Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (25-28)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  “How do you defend against a chest blow when your opponent is stronger and faster?”

  “Ready yourself,” David said, then he stepped forward and like the crack of a whip sent his stiffened palm into the adept’s chest and knocked him back off his feet to the ground where he slid back another two meters.

  “Again,” David prompted with his fingers. Gingerly, the adept got up and walked towards him.

  “Now me.”

  The adept nodded and tried to use the same attack against David, but when his hand approached the white uniform it skidded aside as the acolyte twisted his body to the left and around the adept’s hand so that only the corner connected, though David still had to take a half step back to maintain his balance.

  “Speed is essential, because it allows you to reconfigure your opponent’s attacks into situations that are less damaging or potentially advantageous to you…but if you are not the faster, then you must use the time you have to diminish the attack. Set yourself and lean forward,” David prompted, then he hit the man again just as hard as before.

  The adept flew backwards, but landed on his feet and fell face forward, half the distance from David as he’d gone before.

  “Whatever you do,” David suggested as he reached a hand down to help the adept up, who had got the wind knocked out of him a bit, “don’t let the blow land flush. Chip away at it with angles, however you can create them.”

  “Thank you,” the man said, cringing from the ache in his chest. “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “Speed is the best defense,” David said as he turned and walked on, letting his impromptu lesson sink in. He didn’t know who the adept was, nor did he know most of the Archons in the training facility, but this wasn’t the first time he’d been asked by the younger ones for help and he always took the time to offer some quick assistance no matter how rushed he was.

  Today there was no rush though, and he walked across the facility to one of the training tracks and found it half full of Archons working through various paces. Gone were the lane line lights that had used to guide them in the old days, replaced by holographic glowing spheres set a few inches above the track all the way up to head height depending on where the runner wished their marker to be. David triggered one to stay on the ground, for that was what he was used to, and dropped into the flow before swinging out into lane 3 to pass a pair of slower runners.

  He made his way through 5k at 5:00 pace, just a relaxing run while he gauged the amount of damage he’d taken from the trial, noting the locations where he was sore and hoping they’d work their way out, which most of them did by the time he was finished. For his body, anyway, running worked as therapy and stretching, loosening him up for other training, of which he focused primarily on hand to hand combat.

  Feeling warm and lithe after the run he ran himself through a set of agility drills then headed his way over to Balboa Lane for some strength calibration, noting how fatigued his muscles had gotten from the trial while measuring against a punching bag he had moved into the corner while others were hanging out in their own areas of the long room working on various drills.

  After that it was time for lunch so he stopped by his quarters for a quick shower, then checked his message terminal on the way out…only to stop and sit down when he saw there was a vid from Davis, timestamped 56 minutes ago.

  “David, I need you on Earth. Possibly Green Team as well, though I’ll leave the choice up to you. This mission is a bit more complicated and I’d prefer we discuss it face to face, so get back here as soon as possible. Mischief is afoot.”

  2

  Half an hour later David and a small gear satchel were riding a dropship up to low orbit for a rendezvous with the primary starport. As the golf ball-shaped dropship rose up from the airless surface of the moon the Archon watched the monitors distractedly, seeing the Star Force military complex shrink beneath them as other cities, civilian and Clan, began to show up on the horizon. Each of them spread out across the barren surface in a glittering of lights on the night side, then as the dropship began accelerating laterally new ones began to show up, including the huge city of Capsule Corp that was the largest on the planetoid and served as Clan Saiyan’s capitol.

  It held over 48,000,000 people with a footprint of only 27 square miles. Together with six other cities, Clan Saiyan’s population on Ganymede topped off at 112,000,000, though the Clan had five times that number in total population spread throughout Sol and a few other nearby star systems. The second most populous Clan on the moon was Clan Croft with 18 smaller cities that totaled 68,000,000 members, a mix of civilians, techs, and Clan military Regulars and Knights. The Regulars were recruited and trained by each Clan out of their own population, but the Knights were still trained by Star Force and distributed out to the Clans, much as the Archons were.

  As David watched he could see other bright little specs moving across the black sky as dozens of dropships came and went from low orbit, servicing the 16 Clans that had territory on the moon as well as Star Force’s own colonies and the 5 nations that had retained territory after a long fought out political swapfest. In the end Germany, Denmark, Argentina, Russia, and Tranquility had come out with sizeable swaths of the moon to populate, though together that population totaled only 4,000,000. Star Force and the Clans were by far the most prolific builders in Sol and the nations had never even begun to catch up.

  All together Ganymede held a population just under half a billion, and though it was the largest moon in the star system it wasn’t the most populated. Thanks to Star Force’s guidance Earth’s overpopulation paradox had been solved, and while some stubborn nations still experienced problems most of their unhappy citizenry would emigrate to Star Force colonies, of which there now numbered over a thousand, 4/5ths of which were located in Sol.

  Each colony operated as a part of the Star Force corporation, but was organized to be semi-independent for logistical reasons. All ultimately answered to Davis, but legal concerns were kept to a minimum. All Star Force citizens were free to do as they pleased so long as they didn’t bother others, with the entire civilian legal code numbering only 5 pages, making Star Force colonies a bastion of freedom that many on Earth fled to, further diminishing the population and power of the original nations.

  Star Force’s business code was far longer and infinitely more complicated, detailing a corporate code of conduct for anyone and everyone who did business with Star Force or conducted their own businesses within Star Force territory. For this reason the other nations saw many institutions establishing their headquarters and ‘pirate’ industries within their borders to avoid Star Force scrutiny…which was usually the subject matter for Green Team’s missions. David and 9 others comprised the Clan-less squad that was assigned to Davis along with a few other highly skilled Archon teams.

  They stayed within the Solar System save for when the Director had need to deploy them elsewhere, training heavily and assisting in other duties while they waited for their next mission, most of which usually involved the other nations or independent corporations, though David had been previously assigned to hunt down a serial killer that security was having a hard time pinning down, so when the big man called it could be anything, but when Davis had said ‘mischief’ he got the feeling he was referring to something political, but where the trouble could be coming from was anyone’s guess with so many players in the game.

  When Star Force had began there were about 200 independent nations, now there were 783, some of which Star Force had helped to created, like the Ananke Republic on Mars. It had grown into one of the larger nations, due in no small part to the Star Force training its founders had received, and had expanded to several other planetoids within the system. Other nations were the splintered fragments of political dissolvement, none more prominent than those on Luna. Earth’s moon held 185 independent nations, some of which had begun during World War III and then splintered further as they grew.

  Still there were others, spread acr
oss the system, coming from independent ventures by civilians, corporations, or political factions wherever they could find a foothold, though many were orbital facilities only with no surface territory to their name. Star Force didn’t recognize everyone who wanted independent status just for owning and operating their own space station, but more likely than not another new nation would rise, in name at least, over the next decade or so.

  That was the continuing, chaotic political flux that was the Solar System, but with each year that passed it was being carefully diminished when and where Davis found an opportunity. Already Star Force and its affiliates held more than 4/5ths of the Human population that had originated from Earth and slowly Davis was bringing the rebellious portion into line one generation at a time.

  When David’s dropship finally reached its designated orbit it docked with an enormous, flat rectangle of a starport. One of the more recent constructs that had been designed after artificial gravity plating had become standard, the starport had docking ports along one side designated for dropships while the other half were reserved for starships, many of which were visible, sticking out past the pylons and hanging in space as mobile traffic passed by all around them, most of which was coming to or from the starport, but with some passerbys headed for nearby orbital installations.

  Ganymede wasn’t as orbitally cluttered as some of the other planetoids, but it was still a navigation hazard that had to be managed diligently…which Star Force handled free of charge for all travelers.

  David transitioned off the dropship along with a few other Star Force military officers coming up from the complex, then the Archon went his own way, immediately heading across the huge promenade that doubled as temporary city for the travelers, complete with an enormous entertainment/recreation section. David kept close watch on the time and cut across the indoor park to save distance, walking over a series of waterslides that stretched more than a mile long, twisting up and through the confined area. He’d heard the trailblazers had had some input into the design, but whether or not that was mere rumor was guesswork. They had their hands in so many side projects it was impossible to know, and he admitted he’d wanted to try out the waterslides a long time ago, but never had seemed to find the time.

  Today wasn’t going to be the day, though, for he had a flight to catch. All scheduled Star Force and Clan flights back to Earth were at least 18 hours away and David hadn’t wanted to commandeer a ship just to get him back a few hours faster, so he’d checked the civilian flights and had found one that left within 2 hours of his database search.

  When the Archon got across the station he checked through security, drawing some odd looks when they scanned his pack and saw the single set of armor inside. David just smiled and typed in an identification code on the nearby terminal, seeing the screeners’ eyes go even wider at seeing his identification number…or rather, seeing how few digits it contained. Odd, how he and the other ‘second geners’ used to be the outsiders, with the trailblazers being considered the ‘cool’ ones…now being 5th class was essentially akin to godhood as far as the public was concerned.

  David grabbed his satchel and passed on through, wearing a set of civilian clothes so as not to draw attention. Most Archons wouldn’t have cared, but he’d traveled on civilian transports a lot in recent years and found that a little change of clothes could save him answering all types of repetitive questions enroute from other travels who had ‘never met an Archon before.’

  David boarded the starship without incident, arriving a few minutes before departure and taking a seat in the middle left row after stashing his satchel in the bin over his head. To his right was what looked like a family of four on vacation, with an elderly couple seated in front of them. To his left was a group of teenagers and behind was a scattering of other people, but in all only half of the seats were filled, offering him a buffer of emptiness around him that he was grateful for.

  A series of video screens spread around the wide cabin showed the starport as they gradually pulled away from it and gently accelerated up into a higher orbit on the starship’s gravity drive, heading on a specific corridor through the hundreds of orbiting habitats. When they eventually cleared the congested areas the inter-planetary transport, barely larger than a Dragon-class dropship, pushed off from Ganymede on a short hop in towards Jupiter, decelerating less than a minute after leaving the moon and dropping into a ‘transit’ orbit that was purposefully clear of stations.

  The starship used its conventional thrust engines in concert with its gravity drives to maneuver into an orbit around the planet that would bring it around to the jumpline for Earth, which David was monitoring on a small datapad that showed the planetary alignment. A direct line was possible from Jupiter to Earth, barely missing Venus along the way, along with hitting one of the multiple gaps through the Asteroid Belt. Had the alignment not set up properly the route would have been flagged as hazardous and an alternate, multi-linked route would have been taken, bouncing off a few more planets in order to get a clear approach to Earth.

  It took the starship more than an hour to orbit around to the outbound jumpline and as it did David could see a steady flow of ships coming into the Jupiter microsystem along the same line, decelerating well out from the transit orbit but perilously close to the outbound jumping traffic. Even further out he could see the cluster of tiny moons that were actually some of the first Canderian seda ever built. Jupiter orbit was home to their civilization, and as such contained over 200 of the battle stations that they lived within.

  In addition to that there were thousands of other smaller structures, along with several larger, including several Star Force shipyards that were fed by the mines and factories on the nearby moons. Most of those shipyards were civilian, producing the insane number of vessels cruising around the star system while at least a few were pumping out drone warships by the dozens, though most of Star Force’s military production occurred elsewhere. The Clans also had some of their own shipyards in orbit around the moons, but only Star Force had them in Jupiter orbit as they wisely kept all others confined to the moons or specific orbital slots to cut down on navigational hazards.

  That said, when David’s starship arrived at the jumpline and engaged its gravity drives at minimal power to counteract the pull of Jupiter while it stalled out its orbital momentum, it had to get in line behind several others that were jumping out one at a time, all the while more were coming in from Earth higher up in orbit with the actual jumpline in between them.

  Normally a starship had to jump on the exact line, else the propulsion wouldn’t be centered along the correct trajectory and the ship would drift off target. Problem was, the line to Earth and from Earth was exactly the same, meaning that cross traffic could potentially ram each other during transit. To solve that problem Star Force had originally enacted a circuit around the system, from one planet to another that was one-way only, which required ships to make a significant, if not nearly fully lap around the system to get to their destination, but with the advent of the differential gravity drive technology…another gift from the pyramid database once Star Force techs had figured out how to build it…the gravity drives could ‘push’ off of whatever gravity well they wanted while excluding others.

  This meant more precise jumps out from Earth without Mars’s limited gravity nudging you off course, or any other mass for that matter, including the Sun. It also meant that you could make combo jumps, such as pushing off of Jupiter just off the jumpline with a side push from the Sun that would counteract the errant vector. In this way, when David’s starship eventually found its way to the front of the line, it was able to jump on the ‘right side’ of the jumpline with help from other gravity wells in the system while incoming traffic was decelerating in the same manner on the ‘left side.’

  This gave several hundreds of kilometers of breathing space in between both sides of the jumplane, more than enough for safe transit so long as your craft had a sufficiently accurate gravity drive…whic
h Star Force mandated for transit, whether you were affiliated with the mega corporation or not. If a nation felt like they didn’t have to follow the rules and could jump wherever they liked they’d find a warship on their ass in short order, for mid-jump collisions were not something to be taken likely, given that they were 99% fatal and could spray debris across the destination point that could affect a multitude of ships and stations.

  Star Force punishment for unsanctioned jumps along the primary jumplines was immediate confiscation of the vessel, followed by stiff penalties and fines. Many nations and corporations had vehemently objected to this infringement on their sovereignty, but Davis didn’t care and after a few stupid individuals had their ships seized everyone got the point that he was adamant on this when he took the seized ships and organized a low speed collision for display purposes. The virtual liquefaction of the ships had put enough of a scare into the populace that Star Force protocol concerning navigation jumps was immediately deemed as ‘common sense’ with anyone even joking about making an unsanctioned jump getting a social beatdown by the media.

  David’s flight back to Earth, ironically, took all of 17 minutes before the starship decelerated against the planet’s gravity with an additional push on the Sun for stabilization purposes. That left it drifting wide upon arrival, not having completely negated its erroneous trajectory. Another extremely low power pulse from the gravity drive along with conventional thrust engines moved it off the jumpline and into a high parking orbit where a series of starports were strung out around the orbital infrastructure like pearls on a necklace.

  It took a couple of hours to get to the nearest one, then David got off onto the station and met up with a Star Force priority shuttle that he’d arranged for earlier, which allowed for a direct flight down to Earth rather than having to process through the intricate series of traffic stops that the civilian population had to endure, for there were so many orbiting stations around Earth that it made the use of designated space lanes absolutely necessary.