by Aer-ki Jyr
Olivia started detaching her armor and suddenly Morgan and Kip saw how much blood she’d lost. The inside of her neck collar was coated with it, but it had also seeped down through the thin line between the collar and her neck and soaked into her white uniform underneath…which had the most of the upper left torso colored deep red.
“Ouch,” Morgan said, taking a step closer to her and gently laying a hand on her head.
“I’m low,” Olivia confirmed as Morgan hacked into her nervous system to gleam some information on the state of her body…which was running low on blood, but fortunately not low enough for the Archon to pass out. “And hungry.”
Morgan stepped back and let her finish climbing out of her armor, then Olivia stretched for a moment before picking up her helmet and looking at the damage from the outside again, tapping a finger on the intact portion of the transparent material.
“I think it’s time for a design change,” she said, throwing Morgan a glance as Kip came back in from another room and tossed her a water bottle and two sealed foodstuff packages.
“Harder faceplate?” he asked.
“No faceplate,” she countered, opening the water and sucking it down inside of a few seconds, pausing only for breath before tearing open the first of the packages and biting into a dense breadstick.
“You think we should go full HUD?” Morgan asked, knowing that the suggestion had come up before. The ‘visor’ portion of the Archon helmet was the weakest point, but now that they also had an energy shield covering it there hadn’t been much discussion about that weakness…and for good reason. The material wasn’t glass, but a super hard transparent synthetic that was stronger than steel, allowing them to keep the visor thin and avoid any lensing effects that would diminish their vision and situational awareness.
“Yo…ell me,” she said, still chewing as she glanced at her helmet.
“Your head hurt?” Kip asked, noticing that she wasn’t using psionics, which could easily allow her to talk and eat at the same time.
She swallowed. “More lightheaded than pain. I’ll be alright.”
Morgan turned the damaged helmet over in her hands, looking at it again and picturing what no visor would look like. It would mean they wouldn’t be able to see out of it except for when it was powered, using sensors on the exterior to translate images inside to a vid screen directly in front of their face…or more likely a holographic version, similar to what was used in the skeets.
“We’d have Pefbar as a backup, but the adepts and others wouldn’t…and we’d have to coat the thing with microcameras, otherwise a little armor damage would blind us.”
“Make it ranger and up then, but I want it.”
“Not going to argue with you there,” Kip agreed, with Morgan tossing her helmet to him so he could take a closer look.
“Are we ready to leave?” Olivia asked, tearing open the second foodstuff package.
“Yep,” Morgan said, “unless you have something to finish up?”
“Let’s…go,” she said, abandoning her previous targets that the explosion had stopped her from getting to, knowing that they didn’t have time nor an extra helmet for her on this run.
Morgan nodded and headed aft to take care of the camouflage canopy while Kip headed forward, walking through the sections of the comfortably small ship until he came to the pilot’s quarters and knocked lightly.
A moment later the door opened and a Star Force Regular stepped out.
“We’re leaving,” Kip told him.
“Back to the ship or repositioning?” he asked, stepping past the trailblazer on the way to the cockpit.
“To the ship. Morgan’s getting the canopy. As soon as it’s secured you’re free to work your magic,” Kip said, referencing the fact that the man had a higher pilot’s rating than he did...which running blockades necessarily required.
“Alright, let me know when she’s back,” he said, moving into the pilot’s seat and beginning the power up sequence. This was his fourth trip down into enemy territory, with him knowing well that the trick to beating the Skarrons both down and up was in getting a head start on them. He didn’t know if they’d spot the ship when the canopy came off, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.
As soon as Kip signaled him that Morgan was done he kicked in the anti-grav and accelerated ahead, maneuvering through the rolling terrain at low level to mask their hiding spot in case they wanted to use it again, then when he had the spot he wanted lined up with his preferred orbital escape vector, he tipped the nose of the puddle jumper up to the sky and accelerated hard, tearing a narrow gash in the atmosphere that sucked energy out of the ship’s shields from the high friction.
He kept the speed just slow enough to not breach them completely, then as the air thinned he increased speed to match, seeing several Skarron ships in orbit altering position to try and intercept them…but it was no use. The Star Force vessel had a clear patch of orbit ahead of them and the Skarrons couldn’t get there in time, nor did they want to, for the puddle jumper would have just flashed by them in the blink of an eye.
What the enemy was attempting with their smaller vessels was to match the speed and outgoing vector, essentially meeting up with the puddle jumper further out as they accelerated towards a guessed rendezvous point…but it was no good, for as soon as the ship got outside the atmosphere and up to decent speed the pilot made a course correction, using their binary drives to curve their trajectory in an arc that the Skarrons couldn’t follow.
That broke them free of their pursuit and brought them to a jumpline for a neighboring planet, which they then took…with the Skarrons following at a considerable delay.
When they arrived at their destination a few minutes later the pilot immediately moved them around to the stellar jumpline and shot them off again…but at a very slow speed. Once they were outside the effective sensor range of the Skarrons he used their binary drives to move them off the jumpline and bring them to a standstill out in extremely high orbit around the planet. There they waited until the Skarron ships made their own jump towards the star, bypassing the puddle jumper and leaving them in the clear.
It took a while to pull back up to the planet, but once they did the pilot swung them around to another jumpline, this one to one of the outer planets in the system. From there they made another slow jump out to where they rendezvoused with the warship Luigi, which had been their ride into the system and their quiet base of operations for their sabotage runs against the Skarrons, now parked in a position that the enemy couldn’t get to easily, due to their lack of binary gravity drives.
The Infiltrator-class puddle jumper showed up on the warship’s sensor at a far greater range than they did on the Skarrons’, giving the bay doors time to fully open before the pilot flew their interplanetary transport inside and gently landed it on the deck next to several others of identical design.
The three trailblazers exited the craft wearing their armor rather than carrying it and headed for their individual quarters on the ship, depositing their armor there then heading off to various locations. Olivia headed to the med bay to get her injury attended to, Morgan headed directly for the sanctum to catch up on missed workouts, and Kip went to their impromptu war room, which was an extra set of quarters the trailblazers had reworked into a private bridge where they could monitor and plan all insystem raids.
When he got there the room was empty, but as Kip uploaded the data he and the others had compiled from their most recent run the door opened and Paul walked in, having tracked him down once he heard they’d returned.
“Surprised you’re still here,” Kip said from his seated position as he walked in.
“Have to get some training in every now and then,” Paul argued, pulling up a chair and accessing one of the four terminals so he could see what his fellow trailblazer had just added.
“What’d I miss?”
“We hit three more orbital facilities and did some light damage on the ground.”
�
��How the hell are you getting past their sensors?” Kip wondered, knowing that he’d hit a shipyard earlier.
“Very carefully. Kara’s shadow mode is rather useful, but even she has to be cautious at close range.”
“So you’re letting her hit the orbital stuff solo?”
Paul shook his head. “No, but she’s been getting me in and out.”
“Not worth the risk, bro.”
“Well,” Paul said with a smile, “to be honest their sensors are crap compared to the lizards.”
“But their anti-air is better…and you look an awful lot like a missile floating in space.”
“I don’t do the floating thing…that’s all Kara. She’s got a way of measuring the sensor intensity as it hits and absorbs on her armor, so she can pretty much sniff around and find the weak spots without giving herself away. After that she goes in and does a little reprogramming to create a blind spot…then I come in.”
“Using what?”
“A stealth pod.”
Kip shook his head. “You’re nuts.”
“Haven’t gotten killed yet,” Paul said sarcastically.
“Yeah, well, what’s the point of saying ‘I told you so’ if you’re not around to hear it. Stop while you’re ahead, will ya?”
“You do anything on the ground other than inconvenience them?”
“Kind of hard to do that without blowing stuff up…but yeah, I managed to slow down a few of their factories.”
“Which ones?”
“The specialty kind. They won’t be making any more gravity drives for a while…their corovon stores just got significantly thinned.”
“You didn’t bring it back here did you?”
“No, way too heavy. I hid it inside their own infrastructure. I doubt they’ll find it anytime soon, if they’re even looking for it. By the way, Olivia took a nasty hit. Messed up her face when she got caught in an explosion. Leveled the building around her and a piece went through her faceplate.”
“Ouch. What blew up?”
“She doesn’t know, but she’s got a good gash across here,” Kip said, drawing the line on his own face, “and lost a lot of blood, but she made it back to the puddle jumper on her own. She thinks we should redesign the helmet to get rid of the faceplate.”
“Were her shields up when the explosion went off?”
“I don’t know, but she’s shook enough that I don’t think she’s going to let this one go…and I can’t say I disagree with her. We’ve got Pefbar to use as a backup if the HUD loses power, so I don’t see why we don’t make the change, for us at least.”
“Guess you two just volunteered to test the prototype.”
“Jason’s been the one tinkering with the armor. Why haven’t we made this upgrade already?”
“We were waiting until the neuro link became useable, but if Olivia took a hit then we probably should have come up with an intermediary before now…at least as an option. I may stick with the current model though.”
“Should we send this off to Jason or handle it ourselves?”
“If Olivia took the hit, then she’s probably the best one to design a defense against it. I’d throw what you come up with to Jason and see if he can add anything helpful, but there’s no need to shuffle it off to him if Olivia has the spare time.”
“That depends how much longer we’re going to be out here,” Kip reminded him.
“A few more runs, at least. Sam picked up something insightful on his last mission. You got an hour to spare?”
“Can…but after that I need to hit the sanctum.”
Paul nodded. “Come with me.”
“Where to?” Kip asked, following him out.
“The holding cells.”
A little over 10 minutes later the pair of trailblazers walked in behind another two sitting on the free side of the containment field that separated them from a captured Hobbit, and one that was apparently more than willing to talk, for Kip could hear him rattling off the Skarron language that the computer was translating. Kip hadn’t learned more than a few words himself, having to keep V’kit’no’sat, the trade language, Calavari, and now Protovic straight in his head…and was glad that Davis had begun implementing English as the standard Alliance language, for with the insane number of races in the galaxy, maintaining native languages was utterly absurd when the point of communication was to actually communicate with each other.
Paul and Kip didn’t say anything, preferring to stand in the back and watch as Sam and Mark-099 were having an animated conversation with their prisoner…which Paul had explained to be more of a guest on their walk over to the cell.
WE WERE A LARGE RACE SPREAD OUT TO SEVERAL HUNDRED STAR SYSTEMS WHEN THE SKARRONS FOUND US. WE COULD NOT OFFER MUCH MILITARY RESISTANCE AND THEY KILLED MORE THAN A THIRD OF OUR POPULATION BEFORE DECIDING TO INCORPORATE US INTO THEIR EMPIRE TO REPLACE THE BERULATS. THEY FOUND THEM TO BE INADEQUATE AND KILLED THEM ALL WHEN WE ARRIVED TO REPLACE THEM. WE FEAR THEY MAY DO THE SAME WITH US IF THEY ARE ABLE TO ANNEX ANOTHER RACE THEY FEEL IS SUPERIOR. IT HAS BEEN RUMORED THAT THE PROTOVIC COULD BE A POSSIBLE REPLACEMENT, BUT SUCH RUMORS ARE COMMON AMONGST THE ARONSIC.
“How long ago was this?” the ‘other’ Mark asked, for there were two of them amongst the trailblazers with the same name.
APPROXIMATELY 1500 YEARS AGO.
“How many of the other Aronsic feel as you do? How many are loyal to the Skarrons?”
ALL ARE LOYAL. WE HAVE NO CHOICE IN THAT. BUT THOSE THAT WHISPER COMPLAINTS ARE MANY ON THE WORLDS THAT I HAVE SEEN.
“How many worlds do the Skarrons possess?” Sam asked, already knowing the answer but gauging the Hobbit’s reactions to see whether or not it was playing some angle here. When it had come across Mark on his most recent mission it hadn’t fired its weapon, responding with enough curiosity that when the trailblazer had reached out with his Ikrid and accessed its mind to render it unconscious and wipe the memory of his being seen, he’d been prompted to make a different call, first engaging it with conversation then deciding to bring it back here for further questioning.
TOO MANY FOR US TO KNOW. WE ESTIMATE AT LEAST 10,000 STAR SYSTEMS, BUT THE TRUE NUMBER MAY BE MUCH LARGER THAN THAT.
And it was, for in recent years Star Force had accessed a measure of data from captured enemy ships, including a navigational map that tagged some 72,912 systems as Skarron territory, with the bulk of those in the neighboring galactic arm well over 1,000 lightyears from the ADZ.
“What about the Jenipars?”
I DO NOT KNOW. WE HAVE LITTLE CONTACT WITH THEM AND I PERSONALLY HAVE HAD NONE.
“And the Aronsic and Jenipars are the only two races the Skarrons currently have incorporated into their empire?”
AS FAR AS I KNOW, YES.
Aren’t these the same guys that were eating Kiritak a while back? Kip asked Paul telepathically.
The Word was also composed of Humans, Paul reminded him.
Not what I mean. If this is headed where I think it is, we’re going to have to distinguish between unwilling slave and willing slave.
At least we can have this discussion with them. By now a lizard would have tried to tear its own throat out.
Not my area of expertise.
But this is, Paul countered.
Prisoners are prisoners. We don’t give them a chance to switch sides after shooting at us…and by us I mean the Protovic too. We have to find a way to get to the willing ones first, if they really exist. Switching sides is easy after you lose.
Sounds like the beginning of a plan.
Down the road…after we’ve got a few more sentinels deployed. Right now I’m sticking with shooting them.
I get the feeling these two are going to want to start earlier than that, Paul said, gesturing towards Sam and Mark.
They’re welcome to try, so long as it doesn’t eat up resources.
You think it’s a bad idea?
Kip sighed. No, we just can’t fall into the trap of trying to help the guys shooting a
t us.
We won’t, Paul said confidently, but if we can undermine their own ranks, we might get them to hesitate before shooting us.
Kip slowly broke into a smile. I hadn’t considered that.
Being the good guys does have its advantages.
That it does, Kip said, silently walking out, having seen enough to give him something to think about on his way over to the sanctum.
3
May 3, 2521
Solar System
Ceres
Haley Somerson returned to her temporary quarters within the colony that had been her home the past 26 years, only to finish packing for the trip away from the small, icy planet to a distant star system, not even in the Core Region, but further out inside Zeta Region. She’d just said her goodbyes to her father, having spoken with her mother a week ago. She liked him far more than her, but neither were emotional affairs, given that she’d only met them a handful of times. It was her family she was having a hard time leaving, but now that she and her brothers and sisters had graduated out of the maturia they were all going their separate ways.
A lot of them were staying on Ceres, but about a third were moving on to other worlds. A few more had yet to graduate, with the first of them having tested out a year and a half ago. Since then it had been a steady progression through the 100 of them, with each completing their primary maturia training on an individual basis. Once that occurred they were given regular quarters in the city, such as Haley was now located in, and free run of the colony, having become full-fledged Star Force citizens upon graduation, despite the fact that she was only 26.
Her quarters were small, no larger than they’d been in the maturia, but the biggest change were her neighbors, for they were no longer her family. The closest member of her orisect was several blocks away and about 7 minutes of walking, making a quick stop in to catch up on how they were doing impossible. Before it was just a few steps down the hallway…now the brothers and sisters she’d trained with were scattered about the city, but at least they were still in this complex and not one of the other cities, meaning she had a few familiar faces to visit from time to time, but it wasn’t the same…not by a long shot.
