by Aer-ki Jyr
“We know. I’ve got teams going around and pulling them out. I had planned on interrogating them, but now that you’re here, would you mind?”
“Have you searched the walker?”
“Not yet. We took it down from range, so I haven’t had any units in close yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s dead.”
Jenna glanced at Levi and he took off running in the direction of the Skarron war machine.
“How many ships did you come with?” Brayden asked.
“We’re not getting involved in the fighting until we know what’s going on,” Jenna cautioned. “For all I know this planet had this coming.”
“We sent records.”
“We got them.”
“Then I don’t understand the hesitancy. The Marauders have no affiliation here other than a small outpost, but it’s clear that this is the type of predation that Star Force routinely stops.”
“Star Force also has a habit of taking planets from others,” Jenna pointed out. “And we don’t do it for pay.”
“We only take defensive assignments,” Brayden said defensively, sensing the rebuke in her tone.
“We’ve currently got the lizards on the defensive. You going to chip in and help them out too?” she asked, taking a couple steps past his shoulder and pointing. “Get whoever is in that tank out and I’ll see if I can get some answers for both of us.”
Brayden followed her armored finger with his eyes and saw the wreckage of one of the Tangos’ tanks about 300 meters off. “Easy enough,” he said, getting on the comm and calling his units with cutting tools and medics to him.
Levi accelerated gradually, passing through a flame wall about 100 meters away from Jenna with the tiny plasma flares barely tickling his shields. They did interfere with his vision of the ground ahead, so he switched on his Pefbar and was suddenly able to see through the smoke and flames as he finally got up to his normal cruising speed. Both the armor he wore and Jenna’s were the light variety, now reduced down in size so much that they appeared to be little more than thick wetsuits over the moving portions. The solid plates were downsized as well, making for a very fast, agile armor that the pair favored.
He wore a slim pack on his back with a handful of supplies, over top of which a weapon rack held a rifle, a pair of pistols, and an ammo pouch. That was standard gear for ‘social’ calls, and would be amped up considerably if any heavy fighting was expected. The extra weight slowed him down a bit, but he’d been running and fighting in armor like this for so long that the bulk on his back almost felt like a third limb by now.
Crossing the distance over to the walker in a blur of moving legs and pumping arms, Levi scanned ahead with his Ikrid, not trusting that the deadly machine was truly out of order. When he got close enough he picked up a single mind remaining, but by the time he got to one of the massive legs the contact winked out, with Levi assuming that one of the crew had been barely hanging onto life and had just now succumbed.
That meant there was no one inside to get to open the door, so when he drifted to a stop underneath he circled around the walker, getting a view of the damage to all sides, then picked his spot and dropped to the ground, gathering his legs underneath him. He triggered his Yetu, extending his legs out in a jump that was amplified by the momentary surge in muscle speed. That sent him shooting skyward without the help of his armor halfway up the walker’s leg.
Levi grabbed hold of a joint, gluing himself to the side with a tiny telepathic order to the armor that activated the magical grip points in the hands and toes, giving him a spiderman-like grip even on flat surfaces. He had to move slow, and some materials were less agreeable than others, but he was able to climb up the leg and then onto the bottom half of the giant sphere, using weapons damage for grip when able. He scaled it to the point where there was a man-sized hole, then climbed in through the short tunnel that a rail gun slug had carved out.
There was a mess of chewed up machinery, but he was able to wiggle his way into the crew compartment where he found a slew of body parts from races that he couldn’t identify. There were two more or less intact corpses in uniform, but the rest was a blood-splattered death cocoon with multiple access points to the exterior light, indicating where the rail gun rounds had entered from, one of which was imbedded in the sidewall, now a squashed plug of metal rather than the pointy bullet it had originally been.
Levi pulled himself out of the damage-created shaft and stood up, feet squishing on gore. A quick look around confirmed that the control station that he was interested in was still intact, though there was a lot of extra junk in the way. He walked across the body parts and climbed up on the now twisted rigging that had allowed what looked like bipedal pilots to operate a craft designed for the multi-armed quadrupeds that were the Skarrons.
The padawan ripped off a panel exposing the interior components of part of the computer system, then pulled out a long, rectangular component, disconnecting the three wires linking it to the auxiliary power and comm systems. Levi reached back and opened his pack, sliding the salvage inside. He knew the techs back on the Jor-El would be able to access the device, which would then give them an itemized history of this walker. Where it had been, who it had been assigned to, what damage it had taken, the sensor records surrounding that damage, and anything else useful to the Skarrons in analyzing their defeats.
Star Force had known about the data nodules for some time, and had made a habit of ripping them off the dead walkers when they could, though it seemed that each one, no matter how large it was, only contained a single nodule, making it a bit of a lottery as to whether it would be destroyed by damage or not. Given how many walkers the Skarrons deployed in the field, all it would take would be one nodule recovered to give them an idea of what had happened in any given battle, so this one being intact was a stroke of luck…in addition to the thick support beams it was located next to.
He knelt down near one of the more or less intact bodies, examining the uniform and any other bits of detail available. These obviously weren’t Skarrons, which ruled out one possibility that they’d been considering. The mercs’ data had said they hadn’t observed any Skarron or Hobbit presence, but Jenna and Levi had found it very odd that the Skarrons would let anyone else use their walkers, especially since they didn’t even let their own Hobbits operate them.
But it seemed they had here, or had they stolen a walker from them? Too many possibilities to narrow down yet, but they could scratch one off the list…and hopefully this nodule would give them a few necessary tidbits to help unravel this mystery.
Levi spotted a sidearm loose on the floor and picked it up, finding the trigger and shooting one of the torn up walls. A short burst came out and melted into a panel, but it wasn’t plasma. He guessed it was a lachar, and by the design and yield he guessed it was low on the tech tree. Odd, given how advanced a war machine these dead guys had been piloting, yet they were carrying primitive personal weapons?
That suggested a hodgepodge grouping, and from the look of the body parts lying around, there were at least three different races present in the walker, all of which he was unfamiliar with, though it was difficult to say for sure about the third, given that he was having to mentally piece it back together.
Levi took another glance around, finding nothing else of interest, then he jumped up to the top of the chamber, grabbing hold of a different bit of damage and climbing out through a much larger gash that led him to a door-sized hole high up. He skittishly walked out to the edge, unsure of his footing and being wary that it might slide out from under him at any moment, falling apart.
With a thought he activated the powered setting on his armor and took a step out onto the curved hull, sliding down a few meters quickly and then transitioning into freefall. He braced his legs and caught them against the ground, pushing hard and having the armor do most of the work in lieu of the jump pack he didn’t have. His feet dug into the ground several inches as he dropped to a knee, bleeding off his momentum before standing back up and b
eginning his return run towards the cluster of merc tanks on the horizon.
The tank pilot that Jenna had tagged for recovery had lost a hand and was unconscious when they pried him out of the pinched cockpit that had been dented inward from a rail gun slug deflection. The Marauder medic had quickly sealed off the wound to keep any additional bleeding from occurring, but we wasn’t about to inject him with any supplicant without knowing his biology. It was quite possible that this one was going to die simply from the loss of blood, but as the medics ran their tests to determine what he could or couldn’t take Jenna slipped off one of her armor’s gloves and pressed her small, pale fingers against the ridged forehead of the orange-skinned biped, using the physical contact to amplify her Ikrid link.
There was a mess of pain and recent memories to sift through, made all the more murky by the unconscious state he was in and her unfamiliarity with this race, but she took her time and sorted through what she could, gradually finding some points of recognition and working from there. It took more than ten minutes before she finally got a name, followed by a bit of additional information before the Tanzghi’s mind disappeared along with his life.
“He’s dead,” she said to the medics who were readying an injection. Jenna turned to face Brayden as she slipped her glove back on and locked it into her wrist plate. “This one belongs to a war party called something I can’t pronounce, but loosely I’d tag them as the Tipring.”
“War party?”
“Neither army nor mercs, they’re recruiting from their populations in time of need. This one has been involved for a lot of years, and it seems to think that whatever they’re doing is to protect their homes. Conquer or be conquered, though with a few wrinkles that I couldn’t quite iron out. Anyway, the Tipring are part of a coalition that’s on some sort of quest. Please tell me some of the others are still alive?”
“I’ve got reports of four captives recovered, but they’re all in bad condition. One has already died, at his own hands.”
“Lovely,” Jenna said, reaching out with her Ikrid to scan at maximum range. It took a moment to weed out the merc minds, but she was able to spot two more anomalous ones within bits of wreckage. “I can sense two more.”
“Where?”
“There,” she said, pointing to half a tank more than a quarter mile off, “and…never mind. That’s one of yours,” Jenna corrected as one of the search team members pulled out of a wrecked tank and walked off empty handed.
“Near death?” Brayden asked.
“I can’t tell this far away.”
“Let’s get on it,” the Colonel said to the scattering of mercs standing around the pair, who immediate broke up and got moving now that they had a task assigned. Brayden went with them, but Jenna lagged behind as she felt Levi approaching. A minute later his running form broke through a smoke cloud and came into view, coasting to a stop alongside her dark blue armor.
“Anything?”
“Crew is dead, and they’re definitely not Skarron. I did find a nodule. Looks intact.”
“Good.”
“You?”
“Not much. My date died before we could get very far.”
“There’s gotta be more left around here.”
“A few. The mercs are pulling another one out now, but so far they’re all in bad shape. We may have to go on a little field trip of our own later.”
“Why wait?”
“I don’t like mercs, and I want to get a feel for these guys as much as the Varshoo.”
“Got a name then?”
“Yeah,” she said, sending him a brief telepathic summary of what she’d learned.
“Curious,” Levi mewed.
“What?”
“Something about the way they decorated the interior of the walker,” he explained, sending her a telepathic image of what he’d seen.
“And?”
“I’m not sure, just an odd feeling.”
“If your odd feeling gets and definition, let me know. In the meantime let’s glean what we can from the scraps here, and keep your eyes open for anything on these Marauders. If you can manage a date with a bit of snuggle time go for it. There are at least two girls out there.”
“Plenty of guys then,” Levi deflected.
“You romanced me out.”
“Could just try a friendly hug outside of armor?”
“Or a punch…but I don’t have an excuse for that yet. Just try and find some way to get some skin contact.”
“Your spidey senses tingling?”
“I don’t know. They just rub me the wrong way. If there are any good guys in this fight, it might not be them.”
“Don’t trust a quitter?”
“If they’re still interested in fighting, why did they leave us?”
“Good point.”
“Keep your eyes open and study everything. We’re blinder here than usual.”
“You want me to run my find back up to orbit?”
“No, but call a dropship in to pick it up. I want you here with me snooping around.”
“Don’t think we’re going to get anyone out of armor here. Are we going back to their basecamp?”
“Play it by ear and see where it leads,” Jenna said, beginning to walk in the direction of the newest survivor that the mercs were just now getting to with their equipment, for plasma had a way of melting hatches closed. “For now, just roam. I’ll see what this guy can give us.”
5
October 10, 2735
Noop System
Tieor
The pair of Archons ran together through the night, traveling at better than 30 miles an hour as they cruised at Levi’s maximum sustainable pace for the cross country trip. Both Archons were using their armor’s powered enhancement to reduce the workload, making it feel as if they were running without any extra weight on them at all. Typically they didn’t use that setting save for extreme situations, preferring to just use their strength to overcome the slowness of the armor, but given the distance they were running across an uninhabited bit of countryside towards one of the Varshoo-held cities they didn’t want to arrive there exhausted.
Jenna let Levi lead the way so he could set the pace, given that he was the slower of the two, but she handled the navigation, giving him a telepathic nudge to veer left at a clump of trees ahead. The padawan did as directed, taking them a bit off the path and through some waist-high grass before the bare dirt returned for a few strides, then was quickly replaced by scrub brush that tickled their armor with thorns. They blew through it like a knife blade, leaving only a small disruption for someone to follow.
That wasn’t the concern here, for so far no one had noticed their passage. The surveillance around the captured city was aerial only with a few loose patrols around the perimeter, meaning that if they tried for an aerial assault they’d probably be picked up on their descent, even if they dropped from orbit with jump packs. The long route over land was the easy way in, but taking vehicles or going via road would have been a bit too obvious, even at night. On foot was the preferred method, because no one expected anyone to travel the 42 mile gap across wilderness in a single night, let alone within two hours.
And because of the design of their armor their movements were whisper quiet, making them literally ghosts in the night with the overhead cloud cover masking any starlight. They both had a tiny pinprick of light on their helmets that they could use for their nightvision, in a frequency that most races couldn’t see naturally, but neither Archon needed it, for they simply used their Pefbar to see ahead and all around them, offering them better situational awareness within a limited radius.
Beyond that they were essentially blind, but the tracking systems on their battlemap let Jenna navigate them to where they needed to go, for she’d set up several waypoints based on previous orbital scans and they were arriving at the last of them now, for just around the tree clump she’d had Levi veer left at was a ridgeline that would run straight up to the city edge. There it would be cu
t off abruptly by the infrastructure on the city’s back side where the wilderness pressed up against the outer ring. There were a fair amount of trees there, cutting off most vehicular traffic aside from a few wide paths that doubled as roads for those travelers that chose to skirt around the perimeter rather than take internal routes from point to point within the city.
The approach made for a huge blind spot that the invaders were basically leaving unmonitored, and to be blunt why would they bother locking it down? They were running rough shot over the planet and methodically taking one site after another, making it appear that it was only a matter of time before they conquered the entire planet no matter how many mercenaries the locals hired to try and slow them down.
Jenna still thought it was sloppy, especially considering that those mercenary units weren’t tied down to any location and typically would have their own transports, whether they be ships, aerial craft, or some form of speeders. Had she been the Varshoo commander, Jenna would have put up at least a light patrol perimeter around the city in all directions to give the troops inside a heads up in case someone tried a counterattack, but most of their efforts seemed to be focused on locking down the spaceports and main roads, keeping people inside as much as keeping others out.
According to the few minds she’d been able to raid from the Marauders’ prisoners, Jenna had determined that there were at least 18 different factions within the Varshoo army here, and many more in their overall empire…save for that it wasn’t a civilization. They were a conglomeration of mercenary units, security forces, defense leagues, and about anything else that had an even vaguely military aspect to it. Each puzzle piece was put together to form the Varshoo, which was a military for hire, so to speak. What they were doing here she hadn’t been able to determine because the soldiers she’d interrogated didn’t know, but this wasn’t the first planet they’d hit.
She’d found memories from 14 other assaults, all successful and against similarly primitive civilizations. The Varshoo were conquering designated worlds then handing them over to someone else, moving on and repeating the process where necessary. Sometimes they’d move straight on to another mission, others would involve holding breaks at some neutral point or even see the puzzle pieces return to where they’d been gathered from. What was behind it all was still uncertain, but Jenna had gathered the identities of those higher up the ranking ladder who might know the answers to those questions, which was why the pair of Archons were headed towards the city of Djok.
