Star Force: Revulsion (SF70)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  They were not going to chase him off, no matter how many of them wanted to sacrifice themselves to take him down. His tiredness was now forgotten with the memory of the mental contacts he’d made with the now burnt prisoners echoing in his mind. This injustice could not be tolerated, and he was going to destroy every bit of their darkside ceremony as he could.

  After thinning the crowd and leaving a trail of dead or heavily wounded bodies behind him as he roamed the plaza with the beehive of Protovic following his every movement, Mike knocked them back with another Fornax field and took the pause in the bone breaking to jump up onto one of the outer pedestals that was still on fire. He flicked his shields back on and went into the flames, seeing that only a few small bone fragments were left of the lizards. Everything else had been incinerated and vaporized by now, with the flames being a testament to this horrific ceremony that he was now going to smother.

  He telekinetically reached inside and cut off the fuel supply with another crunch of the pipes. When the green flames dropped around him he jumped down into the crowd, landing in a pile of twitching bodies thanks to a preemptive Fornax blast, then hopped off that spot and up into the flames on the next pedestal. One by one he snuffed them out, then he dove back down into the angry mob and met them with an anger that outscaled theirs.

  Mike was literally glowing with righteous fury and continued to beat down everyone that threw a blow at him until he got a battlemap ping from his Bsidd units indicating that they were all aboard and ready to depart. They were wondering if he was coming with them but not going to interrupt him, with the ping letting him know there was a way out if he wanted it.

  “Go,” he told them, just noticing the approach of a second dropship to the other evac site within the city. “I’ll call…when I’m…done here.”

  He didn’t receive a reply, perhaps due to the sound of his voice, recognizing that he was still in heavy combat. The Bsidd knew better than to second guess his orders, for he was an Archon and far wiser and more powerful than them, so if he said to go they would go and not think much of it. Archons knew when to fall back and survive, and right now this sick rabble wasn’t a threat warranting that.

  Mike stayed there and continued to fight until there was no one left to hit. When the last of them were gone from his immediate presence he pushed out his senses and looked around, seeing a field of bodies across the plaza, some of which were moving or limping off, but just as many that were unconscious or dead.

  Those who survived would have a chance to realize they were Sith scum and change their ways, but that wasn’t why he had left some alive. He wasn’t going to go around and kill those who were still alive, but anything that attacked him was going down and he honestly didn’t care if they died or not. The idea that this ceremony was legit and he was just protesting it with his beatdown had to be squashed immediately. They were in the wrong and this was the rectification. He wasn’t delaying the ceremony, he was destroying it.

  To that end, with no more infantry or crazed civilians to hit, he went back over to the nearest pedestal and leapt back up on top and proceeded to start demolishing it bit by bit, first with telekinesis, then with his muscle and powered armor. It took time, but he was able to shred the pedestal in visible defiance to anyone watching. They would not and could not stop him, which was what he was trying to intone with his actions above and beyond just being Hulk-esk mad.

  The darkside could not be tolerated or ignored, and as such he took the time to shred all five pedestals before calling for a dropship to meet him outside the city to take him back up to orbit.

  9

  When Mike got to his dropship he boarded it in a field outside the city and found only the pilot inside, but as soon as it lifted off he got a comm from the Admiral.

  “Archon?”

  “Go ahead,” he said as he sat down on an empty bench in the compartment behind the cockpit.

  “Evac is proceeding in all areas save for one. Our troops on the southern continent are engaged in heavy action at the moment and cannot withdraw immediately.”

  Mike frowned and pulled up his planetary battlemap, zooming in on the area that he was well familiar with. He’d fought there a week ago, securing a trio of cities against a lizard advance that had then turned into an assault against one of the enemy’s landing zones. That’s where the troops were now, and by the number of enemy contacts on the map he could tell that something was very wrong.

  “What happened?”

  “Subsurface bunkers, we think. We’ve only had a few minutes to analyze it, but the lizards got a lot of reinforcements all of a sudden. Our troops have taken up defensive positions within the enemy base and are unable to withdraw at present. The enemy has also deployed considerable air assets to keep our aircraft away.”

  “I can see that,” Mike said, blowing out a slow breath and starting to realize just how tired he was now that his anger was coming down from raging levels.

  “With your permission, I’d like to divert a portion of the evacuating troops to help pull them out.”

  “Do it. I’ll head there on the ground and we’ll be the last ones out.”

  “What do you want me to do with our guests?”

  “How many are still onboard?”

  “Six in medbay and your liaison.”

  “They’re coming with us.”

  “As prisoners?”

  “No, they’re just coming. Don’t let them leave the ship, but otherwise don’t confine them. I’ll deal with them personally once I’m onboard, but don’t let them have comm access until then. And move the wounded onto your ship. I want them all in one place.”

  “What happened down there?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. Some sort of sacrificial ritual where they burned a group of lizards prisoners and one of their own alive in the city square with a crowd watching,” he said as he got up and moved into the cockpit.

  “I honestly don’t know what to say to that.”

  “Coordinates,” Mike said, talking to the pilot as he relayed them to his console via his helmet battlemap. “Just get me close and I’ll take it from there.”

  The Bsidd wordlessly agreed with a head twitch that was the equivalent of a nod and adjusted their course away from an orbital trajectory and into a globe spanning jaunt through the thin upper atmosphere.

  “It’s an abomination that cannot be tolerated,” he finally answered the Admiral. “I’ve seen plenty in my life, but this is among the worst. I imagine it’s not something you learn about in the maturia.”

  “No, but I thought I’d seen enough lizard combat for things like this not to surprise me.”

  “The darkside comes in many forms, unfortunately.”

  “But why? The lizards are dishonorable, but there’s always a tactical element involved.”

  “That’s what our guests are going to tell us eventually. We’ll take them back to the ADZ for a proper language analysis and interrogation.”

  “Are we taking the entire fleet back?”

  Mike hesitated for a moment as he thought that through. “I’d like to get back to our original mission, but it’ll have to wait. I need to go back and I’m not sending you there without at least one mage.”

  “We can resume orbital bombardment and hold on any ground action until you return.”

  “I trust in your ability to get it done, but the lizards are devious enough I don’t want you going in without a mage in case they pull something. If there’s any rethinking to do on that point let’s save it until after we get everyone back up to orbit.”

  “Agreed. Are you alright?”

  “I’m not injured.”

  “But are you alright?”

  “No, I’m not,” Mike admitted. “There’s a system full of bad guys that we have been fighting to protect. I screwed this one up.”

  “We fight the lizards wherever they are. The more of them dead, the better the galaxy is.”

  “Except we pushed harder than normal in some cases to sa
feguard the Protovic and we lost people. That’s a sick feeling I don’t think I’m ever going to shake, nor should I. To answer your question, I’m more angry than unable. I’m tired, but I can handle another short fight to get our people out. I could use a few more senzu beans though. I’ve only got 1 left.”

  “I’ll send a courier to track you down once you get there. How are you planning to get through their aerial blockade?”

  “I’ll go ground. I don’t want to wait until our fighters clear the air.”

  “Should I task a warship?”

  “Not with their big guns still in play. How many do they have left?”

  “We got 3 batteries, two more are left.”

  “Have one standing by in low orbit just in case, but I’d rather not waste one if we don’t have to. Or are our troops there in desperate need?”

  “They’re cut off, but holding ground.”

  “We play it safe then. Actually, I’ll get those guns myself.”

  “Do you want one of the other Archons with you as backup?”

  “No, keep them with their present units. I’ll just take a quick nap enroute to recharge. Get that extra ambrosia there ASAP. I’m going to need it.”

  “I’ll launch a dropship with it inside of ten minutes.”

  “Good. Let’s get this done before anyone else dies,” he said, cutting the comm and walking back to one of the benches where he laid down and configured his battlemap to ping him when they got in proximity to a waypoint he added. With that last bit done he closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down and half fall asleep, keeping the remainder of his mental functions active so he could slip into a healing trance and make the most out of the travel minutes ahead.

  9 hours later he and the last of the Star Force troops flew back onboard the jumpships, having successfully pulled out the besieged unit and destroyed most of the lizard base in the process. As the dropships came onboard and deposited him and a handful of others on the Archer 7’s deck the warships began recalling their drones with the massive discs sliding into the racks one by one as they made final preparations to leave with neither the lizard nor Protovic fleets getting in their way.

  On Mike’s way out of the hangar deck Candy Cane found him and held up a hand for him to stop. The Archon clamped down on his renewed anger at seeing the red/green face and accessed his mind again, which allowed them to exchange some ‘words’ in a shorthand they’d learned over the past weeks.

  Candy Cane wanted to know what was going on, for he’d been unable to communicate with his people and the few wounded Protovic had been gathered here from the other ships they had been still receiving treatment on before being sent back down to the planet or to a Protovic ship like the others who’d already been sufficiently healed to leave.

  Mike considered what to tell him, but ultimately settled a hand on his shoulder and imbued the knowledge that he was going to be used as an emissary to the other Protovic in order to establish communication with them, as well as to teach them and Star Force about his people’s language and civilization.

  He felt a brief surge of anxiety, for he was being told rather than asked, but that thought disappeared when he realized what an honor it would be. Candy Cane sent thoughts of agreement back to Mike and he decided to leave it at that, walking on and heading towards his quarters where he was going to crash while letting the Admiral handle getting them out of the system. Unless something monumental happened on their way out he was going off the grid for a long while, not only to rest and train, but to think this through and prepare a report for the trailblazers that would hit the grid in the first Star Force system they passed through.

  Hopefully by the time he dropped off the fleet in the Bsidd Region and got his flagship back to the ADZ with their guests there’d be a response and course of action waiting for him.

  Kip-022 was coming back into his quarters onboard his flagship after a very hard day of training while his combat fleet was in transit when he found the message from Jason at the top of his notifications list when he logged into his account. They’d been scheduled to pass through a system with a relay a number of hours ago, but this was the first chance he’d had to check for updates and he expected a lot of them given the amount of time his attack group had spent clearing out two planets in a lizard held system along the Calavari Region border.

  Kip opened Jason’s message first, as he always did with messages from his fellow trailblazers.

  I expect you’ll be getting this message on your way back from mission, and if my guestimates are correct there will still be time for you to arrive if you wish. There’s been a discovery of a splinter race of Protovic out beyond the Bsidd Region. Mike-448 was on a standard cleaning mission when a scout ship relayed the information of an indigenous race within lizard territory that was holding out against them.

  Without knowing who or what they were he diverted his fleet to their aid seeing as how they were actively battling an invasion fleet. When he arrived he discovered that they were Protovic, red faced instead of purple for some reason, and commanding a very dense system of planetoids, most of which were still in their possession. He eliminated a good chunk of the lizards’ warships and put down ground troops to assist in the defense of several surface cities that were in danger of falling.

  That was when something bad happened, and he filed a detailed report I suggest you read through carefully. It’ll turn your stomach. After successfully defending one city by a very narrow margin, the Protovic held a ceremony in a city plaza where they burned alive a group of lizard prisoners and one of their own people in some sick ritual. Mike tried to stop them but didn’t get there in time, then went Hulk on them and beat the crap out of the entire crowd who took offense at him interrupting their celebration and tried to stop him from stopping them.

  He included his helmet cam data, and the natives literally went insane trying to stop him in a swarming, unarmed rush worthy of the lizards. I’m proud to say he beat the crap out of them rather than running away, then destroyed the sacrificial pillars and left the plaza full of dead and wounded barbarians. After that he immediately recalled his troops to orbit and left the Sith civilization to fight the lizards on their own, but he did bring back a handful of Protovic whom he’d had on his ship recovering from injuries. He’d pulled them out of wreckage from a naval battle and didn’t bother to return them when he left. We have them now and are learning their language and a lot of stuff about their sick culture.

  And by sick I mean right up there with the Aztecs and Darth Sidious. We’ve got them on Mars and will be working through their interrogation for at least a few months, and by ‘us’ I mean myself, Greg, and Rafa. Given your history with the non-barbaric Protovic I thought you might want in on this. We’ve already agreed that there’s no way we can let this stand, and we’re not going to remove the lizards around these guys and let their sick civilization remain. Right now we don’t even know if this is their only system or not, nor do we know of their connection to our Protovic. There’s a lot of questions to be answered and not having a common language is a pain in the ass. The more psionic help we can get the better, so if you feel like stopping by Sol please do.

  At the bottom of the message was a link to a copy of Mike’s mission report, which Kip read through next followed by reviewing the helmet cam images from him and some early shots from what looked like a group of Bsidd at further range as the Protovic tied up the lizards to elevated platforms. When he saw them tie up one of their own and then light the fires through Mike’s helmet his stomach sank into a pit of fury that was echoed in the images turning into a bloody beatdown of everyone in attendance.

  Kip made himself watch despite the nauseating camera whips side to side as Mike had been fighting. It didn’t make for good watching, but he wanted every bit of information he could get and followed it through to conclusion, seeing the field of dead and wounded Protovic that the mage had left behind along with the wrecked incinerators.

  When the recording
ended he just sat at his terminal staring at the blank screen as his mind wheeled in thought. What they had done was…something that you didn’t do by accident. No one chose when and where they were born, but no matter the culture around you there was always your conscience, and Kip had learned that a conscience wasn’t just a Human thing, but something all races had. It was an innate understanding of right and wrong that didn’t result from learning, but rather a fundamental sense just like sight or hearing.

  That sense could be clouded, distorted, even suppressed to the point where you became a living, apathetic zombie…all of which could be a byproduct of the civilization’s culture weighing on you, but your conscience would always be there fighting back, perhaps losing, but there would always be internal conflict so long as you were a good person. Even if you were tricked into doing bad things, that internal resistance would always be there.

  What Kip had just seen said that this civilization was so far gone that these savages not only participated in this sickness but reveling in it. There may be no real ‘Force’ like in Star Wars, but there was a lightside and a darkside, and this was chokingly dark. These people had given over to it willfully, and he knew that by their reaction to Mike. They didn’t stand by and do nothing, they went after him with a vengeance that defied reason or logic, whereas a conflicted person would freeze up and hesitate.

  If these people had been good in the beginning, they were lost now. While theoretically no one was permanently lost to the darkside, coming back out of it required a person to want to…with those who were truly dark wanting to be that way and therefore irredeemable. As bad as the lizards were, this was worse. The lizards didn’t kill their own, save for imprisonment situations, and their sick sacrifices at least held a combat purpose. Sacrifices without function were reserved for the truly insane, and that’s what Kip saw here in the faces of the crowd that attacked Mike to their own demise.