Star Force: Ice Queen

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Dre’mo’don blasts came immediately as his stealth field dropped and Connor’s shields began taking some hits, but the Zen’zat was missing as much as he was hitting…then Carrie’s strength hit its limit and the Yinbi failed. It wasn’t her fault, for it was a new psionic to her and they hadn’t practiced it much over the two years she’d had it, but they’d managed to catch the Zen’zat off guard with it…and now it was time to use their nearly full arsenal of battlemeld psionics to take him down.

  Connor began with another Jumat, knocking him back as Carrie grabbed his feet in a Lachka hold, tripping him up until he too used his Rentar to free himself. Seeing her dark brown armor in contrast to Connor’s pink, the Zen’zat went for the weaker one, pouring firepower into her shields then swinging down towards her head with his left fist as she dropped to the ground and Connor pulled her through the gap in his legs with another Bataf.

  When underneath she hit him with her own weaker Jumat, punching him into the air as she became the Anchor and pulled her Master forward on the Bataf, launching him feet first into the Zen’zat’s back and knocking him to the ground ahead of them as another Pefbar bubble came into view behind them, followed by a spray of Dre’mo’don blasts as another Zen’zat came to assist.

  Crap, Connor thought as the two Archons stood up back to back charging their next attack as they also fired Dre’mo’don orbs at the Zen’zat from their own forearm gauntlets…but theirs were less powerful and the Zen’zat shields more so, meaning they were eventually going to lose that exchange if it was allowed to persist.

  Suddenly the first Zen’zat got their attention, with both Archon minds focusing on it as he emitted a Wequay telepathic lure. Too late they realized what it was, turning their attention back on the other one as he punched Connor in the chest so hard it knocked him and Carrie back 6 meters and sent them sprawling on the ground while both Zen’zat poured fire into their nearly depleted shields.

  Both Archons pulsed their Cerden, linking their bioshields and enhancing them greatly to give their mechanical shields a few seconds breather, then Carrie took off, running into the sky on invisible steps as Connor stayed put on the ground. A few seconds later she dropped to the ground on the other side of the Zen’zat that tried to swat at her leg but missed, then the pair emitted their charged Jumatran from a common focal point between the two…that was now oriented sideways to the Zen’zat that had punched them.

  The Jumat-like blast formed as a distortion in the air then launched almost immediately into the Zen’zat with such force that he ricocheted off the building wall, leaving a slight dent in the hard material as dust-like shards of it and his armor fell to the ground as the two Archons went after the other one with Connor turning Carrie into a living weapon, throwing/pulling her balled up body into the other Zen’zat, taking a few shots on the way and knocking him back…but Carrie didn’t bounce off. Instead she grabbed hold and wrapped her body around the Zen’zat while she dragged a Lew conduit from Connor.

  That energy ribbon hit the Zen’zat, bypassing its armor that wasn’t designed to stop such things because the V’kit’no’sat were unaware they even existed. It impacted the Zen’zat’s body and delivered the predetermined Ikrid command past the mental blocks that otherwise stopped the Archons from doing to the Zen’zat what the Zen’zat had done to the Elves.

  His mind froze up momentarily, with him fighting off the effect soon thereafter, but not before Connor and Carrie turned him into a punching bag, hitting him back and forth between them with physical blows with added Dre’mo’don blasts thrown in where they could manage it. Both Archons pulsed their Tavitor, briefly enhancing their physical strength to really hammer some of the hits home, and before the Zen’zat could recover his shields were down and he was taking armor damage.

  The other Zen’zat shook off the unbelievably large Jumat hit and came at Connor from behind, but thanks to Pefbar there was no ‘behind’ as far as vision was concerned and Carrie darted off, walking sideways against an invisible wall halfway across the street from where the physical wall was, and curved around behind the second Zen’zat that was hit with what felt like a physical impact as she dragged the Neofen ‘clothesline’ into him.

  He didn’t see it coming, for it was an energy the Pefbar couldn’t detect, and it knocked him sideways into a Connor reverse elbow to his dipping head. The Zen’zat fell backwards as Carrie came forward, landing a diving elbow-first Archon Punch into his back that cracked armor. Connor used his Lachka to drag the flying Zen’zat into a bit of curve and got the two to collide, then Carrie poured more Dre’mo’don fire into them as Connor pulled a small rod off the minimal rack on his back. It elongated into a sword with no sharp edges, and he took it to the Zen’zat as they got back to their feet, using the extra range to stay out of their arms’ reach as he went melee into the nearest one.

  Occasionally pulsing his battlemeld Tavitor to really hammer a particular blow home, he broke more bits of armor off them as it flowed across their bodies, getting thinner and thinner as it spread out to cover any small holes. Meanwhile Carrie stayed back getting in several more shots until one of the Zen’zat pushed past Connor and went after her…but she just walked up the invisible steps into the air out of his reach and the two exchanged Dre’mo’don fire until a silent object appeared at the far end of the street and moved towards them as tactical data flowed into their helmets.

  Carrie pulsed her Yetu, doing a Jedi jump upwards then hung in midair to create an invisible step for Connor to land on as he did the same…simultaneously creating one for Carrie to land on as both Zen’zat beneath them reactivated their stealth fields, but too late. They disappeared from view as the street beneath the Archons was flooded with bright blue flashes of much larger Dre’mo’dons from the skeet that had dipped down to street level and was gliding forward between the tight sidewalls.

  Connor telepathically helped the pilot aim at the invisible targets, though it wasn’t needed as their stealth fields fell with even glancing hits. The two Zen’zat ran the other direction, spreading and trying to get distance on the much faster craft as it zipped by underneath the Archons who were leaping from invisible step to step to follow midair. They got a good view of the green/black Zen’zat armor being blown apart and the first Zen’zat going down, but the other made it to a corner and disappeared from view.

  Up, Connor said to Carrie through their battlemeld connection, and both began climbing those invisible stairs up to rooftop again to continue the chase but the second Zen’zat target wasn’t able to reengage his stealth, making him an easy target for the skeet once it rounded the corner. He went down as well, this time in pieces, while the two Archons dropped back down to street level and went to the body of the first Zen’zat, knowing that their armor would revive them from even serious damage so long as their head wasn’t hit too badly or the armor too chewed up.

  But that wasn’t the case for this one, who’d they’d hoped to interrogate as to the location or targets of the other one or ones. A full quarter of his head was blown off around his missing right ear, meaning he was unrecoverable for either the armor or the Archons’ healing abilities.

  “Well done, Padawan,” Connor said as they released their battlemeld.

  “I was in over my head and you know it,” she countered, looking at the few melted spots in her armor, all of which had failed to get all the way through to her skin.

  “I couldn’t have taken both of them alone, and even one would have been a challenge. I’ve never seen one with Wequay before, and they both at least had Rentar,” he said, citing both tier 2 psionics.

  “Thank you for making me look like a badass.”

  “We fight as a team, and that makes our linked pairing a badass. I’m proud of you.”

  “They are so damn fast.”

  “I know. These aren’t low level Zen’zat. I’d guess high-level Zardaku at least,” he said, referring to the second tier of Zen’zat rankings out of 6…with level 6 being virtually unobtainable.
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  They both saw the skeet reappear over the buildings and resume a patrol hover. Apparently there were no other targets visible, with at least one other Zen’zat still on the loose nearby, but Connor couldn’t sense anything and guessed he was running for his life at this point…and rightly so.

  “Two down,” Carrie noted.

  “No clue how many more are left. Hopefully this slows down their sabotage a bit,” he said, rotating his right arm around in a stretching motion and encountering a hitch. It jammed up until he lowered it a bit, meaning it was damaged, but it wasn’t too bad and he didn’t feel like heading back to grab another set just yet. Carrie had damage too, but she was still moving well.

  “Next move?”

  “Patrol and see if we can get lucky. That one is still relatively close.”

  “After you, Master,” she said, feeling his battlemeld prompt and accepting it so she could create the invisible steps for him leading up to the rooftops.

  Connor took them in large leaps, able to see them thanks to the battlemeld sharing of their senses and skipped several of them, then when he got to the roof Carrie jumped and he pulled her all the way up on a Bataf conduit, leaving the Zen’zat remains for security to deal with as they ran off at slower speeds and began building hopping again while extending their Ikrid range as far as they could hoping to get lucky and get another Zen’zat hit.

  9

  March 24, 4827

  Tauriel System (Seon Region)

  Eoxion

  Jessica paced around her throne room, cape trailing in the air behind her as she was too focused and angry to sit still. Even with the deaths of two Zen’zat the sabotage had not stopped or even slowed. More and more of her factories were getting hit and another 28 Elves had been killed…but the one Zen’zat that seemed to be hunting them had been wounded and driven away more than a week ago and there hadn’t been another Elf hit since. Hopefully that would hold, but the loss of the Duke’s infrastructure continued.

  The damage wasn’t great, but the disruptions in production were mounting and some of the repair work that had been completed had been hit a second time…infuriating her even further. It was like there was no way to win, and even the handful of other Archons and a team of Mavericks that had arrived hadn’t been able to catch any more Zen’zat. They were still moving about freely, and she had far too many factories on this planet to defend…giving them a plethora of targets to choose from.

  And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it other than rebuild, but at the rate the Zen’zat were moving she was losing ground and their ship or ships still hadn’t been located yet despite massive ongoing sensor sweeps. The damage to her factories were being accomplished with explosives and hacking to maximize the damage, but they weren’t obtaining the explosives from here. Her stockpiles were well guarded and mist generators surrounded them now, so the Zen’zat had to be using their own supply.

  Were they near to running out or getting additional reinforcements in under her nose? The best time to detect a stealth ship was when it was moving through atmosphere or coming out of a jump and ramming into so much stellar radiation it usually gave off a blip no matter how much it tried to absorb. Star Force had experimented with ways to negate that, but collision speeds of multiple times lightspeed made total capture almost impossible.

  But so far there were no arrival pings on any jumpline noted, and Jessica was pumping out more detection satellites to increase sensitivity, but those wouldn’t be in place for months…at least not enough to lock down the system with a fine sensor net.

  Jessica was also pouring through the data files coming through the comm grid from the rest of Star Force. Were they also experiencing this and did they have any suggestions of how to proceed?

  There was some data on stealth activities, including the Ghostbane sensor, but until Star Force got its own version up and running the V’kit’no’sat were apparently going to have full run of her territory and who knew elsewhere. If their stealth tech had improved to this level then no system was safe.

  So why here? Why was her home system the only one under infiltration? The Elves she could understand, but why the sabotage? There were plenty of other systems with more important infrastructure to hit, and a lot closer to the front. So what were they playing at here other than trying to weaken the defenses around the Elves?

  Jessica didn’t know. She didn’t know anything and was chasing the rabbit down the rabbit hole day in and day out. The Archons were frustrated too, but at least they were out there doing something. All she could do is wait to see what was hit and try to adjust her production lines to compensate, changing her growth into a holding action at best, meaning the longer these Zen’zat ran free sabotaging what they liked, they were doing far more damage in terms of disruptions than they were worth…making this clandestine attack quite the coup.

  No shield generators or planetary defenses had been hit yet, thankfully, for she didn’t trust an invasion fleet not to come into the system and wipe out all the Elves in the most efficient way possible. They had to be the key to this…something to do with V’kit’no’sat edicts or paranoia over misuse of psionics…but aside from the lone assassin that seemed to be hunting them the rest of the Zen’zat were ignoring the Elvish cities and going straight for Jessica’s industrial infrastructure.

  That made it personal, and she wasn’t going to sit here and…

  Jessica stopped pacing, her momentum pulling her cape forward around her body as she was frozen in thought. It wasn’t an attack, but rather an epiphany. Not to do with the Zen’zat attacks, unfortunately, but what she hadn’t been thinking about for weeks…and that being the Zezdi.

  “Damn I’m stupid,” she said, forcing thoughts of the Zen’zat and what she couldn’t do aside and focusing on what she could do…namely solving the Zezdi developmental problem whose solution had just hit her out of nowhere.

  Jessica walked back over to her throne and sat down, mentally pulling up her holographic interface ringing her with information. She adjusted most of them to data fields, pulling up familiar research she’d been doing while digging up a related post in the medtech advancements. She’d seen this a few years ago, but only now had it popped back into mind…

  There. She had the summary up again, including an update that she hadn’t read concerning Star Force’s ability to write genetic memory. Primary research into that area involved the Paladin, but knowledge had been gained from the V’kit’no’sat database that had allowed them to go even further and pack more information into each of the new Paladin born, making them superior upon release from their growth pods.

  The reason the Zezdi held onto their offspring so long was to give them the necessary experience and instruction above and beyond the physical development. That gave their parent enormous influence over the 8-12 offspring they carried on their flanks/back in little nodules with their heads poking out. The spider-like race was extremely hive minded but accomplished it without telepathy, primarily due to this long period of coexistence before the younglings disconnected and became independent.

  Jessica had originally thought of them as the ‘spider kangaroos’ when she’d been assigned to oversee their conversion and development, and they’d proved to be very resistant to change due primarily to this method of instruction…for while in this state there was some neural connection, meaning their minds were partially linked and that dependency was something that had debilitating side-effects when not implemented.

  Though rare now, in the past when a Zezdi had been killed while carrying younglings some of those younglings could survive, but if they weren’t close to release anyway they became almost zombie-like without the mental link to their parent. Jessica had worked to develop those individuals using the typical maturia system but it had not worked well. The Zezdi were built to reproduce this way, which was why she was having so much trouble finding a way to separate them from their bad habits that literally clung to them generation after generation.

 
; She’d been watering down those bad habits, but until the individuals could be separated from their hive mind they could never take their true place in Star Force. That had been the paradox she was facing, and as it turned out the solution was really very simple in concept, but would be a headache to genetically program.

  Replace the learning phase with genetic memory, allowing the younglings to disconnect almost immediately once sufficiently physically mature while mentally developed similar to the Paladin…but just enough to get them free from their parent. Not to turn them into new…

  Wait a second, she thought, stopping her perusing through the genetic writing notes she’d pulled up. Why not? They’ll never reproduce as fast as the Paladin, but why not have them fully tricked out with genetic memory. That would increase their productivity exponentially…

  Then the downside hit her. Paladin were heavily regimented, limiting creativity and making it a long hard struggle to develop to the point of independent thinking. The very things that made her a Monarch the Paladin did not have, save for the Viceroys, but even they were wearing blinders that had to be unlearned to truly excel. Individuals raised in the maturia system were the reverse, having to learn unity and coordination that the Paladin literally lived and breathed.

  The Paladin had been allowed to stay as they were almost as a mercy, but over time their usefulness had been proven more than that. The fear was they’d become tools rather than people, but that had never occurred with Archon oversight. The Viceroys had tended to think that way based off their genetic memory, but that had been modified over the years and, to be honest, the Paladin were truly becoming impressive despite their limited individual status. Their strength was their numbers and rate of building speed, not in their high skill levels.

  Humans were the reverse, with individuals like Jessica reaching great heights that Paladin simply could not achieve in any great number. A few of their individuals had overcome their base programming and were on the same path now, but they were rare and far behind where other races were, and Jessica and the other Monarchs didn’t like inhibiting an individual’s growth for the sake of their race.