Star Resistance

by D. R. Rosier

  Vik paused for a second, “You may be right.”

  We waited some more, and I wasn’t tired at all. Yay nanites. I knew I’d have to sleep later, but missing a sleep cycle wouldn’t make my body tired, just weary my mind.

  Dessia, Solyra, and Sylara all walked in together, along with four guards who took posts by the exits. I wondered why they worked for Denik, and listened to that traitorous asshole, but I supposed they didn’t have a choice. Denik had control of the empire, and the data net. I’m sure they didn’t like working for an asshole, but they didn’t have a choice.

  Still, if they tried to stop us, I wouldn’t hesitate.

  Dessia looked to be about thirty, but was probably twenty times that age. She was five foot six, with the signature light blonde hair and dark blue eyes that Isythians seemed to all have, though the shades of blonde ranged to dirty blonde in some. She had a regal bearing, and despite her position as a prisoner, she looked like a queen.

  Solyra the youngest at just twenty, looked not a day older than eighteen. She was closer to willowy than voluptuous, but was neither, like her mother, and fell between the two. She looked rather angry, and frustrated. I was sure time would temper that.

  Of course, I was a year younger than her, but I hadn’t had a childhood.

  Sylara was about a century old, and looked no older than twenty. Her body was in the average range as well, but unlike her sister and mother who were on the willowy side of the line, she was on the voluptuous side with larger breasts, and slightly more pronounced curves. She also showed the same equanimity that her mother radiated.

  Telidur and I took position near the doors, I had the one that led to the sitting room in the front of the large lavishly decorated house. It wasn’t that tacky, for royalty anyway. Just a little over the top in my opinion, but then I’d always had simple tastes even with all the money I’d made back on Earth.

  For a moment, I wondered what my old handlers thought about my disappearance, then pushed that down. A mission was hardly the time to reminisce or speculate.

  Vik said, “Now.”

  I hit my two with the sonic weapon from short range, while Telidur did his two, they dropped to the floor like sacks of grain.

  Then we all removed the stealth, and the three suits appeared hovering in air right next to his family.

  Vik said, “Change now, no time to explain.”

  Dessia hissed, “It’s a trap, get out now.”

  Vik rolled his eyes, “We know it’s a trap, now change damn it,” and then he turned around.

  They seemed to break them out of their surprise, and they jumped up to change. I could just tell with my spatial awareness, it was easy enough to keep track while I covered the door. It wasn’t long before agents came out of the woodwork. I felt relaxed and in control, frosty. This was the easy part. I wouldn’t have to meet his mother until later.

  The first few went down fast under sonic attack, but the next wave had powered armor on, which was all I needed to know. It had definitely been a lure and trap for Denik to wipe out the rest of his family.

  Their suits were very effective, as I pelted them with plasma balls, while I shot blasts of plasma from the hand weapon in my left hand. Fortunately, my shield was just as effective, if not more. I couldn’t afford to shoot from cover, a stray shot of plasma could kill Vik’s family while they were still getting dressed.

  There were two of them, and two on the other side. I kept shooting them with plasma, and they didn’t seem to take notice. It was military gear for ground forces, and tough if bulky. Better than the armored suits those Stolavii warriors had.

  “Jill, tell me when their shields are active.”

  It was several long moments of fire back and forth, and I started to wonder if those suits weren’t as new as the ones I’d invented, their shields were strong and impressive, even for heavier armor. Maybe they had dimensional ports powering them. Which meant we could fire at each other all day, until one side brought in a heavier weapon.

  Jillintara said, “Shields are online, should I stealth them?”

  “No, then they’ll know we can do it. We want to hide that knowledge, and make them think we’re on the shuttle. Just… follow me.”

  I ran down the hall and tackled one of the armored guards, which was stupid because it was like hitting a brick wall. Then I pushed my palm against his chest. I could see our shields become visible as they glowed blue as fought against one another, but that wasn’t what I was up to.

  Dimensional ports opened through the dimensions, so it didn’t matter that he was shielded from anything in this universe, or normal space. The only limit was that the device was set to have the port open and feed plasma a few inches from the device above the palm. And my palm was against his armor, with only our thin shields in the way. That put the dimensional hole inside his body.

  The shields did prevent the formation of a field to contain the plasma in a ball, and direct it, but that didn’t matter either. The plasma came out of the microscopic hole just fine, and his suit and armor would contain it inside his body.

  A second later I stopped, and pushed him over. He was shielded and his suit looked fine, but I imagined the plasma had incinerated a large portion of his upper body. I moved toward the second one, who turned and ran.

  Well, good, I didn’t really want to kill him.

  I turned right, and went down the hall, I had to knock out two more unsuited guards with the sonic weapon, and then went up the stairs with five suited and shielded people behind me. There were no more attacks, and I heard the guards start to leave the house, which gave me a really bad feeling. We ran up to the veranda which was quite nice.

  I smiled when the shuttle rocketed down and came to an alarmingly fast stop. Inertial dampers, but the opportunity to see the results in action weren’t that often. We all got up in the shuttle, and then cloaked and backed out. The three women we were here to rescue were actually floating, and I wondered if they could even see. I doubted it.

  The shuttle closed up and shot into the sky at an angle, at the same time we shot straight up.

  Five seconds later, the mansion exploded beneath us, but we were high enough to avoid it. Huh, he must have had explosives set up just in case, too bad he waited too long to use them. Too bad for him I mean.

  Fortunately, the well armored guys were the only hiccup in the plan. When we got into space, there wasn’t a space ship in sight, they were all on the other side of the planet trying to find our ship, just as I’d hoped would happen. I couldn’t see the ship, but Ann had no trouble being on the net, and flew me straight into the airlock, which closed once all six of us were inside.

  Right. Now all we had to do was make sure there were no Trojan implants, and we’d be golden…

  Chapter Twelve

  The airlock cycled in just a few moments, and then the inner door opened. With a thought, I interfaced with the ship to check status. Jillintara was already running a scan on our three new guests to make a determination on their implant status. We were also moving at two hundred gravities toward the border of the star system. It would take us a little over two days to reach earth.

  Everything back at Tau Ceti seemed to be on track as well.

  Dessia demanded, “Where are we?”

  Vik replied, “Just a minute, we need to make sure you aren’t bugged.”

  The scans finished a moment later. All three of them had their normal implants shut down, and had a secondary implant installed. I tried to interface with one of them, and I couldn’t. Either they were dumb spy implants, or they didn’t have local access protocols, only quantum paired connections, which would handily defeat any efforts to analyze them by software.

  I wondered why he didn’t use the overrides on their implants instead of going this route, but maybe he didn’t simply because we’d already defeated that measure when he used it on Jillintara, and he probably didn’t understand how we did it. So, he’d changed tactics for this trap of his, which happily blew up
in his face. The trap I mean. I was more than sure that trap had been meant to kill both Vik and the bait.

  Still, I kept that part to myself, the last thing I wanted to tell a mother and two sisters was that their brother had intended to kill them. They either already knew, or didn’t want to know.

  I said, “You are bugged, and have a secondary implant installed. Please follow me to the med bay.”

  Nanites took care of keeping us healthy, and could repair most anything including light wounds in battle if they weren’t mortal. But some damage, and some procedures, were beyond them.

  Sylara said, “Who are you, take off that head covering.”

  I shook my head, “Not until your bug free. I’d rather not introduce myself to Denik.”

  Sylara didn’t look happy with that, but the six of us all headed toward the med bay, where Jillintara held the same type of device that had implanted my palm weapon. I guessed it was used for implanting and removing artificial assistants as well, I hadn’t been conscious when Ann was installed.

  It might already be too late to keep my race a secret, I wasn’t sure. The assistants were extremely helpful, which meant they should be translating my speech to Isyth without further comment. Unless Denik thought to ask, and in the next minute or two before the implants were destroyed, he’d never discover there’s a human on the Scythe’s crew. I worried if he worked that out, he might divine a part of our plan.

  Hopefully, he was too busy yelling at people for their incompetence in letting us escape right now, instead of directly monitoring us. Hope was a bad plan, and I always endeavored to take it out of the equation, but sometimes it was all I had.

  Yes, he knew I was here already, he’d been watching us for months through our mission reports on the old military data net while we ran around. But… that was before all the changes happened, and I got the downloads.

  It didn’t take long, maybe ninety seconds each. The secondary implant was pulled out and destroyed, and their original implants were turned on.

  I retracted the head and gloves, the material retreated into the suit.

  Solyra looked bemused, “A human?”

  I smiled, “A long story, and we interrupted your breakfast and hadn’t had our own yet. We could brief you over breakfast in the galley? Oh, welcome aboard the Scythe.”

  Sylara’s face was unreadable, but she nodded.

  Dessia frowned in thought.

  I wondered if they just weren’t used to normal people talking to them as if they were normal. Vik loved that I didn’t fall all over myself kissing his ass. Maybe they wouldn’t, like it I mean. Then again, Solyra still looked amused, it was Sylara and Dessia that looked out of sorts. Maybe it wasn’t even about me, not everything was after all, and they’d just been through an ordeal. The successful mission had me zinging inside, but not everyone was as crazy as I was.

  Jillintara said, “I’ve arranged a basic layout download of the ship for your assistants to pass on. You should also have access to some of the ship’s systems and full control over your ship suits.”

  I started to feel awkward as we walked out and headed toward the galley. I wouldn’t start kissing their royal asses, but I decided to let Vik do all the talking, and I’d just answer direct questions. I was hungry anyway.

  It was when I saw the look of distaste on their faces, when they realized they’d be eating out of a food synthesizer, that I decided it was going to be a long ass eight months. I put in my own selection, and sat next to Telidur, and across from Jillintara and Rilok. I was highly amused by the space left between us and the four royals.

  I started to eat.

  Vik said, “It’s a long story. You already know up to the part where we were attacked and our FTL was disabled. We’d finally tracked down the Stolavii responsible for taking so many humans, and found Denik was behind it. After that, we’ve been working toward building up our own counter-revolution fleet to take Denik off the throne and restore father. It wasn’t until recently we learned the truth about our family and set off to rescue you, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

  “Here’s what we’ve been doing since we lost access to the military data net…”

  I half listened as I ate, and the other half of me surreptitiously watched their reactions and body language. Once again, Vik got rather more animated when he described anything I’d done, or had invented by creating new combinations of technology. I wasn’t the only one to pick up on it, and started to wish he’d gloss over those parts a little more.

  Solyra kept giving me amused looks, which were hard to interpret for me. Dessia and Sylara on the other hand were clearly picking up the undertones of his praise, and didn’t look pleased at all. It didn’t look like they approved of his close relationship with me, a human.

  All of which brought up a few questions in my own mind, did Vik love me? Because the admiration and pride for me in his voice was clear. Did I love him? I wasn’t sure, but it felt like it sometimes. Did that matter? Sylara would be queen, at least he wouldn’t have to rule, but without twenty siblings didn’t he take on the onus of finding a mate to start having babies?

  It was all so confusing, and made my stomach churn. Battle risks were so much easier and less treacherous than ones of the heart. I decided to just go with it, and whatever happened would happen. Easier said than done, but that’s what I was going to try to do. Somehow, I managed to finish off my food while he finished the briefing.

  Sylara said, “It’s a well thought out plan, if not ideal to involve the humans. It also won’t be as simple as taking him out and rolling back his changes to the laws. We’ll be paying for his foolishness for a long time. The three other races in the empire will be distrustful, and perhaps worst of all, we’ll be inheriting a war with the Stolavii. He’s been hunting them down, all of them, not just the pirates and dubiously moral mercenaries. There may be other problems as well.”

  Vik said, “Like?”

  Sylara shrugged, “The Alirann and Kruterran empires keep an eye on us, and generally leave us alone. Who knows what they’ll think of two large battles within a year of each other, or if they’ll feel threatened or worry about our intentions or lack of stability. While the new ships are great, and will stimulate more private merchants, the two empires might be alarmed when there’s ten times as many ships in our space. They may just ignore it, they may not. I’m not complaining though, the new tools you have all developed will go a long way to cleaning up Denik’s mess, but it will also have other impacts and create new and unique problems for us.”

  Vik nodded, “I knew there would be fallout, but my concern was getting the right person back on the throne, after that it will be up to you to lead us. I’d been thinking father, or one of our older brothers, but…” he trailed off.

  Sylara said, “Understood. And that’s fine. We’ll also have to make things right after the fact. We need to reimburse the companies for the illegally created element,” she looked at me and her face was blank, I started to wonder if that wasn’t just a royal thing rather than disapproval, but I doubted I was that lucky.

  She continued, “We’ll also be making sure you get the royalty, for the new reactor, destroyer, weapon, and suit designs.”

  I… wasn’t going to argue with that, but I hadn’t been expecting it. Apparently, I’d be able to afford my own ship far sooner than I’d expected. Still, the funds would just be a security blanket, there was nothing I wanted to buy that badly, and as for the ship, I’d prefer to stay on this one with my lovers and friends.

  She looked back at Vik, “One more slight change to your plans, I’ll need you to assign Telidur or Rilok to me for the duration. Mother and Solyra can handle themselves with two humans, but it would be unwise for me to be on a ship alone with three strange men of another race. Even with these ship suits, and a new palm implant which I intend us all to have, there’s a political and appearance aspect of it to consider. My ship will be crewed by two humans, myself, and one of your guards.”

 
That was actually reasonable, and I didn’t think the actual counter-revolution part would take long. Before that happened all six of us would be on this ship for another eight months, and the battle to put down Denik and put Sylara on the throne would be relatively short. Days, weeks at the most. The shakedown and training would take longer than that.

  I hoped. It wouldn’t do to forget Denik got a vote, the other side always did in a war, and he was building ships as well. Much less efficient, but still powerful weapons of war. If he figured out fast enough that it would take three destroyers to one of ours to make it an even fight, it could drag on a while.

  Rilok said, “I volunteer sir.”

  Vik nodded in approval.

  Solyra asked, “When will we arrive at Earth?”

  Jillintara answered, “About fifty-one hours.”

  Vik said, “Once the five hundred are built, should we continue to build, and expand the power plant? We’ll lose some to attrition, and I have no doubt part of the deal with Earth will include them keeping a certain amount of ships to safeguard their system from the Stolavii. Once we put down Denik, we will have some ships left, some building, and can start recruiting personnel from the five empire planets immediately. After what you said, I worry the Stolavii will attack us right after our civil war comes to an end, when we’re at our most vulnerable.”

  Sylara nodded, “We’ll hopefully have some ships left from Denik’s side as well, if we can get them to surrender once Denik is dead. Those can be refit to add the extra weapons, wormhole drive, and reactors. But, we also need to shut down the synth lab at that point, and buy it from lawful sources.”

  Vik nodded, “Alright, easy enough. Anything else?”

  Dessia said, “The humans will need implants to run the ships, but they don’t need personal weapons, or suits with all the capabilities these have, since all fighting will be ship to ship. I’d suggest giving them suits that are only enhanced with oxygen ports and minimal shields to keep them alive until search and rescue operations are completed.”