the internal detonations before ultimately hitting the antigrav, for the big ship went down and pancaked the sand below…fortunately without any mechs beneath it.

“One down, a billion more to go,” she said, signaling for one of the drone trios to be assigned to her.

Riona swung back towards the TF as the unmanned fighters were coming out of the bay and picked them up using an auxiliary control panel, slaving them to her own skeet. Each of them looked almost identical, save they didn’t have a cockpit. What they did have was more weapons, including missiles, which she was going to need to take down the other cruisers with the help of many, many others. As advanced as their aerial division had become, warships were still freaking huge and heavily armored, requiring an insane amount of ordinance to take down.

Which was why she enjoyed it so much. Fighters should never be able to take down a warship, so whenever it did happen it was a sweet, sweet moment…except that right now there were others still in play that needed to be killed and they weren’t obliging Star Force’s mauler range on the dropship, meaning this was going to be a slugging match.

“Guys, a little cover please. I don’t want the wisps picking off my drones.”

“On the way,” another pilot in her temporary squadron responded.

“Alright,” she said, shooting down another two wisps and getting a third with her drones as the four of them ducked through a swarm enroute to the next closest cruiser that was already hammering the dropship with plasma. “Let’s find a sweet spot.”

2

Wen’sta’lon sat in the cockpit of his Wildcat-class mech, strapped into the control harness and waiting impatiently as the Axius transport made its way down to the surface of Leonis. He’d been briefed on the assault progress earlier, knowing that Star Force mainline troops had already secured a beachhead and were in the process of taking down two lizard bases, but that’s not where his team was heading. They were going after a different lizard base, one that had already been hit from orbit and blasted into smithereens…on the surface at least.

Orbital scans showed at least some subsurface structures, how many of which was still a lingering question. He wouldn’t be probing those himself, for his mech would most likely not fit inside, but others would. His job was to secure the surface, eliminate any hostiles, and cover for the burrowing teams as they made their way down inside to engage the enemy.

This was the third combat assignment that Wen’sta’lon had seen, given that the Scionate had only recently earned his spot in the Axius military and one of the first native born colonists to do so. He was only 10 years old, but had shown remarkable skill in piloting the wildcat…or at least compared to the few others who had tried, for the mech was quadruped in design and Star Force had few that could pilot it, most of whom were immigrant Scionate completely unfamiliar with the concept given that his native race used tanks rather than mechs.

Wen’sta’lon had learned quickly, but he still was being given small assignments…for which he was grateful. He’d much rather be out here fighting real enemies than stuck in training simulations and games, especially since this time it was personal. The lizards had invaded the ADZ and they had to push them out else risk their own worlds. Yes, he definitely wanted to be out here, even if all he was going to do was swat a few infantry to cover for the others.

The long trip down in the dragon was tedious, but when the bay doors finally opened he and one other wildcat exited first, walking then running out onto the mix of burnt sand and building that had been scattered by the rail gun impacts. The mech’s paws sunk in deep, but he was still able to move about easily enough, running forward at a lope and pulling a quick circle around the drop zone as more of the Axius dropships came down.

He spotted one lizard amongst the rubble and ran after it, seeing it scurry behind a piece of shrapnel the size of a Calavari and disappear. Wen’sta’lon popped out his mauler cannon from under the ‘chin’ of the mech and fired at it, melting the piece of building and vaporizing the lizard at the same time. His first target eliminated, the Axius Scionate returned to his patrol loop.

More and more dropships came down, unloaded, and took off again returning to the jumpships in orbit ferrying the troops here. Once sufficient infantry were assembled Wen’sta’lon was ordered to scout out ahead which he took to with eager lethality, hopping over various bits of debris in a way that only a quadruped mech could and getting a good head start on the mix of various races that made up the commando units. They were all armored up, but he didn’t want any of them getting killed so he kept close attention on the area he was scouting out, intent on killing any and all of the little green heads that showed themselves.

The next thing he knew his shields were taking plasma hits from the starboard side, with him turning his mech in that direction with a shuffle of the huge mechanical legs and finding a pair of lizard tanks hidden under an overhang of rubble. One was a shade, the other a copper, and both were pouring plasma into his shields…though most of the damage was coming from the shade.

Wen’sta’lon decided to target it first, running towards it and firing his mauler twice, missing low with the first shot and melting the sand in front of the lizard anti-armor tank into a puddle of glass that shot up like a geyser, obscuring his view. The next one went right through that cloud and nailed the shade, killing it with the single well-placed hit…though in truth it had been more luck than skill.

The copper began backing under the overhang and exiting out the far side, causing Wen’sta’lon to accelerate up into a full run to chase after it…then his footing suddenly went out from under him as the sand fell away and he dropped down into a chasm.

There was a loud ‘thunk’ outside the mech, but with the IDF he didn’t feel the impact as he hit the rubble strewn ground of a cargo bay. His wildcat was laying on its side, but within the cockpit the Scionate looked around, seeing on the hologram that he’d fallen through a hole in the ceiling that had what looked like now torn paper glued to it.

“Tricky bastards,” he growled as he worked the mechanical legs around in order to get to his feet as a missile impacted the head of his mech, followed quickly by more missiles and a hoard of plasma from the ambushing troops around him in the hollow.

Even before he fully stood the wildcat up he started shooting the infantry around him with his secondary weapons, popping them up from behind armored plates around the mech’s hull and shooting with computer support using buttons on the claw pads and teeth bar. The blue plasma he fired back clashed with the deep red his mech was painted, making for a terrifying sight as the enemy infantry melted under the counter attack…then larger plasma blasts began to hit the wildcat from repositioning lizard tanks, with Wen’sta’lon realizing he was in a tricky situation.

His mech would hold up to plasma fire for a good while, but the rubble he was trying to stand on was causing him to trip and stumble, essentially holding him still in the bay and giving the enemy a stationary target to shoot at. He belatedly realized he was standing in the crater of an impacted rail gun slug that had collected the debris from the roof, meaning he was essentially standing on rough pebbles that kept moving underneath his mech’s feet.

By the time he’d eventually gotten some balance his shields went down, but he was unable to turn around and fire his mauler at the tanks behind him. He was hitting them with the aft plasma cannons but not doing enough damage, for there were more than a dozen tanks down here and there were more coming in from other subsurface chambers.

“So much for fighting on the surface,” he said, crouching low before jumping off the rubble with a bit of help from his limited jump jets. He didn’t clear the edge of the crater, but did get his front two paws on the unbroken ground around it and pulled himself clear as his armor began melting off.

Before any of the enemy weaponsfire could penetrate clean through he bathed the floor ahead of him with plasma fire, burning away a few dozen infantry and seeing a secondary explosion from a missile launcher that knocked over a few more. When he turned his mech around to face the majority of the tanks he got a warning on his battlemap, prompting him to run around the large crater, still taking shots and losing armor, enroute to the closest tank and pummeling it with mauler energy.

He worked his way up the line, still getting swarmed with infantry blasts and a few missiles as the other wildcat came down through the hole above, landing with a crunch on its own jump jets and getting tripped up as well, but not fully falling over on the bad footing. It eventually got clear on the far side and the pair of mechs worked together to chew into the tanks with Wen’sta’lon taking heavy damage.

As they did so tiny little mechs poured in through the hole, floating down on their jump packs and hopping off the debris in secondary jumps to get to the edges whereupon they ran forward and the Axius Irondel began engaging the infantry directly, both with the chicken walkers and a few quadruped neite minimechs. Following them down came a few biped armored infantry with a handful of Humans and 7 other races of similar biology all wearing what appeared to be commando armor, yet it also was colored the deep red that Axius was known for.

Those infantry spread out and worked in conjunction with the minimechs, which stood about the same height as them in most cases, and tore through the unarmored lizard infantry, most of which didn’t even have protective vests on, just plasma rifles and a fiery determination. It didn’t take them long to thin them out, then they were faced with too many corridors to follow the retreating enemy through and wisely held themselves back to secure the underground bay while more reinforcements came down.

“You certainly bit the wrong tail this time,” Ha’mon’sta commented over the comm to his fellow Scionate.

“Shut up,” Wen’sta’lon bit back. “It was a trap.”

“That you fell into.”

“You would have as well.”

“Maybe,” the older Scionate said, happy to see the ‘prodigy’ having some setbacks, “but right now your armor is torn up and your shields are weak. Restrain your combat accordingly. I will take the lead.”

Wen’sta’lon growled but didn’t offer any other disagreement, knowing he was right. He watched as the other wildcat walked out through one of the large doors ahead of a column of infantry enroute to hunting more lizards, probably of whom would have more tanks that needed to be eliminated.

Wen’sta’lon cursed himself for being so sloppy, as well as the blasted shields for taking so long to get back to full strength. Once they did he assigned himself to another infantry group heading out and worked his way to the lead, comming the troops to get out of his way so he wouldn’t step on them, then it was back into prowl mode…with the armor damage now concealed underneath his shields an ever present warning in his mind not to get too careless. He didn’t want to lose his mech, else he’d be sitting out this assault and who knew how many future ones until he got a replacement.

Riona walked into the command center in the TF, just having gotten out of the shower after a forced four hours of sleep. She hadn’t wanted to take a break, but given that this assault wasn’t going to be over in a day’s time she knew she had to keep herself fresh and reluctantly had sent herself to bed after making sure both assault groups had gotten off to a good start.

The Archon was about to head back out again in her skeet but needed to get a good overview of events across the planet before she did, and while it was possible to do so from the cockpit the layout of the command center made it much easier and quicker to get up to speed, hence the drop-in on the way to the hangar.

“Talk to me,” she said, walking inside and getting the attention of the current staff, which were also having to rotate out to keep fresh.

“Axius has successfully landed and begun assaults on six sites,” a ranger by the name of Yensic began. “Mild resistance on the surface, but it’s getting nasty underneath. No fatalities yet, but they’re losing a fair amount of equipment.”

“Warn them to be patient.”

“I already have. They’re not proceeding recklessly, our old friends are just being their usual selves.”

“Why do I ever expect less?” Riona asked rhetorically. “Where are the Scionate?”

“They landed an hour before Axius. 13 current assault zones with another two due to come into play inside the next six hours. I’ve been having discussions with their commander concerning tactics, for they are losing troops, though they’re still winning at the moment.”

“Do any good?”

“Probably not, but I felt like trying.”

“Some people have to learn the hard way. Where do we stand?”

“Choppy, but we’re starting to break through. The lizards have detonated a number of explosives to seal off access shafts to the lower levels of the city. A report less than 20 minutes old indicates that they may have some seriously deep infrastructure.”

Riona nodded. “Signal the troops for upper level sweeps and to avoid going deep just yet. My spidey senses are tingling, so let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way first before we bite off more than we’ve realized.”

“You think there’s a lot of them down there?”

“I think we’re only hitting the tip of the iceberg. When we go deep I’ll lead the way, but for now I’m sticking with the air. Lots of targets to hit up top. Where do we stand with the enemy cruisers?”

“They’re still hiding out there somewhere. Scouts located one concealed surface bay, but there may be a lot more out there that we don’t know about.”

“Meaning they plan to jump us?”

“I wouldn’t bet any credits to the contrary.”

Riona shook her head in dismay. “They didn’t come here to build, they came here to fight and have been setting traps for us from day 1, but building surface blinds to hide warships is an altogether new trick. I’m surprised we haven’t thought of that.”

“Nice how the lizards keep teaching us new things,” Yensic commented dryly.

“Sensor stealthed, I assume?”

“More than that, there isn’t just a blind, but tunnels connecting the entrances to, we suspect, a main hangar underground. Infiltration team hasn’t got that far, still just chewing up the blind we control.”

“Chewing?”

“We blew up the cruiser inside, now we have to fish the pieces back out.”

Riona rolled her eyes. “Figures.”

“I suggest you start here,” the ranger said, pointing to a third city on the map that was about to see mechs and tanks meet up about a kilometer outside of the perimeter defenses. “They’ve been gathering up fighters from other locations while you slept. I think they intend to hold this one.”

“Like hell they will,” she said, already having chosen that group to fight with the moment she walked in and saw their position on the holo map. “Anything new from the Hycre?”

Yensic adjusted the smaller map alongside the main display, bringing up an orbital diagram.

“Kills made in the following locations,” he said as the computer threw up a few new icons. “Most of their fleet is in the system hunting down the other cruisers that didn’t go to ground.”

“Any help with the surface targets yet?”

“Actually, they’re the one that killed the cruiser in the blind.”

“So they are engaging ground targets?” Riona asked for clarity.

“A few targets that they choose, but they don’t have many ships down here for some reason.”

“Maybe they know something we don’t.”

“You want me to ask?”

“Yes. Phone in the results,” she said, having seen enough and heading back out and over to the hangar. Within minutes she was back into the sky and heading towards the mechs now engaging the lizard tanks underneath a swarm of wisps that were dying quickly but adding enough plasma damage to be troublesome. One drone corvette was also there, adding its weaponry to the battle, but there were literally thousands of wisps in play overhead of hundreds of tanks with more coming out onto the sands by the minute.

Numbers…always a numbers game with the lizards, and they usually played it well, but in this case the Alliance should have the advantage, so long as they didn’t waste it. The lizards were going to hit them hard and try to bleed them of troops, not enough to stop their assaults but to delay them long enough for help to arrive. That meant Riona and her assault force had a lot of work to do and not so long to do it.

A month, maybe more before they saw fresh enemies coming into play. By then she had to have the major strongholds eliminated or this could turn very ugly. The ADZ was going to take this world no matter how tough it was, because leaving it in play would create an advantage for the enemy that would cost them more later, so it had to go. Her job was to hit it fast and efficient in order to avoid that eventuality.

The lizards weren’t going to oblige her, as was their nature. They’d fight to the last individual and try to take as many of the attackers with them as possible, meaning suicide attempts and as much other mayhem as they could muster. She was probably going to lose troops to some of it, and she hated that, but the more fights like this the Alliance made the more wary they were of the lizards’ tricks, which was why Star Force was hitting the big targets, hopefully sparing Axius and the Scionate mass casualties.

She trusted her troops, but Axius was still fairly green and the Scionate were like the Hycre…allies, but out of her control. Riona had command of the entire surface campaign, but she didn’t have the ability to micromanage them like she could with her own troops and even Axius, via the battlemap and her authority as an Archon.

Which was why she thought of the Scionate as ‘help’ rather than her own, focusing on what she could control and doing her best to outthink the enemy…a long ongoing challenge that Archons had been facing for centuries, with plenty of successes and failures on both sides.

3

May 16, 2536

Gwet System (Delta Region)

Leonis

Riona’s skeet took a hit, and not a small one. Somehow one of the two lizard cruisers engaging a Star Force corvette a kilometer over the surface of yet another enemy base that they were in the process of invading had hit her with a primary cannon blast and tore off the right side engine pod. The Archon drifted through the fire zone on the other two, eventually righting her ship enough to fly in a straight line but was pounced on by the remainder of the wisps in the battle.

They hammered her hull until they knocked out the left side pod, which left her skeet hanging nose to the ground on the last one and losing altitude. She tried to fly on just the one out of the battle but didn’t make it another 10 seconds before her tail was blown off by a missile launched from the infantry on the surface. Their new favorite weapon left her central hull fully clipped and tumbling to the ground where she crashed into one of the outlying lizard buildings.

She didn’t feel the impact, for thankfully the IDF was still functioning, but did get a jarring vibration through some of the connective beams letting her hear just how hard the hit was. She activated her Pefbar and got a look at what was around outside, realizing that her skeet had landed upside down and the cockpit was pinned to the ground in the rubble.

“Wonderful,” she said, triggering the release and hearing a small click as it failed to move. Riona twisted around in the cockpit and got her feet above her, quite a trick given the small confines, then pushed hard wedging her back against the pommel seat.

She got a couple of inches of separation, wedging her left toes into the crack to hold it as she mentally turned on her striker armor’s powered setting, giving her a strength boost that allowed her to widen the crack further. As she got it a foot or so open she felt the gravity difference in her foot so she held form a moment and telekinetically reached out to turn off the artificial gravity…with her head feeling like it flipped over so that she was now standing upright rather than laying on her back.

Riona walked her feet further into the gap then let the skeet fall back down on her ankles as she slipped off the pommel and crouched down a few inches below it, getting a handhold on the rim of the fighter and lifting as hard as she could. It didn’t move easily, but she did get it up off the ground about a meter before she pulled a tricky one handed support that let her drop down underneath it and get a shoulder on the rim. She almost missed, but got herself wedged in with her muscles straining despite the power enhancement when her head started to swirl with instability.

“No, no, no, not now!” she said, concentrating and scattering the effect. Given any other circumstance she would have welcomed the ascension prompt, but right now she was in hot water and there was no time. Fortunately it took her warning and disappeared, clearing her head and letting her focus on lifting what was left of the skeet up again.

Riona repeated the jerk drop, this time forcing her arms up as she lowered her torso and held an Atlas pose for a moment with her butt nearly touching her heels. She took a twitchy step forward and came back up, pushing her helmet against the hull and making very tiny steps along it until she caught against a section of rock-like wall and could go no further, so she twisted around and pushed laterally as the fighter slipped down, creating a small crevice that she got herself stuck in just as a pair of scalely heads began to climb up over the debris.

One of them got its rifle up and into firing position before Riona yanked it from him telekinetically. She thought about trying to shoot him with it as the other came up into firing position then abandoned the idea, emitting a Fornax field as she wiggled and clawed her way up a few inches with the fighter still pinning her against the wall.

It was an effort to move, let alone maintain the field, and the instability in her head started to come back again. Now thoroughly frustrated she dismissed it a second time and continued to work her way up, glad that her striker armor’s design was smooth on the exterior and she wasn’t wearing a pack or rack on her back, for eventually she was able to slide free once she got her waist up past the choke point, letting her slender legs pull through without incident.

Riona climbed on top and finally released the Fornax field, sagging a bit with relief as she reached down and picked up one of the lizards, throwing him off the heap of rubble that was inside one of their structures and knocking down three more climbing up towards her. She mentally flicked on her shields as plasma fire started to hit around her and pulled the lizard rifle into her grip as she side kicked the other one off the top of the skeet wreck.

Her plasma rifle was in the cockpit, but she wasn’t going back down to try and pull it out at the moment, needing to deal with these infantry first. The striker took two short steps over the burnt hull and jumped, coming down into the group below and firing at them from pointblank range, taking hits to her shields as she did so.

The exchange didn’t last long, with Riona mowing them down with ease and them unable to get through her shields, though one did try to grab her legs and knock her over. He got sent back the other way with a stern kick before receiving the last plasma blast to his chest, melting through most of his vest armor before she fired a second for good measure, punching through the hole and killing him.

Riona tossed the weapon aside, noting how it wasn’t as strong as she was used to as she concentrated and searched inside her ship with her Pefbar, eventually finding her rifle and guiding it up through the crevice telekinetically and over into her waiting hand.

“That’s better,” she said, turning the power on and jumping over some of the low rubble before climbing over a broken wall and up near to the roof. She didn’t have a jump pack on, or anything else for that matter, so she tossed her rifle up first then jumped, getting a handhold on a broke piece of ceiling and pulling herself up where she awkwardly pulled her body over the ledge and into the clean air.

Riona retrieved her rifle and looked around, seeing that she was still well within the lizard base but not too far from a pair of mechs blasting their way into the interior…with the enemy counterattacking with overwhelming numbers of infantry and a good number of tanks in support.

“When in Rome,” she muttered before running over to the edge and sliding her legs over the side before dropping down to street level some 13 meters below. She fell on impact, but partially rolled out of it and came up into a run headed for the nearest lizard as they saw her and responded accordingly.

Riona dove into the melee and got to work, remaining with the ground offensive until she ran out of ammo a few minutes later, then began working her way back to the exterior of the base and fighting hand to hand where necessary until she got to a group of Star Force commandos and bummed a replacement clip from one of them, then took up command of their small group along with grabbing a Calavari Knight from nearby. With the four-armed mass of white armor leading the way she assisted them psionically in punching deeper into the infantry as one of the nearby cruisers fell out of the sky and shook the ground so hard two of her men tripped and fell.

The battle from that point on was one-sided, with the Star Force warship eventually killing the other cruiser and using what operational weaponry it had for close-in fire support, but none the less the combat was brutal up close with the lizards making them pay for every inch of ground they took…and then once they had the surface secure they transitioned into a subsurface theatre where the naval and aerial power couldn’t come into play. The mechs did, to a certain extent, but some 36 hours later they were still fighting it out hand to hand deep inside planet’s crust as an Axius team came in to relieve the battle weary mainline troops.

Riona stayed and helped them clean up most of the hot spots, then with fatigue dragging her into a near coma she eventually relented and turned over command to an Axius Protovic, letting him see to the rest of the sweeps and allowing her to return to the surface where she called for a dropship to pick her up and take her back to the TF.

Riona dosed off enroute, having to be woken up by the pilot when they’d returned. She thanked him then dragged herself out, turning on the powered nature of her armor to help her walk back into the confines of the huge dropship and find her temporary quarters where she began stripping off her sweaty armor, feeling a huge sense of relief. She was about to grab a very quick shower, if she could keep herself awake long enough, when she got two steps away from the tube entrance and fell to the ground when the instability in her head returned.

“Alright, might as well,” she said, urging it on and feeling the stress immediately increase. This had happened once before, or rather four tries ending up with one new ability, plus the battlemeld transfer that Jason had helped her trigger. Her Yetu ability had manifested just like this, and she was eager to see what new ability was making its way forward, despite how tired and loopy she was.

Lying on the elevated shower platform sweaty and naked, she suffered through the transition pains and succeeded in pushing it all the way through to spurn the new tissue growth…which left her in so much pain spread across her entire body that she wondered what the hell she had just gotten, or whether or not her fatigue had contributed to the effect, perhaps leaving her too weak for a ‘regular’ transition.

Sweaty and smelly as she was after spending a day and a half in her armor, Riona mentally told herself to forget the shower and began to climb to her feet to head to bed, not getting more than a knee step forward before saying to hell with it and easing herself back down to the ground and sinking into the fluffy bath mat and falling asleep within seconds.

Riona woke up 6 hours later, feeling like it had been maybe 5 minutes, and was shocked to see how bad she’d been hit. Her entire body ached and her neck had a pinch in it from the angle her head had been bent, but she summoned up enough energy to finally take her shower, then she got dressed and dropped into bed for another 4 hours before getting up and eating something…and by something that was two plates full of food and a load of ambrosia cookies.

Knowing she was unfit for combat and curious as to what new ability she’d gained she headed over to the TF’s training facilities for some light workouts. The dropship didn’t have a sanctum onboard, for that was located in the rest of the warship, but it did have an abnormally shaped running track/hall plus several sparring chambers and challenge specific rooms. Riona went for an easy 5 miles to start with, trying to work out the burning in her muscles from the transition before grabbing a punching bag and doing some light sparring with it…that she gradually escalated up into her normal caliber blows.

Despite her body disagreeing with her she activated her Yetu, which was a combination neural enhancement/muscle speed mode that she could maintain for 12 seconds max…or at least that had been her best to date. She didn’t try for anything so energetic, instead pulsing it for .5 to 1 seconds and getting some blurry punching combos in on the bag, which registered hits and strength intensity on a holographic diagram floating nearby, which the striker used to calibrate her workout and create a baseline for analyzing just how bad her body was at the moment.

She’d been worse before, but only barely. Everything in her seemed to be hurting, and the Yetu made that pain flare up something bad but she stubbornly kept nibbling at it, trying to work herself into a semblance of normal so she could get back out into the field. Flying a skeet wasn’t that strenuous, but she needed quick hand movements to fly effectively and right now she couldn’t hold her hand still. She was shaky and needed to bleed it off, and triggering Yetu was a painful, yet effective way of resetting herself through the super speed that her twitchiness seemed to be imitating.

Rather than trying to hold herself still she’d feed the movement, or so her theory went. It wasn’t working well but after a while she started to get a bit of inner calm that she knew would transition over into other things with time, so she pressed on. The workout continued well past an hour, but she didn’t relent nor did she escalate, preferring to just ‘grease the gears’ rather than exhaust herself again, with that sensation lingering on the edge of her senses as it was.

Riona went through a series of kicking drills against the target, some hitting with her foot and others with her shin…which was usually a bad idea for there was no muscle covering it, just skin over bone for the most part and not a good place to get hit. The bag was soft enough to alleviate that but firm enough to give necessary resistance, so after several hundred kicks her shins were starting to complain a bit…which was when it finally happened.

As if protecting her leg from the next impact, Riona felt an invisible bubble directly over her bare skin hit the bag without her flesh ever making contact. She kicked three times in sequence, with the same light effect, until she finally stopped and tried to figure out what was going on. The Archon touched her bare leg with her fingertips, wondering if her skin was starting to get abrasion fried, but there was no sign of it so she went back to the drills with the sensation returning some 30 seconds later.

This time she caught it, mentally speaking, and pulled back from the bag while maintaining the feel over her right leg. She reached down and touched it again, with her finger being stopped a few millimeters away from her shin against a slick but firm force.

“Holy shit,” she whispered, not believing what her senses were telling her. She touched the invisible barrier again, then forced herself to let it go and reengage it, fearing that she wouldn’t be able to. It took several tries but she did manage to find the mental trigger and recreate the bioshield over her shin again.

Riona stood up and focused on her left hand, forcing what felt like a glove to form around it, then curling her fingers down into a fist and forcing as much energy as she could out into the aura around it…then she stepped forward and punched the target, hard.

The hologram registered the impact, but she never felt it hit her skin. Instead she felt the pressure all along her arm, as if the shield were physically connected not to one piece of her anatomy like an emitter, but to her entire limb…which was when she realized why her entire body was aching. The bioshield upgrade Paul had got had created little bits of tissue everywhere that acted as emitters rather than one or two solid chunks.

Suddenly Riona was glad for the excessive pain, for if she was right then she’d be able to create shields around any and all parts of her body.

She took a few more ‘gloved’ blows on the bag, then her head started to spin as she suddenly felt the effects of low ambrosia sweep over her.

“Dumbass,” she criticized herself. “Paul said it eats ambrosia. I’ll need snacks,” she said, leaving immediately for the cafeteria to collect a stash of ambrosia-laced foodstuffs along with several bottles of red, feeling the draggyness of her workouts already.

When Riona came back she spent the next 3 hours probing her new ability and working through stretching and light sparring drills while her snacks digested to continue to loosen up her body then, after she was convinced she was fit to fight, went back to her quarters and set her alarm for 45 minutes, catching a rejuvenating nap before heading over to the hangar bay and grabbing another skeet. She headed out to the closest battle zone that needed fighter cover, this one being a Scionate offensive, and dove back into the fray, overly pleased with her new ability but knowing that she needed to put it aside for the time being. She’d have an opportunity to train later, right now there was a planetary assault requiring her skills and attention.

4

July 12, 2536

Gwet System (Delta Region)

Leonis

Riona flew her trio of drone fighters in a triangle formation behind her skeet, two positioned above and one below so they’d all have forward firing arcs as she made yet another pass on the lizard cruiser pummeling the TF with a green plasma streamer. The weapon was holding out despite the fact that the back half of the ship was on fire and smoking heavily. The lizards had put most of their shield strength forward to protect that battery and Riona hadn’t been lucky enough to get a shot through the tiny opening that was allowing the plasma to come out.

So the Archon did the next best thing and kept hammering the exposed section of the warship while six others were still pouring fire into the massive dropship as it recalled the last troops from the surface campaigns. Likewise Axius and Scionate dropships and transports were pulling up the last of their troops in the face of a huge lizard relief fleet that had come into the system a day ago prompting the recall. All of the lizard bases had been eliminated with some residual cleanup efforts ongoing, but those had been quickly scrapped in order to get the troops back onto the jumpships and out of the system.

The bulk of the Axius and Scionate fleets had already left, with the Adamant and the handful of Star Force warships and their drones providing cover for the others on their way out. Riona’s TF was the last major chess piece on the planet, given that she’d had her mainline troops assume the final responsibilities to cover the others getting out, meaning there were still convoys coming in to the big dropship even now.

They had avoided the warship barrages, which seemed more interested in killing the dropship than strafing the troops on the ground, though the mechs had downed one of the cruisers on their own when it got too close. Perhaps that was the reason they were staying back and hitting the TF at range, but while they did other warships were scouring the planet and harassing the fleeing Scionate and Axius groups who were putting up a good fight while covering the evacuation.

Meanwhile orbit was where the heavy fighting was going down. The Hycre had long since departed, apparently having left the system but in actuality had gone into hiding within it, so when the lizard fleet arrived to face off against the Adamant and the ‘small’ number of warships it had with it the lizards thought they’d brought more than enough firepower to overwhelm the big ship.

That hadn’t happened, with the Hycre jumping the enemy at a very vulnerable transitional period between star and planet, hitting both locations simultaneously and making several devastating attack runs that sent the battle into a free for all as the lizards split their attention between the Hycre and pushing down to the vulnerable transports waiting nearby their warship escorts.

The few ships that had come down to the surface were nothing compared to the hundreds going at it above the atmosphere, and Riona desperately wanted to be up there in a command nexus but that wasn’t an option. She had troops to get back onboard and right now that meant taking down this warship, which she tore up a little bit more with a mauler storm augmented by the few missiles her drone fighters still had left onboard.

As soon as she zipped past overhead a pair of wisps fell in on her tail that she had to deal with, triggering a preprogrammed attack pattern in the drones and having them split up and loop back. The wisps were caught with four targets to chase and only two fighters to do it with, allowing two of the Star Force craft to get in behind them and execute the kills in short order. Riona had the fighters reform behind her and turned for another run on the warship when she saw a concussion ripple move through the atmosphere as something big inside the lizard cruiser detonated…with it falling to the ground in a soft crash, bending it slightly on impact but otherwise leaving the smoking hulk intact.

Riona tagged the next closest cruiser as the primary target for the 18 other pilots flying with her, a few of which had their own drone escorts, and zipped off towards it together rather than splitting their fire between multiple targets. The rest of the aerial craft were dealing with targets in other planetary locations, covering for their allies while leaving her with the job of supplementing the TF’s defenses.

That hadn’t been the plan, but rather the only option given the timing of the lizard attack. She’d been inside the TF when it had happened, leaving her too far away from the other locations to do any good so she’d decided to make sure the TF remained where it was to pick up the ground troops while the other pilots were off making the kills. Only recently had these warships come into attack range giving her something to do, but in truth she would have preferred they’d just stayed away for the shields on the TF weren’t going to hold out forever.

That said, the last of the troops were nearly onboard and it wasn’t but a few more long minutes until the last of the mechs backed their way into the exposed hangar, firing up at the few wisps stupid enough to follow them into range of the TF’s anti-air, with the shield dropping down to cover the hatch before the bay doors fully closed. When that occurred Riona got a notification on the battlemap and broke off from her current attack run, taking the other pilots and drones with her as they shot upward ahead of the big dropship as it slowly began to rise up from the surface.

The skeets from all areas coalesced at various altitudes in bunches, with Riona taking the highest grouping. As the TF rose up the aerial bays opened and the fighters flew inside during transit, making for a dicey catch even as the enemy cruisers followed it up continuing to throw plasma into the shields. The atmospheric friction cut down on the amount making it to target, but they didn’t let it go, eventually moving in close and using their primary plasma cannons in addition to the streamer to try and get through the now very weak shields before it could hit orbit.

But that also brought them into range of the maulers…or rather their outside range. They weren’t nearly as effective, but what energy they could deliver to the cruisers added up, stripping off their shields and beginning to eat through their hulls while more and more fighters slipped inside the dropship.

Another dozen lizard warships broke away from the orbital battle and dove into the atmosphere, flashing by Riona’s position and heading into the melee below as the TF couldn’t climb very fast given it had to pick up the fighters enroute…which was when Riona made a different call, linking into the comm of all those below.

“Change of plans. If anyone doesn’t have intact atmospheric seals speak now because we’re going orbital. Rendezvous with the donut ring and get there as best you can or head back down to the planet and wait it out. The TF has to go, now, and we’re holding it up.”

Riona changed frequencies and contacted the commander of the big dropship, with the TF immediately gaining speed upwards and actually bumping one of the cruisers out of the way. She cringed when she saw that, with the dropship’s shields disappearing in the collision, but soon it didn’t matter for rest of the Adamant had been coming down towards the atmosphere to meet it and the armor on the dropship would hold out for the rest of the trip up.

Taking her own advice Riona launched her skeet up above the atmosphere and flew directly towards the Melee-class warship, mentally crossing her fingers as the space around it was filled with lizard warships. Their fighters weren’t built for space, so she didn’t have to worry about them, but there were so many ships exchanging fire with the massive donut that it looked like there was no way she was going to get through…but the sizing was deceptive, and what looked to be an unending net of plasma fire actually had huge holes in it, enough for her to shoot her skeet and drones through to one of the big ring’s docking bays just ahead of the ‘donut hole’ coming up from underneath and beginning to slide into the giant ship.

Riona parked her skeet haphazardly on the deck, getting it out of the way of the others but leaving the crew to reposition it where it needed to go as she jumped out of the cockpit and ran towards the exit, headed for the nearest lift to get her up to the bridge.

By the time she got there the TF had fully merged back into the Adamant and the ship had moved back further up into orbit, heading right into the heart of the lizard attack group while the Warship-class jumpships held perimeter positions while firing into the hoard of ships to keep out of the worst of it. The Adamant took the brunt of the attacks and tore through the enemy fleet by the dozens, but still there were more lizard ships arriving in groups and adding to the onslaught, making final fleet strengths impossible to determine.

Riona got over to the command nexus and linked in, reorganizing the battle slightly from what the Admiral had them running and chewed through as many lizard ships as possible while the Hycre fleet really did most of the damage. Eventually the Adamant’s shields went down in several places, with the huge ship beginning to take hull damage but she didn’t pull it out, knowing the beast could stand up to the slugging and reaping the rewards from it. The lizards took to the dropped shields like a swarm of bugs to a light, which allowed the Hycre to literally rip them to shreds.

Rather than retreating the lizards fought to the last ship, with several trying to ram the Adamant and one succeeding in slipping by the specialized shield emitters designed to ‘cushion’ the blow. That ship imbedded itself far enough that the Adamant had to stick around in orbit for another two days cutting it loose before they were finally able to withdrawal and make the jump back to Star Force territory.

Eventually it was decided that the ship needed to be repaired rather than being sent into another campaign immediately, which it could have been given how big it was and how it could take several more such hits and still remain mostly operational. Star Force didn’t like operating that way when they could avoid it, so the Adamant returned to Earth where it could fit into a sufficiently-sized slip and undergo repairs…along with a few new upgrades.

Riona went with it, hopping onto a dropship in orbit and riding it down to Antarctica where she eventually found her way into the V’kit’no’sat pyramid.

“Knock, knock,” she said softly coming into the open doorway of Paul’s quarters as he was riffling through a drawer to find a particular headband he wanted before heading right back out to the sanctum.

He looked up at the sound and smiled, not having felt her approach. “Hey.”

“Hey to you too…you got a minute?”

“I’m kind of in the middle of something, but if you feel like walking and talking you can come with.”

“Works for me,” she said as he came back out and shut the door, walking at a brisk pace and her able to sense a bit of an adrenaline rush in him.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“You first,” she said, glancing at the headband…which with Paul’s short hair didn’t seem necessary.

“Prototype sensor. Headbands aren’t my thing and I forgot to put it on this morning…then I got a whiff of instability and rushed back here. Might just be my imagination but I think I’ve got another ascension coming on.”

“And that would be how many now?”

“Uh, not counting battlemeld this will be the 5th if it pans out.”

“And with?”

“17th. Haven’t found any new ones recently, and neither have the twins. Whatever they are they’re buried deep…or we’re just going about it the wrong way.”

“You have to start counting those.”

“Can’t use them alone, so they’re a different category.”

“If you say so. My count just escalated to two, which is why I’m here.”

Paul looked over at her curious as they walked. “What did you get?”

“Bioshield.”

That stopped him in the middle of the hallway. So far he’d been the only one to manifest that ability, try as the others had.

“Where and when…be specific.”

“In battle on Leonis. Popped up after a crash that I had to crawl out of. I had to dismiss it at the time but was able to get it a day later when I got back to the TF.”

“Describe the crash…it’s important.”

“My skeet took a warship level plasma hit, then the stupid wisps finished me off. IDF was functional so I didn’t feel the hit, but what was left of my skeet went straight into a lizard building and I landed upside down. Had to lift the thing off to get out, and I’m really glad I had my striker armor on or I would have been in trouble. Fought my way back to our ground troops after that then stayed with them until fatigue started to win out. I was almost in the shower when the instability hit again, then I let myself pass out on the floor afterwards. That whole body transformation thing is sick.”

“I know,” Paul said thinking hard.

“What?”

“Just working on a theory. You got time to talk in detail later?”

“Ha. I came here to find you so you could teach me the ways of the Force. I’m your girl until you get tired of me.”

“Never,” he said with a wink. “Give me four hours to finish what I’m working on then we’ll get busy,” he said, raising up his hand palm out. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Riona did likewise, forming her weak shield over her hand and pressing it up against Paul’s. The two shields touched and…

“That feels so weird,” he said, relishing in the new sensation until hers popped. “Sorry.”

“That was probably just me. I can’t hold it long.”

“With time and training, you will.”

“Four hours?”

He nodded. “Meditation room. We’re going to tackle this through battlemeld.”

“Do I have to be naked like Rikku?” she said with a bit of disgust.

“No,” he said with a laugh. “Though I’ll be honest in saying I didn’t mind those sessions.”

“Well if you feel like going it in the buff be my guest,” she offered, “but I tend to concentrate better with at least a few clothes on.”

“I wouldn’t be a distraction?” Paul said, mock shocked.

Riona cracked a smile. “Ok, you have a point there.”

The levity left Paul’s face. “Full clothes and full effort. I’ve had time to get a lot of ideas and haven’t had anyone to practice with until now. It’s going to be extensive, if you’re up for it?”

“Always.”

“That’s my girl,” he said, lightly punching her in the shoulder before heading off to finish up whatever crazy training he’d just been doing, for Riona noticed his uniform was already soaked with sweat.

She let him go and stood in the hallway for a moment, trying to figure out exactly where she was for the Archon hadn’t been back here for many years and she’d never gotten the complete layout of the massive facility down. The residential area she was in now was newish, she thought, not able to remember completely given the continuing construction on the command deck and other places as Star Force added additional buildings inside the pyramid as needed. As of now it held a population of more than half a million, making it a busy city of its own, though still a secret to the public and most of Star Force.

Riona walked around a bit until she found a familiar hallway and headed back out a different entrance than the one she’d come in through, heading out for a bit of a sightseeing expedition and catching up on the new developments and discoveries as well as to just enjoy the sights. The pyramid was pretty much Disney Land for Archons and she liked being here just for the ambiance…and the constant reminder of their true enemy and how formidable they were. It both scared and impressed her to no end. To have someone that powerful as an enemy was terrifying, but to have someone that powerful was also an opportunity to learn and grow faster than you would on your own figuring things out through trial and error.

Which was why she wanted to come here to learn from Paul, knowing that he’d cut years off her own learning curve while remaining ahead of her the entire time. For bioshield he was the trailblazer, and she was immensely glad that he was still here pressing his abilities and developing others rather than out fighting in the field. She needed and wanted a teacher…not to mention the chance to get to know him better. Normally the trailblazers kept to themselves as far as any close personal bonds went, but that was to be expected. She was just a ‘second gen’ and they all outranked her.

But now that she had something to offer Paul she was eager to help out, and despite the fact that he had years of training ahead of her in this discipline she now had something the other trailblazers didn’t, making her a ‘peer’ despite the fact that she’d been an Archon almost exactly as long as they had been.

To her it felt like she’d just been bumped up to the big leagues, and now she felt different. The slight resentment towards the trailblazers was gone, now that she felt she was on par with them.

Actually, she kicked herself for having felt the resentment in the first place. It was childish and, now seeing it from a different perspective, admitted that instead of being their equal they’d ‘believed’ they were their equal, which involved more whining than doing. Now that she suddenly found herself on the other side of the line, even slightly so, it was an epiphany moment, feeling like she’d all of a sudden experienced another upgrade.

“Time to get to work,” she told herself, letting go of the last feelings of resentment and the ‘second gen’ label she’d worn with a mix of pride and embarrassment for centuries. She was an Archon, pure and simple, and it was her skills that defined her, not her birthdate.

5

September 13, 2536

Solar System

Earth

Smooth, Paul reminded her as his thoughts transmitted through the battlemeld telling her exactly what she needed to do through memory rather than words.

Trying, Riona responded, summoning up another weak shield in front of her and barely holding the effort. Manifesting the barrier around her body was easy compared to creating an independent wall not locked into a specific distance from her frame. With the invisible barrier visible to her senses, and Paul’s as well through the link, she held it in place and slowly began to walk a circle around it, forcing her to maintain its position while altering hers.

The effort was intense, but not something she could achieve through raw power. Push too hard and her ‘grip’ would slip, which was what Paul was trying to teach her. Drawing on his experiences, memories, and realtime guidance, she soaked his skill in through the battlemeld and held up the shield for the complete walk-around, then took up a position behind it as the thud shooters in the walls warmed up.

Or rather one did, placed directly in front of her while Paul was sitting with his back to the wall just underneath it and telekinetically adjusting the control panel from afar, which she could also feel through the battlemeld. He specifically wasn’t using any other psionics, such as Pefbar, so Riona couldn’t draw on those. Rather, he was letting her ‘pick his brain’ as to how her own abilities worked as the first tiny projectile shot out and hit her shield wall.

It nearly overloaded it, and when she tried to repair it she suddenly got a lot of intricate instructions from Paul, again, not in words, but in raw mental images that essentially guided her with a level of knowledge she did not currently possess. This was Paul’s choice of instruction, and Riona had to admit she was making far more progress than she’d expected. He was showing her things above her level, almost like a cheat, and as a result was helping her level up much faster than had she been doing this alone or even with an advisor.

It was almost as if he was controlling her shield for her, save for the fact that she was still making the actually projections and corrections, which right now involved reforming the damaged pieces of the shield matrix and holding them intact, for it didn’t matter how much energy she provided the shield if she couldn’t maintain the structure. Let go her concentration and the energy would dissipate…unless she recalled it, which was another trick that Paul was trying to teach her.

Riona had learned that, like the emitters on their own armor, a semi-functional shield matrix was held inside prior to deployment…kind of like opening an umbrella. That meant when a shield first formed it could be somewhat stored away for later deployment. If the shield was completely destroyed then it would have to be reformed before it could get to full strength again.

The bioemitters in her body weren’t quite to the ‘storing’ phase yet, and Paul said they’d have to be kicked in the ass to get it going, which was the next phase of this little calibration exercise…after she blocked 3 more staggered hits.

Barely making it through those, Riona then had to recall her damaged shield. She tried, really, but almost all of the energy was lost when it hit her flesh, like a glass window shattering and falling to pieces on the floor, except that in this case the shield energy simply dissipated into the environment without so much as a sight or sound…though for Paul, he could ‘see’ it through Riona’s senses thanks to the battlemeld.

“That’s better,” he said, releasing the link and standing up.

Riona frowned. “How was that better? I lost it again.”

“Not all of it. Your emitters pulled back in a touch.”

“I didn’t feel anything.”

“Yes you did, you just didn’t notice it because it’s a subtle sensation. The effort was blinding you but I was able to pick it up because I was specifically looking for it. From now on that amount you recall will grow, thanks to the small crack you’ve formed. That was the transition point, and you just achieved it.”

“If you say so,” Riona said, not sensing anything different in her body. “Are we done or are you just tired of being in my head?”

“Just taking a break, or did you not feel somebody at the door?”

“I thought they were walking by.”

A telepathic prodding resulted in the chamber door opening and Aaron walking in. “Sorry for the interruption,” he offered.

“You’re excused,” Riona said sarcastically.

Aaron smiled at her then turned to face Paul. “We just got word from the Hycre that the Elarioni worlds are getting hit by the Skarrons. So far they’re just fighting the Nestafar on the surface, but there’s no way of knowing how long that will last. They’re requesting any help the Alliance can give in evacuating their entire population to the ADZ.”

Paul whistled.

“I know,” Aaron agreed.

“How many ships do they have available?”

“Not enough, but they were able to get a messenger out through the fighting easy enough.”

“How many worlds are currently under assault?”

“They said 5 of 8, but the Nestafar are still on the other three, so they can’t just pack up and leave without getting shot at. They’re only safe underwater because the Nestafar don’t have the resources or tech to hurt them there.”

“Is Kyler going to take this?”

“Hasn’t reached him yet. I thought you’d like to handle it since you and Ariel are so close…and the fact that we’re talking a huge naval operation to get to them. Plus Kyler is probably busy with the lizards right now.”

“And I’m just sitting here training my butt off.”

“We’re just sitting here training our butts off,” Aaron amended. “I can go, but I figured this is more in your wheelhouse.”

“It is,” Paul agreed. “But there’s no way we have the ships available for this.”

“The Adamant will be available soon,” Riona added. “Repairs are almost finished.”

“We’re going to need more than that,” Paul said with a shake of his head. “Even if we can fight through both the Nestafar and Skarron fleets, it’s going to take a long time to evacuate their people…not to mention we’re going to have to configure cargo ships to carry aquatic passengers. That alone will take a few months, minimum.”

“Yeah, about that,” Aaron said deviously. “Sounds like we could use a little help.”

“So it does,” Paul agreed after a second’s delay. “Then take them to Atlantica?”

“Not sure about that one or what kind of resources they need, but that’s a definite possibility.”

“How many people need to be transported?”

Aaron cringed. “The Hycre couldn’t give us a specific number.”

“Wonderful,” Paul said, frowning. “Did they say where this messenger was?”

“At a Hycre world in the old Calavari zone.”

“Well I need more information if we’re going to make this happen,” he said, turning to Riona.

“Go,” she said, dismissively waving her hand at him. “I can take it from here.”

Paul frowned. “What, and leave my new best friend behind. Uh uh, you’re coming with.”

A smirk worked its way onto her face. “Best friend huh?”

“You know someone else with bioshield?”

“So you only like me for my abilities?”

“Pretty much,” Paul said, turning back to Aaron. “I’ll take care of this, but I may need your help down the road.”

“You know where to find me.”

Paul fist tapped Aaron’s chest and jogged towards the open door. “You mind keeping her company for a while? She gets lonely real easy.”

Riona scoffed at his back as he ran out of view, then saw Aaron smirking.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything. You up for some sparring?”

“Actually…yeah,” she admitted.

“Come on, we’ll grab a different chamber. What were you working on?”

“Shield deflections,” she said, walking out with him.

Two months later…

Paul and Riona crossed through the shield barrier on the rear of the Sparrow-class dropship and into the watery environment of the Elarioni hangar bay. Each Archon wore a wet suit with breath mask and swam away from the dropship to where one of the mermaid-like aliens were waiting. Their muscular tri-finned tails trailed below them in the blue-lit water as their neon-colored hair floated loose around their heads. All the Elarioni were ‘female’ in appearance, reproducing trisexually, so they all tended to look alike…almost identical save for a minor tweak here and there.

Whereas Ariel had green hair these two had orange, and one of them raised a three fingered hand up to wave them forward. Paul and Riona followed, swimming crudely by Elarioni standards through the tube-like passageways with Paul doing a weird looking flip kick for propulsion that kept him ahead of Riona and her struggling to keep up most of the time.

Their guides slowed to match their pace, but were clearly riding the brake the entire way to a large chamber that had a squashed spherical design with multiple protrusions that doubled as ‘chairs’ in that there were Elarioni latched onto them operating various control consoles, though in truth they were merely floating in place, tail down for the most part.

Both of them were led over to a pair of spindly tentacle-like arms coming up from the floor that put them nearly in the center of the room with something to hold onto, after which a blue-haired Elarioni swam down to them, her skin darker than her hair save for the patches that glowed with bioluminescence.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, translated through the programming in the Archons’ breath masks, which likewise transferred their words into the Elarioni language…with a bit of imperfection, but reliable enough for most conversations.

“If we’re going to make this happen I need information,” Paul said without preamble. “How many of you are there, where is the fighting currently taking place, how many enemy ships, etc.”

“We will tell you what you require. At present there are 800 billion Elarioni spread across 8 worlds. We believe that all will be under assault in the near future, which was why we have come now to ask for assistance.”

“How many can you transport on your own ships?”

“Only a small fraction, I’m afraid. We have lived in seclusion for so long we do not have many starships, but we do have warships and we will fight both the Nestafar and Skarrons in order to get free. We simply do not have the numbers or transports to do this alone, and we will not leave people behind to die. We ask that you help us evacuate everyone, and in exchange we will use our abilities, knowledge, and strength to become part of your Alliance and fight both the Cajdital and the Skarrons. We had hoped the latter would be honorable, but their conduct thus far has shown otherwise.”

“How did you get this ship out through their fleets?”

“It wasn’t difficult. Their technology is vastly inferior to ours and as you well know orbit isn’t something that can be locked down easily. We ran through their lines and jumped away from our world without major inconvenience, but they also didn’t know we were coming. An evacuation is quite another matter.”

“As I well know?”

“We are well aware of who you are, Paul-024, even before you agreed to this meeting.”

Looks like your famous, Riona commented telepathically.

“And who am I?”

“A skilled naval tactician and a bold and powerful fighter. We have seen the recordings of many of your battles, including the raid you made against the Scionate den.”

Guess I am famous, Paul answered her. “Then you know what I’m capable of, including sizing up our opposition. Getting your people out will be very difficult, but there is a plan in the works. Before that can begin to take place we need data…and an understanding. Have you reviewed the message?”

“Yes. Our sister has described the world in question and we are willing to take her at her word. We also thank you for rescuing her. I would ask, on a personal note, how have you preserved her so long? She is more than twice the age of the oldest known Elarioni.”

“A little thing called self-sufficiency.”

“A drug?”

“No, it’s a state of maintaining a positive healing to attrition ratio, accomplished primarily through training. She learned to do it and as a result doesn’t physically age, though she does grow wiser with time and experience.”

“We have no knowledge of such things.”

“We can teach you, or she can.”

“And there is much we can teach you, in exchange for your assistance.”

Paul smiled, tapping into her mind for a bit of a read. “You’re not sure she’s telling the truth.”

“We have no reason to doubt the word of our sister.”

“You doubt whether she is real or a fabrication we have concocted. You don’t think it’s actually possible to live that long.”

The Elarioni was silent for a moment. “I do wonder why you did not bring her with you.”

“Time,” Paul stated simply. “If we’re going to evacuate your people the longer we wait the more the war between the Nestafar and Skarrons will escalate, which will make a difficult extraction even more so. At present Ariel is in transit. She will not be coming outside the ADZ, but I’ve arranged a meeting on a world near the border.”

“What do you require of us, in addition to information?”

“If we are going to go to the effort necessary to pull your people out, it’s not going to be so you can sit in the ADZ and watch the rest of us fight. You will have to become invested in the defense as well…and not just in an advisory role.”

“Agreed.”

“What are your combat capabilities?”

“Nothing that would be of use to you on land, but our ships are superior to yours. Given time to build more we will be able to defend any world you give us.”

“We’re not giving you a world, we’re offering to share one.”

“I misspoke. I apologize. I only mean to say that we will not be a burden in the long term. What aid you give us now we will repay down the road once we are free to build and grow.”

“By that do you mean other worlds?”

“Possibly, but I meant being free to build without having an enemy sharing the same worlds. The Nestafar have restricted our growth, though they also helped to hide our existence. We do not wish to make a visible impact on galactic events, for it could draw our pursuers to us, but at the moment we face a more imminent concern. We must step into the light whether we wish to do so or not. I must ask, for Ariel mentioned it, that you too are hunted by the V’kit’no’sat?”

“They do not know we exist, but if they did they would hunt us to extinction. Of that I have no doubts.”

“Yet you operate freely and obviously. Is that not welcoming your enemy to you?”

“I hope not,” Paul said honestly. “But if we’re going to have any chance of standing up to them in the long run we have to build and grow now. It’s a bad situation all the way around, but if we’re going to die we’d rather die trying than waiting and hiding.”

“Waiting and hiding have served the Elarioni well. We are uncomfortable with what we must do, but we have no choice. I would ask that our contributions to the Alliance be allowed to occur in less obvious pursuits.”

“So long as that doesn’t mean you’ll shy away from a fight, I think something can be worked out. In fact, I already have something in mind.”

“And that is?”

Paul smiled beneath his breath mask, but the Elarioni couldn’t see the gesture. “What is most obvious to outsiders is your technology. They recognize ship hulls first off, so the answer is simple…don’t use your own. Use ours instead.”

“Yours are inferior.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “I’m not so sure about that. But even if I grant you your point, keep your current technology for defense of your new home, but use ours when battling elsewhere in and around the ADZ.”

“I hardly think you have ships to give away so freely…or do you mean to teach us how to make yours?”

“Actually, I was thinking of a third option…some of your people joining Star Force.”

6

May 27, 2537

Solar System

Inner Zone (Warship Adamant)

Paul threw a handful of tiny thuds at Riona, telekinetically guiding them into hovering orbits around her in an erratic pattern before launching one in at her leg. It hit just above her skin and bounced off, with him catching it and returning it to the halo. He repeated the process with one coming down at her head from above, but the Archon blocked it high with a projected shield rather than a ‘skin’ one. Next came a simultaneous pair, one coming at her gut and the other at her back with her deflecting the one in front but missing the other and getting a little tap on her spine.

Paul shook his head. “Pay attention to your surroundings, youngling.”

Riona rolled her eyes. “I suppose I deserve that,” she said, resetting her mental composure.

“Yes you do, “ Paul said, sending in another towards her face that she reached up and swatted out of the way with a shield-covered palm.

“Better…” he added, sending in two again, this time from left and right.

Riona closed her eyes as she manifested dual shields both a few inches away from her body and only a hand’s length wide. Both circular barriers went up in time to block the hits, but the left one was weaker than it should have been and crumpled on contact, letting the thud drop motionless to the floor while the other bounced off as it should have.

“Tolerable,” Paul noted. “You need to think of both shields as two parts of the same projection. You’re favoring one over the other and that’s a bad habit to get into.”

“I know. Hit me again.”

Paul did as asked, working with her for another 15 minutes with little progress, but each failure and mistake she made was something Riona could use to calibrate, thus the experience, while disheartening, was for a purpose and she understood that. She also knew that Paul knew, meaning there was no ego involved. He was pressing her to force her into a situation where she could learn from mistakes and kept the pressure on so that she would keep making mistakes and challenging her current limits.

That was the sort of thing a friendly Archon did, but if you didn’t have the right understanding in place beforehand it could be misconstrued as hazing, for Paul sought out any and all opportunities to exploit her weaknesses and really grind in the failure. Fortunately the two had gotten used to each other quite fast, helped in no small part by the battlemeld sessions, though for this workout that would have been counterproductive.

When he’d finished pummeling her they switched up, with her pelting him and watching how he responded. Riona didn’t hold back either, throwing three and four at him at a time and Paul having to block them with small shield projections only…no all-encompassing shield that she knew he was capable of summoning up. Still, she couldn’t get any through until she added a Fornax blast and caught him off guard, bouncing two off his taught chest.

He looked over at her with a wry smile. “Cheater.”

She was about to say something when the intercom activated with a repetitive tone. Both Archons glanced at each other as Paul walked over to the side and hit the comm. “Yes?”

“They’re here,” the Admiral said pithily.

“On my way,” Paul said, turning the comm off and walking out of the training room and eventually the sanctum onboard the warship with Riona at his side. The two eventually made their way up to the bridge as the main holo was depicting the arrival of several dozen massive ships, each far larger than the Adamant and bullet shaped, much like the old school Star Force jumpships had been, save these were shiny chrome in color and looked not to have a single protrusion, bump, or dent on their hulls.

“How are we set?” Paul asked.

“All fleets are on standby.”

“Have they made contact yet?”

“No.”

“Do so, and route it to the nexus,” Paul said, heading over that way. Riona followed him and stood a respectful two meters back to stay out of the holocomm when it activated, showing a small version of a Voku with its pointy head and thick, muscular arms. Its skin was pitch black and it had but one eye, that one a deep green and wide set like a visor, for it appeared to be made of crystal rather than flesh. Riona didn’t know if that was a natural growth or a mechanical implant, but regardless it made the Voku look intimidating…despite the fact that they were the size of Knights and larger.

“Greetings, Warlord Paul.”

“Morning, Cal-com. Glad to see you could make it.”

“I have no greater mission of importance at the time.”

“Which group are you personally traveling with?”

“That which proves the greatest challenge.”

Paul smiled. “Same here. Our ships are a bit slower than yours, especially some of the transports we’ve had to scrounge up. Do you wish to jump with us or ahead of us?”

“We will not attack until you are there, so there is no need to travel separately. We will escort you to the divergence point.”

“How soon before your full fleet arrives?”

“Only moments more.”

“Our two largest ships will bracket the convoy. The Ultrix will lead, I will bring up the rear in the Adamant. Work your ships into the formation wherever you like.”

The Voku bowed his head slightly. “As you wish. Jump when you like, we will follow your lead without further communications being necessary.”

“What is your full ship count?”

“There will be 37 conglomerates arriving. We will not reform prior to the last segment of our journey.”

“Very well,” Paul said, seeing that 32 Voku ‘ships’ had arrived. “I’ll signal the fleet to get underway.”

“May fortune favor us on this endeavor,” Cal-com said before cutting the transmission, with his holo being replaced by the sensor feeds as they came back from their miniaturized form on the left.

“Friendly,” Riona commented.

“I’ve met him before and we have an understanding. They don’t talk much, so don’t take that as a negative.”

“Big ass ships though.”

“Their version of a jumpship…except that there is no jumpship.”

“I’m interested in seeing that.”

“Apparently you’ll have to wait a couple months.”

“Bugger.”

“Yeah, it is pretty impressive.”

Riona raised an eyebrow as Paul handed out mental orders to the fleet through the nexus. “You’ve seen them transform?”

“Nothing that large, but yeah, when we had our meet and greet they showed off a bit.”

“And?”

“Worth waiting for…and stealing, if I can work out a way to do it.”

“What’s the holdup?”

“Their combat philosophy doesn’t match ours exactly, and they’ve tailored their tech to match it. Still, the adjustable nature of the transformations is immensely useful. I just have to find a way to do it without sacrificing the advantages we already have.”

“Lesser applications?”

“Probably. It’s a back burner project I dabble with from time to time. Don’t expect Optimus Prime to show up any time soon.”

“You mean for a mech?”

Paul’s head came up slightly and he turned back to look at Riona. “Damn girl, I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“I see that spark in your eye and I like it. I’m calling dibs on naming privileges for whatever you come up with.”

“Deal,” Paul said with a smile as he turned back to look at the holos…which was unnecessary since he was already mentally linked in, but he did so just in time to see the Ultrix begin repositioning around the star to get to their outgoing jumpline with a handful of warships and a host of cargo ships following.

It took a long time to get all of them into position, with the Voku ships slipping into the gaps as groups would make jumps out together, spaced with at least 1 or 2 seconds between each ship so they didn’t ram each other on exit or entry to the next system on the decel end of the jump. Larger gaps of 30 seconds or so existed between groups, allowing for the spacelanes to clear out on arrival and each progressive group tagged with emerging from the jump in progressively higher orbits, laying out the fleet in a long carpet each time it hit a new system.

Then they’d all have to reposition to the new jumpline again, stagger up and make similar jumps. That was the nature of interstellar convoy travel, and over the next pair of months they continued to do exactly that, leaving the Core Region, then the ADZ altogether and passing through what had once been Calavari territory and was now partially Nestafar and partially unclaimed wasteland.

When they got to a predetermined system within Nestafar space but uninhabited by them, the Star Force/Voku armada split up into 8 attack groups, each traveling to a system with Elarioni in it with the intent on hitting them simultaneously so both their enemies wouldn’t have any forewarning that they were coming. Paul, Riona, and the Adamant headed towards the most populous Nestafar world and the one that should prove to be the hardest to get the evacuees out of. It was called Vionsed and was part of a three planet Nestafar civilization, meaning they would have to contend with the system defense fleet in addition to whatever surprises they had in store around that particular world.

They weren’t going in completely blind though, given the information the Elarioni had provided. What they didn’t know was that the Skarrons had already invaded Vionsed. One other world in the system had already been battling the Skarrons on the ground, but when the Adamant arrived a few minutes behind the leading warships Paul saw their sensor data on the battlemap and the Skarron units already in play on the ground.

Not to mention a huge Nestafar fleet in orbit, with Skarron ships elsewhere in the system, though primarily holding onto turf around the other world that now seemed to be mostly under their control based on orbit and surface readings being fed to them by Star Force scout ships deployed there to assess ship numbers.

“Alright, time to get to work,” Paul said, mentally triggering the TF to being the dislodgement procedure from the Adamant, which Riona was on. As he did so the warships alongside began disgorging their drones and deploying them into screens as the Nestafar fleet started to come their way…but like clockwork the first of the Voku ships entered a slightly higher orbit and kept some of its forward momentum, blowing by the Star Force ships as the huge chrome bullet began to disintegrate, with smaller pieces falling off it looking like sand prior to large chunks breaking off, all of which gave the appearance that it was dying a quick death at the hands of some invisible Nestafar weapon.

But each of those chunks didn’t stay rugged. They morphed into smaller chrome ships of various designs, all with smooth lines and perfect hulls that shot off deeper towards the planet and engaged the Nestafar head on, despite their superior numbers.

They were buying time for the Adamant to drop its invasion troops to a landmass on the edge of the ocean where the transports would start setting down. They had to secure the area then hold it for the duration of the evacuation, but to do that they first had to get down there and there was no time to waste. Give the Skarron ground forces time to redeploy and you’d be in a world of hurt…something that Kip had impressed upon Paul prior to their breaking up and heading to different target worlds.

Sending a signal to the Admiral and his bridge staff, Paul ordered the Adamant lower into the atmosphere and directly into the Nestafar fleet once the TF fully separated. While the Voku made up the bulk of the firepower in this operation he wasn’t going to sit back and let them take all the damage, especially considering that their ships were all manned, tough as they were. To that end the giant donut-shaped warship slid down into the Nestafar swarm and began racking up ship kills as another Voku ship entered orbit and began disintegrating into warship pieces that fell down into the growing melee.

By the time the 3rd arrived the Nestafar saw that they were in a world of hurt and pulled back before their numbers could drop below the 50% mark, for the Voku were tearing them to bits.

They began fleeing on separate vectors, clearing the path that Star Force was hacking out down to the surface and moving off to other orbits and seeing what their new enemy would do. Paul’s ships held position, as did about two thirds of the Voku, but the rest of them pursued the Nestafar who regrouped at various locations and continued the fight with better odds.

Paul let them go, knowing that he couldn’t take the Adamant after them if they chose to dance around orbit. Besides, killing the Nestafar wasn’t the point of this mission…that was just a bonus. Getting the Elarioni out was the reason why they were here and to do that he had to hang onto orbit and protect the transports which would start jumping in from the star as soon as he signaled it was fairly safe. Right now the Voku were guarding them there, and as much as Paul wanted to head down to the surface and join in the fighting that was sure to come he knew he had to stay right where he was and oversee the naval situation for the duration of this operation.

Sometimes being the ‘Admiral’ was fun, other times it just plain sucked.

Riona didn’t wait for the TF to land, instead launching from one of the bays during the decent. Her skeet got bounced around a lot by the turbulence but eventually she got it righted and pointed down, lining up the streamlined hull with the oncoming air and pulling out away from the huge distortion ripples coming off the 2 mile wide ship with more fighters following her out. They immediately had their hands full as Skarron fighters moved to intercept the TF and met them literally half a minute after exit.

Riona ducked her skeet down through a long, hard braking loop to level off and begin chasing them through the dogfight that was forming as they tried to throw plasma into the side of the TF. At first the atmospheric turbulence shielded it for the most part, but when the tiny white plasma orbs began hitting the shields the anti-air fire started coming back too, with the enemy fighters quickly learning that this wasn’t an undefended target.

That left them to contend with the Star Force skeets that were easily outnumbered. Riona and the others kept it together though and started racking up kills while going evasive far more than they liked until the Voku fighters came down from orbit, dropping like rocks that then split up into fragments that began chasing after the Skarron fighters. The smallest of the Voku ‘pieces’ was more than twice the size of a skeet and outmassed it by a factor of 6. That said, the craft were still nimble, nearly the match of the skeets in agility alone, and armed with directed energy orbs.

They weren’t plasma, but a form of energy that Star Force hadn’t gotten around to creating yet, even in engineer play, which saw the Star Force techs building all manner of things from the database that would never be put into practical use, just so they could say they did and learn from the experience. These weapons were known as Dwio, and had an active guiding mechanism in the fighters to steer them into targets like a guided missile.

Riona could see multiple colors that she didn’t understand the significance of, but she did see that their shots rarely missed. Even when the Skarrons evaded a lined up shot, the orbs steered themselves into a correction…and passed right through the enemy shields.

The Skarron fighters had the same armor on them that their walkers did, though in significantly lesser amounts, allowing themselves a bit of longevity against the Voku orbs but it wasn’t nearly enough, with two or three shots bringing one down and there being plenty of Voku fighters to get the job done, in addition to the skeets were which holding their own.

Riona was glad for the help and by the time the TF finally set down and began unloading mechs and other ground vehicles they had the immediate airspace secured and were working on pushing the perimeter out and hitting the few surface targets that were of note, some Skarron and a lot Nestafar. Nothing civilian, but a few weapons emplacements that were throwing up anti-air and larger plasma weaponsfire at the fighters, though some tried to play dead and hide, but eventually Riona and the others cleaned out the surrounding area in preparation for the battles yet to come.

And they were coming alright. Skarron walkers were redeploying on the south and west while Nestafar ground troops were massing on the north, with the ocean and the Elarioni to the east. Within a few hours, maybe a day tops, there was going to be a showdown, with both sides looking like they weren’t going to tolerate anyone on their turf, making Riona wonder who would be shooting who if the Nestafar and Skarrons got to each other. Three way battles were extremely rare, but this looked like it might just be one in the making.

7

Ker-shat stood shoulder to shoulder with the other Voku troops inside the transport as it traveled down to the surface of the planet under assault, waiting patiently until the doors underneath his feet eventually opened, leaving him and the others standing on small squares with nothing but an energy shield separating them from the quickly moving ground beneath. As the transport slowed those behind him were released, with him waiting a few moments longer before his shield disappeared and he dropped through the square and into freefall.

The 8 foot tall Voku cushioned the drop using his flight harness, coming down onto the dirt and rock-strewn ground in a crouch as two others fell beside him. One was a skirmisher like himself, while the other was wearing the exoskeletal heavy weapons they were meant to escort to the target…which in this case was an enemy walker with infantry support that was pushing towards one of the Human positions where their infantry was guarding the coastline.

The Star Force mechs were elsewhere, dealing with larger threats and the Nestafar were trying to slip one of their own through a weak spot in the perimeter, yet it was far enough away from their massive dropship to be out of its weapon range. Those closer positions were reserved for the dozens of transports coming down and parking near the water’s edge and extending pylons out into the depths to facilitate the transfer of evacuees…and this walker was heading for the nearest of them.

The Voku transport had put them down behind the enemy grouping, with the leading elements already engaging the Humans and the four-legged machine blanketing the area ahead with plasma that the Humans were having to evade while effectively chewing up the enemy infantry. As soon as Ker-shat got to his feet he and the other two Voku began to run, then they leapt forward and flew some 80 meters before landing again and running some more. They repeated this process three times before coming up on the rearmost infantry, with the Voku leaping up again and grabbing one of the flying Nestafar by the neck from behind.

He dragged it to the ground with him, placing a killing shot to the back of its neck from the blaster gauntlet that he wore attached to his forearm then discarding the body as he landed and ran forward. Meanwhile his double did likewise, rising up as he fell as both of the skirmishers paved the way for the slightly slower moving teammate coming up from behind as he refrained from firing so as to give the skirmishers more of a surprise factor…though his sights were set dead center on the walker ahead.

Ker-shat was wearing very little, as was Voku custom. His black body was covered by an equally black and flexible skin-tight sheath that provided a bit of armor value against abrasions and weaponsfire, but in order to preserve his agility the bulk of his defense came in the form of a pair of shield generators housed in solid strips along the outside of each hip. One was an energy shield, in that it repelled all energy while making an exclusion for his own weapons. It operated like a bubble surrounding him and anyone he kept close, with him able to adjust the size with a simple touch to the control interface he was wearing.

The second shield was the more complex, for it was anti-ballistic and also encompassed him in a sphere of protection. The delicate nature of the construction only blocked fast moving objects, allowing Ker-shat to interact with his environment as if the shield was not even there…but it was, with a matrix structured in a way not to oppose normal movements. Or rather, technically it opposed everything, just at such a low level that it wasn’t detectable. When sufficient momentum hit the shield matrix it caught and caused a chain reaction that intensified the resistance, much like trying to walk through water.

Move slowly and you have little trouble, try and go fast and you essentially run into a brick wall. It was a crude metaphor but essentially correct, though the seamless integration with Ker-shat’s combat made it appear almost magical. The only other things he wore were the gauntlets on his forearms, both weapons and comm gear integrated into a single unit. Other than that it was just his muscle and skill guiding him into combat with a fluid grace.

His flight harness was part of the shield struts attached to his legs and allowed him brief moments of ability, while needing to recharge in between. The antigrav tech gave the Voku incredible speed across ground in addition to their own running speed, essentially able to jump ahead and close with enemies incredibly fast, as well as to augment jumping.

That was how Ker-shat approached his second target, running a few steps then dashing ahead, almost dragging his feet on the ground as he shot across 30 meters and punched a Nestafar in the head while kicking another two nearby before delivering the killing energy blasts. The rainbow glob of light seemed to defy description or shape, passing as a blur between his forearm and the targets as the rest of the nearby Nestafar began to realize they were being attacked from the rear.

That was when the heavy weapons ‘hammer’ opened fire. He wore the same equipment as the skirmishers plus an exoskeleton that contained a number of extra weapons, the most prominent of which was a tiny Dwio. He didn’t use it at first, intent on clearing out some of the infantry nearby as he closed distance with the walker, sizing up its weak spot. He knew he had to get within one jump from it first, and to do that they had to get through the infantry that was beginning to make hits on the trio’s shields with their red plasma pistols and rifles.

It was an inferior weapon, but damaging enough in large numbers. Ker-shat knew they could take a great many hits before they were in jeopardy, but not from the walker which stopped in its tracks and began to turn around, bringing its primary weapon to bear on them.

Both skirmishers went wide right, hoping to draw its attention and simultaneously diving into a thicker infantry cloud that saw about 2/3rds of the enemy shooting at them from the air rather than from the ground. Keeping on the move they avoided one large plasma blast that actually hit and killed a pair of Nestafar, with the gunner seeming not to care as it continued tracking the two as they got a bit closer to the machine.

Meanwhile the hammer was slowly approaching from the flank, fighting his way through the infantry without carrying much how many of them he got. They were for the skirmishers, his task was the walker and he cagily began to circle around behind it, eyeing the distance he needed and not wanting to dart ahead too quickly and draw attention.

Ker-shat dashed to the right, catching a small bit of the plasma orb as it hit the ground beside him and seeing his shield strength diminish considerably. He still had plenty to fight with, but too many near misses and he’d become exposed. Prompting himself to be more evasive than hunter, he took out three more enemy infantry and kept away from the plasma blasts until he saw the hammer shoot through a nearly horizontal jump and up onto the walker’s back, coming down behind the neck and firing his Dwio directly into the topside armor, vaporizing the defense turret there as it came around to shoot him off.

Ker-shat figured he had it dead to rights, but as long as it was still operational the main cannon at the top of the long neck was still a threat so he kept dancing around and killing infantry where he could until the hammer finally dropped the big machine, with it crumpling to the ground as its legs bent up to form a shallow cage around the Voku as the infantry swarmed toward him and tried to shoot him off…but it was too late.

Now no longer having to be excessively evasive, the two skirmishers went aggressive and started leaping towards whatever enemies were nearby as the distant plasma fire ahead continued without interference as the forward end of the Nestafar advance was still fighting it out with Star Force, apparently unaware that their walker was now down. It wasn’t long until a couple of silver armored Humans jumped out from behind their barricades and rushed the Nestafar while their support snipers continued laying down fire.

The Nestafar instinctively pulled back and up into the air, their natural defensive move, Ker-shat was discovering, with the Voku now making use of it and taking out two or three per leap as the Nestafar were clustering together into firing groups to try and get through the Humans’ thick armor. There were so many that the three Voku had their fill of targets, slowly wearing down their numbers with the Humans making the most kills by far, but eventually the Nestafar figured they’d lost and all of them took flight, pulling back across the dead walker and retreating towards the distant LZ that they’d come from.

Ker-shat and other Voku went after them, leaving the Humans behind and leaping forward to catch the fleeing flyers who were decently fast through the air once they got up to speed. He killed six more before an enemy fighter swooped in and landed a hit on his shield that blew away nearly a quarter of the defensive barrier’s strength. When it came around for a second pass he held up, staring it down and ready to make a defensive dash in whatever direction needing as the hammer landed a Dwio on the craft, damaging it.

The fighter pulled off and fled, with the Nestafar infantry now too far ahead to pursue.

Ker-shat activated his comm and reported their success, then waited with the others for pickup, with a troop transport flying in overhead within a few minutes. The trio jumped up to the underside and grabbed hold of the square rims, pulling themselves inside so they could be moved to another combat zone…and would continue doing so until all threats were eliminated.

Kali-1388 fired off a salvo of missiles from her madcat, with the tiny little guided projectiles swarming towards a Skarron Type-5 walker as it was escorting a Type-4 that was engaging a trio of Nestafar spider walkers and getting the armor chewed off it. Infantry from both sides were around, but otherwise staying out of the way of the big machines as there were groups of combatants everywhere.

Kali damaged the Skarron walker further with some lachar blasts but was still outside mauler range. Gauging the damage to both sides, she twisted her mech’s torso around and leveled the right arm at one of the spiders in the distance, then fired a rail gun slug at it. The metallic round shot across the distance and clipped off one of the legs with the impact, missing the central hull but none the less twisting it around on collision.

As she walked her mech forward she continued to dish out damage to both sides, not in a hurry to get in close, though that’s where her mauler would come into play. Just before she reached the enemy’s plasma range she got a waypoint ping on her battlemap and quickly turned her madcat to the left, accelerating up to full speed and sprinting the machine across the rocky ground, hoping the computer wouldn’t get overwhelmed by all the small bumps and trip on the rocks.

In the distance she could see a pair of voltrons and a slew of escort mechs tangling with a Type-2 and a pair of super dragons…which at the moment were both attacking the Star Force mechs. Ignoring the craziness of it all she targeted the damaged super dragon and launched all her remaining missiles, knowing she needed to do the most damage as she could, otherwise the weapons on the enemy walkers would do a lot more in return.

It took some 18 seconds for her two missile boxes riding above the ‘shoulders’ on her mech to fully unload, with a long plume of exhaust marking their path towards the walker as she continued to run forward…with other Star Force mechs nearby turning to coalesce around the battlemap beacon. When dealing with super-heavy opponents you had to gank them quickly or they’d wear down your side so much that they could turn the tide in any battle…which is probably what the enemies were thinking about the voltrons, prompting them to shoot at the big mechs rather than each other at the moment.

Knowing better than to try and fire the rail gun while running, she held off and tried to do some extra damage with her lachars…then readjusted her aim to a giraffe with a hole blown in its side that was still firing off plasma blasts at her team and pretty much being ignored in favor of larger targets. Taking manual control she lined up the shot then peppered the walker with lachar blasts rather than the continuous version she also had the opportunity to use. This way she could keep firing in a chain gun-like manner continuously rather than having to take a recharge break.

A lot of her shots missed, but she kept it up from range and even though her aim running was shaky she delivered enough hits to the damaged section to see the walker collapse on its own legs and power down, no longer throwing plasma at her friends.

Just then a huge explosion ripped apart the Type-1, with Kali not knowing where it came from. She hadn’t seen anything hit it, then as it twisted and fell over she saw a big chrome suit of armor riding it down…no, not one, but three of the things larger than her madcat with their arms dug into the side as it crashed.

But with all Type-1s that wasn’t the end of it, for it simply jettisoned the damaged segment and kept on fighting, with the three Voku mech/suits running away quickly as they got pummeled with plasma. Two of them made it, but the third went down hard, its shields no longer protecting it and the Skarrons exacting their revenge for the lost segment until a giant physical shield dropped over top and blocked the incoming fire as one of the voltrons moved forward to cover it.

The other two kept running backwards until they were out of the main firing lines, then Kali did a double take as the two came together in what looked like a giant robot hug and melted into one another, forming a stationary stature that the Archon couldn’t look at any longer as she was now within mauler range of a group of spiders and giraffes that were just now beginning to target her.

She slowed to a walk and opened up with her mauler and rail gun, taking a spider out within 20 seconds before turning slightly right to attack another, with all those involved constantly on the move and repositioning, though her mech was by far the most agile…up until a pair of starscreams flew in and landed nearby, transforming into mech mode and giving her some backup with their own smaller mauler cannons.

A proximity alarm alerted her to a contact coming up behind her, and she looked just in time to see another of the Voku mech/suits run past and dive head first into three spiders. It landed on one, grabbing it and rolling through a somersault with it locked in a death grip, then flipping it through the air coming out of the roll before jutting to the side and kicking another to the ground.

Kali landed a mauler blast on that one before the Voku reached its arms forward and pummeled the walker with energy blasts while ignoring the plasma raining down on its back from the third spider and others further away. She adjusted her aim to the other spider, then held up as the starscreams crossed her firing line. With a moment to glance at what else was happening she saw the melting ‘statue’ finally take shape and walk off, now half again as tall as it had been with a similar biped form.

It ran up alongside the second voltron, now almost as tall as it, and the pair ran forward together, with the second voltron joining them in a shield wedge, with the Voku in the center and mostly protected from the white plasma storm coming down on them, though the giant physical shields were starting to show a few holes.

That was all Kali could see, for she had to turn her attention to the second super dragon as it adjusted its sights away from the voltrons and towards her little section of battle. She was still outside of mauler range, barely, so she ran forward and began firing it and her rail gun off as quickly as she could, with the metallic bullets not needing to be well aimed to hit the giant machine.

It fired off one large plasma stream, hitting another madcat and melting/exploding the missile boxes off it. The mech fell, apparently already having its shields down, and buried its nose into the ground, then suddenly all the anti-air weapons on the Skarron Type-1 lit up as a mass dropped out of the air and impacted the ground with a large boom that rocked Kali’s mech slightly. Before the dust cleared a giant Voku mech/suit stood up and walked towards the super dragon and punched it down into the ground with a massive fist.

Then, prompting a laugh of joy from Kali, it picked the entire super dragon up and spun it around its body, building momentum before releasing it sideways…and throwing it into the side of its twin, sending both crashing in a tumble.

“Yes!” she yelled in a satisfactory manner as she looked for another target of her own, finding plenty and settling on a spider that was now targeting the Voku. “Kick their ass bro. I’ve got your back.”

8

August 29, 2537

Hachtat System

Eliossa

One of the Elarioni, whose name was impossible for Humans to pronounce, swam along with her sisters in a long, river-like flow of bodies through the ocean towards the shore, escorted by their aquatics warships to make sure that neither the Nestafar nor Skarrons interfered with the evacuation process and attacked the defenseless civilians. Shri, which is what she would eventually be called once they arrived in the ADZ, could sense her sisters all around her, but not just in the line she was traveling with. There were others nearby, all converging on the same area where the Human transports were waiting on shore.

The Elarioni had a limited telepathic ability, not enough to speak to one another or read minds, but they could feel each other out and read basic emotions, such as when one of them was in danger the others would know or when they were excited or happy. Right now Shri was swimming in a sea of anxiety, kicking her tail rhythmically to maintain a decent pace and having her hair swaying in the chop from the others ahead of her. She carried only a small satchel with her, having been told all other supplies would be provided on the transports and that space was at a premium.

They were going to have to endure some very close living quarters in order to get everyone offworld, but that was a small price to pay for their freedom. Already the Skarrons had attacked two underwater settlements…futilely, but their intentions were clear. Not only were they going to rid the planet of Nestafar, but they were not going to tolerate any other presence here. Their aquatic weaponry was limited to infantry troops with spike guns, but she and the others knew/suspected that the Skarrons hadn’t come here equipped for aquatic warfare, for they didn’t discover the Elarioni civilization until after they’d arrived…meaning that if they were willing to start engaging them with what little they had available, then that probably meant their true aquatic forces were on the way.

That was a fight they were willing to make in the water, but they’d never be able to remove them from the surface. And if the Alliance’s reports were accurate, the Skarrons would keep sending more and more troops from their massive empire until they eventually succeeded. Shri and the others had to flee before they could be enveloped in a no-win scenario that would gradually grind down their population and resources until they were wiped out of existence.

The fact that there was fighting going on now up above was cause enough for anxiety, but Shri and the others weren’t very keen on the idea of traveling on an alien ship…especially considering those aliens were air breathers. That said, it was a way off the planet and they were going to take it, trusting their leadership’s guidance despite their misgivings and abandoning their homes for the evacuation lines, some of which stretched thousands of miles.

Those long lines were being facilitated by aquatic ships carrying and offloading evacuees to nearby locations, then allowing them to swim the remainder of the journey on their own. Already it had been 13 days of constant evacuations, with Star Force transports landing by the dozens, loading, then taking off for the ADZ while others came down to replace them. Shri hadn’t seen any of the ships in person, only on recordings, but they were massive vessels that she had a hard time understanding how they could even land on a planet.

Most of the Elarioni ships were small and agile, with massive hulks being the way of other races…yet one more reason for their apprehension, though in theory a big ship would carry greater defenses, yet Elarioni combat philosophy held that speed and agility was more important than armor and shields.

At least that’s the way it worked underwater. In the air or space was another matter entirely, which was also why they felt so out of place there. The Alliance was much better suited to such combat arenas, and hopefully the two could learn and supplement each other…at least that was the stated purpose of this merger with the Alliance. They rescue the Elarioni and in turn Shri’s people would help strengthen their aquatics fronts, few as they were.

The pace Shri and the others were maintaining wasn’t overly hard, but they’d been swimming for the past 14 hours and all were getting tired. None the less they persisted, understanding the importance and danger of the situation, and swam on with the seafloor gradually rising up beneath them until they were in the coastal shallows…with that environment eliciting even more anxiety, for the closer to land they were the more danger they were in. Elarioni preferred deep water above all else, with the shallows making them feel claustrophobic.

Shri had expected a large group to have gathered around the loading areas, but to her surprise there was none at all. The line she was traveling in merged with four others at various points in the shallows, with the now super-thick line ending at the opening of a massive tube with several Star Force armored suits floating nearby with flanking Elarioni escorts, for crowd control she imagined. She was less than 100 meters away from them when the line suddenly stopped and she got her first rest…though she found that floating in place waiting was more disturbing, for she felt like the enemy could drop down on her head at any moment.

Those in the tube swam on, disappearing around the upward bend and into the ship beyond. Shri and the others couldn’t see more than a giant shadow ahead of them through the water, for they were staying low beneath the surface to avoid drawing attention from enemy fighters that might be circling around overhead. A few minutes later that shadow rose up and disappeared, letting the sunlight through that created a mild haze from the dust in the water from the combat that had been occurring nearby.

Shri waited and waited, nervously flexing her three fingers in and out while giving her tail and torso muscles a much needed rest. There was little talking, for all were tired, but the guards at the entrance of the tube told them that another transport was incoming and they spread the word back down the line as the group at the end swelled up into a large crowd.

Eventually another shadow lowered over them and set down on shore, connecting to the tube and sending a pair of red-armored Humans down it and into view…whereupon the line started moving again, with them leading the Elarioni up it with the guards at the entrance setting up the spacing to keep the flow moving but not overcrowded.

Shri was held for a moment by the outstretched arm of one of her sisters, then released without so much as a casual glance at her. These guards must have processed thousands if not millions of Elarioni by now, so the lack of personality was understandable. Shri swam into the 50m wide tube along with the others and curved up, rising above the level of the ocean and onto land, she guessed, for the tube walls were opaque with nothing visible outside them…hopefully because they were covered in heavy armor.

When she got to the end of the not so short tube the line was divided up, with her being shuffled into the leftmost segment and into a much smaller tube with three others beside her. That little group swam through the curvy course, with a feeling of claustrophobia choking her mind, both from her own fear and that of the others washing over her but there was nothing they could do but keep moving so they bravely swam on, not knowing what they would encounter ahead.

About a minute later her group of four exited the tube into a large chamber, with the transition being a physical relief on all the Elarioni, but above and beyond that was the curious joy at seeing their own technology inside. The room was alien, but small stations were constructed in Elarioni fashion and even had their own language prompts and keyboards, with a repetitive audial instruction to log in at an available terminal.

Shri swam over to an open one and followed the written instructions. It was little more than a checkin station where she input her personal identification information, then a small armband was produced in a cupola beside it. She took the Elarioni designed bracelet and slid it over her wrist and halfway up to her elbow, then swam forward two meters and used it to access another tube, this one with a waterlock. She swam inside the Elarioni designed structure, knowing how to access it and closing the doorway behind her.

With the armband she touched a sensitive panel and heard machinery moving for a few seconds before the other side of the waterlock opened into a very narrow tunnel which she swam down following a guide light on the wall. She kept pace with it easily enough, for it was moving slowly, but its presence felt reassuring because Elarioni used such things in their own cities to guide children and newcomers around. Eventually the tunnel split into four branches, with her following the light into the upper right and down another length before she passed through four more splits.

The last section of tunnel finally opened up into a curious habitat area, reminiscent of Elarioni design but much more compact. She saw a few others swinging around the choked passageways that were little more than cracks between floating cubes in an otherwise huge water-filled environment.

Shri politely made her way through the crowds even as a prompt was repeating itself, indicating that all should stay ‘indoors’ during the loading procedure. Some of the others were traveling as she was, while others were moving about out of curiosity and making traffic impediments of themselves.

Following the information on her armband Shri made her way through the tight habitat to her section…a large cube suspended by beams connecting it to others and the distant walls. She entered one of the 24 entrances and swam inside searching for her compartment. After several twists and turns she came to number 73 and opened the small round door and pulled herself inside, seeing little more than an elevator-sized chamber.

Immediately she worried about claustrophobia, but the entire design was Elarioni despite the difference in materials, and she settled into a resting float in the center as she logged into the computer with her new id and accessed the newsfeeds and other aps, one of which allowed her an external view of the ship.

She unconsciously released a bubble from her nose when she saw what was happening. The Human ships were truly massive and parked all along the coast, each with multiple tubes connecting them to the water. She could see fighters streaking by overhead in patrols while walking machines did the same nearby. One of the giant transports pulled up, showing its true bulk, only to be replaced by another coming down mere minutes later.

Shri knew there had to be millions of Elarioni in these ships, and she was both impressed and afraid of so many people being packed in together, for they made easy targets.

She kept looking around the other camera options, some not even based on her transport, that showed the distant fighting. The area around the evacuation zone was secure, yet riddled with debris. There appeared to be at least two ongoing conflicts to the south, but her ship was well outside of their weapons range. She did notice the Star Force troops, which she was somewhat familiar with by this point given how much information about the ADZ had been passing around, but there was another ally in play that she didn’t realize. She searched the computer database and couldn’t find a match, wondering if it was her own fault for missing something or if they simply didn’t have information on whoever they were.

Regardless they were fighting the Skarrons more effectively than the Nestafar had been, which gave her a little bit of comfort as she waited for the transport to load. Inside her compartment there was food, which she eventually started to nibble on. Everything was right here that she would need for the trip, with the introduction material on her terminal indicating that it was preferred that she stay put for the duration of the journey, given that there wasn’t room for lounging outside.

Shri knew that wouldn’t do for a long interstellar trip, but the compartment was comfortable enough that she settled in and distracted herself with watching what was happening outside…and within. There was a separate, live feed showing the boarding process, how many compartments there were, and how many were filled. At the moment there was only 2% filled, and she’d been here for more than half an hour already, underscoring just how large the Human transports were.

There were also ways of checking on who else was onboard her ship and even the others, with Shri looking up several of her friends to see if they’d evacuated already. Some had come with her onto this ship, she knew, but it wasn’t until she looked down through the lists that she found out which ones were where…and the fact that she could send them messages.

That kept her busy for the hours that followed as she had an ongoing conversation with two of them up until the transport disconnected from the water tubes and began to lift off. Shri paused her conversation to watch and mentally cross her fingers, hoping they wouldn’t end up getting shot down. Painfully slow the transport rose up above the evacuation zone, with her getting an aerial view of it all and seeing just how large it was from yet another perspective.

From there they moved up through the atmosphere with her keeping a close watch on the surrounding combat to see if any fighters or ships would be coming their way…but the trip up to low orbit didn’t see any difficulties. There they stopped, however, along with several other fully loaded transports and many empty ones under the protection of an even larger Star Force warship that dwarfed the ship she was on. It and many smaller ones guarded them as they waited, for what she didn’t know, but they spent many hours there…with her feeling a mix of anxiousness and relief, for both she and the others were off the planet they feared they’d be trapped on, but waiting in orbit to be shot down was equally vexing.

Ultimately her ship formed up into a convoy of 9 transports that were escorted out by the other faction that was aiding the Humans. Shri still couldn’t get an identity on them, but their ships had the same chrome color as their walking battle machines and they flew out to a jumppoint with them while others were intercepting the Skarron ships that were actively trying to get at them.

Shri’s heart nearly leapt up into her throat as a group of six actually got within weapons range and fired on a transport…not hers and the shields held, but it was still frightening all the same. Those enemy ships were quickly engaged while the transports moved on, jumping out from the planet on a brief trip to the star where they met up with thousands of others, most of whom the computer tagged as being empty and waiting for their chance to go down to the planet.

Only then did she fully realize the scale of the evacuation effort. Seeing numbers on a chart was one thing, but looking at all these ships here and knowing how packed hers was underscored just how big this operation was…and how much they owed the Alliance for doing this.

More of the alien ships were here, guarding them closely as a handful of Star Force warships also patrolled the area. Things appeared quiet at the moment, with no enemy ships in orbit…as far as her sensor feeds indicated. There was another long wait, one in which Shri slept through while her transport slowly docked with a jumpship, before the console pinged an update alert as they finally got moving towards their jumppoint in a much larger convoy with one of the Star Force warships escorting them out.

Her jumpship went first, followed by the others shortly thereafter that she was then able to detect mid-jump through their location beacons. It took a while for them to register over the vast distances they were coasting between, but she did see the warship bringing up the rear, glad to have the military vessel with them and even more glad to be out of the war zone.

Now was the longest wait of all, with them having to make multiple jumps that would take weeks to get to their eventual destination. Shri stayed in her compartment for three days before venturing out and over to one belonging to a friend and talking with her in person, as most of the other Elarioni were doing. Other than that she explored a bit, finding nothing but habitats and spending most of her time in her own and accessing the entertainment, social, and knowledge software to pass the time.

Of particular interest was their destination world, which she studied intently and happy to find out that it was completely a water world with no land for enemies to occupy. If they wanted to take it, they’d have to fight an aquatics war, which she knew her people were more than capable of doing.

The database called it ‘Atlantica,’ which she had a hard time pronouncing, but by the end of the trip she had it down well enough in her own dialect and was eager to feel its waters on her blue skin.

9

November 2, 2537

Hachtat System

Eliossa

Riona was woken from a sleep cycle onboard the TF and groggily ran to the hangar bay, half dressing in the hallway as she went and getting into her skeet just in time to hit the air along with a dozen others that met up with some 100+ Voku fighters a few miles off enroute to a fresh enemy LZ where the Skarrons were just now beginning to land transports. There hadn’t even been enough time for an orbital battle, with the enemy dropping into the atmosphere directly from their jumppoint and burning hard to get to the surface past the chasing Voku vessels.

Several dozen Skarron warships broke off from the group to intercept them, screening for the transports to get to ground and unload thousands of new walkers onto the planet a few miles off from the evacuation zone…and within easy walking distance for the machines to begin a new assault from. So far, after an intense first three weeks of combat, both the Skarron and Nestafar had avoided the Star Force foothold on the planet while they continued to battle each other in other areas. There were a few attempts to get at the evacuation ships over the two months that followed, but nothing that the defenses couldn’t repulse with ease.

As was typical, that was about to change. Riona blinked away the last traces of sleep from her eyes and focused on the sensor readings from the LZ ahead as she and her impromptu squadron tucked in behind the much larger Voku fighters. The skeets were faster in super pursuit mode, but she wanted to arrive with their allies because it was going to get messy very fast and the more anti-air that went their way the better. The Voku fighters were more heavily armored than the skeets and could take a greater pounding, hopefully allowing the Star Force fighters some breathing room to maneuver.

By the time the group arrived at the LZ there were already over 50 walkers on the ground and the fighters knew better than to try and hit them. Instead they climbed and stretched out into a long line, some 5 or six fighters wide, and struck like a plasma streamer at one of the descending transports that had four Type-3s suspended underneath plus who knew how many infantry inside.

The Voku hit first, pounding and breaching its shields as they shot past taking what anti-air fire could hit them as more and more fighters struck the ship enroute to flying to the far side. Riona’s group was in the back third of the lot and unloaded their maulers and what missiles they had on the target before zipping past and out of sight as the Skarron fighters emerging from multiple transports, most of which weren’t even on the ground yet, poured down on them and the Voku in turn turned their attention to neutralizing that threat as the transports continued to flow down to the surface.

Riona’s squadron turned back after some dicey maneuvers to avoid collisions with the Skarron fighters and dove after the now smoking transport. Alternating between short attack runs and flanking ‘stalls’ that allowed them to pound the craft from short distance the skeets added to the existing damage and managed to knock it out of the sky before it could sufficiently decelerate.

The transport rammed the rocky ground, smashing the four walkers underneath it and crumpling on impact, killing who knew how many inside. Riona couldn’t watch long, for the enemy fighters were increasing in number and before too long they’d be outmatched and would have to flee, but she was content that they’d taken out those four walkers…which would mean less for their ground troops to deal with later, though given the overall numbers the Skarrons were deploying it seemed that it would matter little.

Riona brought her squadron back up to the Voku and assisted them with killing several hundred fighters before the airspace became too clogged and they had to pull back, bringing the enemy with them and fighting an ongoing battle while retreating all the way back to the evacuation zone perimeter defenses where the land-based mechs added their anti-air fire to the mix and more Star Force and Voku fighters arrived from other locations to assist.

Knowing that they had to kill as many of the fighters now, while they could before more unpacked from the transports and literally choked the skies, Riona flew hard and aggressive, more so than normal in order to rack up a high kill count but the overreach eventually came back to bite her as she risked going back into the thick of the fray with too low of shields and got hammered by a group of Skarron fighters working in concert as the two Voku fighters nearby her went down and left her momentarily isolated.

She saw the vulnerability immediately and tried to go evasive, but too much plasma was coming her way and her armor could take only so many hits. A long loop towards the ground ended with her tail being blow off and her skeet hitting and rolling across the ground in a very pod racer-like crash, with the numerous flips tearing off what appendages the enemy fighters had left intact. The last few rotations banged her around inside the cockpit as the IDF lost power, leaving her dizzy and disoriented for several long seconds after the remains of the skeet finally came to a rest.

“Damn it,” she swore, grabbing her rifle, popping the canopy open, and rolling out to drop onto the ground as she fell a couple of meters, leaving her staring up at the sky.

Riona got to her feet and looked around, seeing the fighters continuing their battle overhead but at the moment it looked like they were ignoring her…as they should, for they had plenty of targets up there that could shoot back. When she turned around and looked towards the LZ the pit of her stomach sank as she saw their ground troops already in play and heading her way…both walkers and a horde of infantry preceding them.

She figured she had about 3 minutes before the leading elements reached her, and there was no way she could fight them hand to hand out in the open…leaving her one choice.

Riona walked around the edge of her broken skeet and took off running back towards the evacuation zone perimeter several kilometers away and desperately hoping that none of the fighters would try and make a strafing run on her. The striker armor that she wore would protect her from a single hit, maybe two, but fighter weaponry was much more potent than the infantry versions and this would be a very bad matchup, especially since she couldn’t fight back, but she didn’t have any good options. Staying put was a death sentence, so she had to run and run fast.

Riona activated the powered nature of the armor and took off in a flash, running as fast as she could in just shorts and a jog bra, with the heavy armor plates moving themselves to keep in sync with her body’s own motions. After about thirty seconds she reached back and disconnected her rifle and tossed it aside to make herself lighter and more smooth, recognizing the fact that if she had to shoot it out with anyone right now she was as good as dead…plus she always had psionics to use if she had to.

With that extra weight gone her speed increased a tick, plus she threw in a few Yetu bursts that her armor matched, with her watching the skies as much as the rock strewn ground ahead of her, choosing her foot placements ahead of time so as not trip herself up. Riona ran for several minutes with additional fighters dropping out of the air…most of which were Skarron…all around her, with several pieces of debris raining down and hitting her helmet, but fortunately they were no bigger than her finger, though if she hadn’t been wearing armor they would have cut her up for sure.

Counting herself lucky in multiple ways she kept running as fast as she could consistently manage, tearing across the meters of ground with a speed that most biped races could never hope to match and searching the horizon ahead of her looking for the nearest fort/outpost that would mean a safe haven. She saw several mechs ahead, but they couldn’t do much more than distract the enemy from her. If she was going to get inside it would have to be at one of the outposts and so far she couldn’t see any, though the battlemap said they were there.

She passed by a madcat that was walking the opposite direction and firing off its rail gun with a boom that shook her steps, but the Archon managed to stay on her feet and keep running, eventually passing two more in that particular star before she got behind them, feeling a bit better but still overall exposed as large dark spots began to rise up ahead of her. At first she thought they were transports leaving, but they held a low altitude and grew in size, coming forward towards the enemy and Riona seeing that they were not tagged on the battlemap for several seconds before an update was made.

That meant Star Force didn’t know what they were initially, but soon the Elarioni tags appeared just before their ring-like warships opened fire on the Skarrons behind her with what looked like Sammies but she couldn’t be sure. They were accompanied by huge globs of glowing blue and purple that looked for all the world like a glue spitter.

Riona wanted to turn and look at what they were hitting but she didn’t, knowing that she had to keep running to safety before her luck turned from bad to worse. Eventually the warships, most of which had an elliptical design to the rings, passed overhead with her able to see the sun through their hollow center, as well as the fighters that were continuing to battle it out at higher altitudes.

Eventually one of the outposts came into view and she had to divert to the south a bit, already with her legs burning from the effort but she didn’t care. She could rest later, and sore legs were a lot easier to recover from than plasma burns so she pressed on until one of the gates opened up ahead of her, allowing her to keep her speed all the way into the interior, with it resealing behind her and the bubble shield overhead finally taking her out of harm’s way.

Riona slowed to a stop then sagged to the ground, landing on her knees and breathing heavily. She knew she had to get to the command center and organize pickup so she could get back into the fight, but right now she had to let her body recover, for she’d pushed herself far harder than she’d intended to, with the adrenaline of the moment overriding her normal inhibitions.

“Are you alright?” a Regular commando asked as she came up to her.

Riona held up a ‘wait’ finger as she continued heaving, slowly pulling her breathing back under control enough to speak.

“Yes…I need…transport…back to…the…TF,” she managed between heavy breaths.

The commando nodded. “I’ll relay the message. Nice escape by the way.”

Riona nodded but didn’t say anything as she ran off, preferring to spend her precious air on recover rather than useless sentiment. She did manage to look up and see more of the Elarioni warships passing by overhead, prompting her to adjust her battlemap to see how much damage they were doing to the enemy…which was when she also saw large Voku ground and air formations closing on the Skarron LZ and their assault columns reaching out from it towards the evacuation zone.

This was going to be one messy fight, and she had to get back into it as soon as possible.

In orbit Paul had his hands full, but nothing compared to what was going on down on the surface. The Skarrons had brought a sizeable fleet escorting their transports and some of it was headed his way to try and get at his own transports, which he was tasked to defend. That left the offensive portion of the orbital battle to the Voku, who were doing a remarkable job of it, but once again the Skarrons had brought with them a solid naval punch and were milking it for all it was worth in order to get their troops to ground…and the frustrating part was that there was no way for Paul to stop them, nor could he send drones down to the surface to help out, for he needed them all to protect the Elarioni onboard the transports.

He was relieved when he saw their own warships coming up out of the ocean and moving into the fight…something that hadn’t occurred to date, but as curious as he was to see what weaponry they employed he didn’t have the luxury of watching. The Skarrons were getting tricky in their maneuvers and he had to keep reshuffling his ‘chess board’ around the safe zone in orbit to outflank any potential runs in at the waiting transports, though some were already taking long range lachar hits, meaning Paul had to send drones out after those attacking ships to either destroy them or force them back out of range, keeping him constantly busy with only a moment here and there to glance at what was happening down on the surface.

There was someone else watching, however, and watching closely. More than a day into the battle new ships flew in, not coming from space but from overland and depositing a Nestafar army on the far side of the Skarron LZ, with them seeing a moment of opportunity to strike back at the enemy that was slowly conquering their planet. They had no love for Star Force or the Elarioni, but they recognized that they weren’t here to conquer their world and were defending only a tiny piece of it…and if they could use the confusion to put some serious hurt on the Skarrons then they were going to take the opportunity before they had to face this huge relief force on their own if/when they overran the Humans and their allies.

With flocks of Valeries following the transports out and providing air cover, the massive ships unloaded the Nestafar walkers and send them into the Skarrons’ grounded transport like several deadly arrows, hitting their weak side with the enemy sluggish in response…and even then only able to throw a few troops their way, for the bulk of them were engaged on the far side and unable to redeploy fast enough even if they’d been free to do so.

After some 20+ transports were destroyed a few of them started taking off, with the Valeries hitting them hard and sandblasting their shields with thousands of tiny plasma blasts, enough to tear through them and take a few of the ships down while the ground troops continued to blast more of them into rubble from pointblank range.

Inside of that rubble field more Skarron infantry and a handful of walkers met them, with several Type-1s and 2s throwing up missile support in a huge arc that traveled up over the transports in the LZ and down onto the super dragons, knocking out several of them in less than a minute but leaving so many more intact that they couldn’t stop the Nestafar assault wave, despite seeing it coming towards them at an ominous, pondering pace.

Now getting hit hard from both flanks the Skarrons had a choice to make…stay and fight it out or try to pull back and save what troops they could. They chose the former, making both Star Force and the Nestafar earn their victory and wearing down the troops on both sides. It took another four days before the Skarrons were eventually slaughtered, with most of their transports fleeing into space before they could be killed…yet unable to pick up their walkers and infantry to take with them.

When the Nestafar troops eventually came into contact with Star Force, the Elarioni, and the Voku Paul ordered a slight pause to allow them to retreat…but they didn’t. Instead they dove head first into their other enemies and forced another long battle that consumed the next 2 days, ending with an Alliance victory but at a heavy cost.

There were Voku mech/suits everywhere, along with destroyed fighters and infantry corpses, though the latter didn’t have massive numbers of casualties, given that they were selective in where they employed them. Many Star Force mechs and skeets were down as well, though in far smaller numbers given that they hadn’t had a large force to contribute to the battle in the first place.

Two Elarioni warships had also fallen, now dug into the ground and leaking water. Recovery efforts were being made by the other ships to try and get to any surviving crew, but land and air were death to the Elarioni and few were recovered alive.

The rest of their ships were showing damage of various levels, all of which retreated back into the water and disappeared into the depths to make repairs, leaving an incredible amount of debris behind on the battlefield, most of which belonged to the Skarrons. It stood as a testament to the effort Star Force and the Voku were going to in order to get the Elarioni off this world…all the while the evacuation transports continued to load and depart round the clock.

That was the ultimate victory of it all, but accomplished at a high cost…and one that the Elarioni would never forget.

10

December 27, 2537

Hachtat System

Eliossa

Paul stood in the command nexus onboard the Adamant, much as he had for most of the past 4 months, but for the first time he was holding back the transports. That was because the Skarron fleet in the system had been continually growing, and even as they successfully evacuated most of the Elarioni from the planet the convoys heading out to the Voku fleet guarding the jumpships at the star had been getting jumped more regularly.

The Skarrons hadn’t hit his position or at the star, trying instead to snipe their ships when they were at their most vulnerable, and now that they were devoting more and more warships to that endeavor Paul had to hold back the last of the transports or risk losing one…something he had avoided thus far.

Most of the planet was now in Skarron hands, with the Nestafar stupidly having wasted troops battling Star Force and the Voku, but in truth if they hadn’t it would have only delayed their defeat. The Skarrons were overrunning them with numbers that they hadn’t seen in the assaults on the ADZ…a dire omen for what was likely to be coming their way eventually, for Nestafar space was much closer to Skarron territory. If this was how they dealt with nearer threats, then it was only a matter of time until their border eeked out close enough to the ADZ to warrant a larger assault.

But they had time to prepare, it seemed, and right now getting the last of the Elarioni out was the mission. They were going to accomplish it with ease, Paul knew, thanks to the superiority of the Voku. But completing that mission without losing a single transport was the tricky part…and not leaving anyone behind. The Skarrons weren’t stupid, and had deduced what they were up to, all the while trying to interfere if just out of spite, for they didn’t have the numbers to take down the Voku fleet, given how superior their ships were.

So Paul held the last of the transports, getting a group of around 400 sitting in next to the Adamant and his other few warships, surrounded by a cloud of drones with patrolling Voku cruiser analogs keeping any predators at bay while frigate analogs spread out in an even wider detection zone, sending out active signals to monitor the area with such sensor intensity that it surprised Paul. Apparently they didn’t want the enemy sneaking anything in, though to date Skarron tech hadn’t shown any such capability and Paul wondered what enemies the Voku had that did.

When the last transport was loaded at 3/4ths capacity he held the six more empty ones that were waiting in orbit and signaled the other empties at the star to stop coming. Some of the ships were on their third round trip, just having gotten back from Atlantica thanks to the ever increasing speed of Star Force’s newer jumpships. The long trek, however, still meant that Star Force had to devote an insane percentage of their transport fleet to this endeavor…and not just here, but the other 7 planets that were being simultaneously evacuated.

Paul had gotten a few status reports from them, passed along by the transports who were meeting up at their eventual destination and swapping intel, and so far there had been no major problems in any of the campaigns, each of which was led by a trailblazer. Paul had taken the most difficult assignment for himself, or so he’d thought in the planning stage, with the reports coming back indicating that he’d been correct.

This planet’s Elarioni population was the largest also, so it was with only a small shock several hours later when the TF finally pulled up from the surface that several thousand Cruiser-class and smaller starships rose up from the oceans across the planet simultaneously, making the waters look like a giant cereal bowl full of O-shaped Cheerios as they made the transition to air.

The Voku stayed on the ground covering Star Force’s exit and came up with the Elarioni, bringing their ground troop transports back up to the carriers in orbit and joining with them in transformer style while their warships pulled back from hunting the Skarrons elsewhere in orbit and formed up into a defensive wedge around the transports and Elarioni civilian starships while the aquatic race’s own warships did likewise.

Not to Paul’s surprise the Skarrons began moving their fleet around quickly, attempting to bring one last hammer blow before they escaped. Problem was such a massive fleet comprised of 3 different races couldn’t move together with as much coordination and alacrity as a single, smaller one. They had to jump out in stages while the long carpet of ships was laid out for the enemy to hit at whatever point their wanted.

Paul held the Adamant back until the last section began to move, knowing the stragglers would be the most vulnerable, and began fighting a rearguard action as Skarron warships began to come up from below them, skirting around to the gap between ship and atmosphere and hitting the rear…intent on coming up the middle and getting at the Star Force transports just ahead.

Devoting what drones he had left, Paul sent them down into the enemy not expecting them to return. He’d had enough with the playing it safe routine and decided to nail the bastards for their insolence…and with Ta’lin’yi they certainly were able to accomplish that, catching the Skarrons off guard with the offensive maneuver and creating a bloody melee as the Adamant gained altitude ahead of them and followed the back of the convoy out.

The Voku commander contacted him and they set up their final battle plans, including sending a few ships back to destroy the drone debris that was large enough to potentially survive impact with the planet. Paul didn’t want the Skarrons getting their hands on any intact pieces, and he’d purposefully had the Adamant hovering over the target zone rather than occupying a normal orbit prior to their final departure, knowing that the drone debris would fall into the atmosphere and burn up…if it was small enough.

Some of the Voku ships flew back and killed the handful of Skarron ships remaining before blasting apart the intact hulls of the drones that were now partially or totally inoperable. None had survived to return to their warships, with Paul having ordered their pilots to hurt the Skarrons as badly as possible…and their having destroyed more than 500 enemy vessels in the process.

But the Skarrons had thousands more insystem with a large chunk of those harassing the outgoing fleet and more jumping in from the other planets to tighten the noose. They weren’t going to get them all here in time and the Voku were insistent that it wouldn’t matter, taking it to the enemy head on and making them pay heavily whenever they ventured close to one of the transports.

The Elarioni warships were doing likewise, guarding their own people closely, on both their ships and the Star Force transports, and giving Paul his first good view of their military hardware. They had beam weapons similar to the Dvapp’s Sammies but these were using an altogether different type of energy. Using the limited sensor readings he was able to get what he thought was a match with the private database of V’kit’no’sat documented tech.

It was a Yor’vok, and something the Elarioni had not originally possessed when the V’kit’no’sat had hunted them. Or, to be more accurate, not what they’d possessed the last time the Elarioni had been updated in the database, with their eventual ouster happening much more recently than the fall of Earth. The Yor’vok was pretty much a standard, straightforward weapon that employed altered photons and worked like a slow moving laser…only infinitely more powerful. Normally light particles were scattered and had large gaps between them in transit, but with the Yor’vok they were densely packed together, so much so that little bits would escape and cause the beam to glow whereas a laser was invisible until it hit and reflected off of something.

It was a burning weapon, effective against shields and armor alike, but the sticky energy matrix they also had was what intrigued him more. That was an even higher level technology and something that Star Force wasn’t yet close to developing. The Elarioni weapon was crude by V’kit’no’sat standards, but it was the first time Paul had seen one of the ‘holy’ weapons employed on the battlefield…and it sent a shiver down his spine.

The Elarioni version couldn’t attack shields, meaning they had to take them down with the Yor’vok first, after which they would essentially spit a glob of glowing destructive goo at slow speeds and splatter the enemy ship…with the Ha’star melting the matter as if it were little more than snow to a bucket of hot water. The drawback was, if you could call it a drawback, that the Skarron ships were so big that the Ha’star could eat large chunks into them and the rest of the warship could keep fighting.

The Elarioni didn’t know yet the interior structure of the enemy and where to probe for weak points and there was no time for Paul to inform them of that now, but none the less the Skarrons had no defense against the Ha’star after their shields went down, for the armor they so depended on was like tissue paper to the Elarioni weapon.

Even though most of his thoughts were centered around the evacuation, a part of Paul’s mind sized up the threat the Elarioni would pose if Star Force fought them…and immediately saw a weakness. Not in his own fleet, but theirs. The Yor’vok was a pure beam weapon, which meant it was easily defendable against with a reflective shield. To date Star Force hadn’t had cause to use such a thing except in low level applications against lachars, with only partial deflection occurring. Against a Yor’vok they’d get full deflection so long as the shield matrix was strong enough, and would even be able to, with a bit of luck and a lot of skill on the shield controller’s part, redirect the Elarioni’s own weapon back at them.

And without being able to take down the Star Force shields their Ha’star would be next to useless. For as advanced as their tech was, their battle layout was lacking. Then again, they were aquatic, with naval warfare probably being something they delved into rarely, especially given that they’d spent so many years in hiding. He was thoroughly impressed by their tech and knew how effective it would be against the lizards and others, but in a head to head he’d own them.

With the Voku warships quickly cleaning up behind the Adamant, the big command ship slowly made its way up to the jumppoint…with more and more Skarron warships closing in around them, so many in fact that the only way to keep the jumppoint clear was to engage the enemy in a slugging match and slowly pull your ships back into themselves as the mass jumped out. The Adamant got severely beaten up in the last few minutes, taking many hits that otherwise would have gone to the Voku as they recovered their damaged ships, melding with them and carrying them out, until finally only a few dozen the Star Force command ship remained.

Those few jumped out together under heavy weaponsfire and ended up at the star a few minutes later, seeing that several skirmishes were already taking place there and knowing that the rest of the Skarron ships would soon be on their way. The evacuation fleet was already repositioning around to the exit jumppoint, which was where one of the conflicts was occurring, but with the influx of Voku and Elarioni ships they kept it clear and sent a continual stream of Elarioni starships out while the Star Force transports continued to load up onto the waiting jumpships.

Paul watched the jump signatures of the Elarioni, getting a computer estimate as to their speed and seeing that they were only slightly faster than the Skarrons…but like their enemy they also didn’t need jumpships, which was a double-edged sword. Paul informed the Adamant’s bridge crew that they’d need to match the Elarioni jump speed in order to stay at the back of the convoy, with a message from the Elarioni coming through that they were claiming the ‘galaxy down’ part of the road, meaning that after they made their departure jump they’d drift lower on the galactic plain, allowing the faster moving jumpships to pass them by above the jumpline to avoid any potential collisions.

As expected the bulk of the Skarron fleet showed up to ‘escort’ them out of the system under fire, with the Adamant taking a few more hull hits but nothing major as it soaked up a lot of the enemy’s attention. The Voku stayed with it and all of the remaining jumpships, ensuring their departure and sending ships with them to further guard the convoys as they moved from one system to another, knowing that an enemy could be waiting for them ahead if they were smart enough.

Paul didn’t expect the Skarrons or Nestafar to be that determined, but he was glad for the backup regardless. Once the jumpships were fully loaded they began winking out of view, carrying their precious cargo out of harm’s way and leaving nothing but warships behind. Those then stayed around a bit and fought it out with the Skarrons to make sure they didn’t jump after the convoy and potentially meet up with it mid jump or cause trouble at the destination system.

After more than an hour of combat and a lot of dead Skarron ships the Voku commander consulted with Paul and they both began to pull out, with the Elarioni already having gone ahead, given their slower speed and desire to stay with their own ships.

Most of the Voku took off at amazing speed, but the commander kept a good chunk of them with Paul and the Adamant, so when the command ship made the jump and left the enemy system behind the chrome ships reformed around it within a few kilometers, demonstrating their navigational skill, not to mention their gravity drive strength, because pulling on stars lightyears away for maneuvering capabilities mid jump was a very expensive and unrewarding venture, allowing you only a little tug here and there, with most ships using thrust engines to accomplish such maneuvering.

Paul took note of the positions of the convoy ahead, with their beacons signaling back and allowing the computer the ability to calculate their approximate position, even if the signal was lagging an hour behind. Seeing that all was in order and marveling at the Voku’s fleet, Paul released the control sphere in the nexus and left the bridge, intending to get in a short workout then a long sleep period. Something he’d been reluctant to do during the evacuation, taking only brief rest periods sufficient enough to accommodate his limited workouts.

He met up with Riona later and they got back into their training routine as if they’d never left it, both recovering a bit of lost fitness and probing their bioshield capabilities as the fleet made its way from system to system, back into the ADZ, and over to the far side where Atlantica lay near the rimward lizard border.

“Hello stranger,” Paul said through the water as he swam up to Ariel’s quarters in Manaan.

She turned around, her green hair spraying out into a fan around her head as it floated in the pristine water inside the city and bracketed a huge smile on her blue face. He could have sworn the glowing patches on her skin increased their aqua-colored intensity, but regardless it was obvious that she was glad to see him…given that it had been decades since they’d last met in person.

“Finally,” she said through the translator in Paul’s breath mask. The Elarioni swam over to him and locked him up in a big hug. “Why do you do this to me? I’ve missed you so much. You could at least stop by every 5 years or so,” she said with a touch of sarcasm.

“Bad guys to kill, ships to build, systems to conquer…I’m a busy guy,” he said, hugging her back.

“I know, I know,” she said, finally releasing him and looking him in the eyes that weren’t covered by the small, compact mask that gave him his Elarioni voice. “And you did just bring me some new friends, so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.”

“I would have found you sooner, but you’ve been out and about.”

“Yes, things are absolutely crazy right now…but a good crazy. There’s no room to put everyone so we’re camping out in free water and that is something I haven’t done for such a long time. They haven’t either, so it’s a new experience, but one that they’re loving. They really like Atlantica, and your cities, by the way. I think this is going to work out beautifully.”

“Well, you did help design most of our stuff,” Paul pointed out as she pulled him all the way inside her quarters by the wrist, with him letting her propel him forward given that she was the far better swimmer.

“Some,” she corrected. “Kyler knows the water almost as well as I do now.”

“High praise.”

“And well deserved,” she said, finally letting go of him for a moment, then swinging around behind him and pressing on his lower back. “Let’s see what progress you’ve made.”

Paul laughed, then assumed an old position and let Ariel test his flexibility and kick strength as he went through several motions while she held him in place.

“Not much better,” she commented dryly. “But no worse. You haven’t been doing much practicing.”

“Actually I have, you just forget how bad I was.”

“No I don’t,” she said humorously.

“That and I’ve picked up a new trick. I’m still not as fast as you, but I’m much quicker.”

“Oh? Then why aren’t you showing me.”

Paul’s face tightened up in a smirk, but more from effort than amusement as he formed bioshield fins over his legs and kicked in a very similar way to how Ariel moved.

The water behind him moved in such a way that, despite not being able to see the shields, Ariel instantly could feel the difference…and the power that he now had.

“What is this?” she asked, curious and excited.

“A new ability,” he said, grabbing her wrist to get her to let him go, then he righted himself parallel to her and held up his bare hands, forming a shield bubble in between them that pushed back the water and formed a small vacuum, which him altering the shield so it became partially visible. “I can create energy shields and use them in multiple ways, including giving me a tail, more or less.”

“Come on,” she said, grabbing his wrist again and pulling him back towards the door. “You’re going to show me on the course.”

Paul smiled underneath his mask and let her drag him out and across the watery tunnels within the city to one of the obstacle courses that Ariel trained on to maintain her self-sufficiency…something that she’d be teaching her own people to achieve, given that she was far older than them all, but none the less younger than when he’d found her on the lizard jumpship, which her grip testified to.

He enjoyed the ride over, then swam the last few meters to the starting position near the pedestal as Ariel took up position on the other side of it and stared at him with her glowing golden eyes.

“Ready?”

“Always,” he said, putting his hand on the start button.

“Impress me,” she taunted, smashing his hand down and activating the timer in the friendly method of starting the courses they’d developed whenever running one in tandem.

Pushing off the pedestal for a bit of momentum, Paul leveled out and began the intricate kick that she’d taught him long ago, summoning up shield enhancements and finding himself still outpaced by Ariel, with her looking back at him and smiling…but with her tail kicking harder than it normally did to stay ahead of him.

She was still the better swimmer, but he wasn’t so inferior now…and judging by her smile he guessed that he’d advanced to the point of being a peer. Maybe a slower little brother, but still a peer rather than a student.

Which Paul’s mind immediately corrected into Star Wars metaphor. No longer was he a youngling, for in that satisfied expression of hers he’d just been promoted to Apprentice.

The Force is strong with this one, Paul thought, trying to goose a little more speed out of his body.

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