Starblood: A Military Space Opera Series (War Undying Book 1)

by N. D. Redding

  This was a problem though, because I needed them to do a much more complicated maneuver soon that should include another ten Technomancers, and there was no reason to believe they would somehow rest and recuperate between now and then. Whatever. We’d take it one step at a time. Right now, we needed to see what gifts Tailor had sent our way.

  The package was loaded with ammunition of all calibers, tons of O-Nan cells, and to my surprise, a Fyre Armor upgrade container. Tailor, that son of a bitch, had a nose for what I needed most. The only Technomancers beside me who had access to Fyre Armor were Corporal Birch and Neumann but neither of them wore the basic armor yet. Although they earned the right to wear it, they’d have to visit Lilian after the battle to get one. If they survived.

  I attached the container to my chest and four small hooks extended from my armor pulling the box in place. Just before I initiated the upgrade, a notification popped up in my INAS.

  Mark 2 Fyre Armor upgrade detected:

  Level requirement: 22

  Cost: 1,200 Credit

  Current balance: 3,400

  Ah, yes. Nothing came for free in the Commonwealth Federation. It’s not that I forgot, but it always managed to stun me how the Federation would make you pay for the things it needed. Without creds there were no upgrades, so you either fought and earned the pay so you could fight even harder, or you didn’t fight and eventually died on a mission that went well above your head and your gear.

  At Persei Academy, they told us it wasn’t much different from medieval times when knights had to buy their own armor and weapons. A bunch of cadets got immediately riled up about being compared to knights. I guessed we did live in a sort of feudal system since it was hard not to compare our situations. The Ka were kings, the Imminy were the nobles, and the rest of us… Well, we were the serfs. Serfs who should be honored to die in their wars and even had to pay to do so.

  I paid the cost over my INAS and the armor upgrade unlocked. Finally, some serious upgrade! I could make do with my current defenses, but I was running low on cells in almost every fight. I selected the upgrade and my Fyre Armor extracted the modified nanites from the box on my chest. They spread across my armor, reinforcing the nanite mesh that made up the defensive skin. The gold-green streaks along my chest, legs, and arms glowed brightly as I absorbed the substance. As the process finished, I felt relief in my bones and joints as if the armor itself was now carrying my weight. My nanite capacity jumped significantly once more and was going to be helpful in what was to come.

  I was more than satisfied with my stats, but I had barely any life left in me to celebrate. The brush with the Templar earlier had mostly exhausted me, and what little energy I had was spent on coordinating the Technomancers.

  Mavis approached me with a more than happy look.

  “Everyone’s geared up again and now we have a real chance at fighting back. All thanks to you,” he said as if he hadn’t believed he would ever utter the sentence. “But if you take our Technomancers with you—”

  “That was the deal, Mavis. Do you think I’d have battled a Templar on my own otherwise?”

  “I know, and you’re right, but can it wait? Can’t you help us break the siege first and then take them with you?”

  Mavis’ plead was fair. Even with the new sets of cells and ammunition, the platoon would be severely weakened without Technomancers. It was a hard bargain, and I would most likely sign their death sentence by taking the Technomancers, but without them, Qualt’s entire army, Winters’ regiments, and the entirety of Skull Company would die within these walls.

  “We’ll break the siege tonight, and by the morning every Technomancer is mine. Deal?”

  Mavis chewed the inside of his cheek and agreed.

  “Fine. We got things covered, for the time being, so you should take cover at the altar and get some rest.”

  “No,” I replied matter-of-factly and stared him in the eyes.

  “Thought as much.”

  Mavis wanted to offer me force-juice but that would only mean I’d be half dead by morning, and that wouldn’t do. The hardest part would play out tomorrow, and not tonight.

  I propped myself against the wall behind the altar and opened a can of reddish nutrients as the rest of the platoon, now invigorated by their new set of gear and ammo, defended our position. The attacks came sporadically but never with too much intensity. The Aloi knew we were pinned down without reinforcements, so there was no need to sacrifice troops to take the temple. They knew our position, they knew our numbers, and they could just wait it out.

  The food tasted salty and sweet at the same time. That was red for you. The green stuff that we affectionately called spunk was usually a bit sour, and the blue stuff, well, you just hoped the can wasn’t filled with the blue. Specialists who underwent nanite-injection procedures had a different set of nutrients they needed than ordinary humans. I didn’t know what kind of food engineering went into creating that stuff, but I knew very well to never trust an Imminy cook. The stuff was nutritious, sure, but it tasted like wet cardboard.

  Just as I finished my can, Corporal Birch and Neumann came my way. They too deserved some much-needed rest, and it was written all over their sunken faces.

  “Mind if we join you?” Neumann said, opening his can of delicious Red.

  “Go ahead,” I replied with little enthusiasm. Once the food had gone down my throat, I suddenly felt like catching some sleep. My tired bones needed some rest, but warzones rarely catered to one’s desires.

  “Sir, can I ask you something?” Neumann began with a mouthful of red. He didn’t wait for me to answer and plowed on. “How do you think this whole thing will go?”

  It was a tough question to which there was no real answer. No answer he wanted to hear anyway. The best I could tell him was that we’d all end up dead.

  “Keep your summons alive and your Blade Shield up, that’s all you can do.”

  “Blue,” Corporal Birch hissed as she opened her can. “The fuck else is going to find me in this godforsaken place?”

  “Do you think we can win this?” Neumann pushed again.

  “Private, does it really matter?” Birch interjected. “If you don’t die here and today, you’ll die a week from now. Or maybe a month. Who fucking cares?”

  Birch was far from forthcoming. She had lost her whole squad together with her brother yesterday, so I hesitated to comment. Neumann wasn’t, however, shaken by her pessimistic outlook. The man looked as if he was on a damn holiday that was only mildly problematic.

  “With you in charge of us Technomancers, I think anything is possible. You know, I had a poster of Major Uriel above my bed when I was a kid. I always dreamed of becoming like him.”

  Major Uriel was the first Technomancer to go beyond the Grandmaster tier to become what he thought of as a Starcaller Technomancer. He was a legend among our circles but even civilians knew about him. He was a first-generation Technomancer and he had his peak some sixty years ago here on Detera. They said he could control entire battalions of bots at his prime. A one-man army so to speak.

  “Fuck Uriel, he’s probably dead, too,” Birch muttered as she chowed down on her blue. “Fuck Uriel, fuck the Technomancers’ Guild, and fuck the Federation.”

  “Easy there, Corporal,” I snapped. I knew soldiers could break as I’d seen it happen on more than one occasion, and exactly because of that I had to stop it in its roots. “Get some sleep, Birch.”

  “They hurl us across the galaxy to fight war after war. We die by the millions not ever realizing even why. I’ve been in the military for fourteen years. I’ve been on hundreds of missions, and except for some straightforward mission objectives like ‘take out that building’ or ‘kill this and this Aloi,’ I never really knew why I was at any of those places. I have another thirty years of this shit ahead of me before I collect enough cred to retire, but I’ll be dead a hundred times before I get there! And you know what? Fuck this shit!” she cursed, spitting out the blue and throwing
the can across the temple.

  “Without the Federation, we’d all be at the mercy of the Aloi. If you have to pick an evil, pick the lesser one,” I said calmly, but she just sneered at me and then snickered.

  “Because the Federation protects us? From what? The Aloi? The Aloi couldn’t give less of a shit about thirty human planets on the far side of the galaxy. We wouldn’t have met the Aloi in another thousand years if it wasn’t for the fucking Ka!”

  She pulled her black hair back and tied it into a knot. She was just as rugged on the outside, but she had a warrior’s beauty to her, whatever that meant.

  “Birch, I get what you went through but—”

  “No, you don’t! None of you know what I went through. The Brawler was my brother, and the Commando was my fiancé. I lost them both to a stupid plan made by a fucking moron!” I couldn’t argue there as she was right. “He threw us to the wolves, that piece of shit, if I ever get out of here alive I will send a hundred cells worth of nanites down his throat and tear him apart from the inside!”

  “We can do that, right?” Neumann lit up with curiosity but neither of us answered.

  “What’s your point, Birch?” I asked, losing my patience bit by bit. She wasn’t the first soldier who had lost someone, and more than once had I seen families ripped apart in the field. It was tragic, sure, but that was the path you picked when you signed up.

  “My point? What’s your point, Stavos? Why are you here?” I hated that question. It always felt like an accusation although now more than ever I felt that I knew why.

  “To kill as many Aloi as I can. And because I was ordered to. There isn’t much else to it, Birch.”

  “Bah!” she snapped. “Really? Are you that type? The way everyone talks about you, I thought you’d be a genius or something, but instead, you’re a fucking army poster-boy!”

  I stopped myself from slapping the shit out of her for talking to a superior the way she did, especially with Neumann listening in. I told myself to practice patience with her. I had never lost a family member that way and hoped I never would see that day come alive.

  “You don’t know what you’re saying, Corporal. You’re tired. Go and get some sleep,” I said, turning my back to her and closing my eyes.

  “Do you have family, Stavos?”

  “I do,” I replied, signaling that I didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Are they alive?”

  “Yes.” Come on just leave me be.

  “Where are they?” I turned back toward her and Neumann.

  “My parents are on Persei Prime, and I have a sister on Earth.”

  “Earth? Isn’t that fancy. Is she some kind of politician or?”

  “She’s a mathematician. A good one that even got a Ph.D. in it. She was invited to the Commonwealth University in the New Berlin polis-canton.”

  “Guess who daddy’s favorite is.” Birch snickered. I was slowly starting to really lose it by now, but it wouldn’t do to reprimand someone who lost everyone they loved not even twenty-four hours ago.

  “We all pick our own paths,” I said, hoping to end the conversation.

  “At least you have something to fight for.”

  I stopped myself from turning away once more and sighed hearing that sentence.

  “Listen, Birch. And you too, Neumann, this concerns you as well.”

  I propped myself up, sat as comfortably as I could, and then told them the story of the lobotomized Technomancer I killed in Instormia. I left out the details of why we were there, but they got the gist of it anyway. When I finished the story, Neumann was almost shaking. The enthusiasm was scrubbed from his face. Birch said nothing, but I knew it hit her just as hard. The implications were terrifying, and I knew that any sensible Technomancer upon hearing it would at least feel discomfort, outrage, or even more if you were anything like me.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” I heard a voice ask from above me. Layla and Leo. The two had come to keep me company and from any kind of rest or sleep as well. Goodbye sleep. They leaned against the wall next to the rest of us and opened their own cans.

  “Spunk it is!” Leo said cheerfully as he stared intently at the can.

  “Boss, was it anything like this back when you were on Pelerin?” Layla asked.

  “Like this? No, it wasn’t anything like this. Nothing in the universe is like Detera, Layla.”

  She just nodded.

  “Did you have any awesome squadmates like us?” Leo asked curiously. I smiled honestly as they never asked me that before.

  “Awesome? Yeah, but not like the two of you.”

  “Are they still alive?”

  “I guess. They both got revived when I did and as far as I know. Johnson returned to Halo II, his home planet. He was a smart guy, a Medic in the military, but he got a full-fledged doctor’s title afterward. As for Pasteur, well, I think he’s still shooting at Aloi somewhere else in the galaxy. He never quit.”

  That reminded me, where was Pasteur now? I checked my INAS and saw he had become a major in the meantime, but it didn’t say where he was stationed. Damn, that could have been me. I shook my head pushing away the thought of grandeur. I was happy wherever I was now, I guessed. It could have been much worse in any case.

  “Sir, can I ask something—” Leo began, but I cut him off.

  “It was the Kayzers’ Guard, a whole company of ’em. They had us surrounded in no time and we had no way out.”

  The memory hurt. Kayzer Guards were elite Aloi soldiers of the Frey race who had come to reinforce the standard Aloi troops we fought.

  “Kayzer Guards? Holy shit, you saw them?” Layla whispered.

  “I did.”

  “And? What were they like? How did they look?” Leo asked excitedly. Layla slapped him on the head and tsked.

  “Leave the boss alone, you annoying twerp. Do you have any shred of decency? Those fuckers killed him!” I couldn’t help but laugh at that remark.

  “It’s fine, Layla, and I knew I would tell you the story sooner or later.”

  “Is it true that the Aloi allowed the Frey race full autonomy?” Birch asked to my surprise.

  “It’s true. They’re the only race the Aloi have actual diplomatic relations with, but they aren’t an equal partner, more like—serfs?”

  “How come? Why didn’t the Aloi just conquer them like the rest?”

  “You can’t conquer the Frey as they have no planets and no space stations. They’ve been living on giant city-ships for eons that went by the name of ‘Lifewombs.’ By the time the Aloi fleet arrived, they’d just jump to another system. But they somehow liked the Aloi better than the Ka.”

  “How can a race accept an alliance with the Aloi?”

  “Beats me, Leo. All I know is that Kayzer Guards are an enemy unlike anything I’d ever seen. They moved like shadows and attacked before you had a chance to pin down their position. I had never seen blades so quick and deadly in my life, and I don’t think I’ll ever see them again.”

  Goosebumps ran across my back and arms under my Fyre Armor as the memories seeped in along with the terror I felt back then.

  “I need to sleep now, so get some rest.”

  My squadmates left me alone pretty quickly, but my thoughts wouldn’t. The incident with the Templar was etched into my mind and I couldn’t escape it no matter how hard I tried to think about something else. Where the hell did that surge of power come from, and why did that Templar talk to me? It took another twenty minutes of pondering all the implications of that encounter before exhaustion finally took over.

  My dreams weren’t much help either. It was the standard stuff: stars, lights, war, sadness, screams… but then something else appeared. Words. They were the same words that came from the Templar’s lips: make the stars sleep, Stavos. And just as they finished, I saw a supernova explode so close that I could feel the heat and radiation on my body. The ringing filled my ears and—

  “Reinforcements!” someone screamed, tearing me from my dream. I
jumped up from sleep, turned on my Blade Shield, and propped my splinter cannon from my forearm.

  “Ally reinforcements!” someone else cried, and it took me a few seconds for the information to sink in.

  Now that was about fucking time!

  19

  I watched as another ten squads victoriously walked into the temple while smoke wafted behind them. The background was pretty glorious if I had to be honest, all the flames and explosions that had accompanied the Aloi screams.

  Three sergeants walked at the front of the column that was entering the ruined walls of the Aloi temple: Sergeant Dan, Ivor, and Borgatti. It was a triumvirate of specialists if my memory served me right when I thought back to lessons on ancient Romans.

  The group had managed to sneak up on the enemy siege line and utterly destroy them before they could launch an offensive against our position. Mavis and Ginsk rushed to the three with open hands. If I had to be honest, there was no better feeling than seeing reinforcements come in when out on the battlefield. It was the one thing that could sometimes even provide a better feeling than winning.

  The one thing that gnawed at me was the moment I saw Borgatti. He still had a bone to pick with me since the training. Borgatti was the leader of Squad 79, the former first rank in the Company, and even more, he was a Technomancer. All of these things added up to him avoiding my gaze when we would meet in a corridor. I thought it childish, especially considering the situation we were in, but the man had a problem with me. I swear the military sometimes seemed like a bunch of overgrown kids with guns.

  When everyone settled in, squad leaders agreed to have a sit-down so we could work out our plan of attack. We were hunched down in a circle surrounding a big empty box of supplies where Mavis positioned the map. It wasn’t really there but we saw it through our INAS in 3D. The meeting had Sergeants Mavis, Ginsk, Dan, Ivor, Borgatti, and me. Three corporals were there as well, including Birch, Phon, and Chopin. Mavis laid out the situation.