by Aer-ki Jyr
Korav couldn’t let that happen, so when he got up onto the street he jumped up onto a nearby wall and climbed it until he got to the nearby roof and used the vantage point to spot his target. It took him a moment to plan out his route, then he ran across the low building and jumped to the next one that was much taller, requiring him to stick to the side and crawl up it, then he continued to jump/climb over the rooftops until he was able to get ahead of the Protovic.
He wasn’t sensing any counter probing telepathically, so Charro didn’t know where he was when the Protovic rounded a corner and tripped over an extended foot that sent him falling to the ground so hard that his mask popped off and his green/purple skin bathed the sidewalk in a shower of color.
“Hello, Charro,” Korav said calmly as the man tried to clear his head that was obviously pounding from the impact. “You’re coming with me.”
“Star Force!” Charro yelled, pointing at Korav. “Star Force!”
“Fine,” he said, running over to him in two steps and grabbing him by the back of the neck as he hauled him to his feet, though he tried to squirm away futilely. “We’ll do this the hard way.”
“Star Force! Help!” Charro continued to yell, with the nearby pedestrians recoiling quickly and clearing out the area around the two as Korav half dragged Charro with him. When he got his fingers on the skin of Charro’s neck the outbursts stopped as he hacked into the Protovic’s mind and took control, for Charro’s telepathic skills are mostly untrained, otherwise Korav would have had a tug of war on his hands that could have been hard to win.
But it was too late, for soon a Dovagno security patrol caught up with the pair and stopped them at gunpoint.
“Release him!” they demanded in their local language, though most Dovagno knew passable English.
“This one is coming with me,” Korav said, working his way into the mind of the three guards. “Turn around and leave us be.”
The three hesitated, lowering their weapons as they glanced at each other, but they didn’t leave fast enough and another two Dovagno, these not security, came forward shouting.
“Mind rapper!” they accused, pulling up a pair of pistols and aiming them at Korav as Charro tried to twist out of their firing line behind him.
“Shit,” the Arc Commando said, letting go his telepathic trance and ripping the weapons out of the hands of all 5 of them before they realized what he was capable of…but that didn’t stop the confrontation, for more Dovagno on the streets began stepping forward in a rage as they saw the Star Force magic being used.
Korav dug his fingers into Charro’s neck, holding him in place and focused, rendering him unconscious and dropping to the ground as more pistols were popping up and aiming at him. A couple shots got off, missing him, but the third hit and dissipated on an energy shield.
The Arc Commando shook off his robe and deactivated his hologram, letting everyone see his Human face for a moment before the gauntlets he wore on either arm suddenly melted and covered his body in Star Force scout armor colored a mix of blues ranging from a pair of bright stripes on the outside of the arms and legs to very dark blues almost to the point of grey over the chest and helmet that now obscured his face in a smooth material that had no visor.
When the locals saw the transformation they went into a rage, for Dovagno hated Star Force and every one of them that was armed opened fire, bathing the Arc Commando in a wide variety of energy discharges as Korav raised both forearms and fired back with stun weapons that arced out into area of effect hits, knocking down 3, 4, or 5 people with each shot. He mowed down everyone nearby, then grabbed Charro’s unconscious body and slung it over his shoulder as he started to run through the streets that were quickly exchanging non-Dovagno for the planet’s natives as the area turned into a free fire zone.
Korav covered Charro with his shields, but he couldn’t keep taking hits all day and when they went down he’d have to rely on his armor…which Charro didn’t have. His objective was to return him to Star Force custody, not kill him, and he intended to do just that, though the Dovagno clearly didn’t care if they killed him in the process of taking down the Star Forcer.
“Chip, get down here now,” he said over his personal comm.
“What location do you wish to rendezvous at?”
“Come down on my position,” he said, firing more stun blasts as the streets swarmed with Dovagno.
“ETA is 2 minutes 34 seconds.”
“Wonderful,” he said to himself as he picked a nearby wall alcove and dumped his prisoner there as he strode back out onto the street where he held position and bathed the approaching Dovagno in stun blasts while dodging a lot of the incoming fire now that Charro wasn’t weighing him down. Some of the Dovagno got shot with friendly fire, for they were attacking him from both directions and didn’t seem to care about anything other than taking him down.
About a minute later a ship appeared overhead, but it wasn’t Korav’s. The Dovagno patrol ship fired down on him and he had to crouch down and form a static shield over his head to take the blasts, then he jumped to the side of the street opposite Charro to draw fire away from him. From there Korav launched himself into the air and up to the underside of the two person craft where he clung inside the firing arc of its main weapons.
A brilliant blade formed from his armor’s wrist, with him slashing the flat blue energy ribbon into the underside of the ship, cutting through the weapon power lines before letting go and dropping back down to ground in time to shoot a pair of Dovagno that were picking up Charro. He had to fight another couple dozen that had amassed below, but he held his position while the now impudent patrol ship hovered overhead.
He picked up Charro again and backed into the nook, doubling up his shields from the outside and leaving his rear mostly exposed as it faced a hard stone wall. He kept firing and piled up a stack of unconscious bodies in front of him until a grenade came flying towards him and the incapacitated Dovagno.
He telekinetically grabbed it and threw it high into the sky where it exploded, throwing some small bits of shrapnel down onto those below.
“Seriously?” he yelled, then he summoned up a Fornax wave and launched it out as wide as he could in a cone ahead of him, dropping everyone to the ground twitching for a moment, but they got back up as soon as it ended.
“Targets identified. Do you wish to engage?” Chip asked as a slew of targeting options popped up on his helmet’s HUD.
Korav selected one, and suddenly a huge wave of stun energy cascaded down onto the street for more than 100 meters in either direction, destabilizing the cloaking device of the Star Force ship that was hovering overhead in a series of ripples through otherwise empty air.
“Retrieval,” he said as he jumped upward with Charro held over his shoulder and his shields evening out. His flight path angled forward as a doorway opened in mid air and he flew inside the cloaked ship as numerous additional patrol ships fired on him and the spot where he disappeared.
The cloaking field partially held, then the disruption moved off, accelerating quickly as it made a visible shockwave in the air enroute to orbit.
Korav dumped Charro into a cell box that would keep him in virtual stasis during the trip back as his automated ship continued to climb to orbit as the Dovagno tracked the disruption and brought down some of their warships to intercept, but as soon as the Star Force Trimaxion left the atmosphere behind it adjusted course and the Dovagno could no longer see it. They fired along its previous course, and Korav gave them points for effort, but he was beyond their reach now.
He deactivated his armor, with it retracting back down into two gauntlets that he took off and laid on a small table jutting out from the right side of the cockpit chamber.
“Pursuit has been lost,” the Trimaxion’s computer noted.
“Set course for the Neomis jumppoint,” he instructed rather than mentally interfacing with the ship’s systems and doing it himself. “Is the prisoner secure?”
“Statis pr
otocols active and steady. Virtual environment is active. Prisoner is secure.”
“He was a stubborn one. Add another mark to the scoreboard.”
A hologram of dart board appeared with an array of feather-tipped and very short arrows in it. Another one came flying in and stuck with an audible ‘pling’ on impact. The image lingered for another half minute, then disappeared as the Arc Commando retreated from the cockpit to the living quarters on the one-man scout vessel, confident that the automated programming would get him to the exit jumppoint for the system on its own.
After that, it was another 3 jumps to get back to the nearest Star Force planet where he would hand over his quarry for psionic removal and an 8 month prison sentence for the fiasco he’d caused 2 years ago in the Plinth System. After that he’d be free to go, but no longer able to reproduce Protovic with the restrictive psionics.
Before then Korav hoped to have his entire crime family swept up, and as the scoreboard attested, he didn’t have that many left to find.
8
October 4, 128439
Quitassna System (Opaty territory)
Vinanakva
A large spherical mass jumped into the system, braking against the central star and coming to a stop in low orbit. It was a perfect sphere 327 miles wide and colored deep green, with heavy armor plating half a kilometer deep and numerous weapon ports spread around the thin Tu’gor outer armor layer, which was a lighter, cheaper version of Yeg’gor. The green of the Tu’gor was enhanced further, getting rid of the black the material naturally had and turning it into true Canderous green, marking it as a seda and not a Mach’nel, which this small invasion did not warrant.
It wasn’t as fast as a warship, and could barely keep up with Star Force civilian ships, but the mobile battlestation wasn’t meant to go chasing enemies around the galaxy. The Knight races and Clans had the specialized ships for that, while Canderous’s little niche within the empire was their ability to move their homes with them and set up operations in new systems instantaneously…which is why they often followed the frontier invasions to take over once the major battles were completed and the native populations were in need of annexation.
Jumping into the system a few minutes behind the seda were a multitude of ships and transports belonging to the Calavari, who would be taking possession of this system and beginning the indoctrination process for the Opaty while Canderous was responsible for security. It would take time for the Calavari to build infrastructure on the planet, and until they got up and running Canderous troops would be keeping the captive planet in line as the Bez would soon be leaving for another invasion elsewhere.
Ard Ri Esna-58321JOR-18 was onboard the seda and soon to be in charge of system security. The Human’s rank within Canderous was a rare one, for it denoted the highest rank of warrior, but one that did not wish to be an organizer…but rather a field commander. Esna didn’t want to sit safely inside well defended perimeters and use her massive experience to direct others to fight. She wanted to lead from the front and do the fighting herself, and with the Knights and Clans taking all the good fights, cleanup work such as this was as close as she could get.
Esna was one of only a few Canderians that had been born outside the faction, and she was also in the rare group of those over 100,000 years old. She kept to herself for the most part, interacting with her fellow Canderians whenever duty required, but staying inside her personal chambers onboard the seda whenever she didn’t have workouts to do. What she did in those private hours no one knew, but no one dared ask either, for an Ard Ri was the equivalent of a Khan, which was the highest rank within Canderous, and she was extremely over-qualified for a mission like this.
But that’s the way Esna preferred it. The losses Star Force suffered nowadays were not in the form of big fights, but individuals lost here and there in the small ones. That meant she had to be where she could make a difference, and taming enemy populations was about as rough as it got. Though a Canderian typically stayed in space whenever possible, once her seda made it to planetary orbit she would be going down to the surface with the army and staying down there as a venator while others handled the oversight duties.
She would pull rank if they messed something up or her experience knew a better way, but if that wasn’t required she would roam the danger zones solo, looking for trouble and heading it off before it could hit her troops or those they were tasked to protect. That proclivity had earned her the right to choose the Ard Ri rank rather than Khan, as a few others had, because they didn’t want to lose their edge in the golden age of Star Force.
Canderians were built for battle, and they needed it. Training wasn’t enough for them, and after all these years Esna wasn’t going to let her skills slip, for she knew better than the others what a shithole the galaxy could become if things went the wrong way. And to be perfectly honest, she didn’t feel at home in the sedas. They were a refuge, to be sure, and intimately familiar, but Esna was a venator in heart, never staying in the same place, always on the move, and always in danger.
Her brief experience with the Calavari Rammak had changed her in a way that had stuck, and part of her mind was still with him on the run. Peace didn’t feel right. As if the war wasn’t over. It had taken her a long time to figure out why, but eventually she realized the truth that the war never ends. Somewhere, even in the peaceful areas, someone was being hurt. Star Force couldn’t banish bad people from being born, or prevent accidents from happening, and the danger of the galaxy was something that Esna embraced rather than denied, and she preferred not to be around those that did.
Part of her still didn’t feel like she deserved to be alive, and if it wasn’t for Rammak she would have died. It wasn’t fair that he hadn’t made it and she had, and despite all the contributions she’d made to Canderous since then, it wasn’t enough to repay that debt. Nothing ever would be.
Others had become tired of life and diminished, but that wasn’t an option for Esna. Everything she did was a quest, and when she got fatigued Esna would think of Rammak lecturing her to keep going. He had seen something in her that no one else had, and she still felt like she hadn’t fully unlocked her potential.
After the V’kit’no’sat war was over she had returned to Mace and lived there a while, leaving Canderous behind as she sought to find her ‘home,’ but that world, while familiar, felt empty. The rebuilding took forever, but during that time she would run the wilds, retracing Rammak’s camps until they were eventually claimed in the new construction. After that point there was nothing left for her there, and she had returned to Canderous, but not contently. She belonged with Rammak, learning from him as they traveled and fought to survive, and nothing short of that was going to satisfy her.
It was strange, because she was far more powerful now than Rammak had been, even with his extra muscle mass and four arms. She’d beaten numerous Calavari stronger than he had been, but she still felt inferior. She often wondered if she was chasing a mirage, but if Rammak had been here he would have advanced as well, staying ahead of her the whole way. And in truth, it wasn’t the power you attained that mattered, but what you did with it, and when the time came Rammak had shown his immense superiority. So no, Esna was not chasing a mirage. She was chasing a superior that had gone beyond her reach.
So she was alone, but Rammak’s lessons were with her and she would not lose them. And that meant getting out into the wilds and breathing the raw air and experiencing the fear, death, and horrors that plagued this galaxy. It was then and only then that she felt at home, in brief blips here and there, fighting those horrors and saving someone the way Rammak had saved her, but then she had to move on. The danger didn’t stay put, and she had to keep chasing after it in a never-ending game that few others chose to play.
So when the seda made orbit she headed to the hangar bays along with the troops heading to ground as Kit Legat Bard organized the transfer of control with the Bez. She didn’t tell him what to do and he didn’t give her orders. Sh
e just tagged along where she liked, and the competent Legat usually didn’t need any overrides from the Ard Ri, but she was willing and able to do so if needed.
She wore heavy armor, which required her to walk into a hard, standing suit that then melded to her body once she was inside. It was made of the same cellular design that old V’kit’no’sat Zen’zat armor had used, though now Star Force had improved upon the design and incorporated it along with the old school fixed armor that they preferred. Her gold/black/chrome suit had thick plates, some of which contained large hardware components, while others were blocks of the moveable cells, meaning that whenever her armor got a hole in it they would flow to the breach and refill it, giving the heavy armor an insane durability.
Lesser versions of armor allowed a person to work with their skin exposed and activate the armor when needed, but Esna had first learned to use the fixed armor with Rammak, and she preferred having it now and staying behind a helmet during the down times when others relied only on their passive shields to protect them from the unexpected. Right now about half of the troops boarding the dropships had skin exposed, while the others had the heavy armor like Esna’s, except not made of the same material. Hers had extra heavy Tu’gor fibers added, but she had the musculature to handle it, and it made her a literal tank against enemy infantry in fights.
She rode the dropship down to the surface, then when the boarding ramp dropped she walked out with the others amidst the sounds of a firefight somewhere to the west. While the Canderous troops activated their armor, obscuring their skin behind Canderous green stone-like sand particles that made up the ‘flexible’ parts of their suits, Esna lazily ran off to the side and began exploring the new planet on her own while monitoring updates on the battlemap.
