Star Force: Trials (SF68)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Over here, Jason said telepathically, not wanting to lose his orientation in the pond and waste all the mapping runs he’d already made.

  What the hell is going on? Blade-097 asked as Jason felt his mental dot start to move towards him.

  One of Wilson’s surprises, I’d wager. I’ve been around the entire perimeter and there is nothing on the walls to use. The bottom is deep and I’ve started mapping it out, which is why I don’t want to move or I’ll lose my orientation and have to start over.

  How long have you been here?

  I’d guess at least an hour, but I have no clue. And the walls are Pefbar and probably Ikrid blocked.

  Noticed that, Blade said as he finally popped up on the edge of Jason’s Pefbar as he swam towards him with decent speed. More than decent, actually.

  Do you have bioshield augmented swimming?

  Yeah. I thought we all did?

  Mine sucks, and the slower I go the less time I have to explore the bottom. It’s the only place I can think of to look for an exit.

  What about up?

  Can’t climb the walls.

  Don’t need to now, Blade pointed out.

  I’ve looked with Pefbar, but unless there’s some tiny switch I’ve missed there’s nothing up there. My money is on down.

  Have you seen any of the others?

  No. I walked into this trap as soon as I got into the city and I can’t sense beyond the walls or floor.

  Well, if we’re going down let’s do this the fast way, Blade said, sending Jason a battlemeld prompt. As soon as the trailblazer accepted it he knew what his fellow Archon had in mind. Reaching out with his Lachka, Jason lifted Blade out of the water when he was still some 20 meters off and sent him towards the ceiling, tipping him upside down. As he did that Blade used his telekinesis to split the water below him, forming as long of a tunnel down as he could before Jason released him and he picked up speed from the gravity drop, sliding into the hole in the water and continuing down until he hit the bottom of the air column.

  He split the water with a bioshield needle and covered distance quickly until the drag finally slowed him, then Blade transitioned to the leg augments and motored his way straight down to the bottom, barely hanging onto his battlemeld link with Jason due to the distance. Once down there he was able to see the flat bottom of the pond, then began moving around in a search grid using Jason as a navigational point. Eventually he came back up when his air ran out, helped by a telekinetic tug that pulled him up out of the water a meter, then Blade dropped down into a bioshield bowl that floated him like a boat.

  “That is a long way down,” he said, sinking himself back into the water gently before fully releasing the bioshield as he lifted Jason up into the air and positioned him to the next search point on their little grid. When he shot him down in the same manner Blade stayed on the surface sucking air as he watched the results through their battlemeld link.

  When Jason came back up he went again, with the pair alternating too many times to count before Jason finally found something. It was barely a finger-sized depression in the floor, but it held a button that he did not press immediately, choosing instead to come back up and recharge his air supply. Blade went down as he did, heading straight to that spot and finding the button again. He didn’t waste air and pressed it immediately…with a blinding flash of light shocking him as the bottom of the pond lit up in a variety of concealed lights.

  Seeing through Jason’s senses more than his own, Blade saw the entire floor of the pool for the first time, for the water was crystal clear, though the outer lights began to wink off, shrinking the pattern until it reduced down to a spiral that eventually disappeared at the center…which was not where the button was.

  What the hell was that?

  I don’t know, Jason answered. Try again.

  Blade hit the button a second time and the light show returned, diminishing down to the same spot on the floor before disappearing. Jason sensed that Blade was going to need air soon and felt him start to come back up to the surface while he mentally kept a plot on the spiral midpoint. Blade knew what he was doing, so when he got topside he swam over to where Jason guided him and sucked air for a bit as his counterpart swam over to the button location. When both were ready Blade picked Jason up at the edge of his telekinetic range and gave him the accelerated head start before heading down the old fashioned way himself.

  Jason reached bottom a few seconds ahead of the faster Blade and pushed the button. The lights came on same as before, but as Blade followed the diminishing spiral down to its finishing point he found…absolutely nothing.

  Not giving up he ran his hands over the smooth floor, hoping to find something his Pefbar was missing, but eventually he ran out of air and had to go back up top again after three more light cycles.

  “I don’t get it,” he said across the gap to where Jason was treading water.

  “We have to be missing something.”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “Maybe it’s a countdown rather than an arrow.”

  “Could be,” Blade agreed. “But to what?”

  Jason kicked himself around in a circle, extending his Pefbar out in spotlight mode to get more distance. “Go tap it again.”

  Blade swam over to his position, knowing what he was thinking thanks to the battlemeld. Jason picked him up in a Lachka grip and sent him down torpedo style again, but instead of looking down at the lights he focused his Pefbar up and laterally. He still couldn’t see the whole chamber in spotlight mode, but the extra range he gained he used to make a quick sweep that he repeated through a regular oscillation.

  Nothing showed up, so he swam as fast as he could over to another section of the pond and had Blade hit the button again before he ran out of air. Jason scanned that section of the wall and ceiling, still getting nothing. Blade came up and launched Jason down and the two switched roles, with two more section scans before they spotted a small anomaly on the wall just above the waterline.

  “Got it,” Blade said enthusiastically as the lights disappeared and the small blip with them. Jason was still battlemeld linked with him and knew to press it again one last time before he ran out of air and came back up to the top. As he rose up he saw through Blade’s senses as he swam frantically to that side of the pond, then managed to shoot himself up out of the water and over to the wall the last few meters.

  He smacked the wall and slid down, his hand running across a depression that vanished just as he got to it. He felt a handle disappear underneath his touch, then he slid back into the water and was out of reach of it by half a meter. Blade locked that spot firmly in his mind and waited out Jason’s recharge period, intending to get it the next time.

  “How did you do that frog jump?”

  “You saw it. Do you really have to ask,” Blade answered, referencing their still active battlemeld.

  “I felt a shield and a reverse crash bag.”

  “I didn’t use Lachka.”

  “What then?”

  “I jumped with a Yetu burst.”

  “Off your own bioshield?”

  “Sure.”

  “How the hell did you do that?”

  “I linked it to the water like an overlay. It helps get around the projector difficulty.”

  “So you’re close to creating stair steps in the air?”

  “Might look like it, but no. Unfortunately.”

  “Funny, I don’t recall you mentioning anything about that in your training logs.”

  “Really? Must have slipped my mind,” he said, giving Jason enough surface thoughts to read to know that he’d been working extra hard on aquatics for both himself and his Clan Cortana. “Now would you please press that button one more time?”

  Jason sucked in a deep breath, mentally letting him know he and Blade were going to have a long chat on his little technique later. Being too far away for a telekinetic assist, Jason made his own conduit in the water beside him then ducked head first into it, not getting half
as far as their original torpedo but still managing a bit of a head start. He wasn’t fully recovered yet, but he didn’t need to be to just get to that one spot and back again so he swam hard until he saw the blip on his Pefbar, then eased down to it and pressed the button after giving Blade an unnecessary heads up.

  Up top the other trailblazer waited, ignoring the lights as they snapped on and focusing on the patch of wall above him. Like clockwork, as soon as the water lit up the depression formed, sinking into the wall to reveal a T-shaped handle inset into the hole.

  Blade used his bioshield tractor treads to raise him up until his torso was even with the calm water. From there he reached up to grab the handle and felt for how it worked with a probing yank. When it didn’t move he experimented, finding that it did pull out laterally like a drawer. Using it as a handhold he pressed a foot against the wall to get some leverage and yanked it out a good foot before he heard a click to his right and a short doorway formed inches above the waterline.

  Got it Jason. Get your ass up here, Blade told him as he swam over and climbed up inside the meter high tube. When the lights disappeared the hatch over the opening began to close, but Blade wedged himself into it and was ready to use both bioshields and Lachka to keep it open if necessary, though there was hardly any resistance in the mechanism aside from a gentle push.

  Blade reached a hand towards the water and created a Bataf repulsor conduit down to Jason then retracted it rapidly, pulling him up through the water at an angle and over to his wedged position. When his head broke the surface Blade let go of the Bataf and the battlemeld.

  “That bastard made it a binary,” Blade complained as Jason swam the last few meters up to him. “There’s no way one person could make it on their own.”

  “Let’s leave it open just in case one of the others gets dunked in here.”

  “Good idea,” Blade said as he slid in a bit further to give Jason room to climb in while holding the two halves of the hatch apart with his arm and foot. The other trailblazer climbed inside and Blade let go, sliding down the dark tunnel a bit more and unable to see anything beyond the straight tube.

  “This would be easier if I could see inside the wall,” Jason said as he tried to bend the door segments.

  “Just melt it.”

  “Yeah,” Jason agreed, concentrating and summoning up a heat surge into his right index finger…then suddenly he and Blade were yanked down the tube. Jason’s hand caught him on the edge of the hatch as it moved to close with his fellow trailblazer disappearing into the distance. His grip didn’t last long, for the hatch reversed direction and fully retracted into the tube wall giving him nothing to grip. He felt a force field activate on the outside of the wall so he couldn’t slide his fingers over the edge and latch on, then the last bit of hatch disappeared and he got sucked down after Blade.

  The tube made a tight turn after a few seconds, then he was dropped into a larger one and got dunked into water again, this time the moving variety as he slid down what was essentially a pitch black waterslide with his Pefbar again not penetrating the walls. Blade’s mental signature returned for a split second before disappearing a second time as Jason entered a long straight section that had him falling at a steep angle before dragging him around a spiral that eventually ended with a bright light…

  Jason flew through the air and landed in a telekinetic grip as Blade stopped his fall, bringing him down into the shallow pool of water alongside him with the overhead sun glaring down on both of them as they looked out over a huge forested valley from what appeared to be a mountaintop. Jason spun his head around, seeing the same thing stretching out behind him in all directions without a wall in sight and with the water splashing down behind them coming from a magical hole in the sky.

  “What…the…hell,” Blade said, looking around and seeing miles of countryside stretched out before them and all at a lower altitude so they could get a grand view of it all.

  Jason stood up and took a few steps forward, enough to see a piece of the pool spilling over the edge of a drop off into a long but thin waterfall that transitioned into a quickly flowing creek that disappeared into the greenery. “This has to be holographic at some point.”

  “What the hell is Wilson playing at?”

  “I don’t know, but…”

  Run! Greg’s voice said telepathically with a mental arrow pointing them over the waterfall.

  Jason and Blade exchanged glances then took the trailblazer’s warning at face value and dove over the waterfall as a buzzing sound suddenly overwhelmed the noise of the falling water.

  4

  Jason went over first, with Blade stepping off the edge of the waterfall as he clicked on his Pefbar and noticed a cloud approaching from their left. He didn’t have time to analyze it, for a moment later he was in freefall and landing in a churning pit of water half a step behind Jason, who slid down the incline and underneath the vegetation as he traveling along the water flow. When Blade hit he submerged up to his shoulders before being carried off in the flow between a series of rocks, noticing the cloud overhead coming down after them.

  Don’t let them touch you, Greg’s said just as Blade saw the tiny little dots shoot through the leaves after him. Come to me.

  Blade stayed in the water flow, feeling Jason just ahead as Greg’s mental impetus showed them where to go. He clawed at the rocks to get him more speed, for the amount of water was low enough that it wasn’t pulling him along rapidly and the cloud was catching him. Before they got to the second waterfall the first of the little bugs pushed through the thick branches and leaves overhead and into the tube-like tunnel that the water was flowing through underneath. There were dozens of them at first, with thousands more visible on his Pefbar, and they were all headed towards him.

  Blade threw a telekinetic push back towards them, scatting those closest but they were coming at him from multiple angles. He seemed to still be ahead of the swarm but could feel another section of the cloud moving on ahead, as if they intended to ambush him further down the line. That was when he felt a battlemeld prompt and he linked up with both Jason and Greg. A moment later a repulsor conduit was created between Greg and him, with Blade jumping off the next waterfall and swinging on it like a vine. He put up a bioshield and rammed right through the little stun bugs, knowing from Greg that it would protect him.

  But with each contact his shield weakened, for every mechanical bug carried a stun charge and they were all detonating against his bioshield. He made it through the open air and was reeled in partially as Greg landed him in a pile of brush 20 or so meters up from the water flow and near to where Jason had also landed. Back under the brush again, Blade scrambled to get his footing as he climbed up what was left of the small ravine until he came to a path where Greg was waiting, with Jason stepping into the open a moment later.

  “Follow me,” Greg said, throwing several Lachka fields up into the open air above the path to knock back the stun bugs as he led them on the downhill portion of the dirt trail. “And knock them down every chance you can get. Smash them if there are only a few.”

  “How long have you been here?” Jason asked on the run as the three of them moved single file with Greg in the lead.

  “A few hours, but they got Dina. If even one of those things hits you it’s the same as a full stun shot from a pistol. They only have one charge, but if three of them land on your arm you’re unconscious. We didn’t know what was happening until it was too late and they got her. I managed to get a bioshield up over us but couldn’t sustain it and had to run.”

  “Where is she?” Blade asked, throwing another invisible wall up over their heads and using it like a fly swatter. These stupid bugs were fast in air and looked to be able to match their foot speed.

  “Captured. The bugs stun you then the drones haul you off. I couldn’t get close enough to stop them.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Jason asked, linking up with Blade and using a combined Lachka field to encircle and then compac
t a few dozen of the bugs into a mechanical snowball. They double crunched it, making sure the damn things were destroyed, then dropped it and swatted away some more tendrils of the ever growing swarm that had to number in the hundreds of thousands.

  “I don’t know,” Greg said, jumping over a log and taking a spur on the trail that led through a tunnel in the rock. Jason and Blade followed him in, then came up short as he stopped inside. “Keep a field on that entrance. They didn’t come inside last time, but don’t take chances.”

  “Got it,” Blade said, throwing up a bioshield to cover the door-sized entrance.

  “No, use Lachka. Your bioshield will trigger the charges.”

  Blade deactivated the glass-like energy barrier and replaced it with a completely invisible one as the buzz of the swarm passed it by but, like Greg had said, they didn’t try to come in through the short tunnel that had an exit only 15 meters on the other side.

  “I was exploring the lovely traps over there,” Greg said, motioning to the other side of the ravine, “when I felt you guys come in. This whole place is a cleverly sculpted nightmare.”

  “What traps?” Blade asked, keeping his Pefbar extended out the way they’d come while lowering his Lachka field, ready to snap it back into place if anything tried to come through.

  “Gravity traps, about two meters wide. I’d guess 10g. If there were bugs on that side they’d leave you a sitting duck. You can’t run anywhere without taking the chance of hitting one of them and falling flat on your face. I’ve been trying to map out and mark them, but have only had an hour or so.”

  “Go back to the part where who took Dina?” Jason asked.

  “Big flying drones. They came in and picked up her body, then flew off in that direction,” Greg said, pointing where he’d felt her mental signature disappear on the other side of the mountain. “You come in through a dark pond?”

  “Yes,” Jason answered. “Button on floor, door in wall?”