by Kyle Mata
SCORPION
THE RAE WARS
Kyle Mata
CONTENTS
Chapter 1: The Commando
Chapter 2: The Commander
Chapter 3: The Defender
Chapter 4: An Unwanted War Path
Chapter 5: Gathering of Foes
Chapter 6: The Mason and the Pick-Up
Chapter 7: Unlikely Alliance
Chapter 8: No More Masters
Chapter 9: A Tight-lipped People
Chapter 10: Tira
Chapter 11: Disarmored
Chapter 12: Fortshione
Chapter 13: Suspended Animation
Chapter 14: The Information Broker
Chapter 15: The Bar Scene
Chapter 16: The Admiral
Chapter 17: Boarding Action
Chapter 18: The Prisoners Dilemma
Chapter 19: Liber’tira
Chapter 20: The Green Dragon Tavern
Chapter 21: Vurumon
Chapter 22: Deeds Not Words
Chapter 23: Death of a World
Chapter 24: The First Salvo
Chapter 25: The Battle of Xe
Chapter 26: Crash
Chapter 27: Separated
Chapter 28: Task Force Green Phantom
Prologue
CHAPTER 1
THE COMMANDO
“No, wait! I forgot my…” The door slammed closed with a hydraulic hiss and click, and the shuttle zipped off back into orbit without delay. “Knife…”
Karr watched as the twin violet flames from the thrusters on the last rocket for a month took off—the small, yet powerful thrusters that pressed easily through the atmosphere. He was left alone on the uninhabited world RV-100342-324, better known as “Scorpion.”
It had been two years since the rift at the center of the Drea system had opened up. It swallowed a few planets hole, wealthy ones, too. Now, the rift teleports a new planet into the galaxy every few days. Most end up in orbits around one of the stars, but some are not so lucky and land too close to a star or another planet, leading to an impact, and in a few occasions, causing a supernova or planetary genocide.
At first, the three galactic factions would run to claim the usable planets known as ‘Nomen’ for themselves, creating a galactic land grab. They would send colonists, scientists, engineers and other civilians to start colonies on the first discovered Nomen. The factions shortly thereafter discovered that many of these planets were either uninhabitable or extremely hostile due to the conditions or the native wildlife.
Once the factions learned the hard way that they couldn’t just plant colonies to claim a world, they each went about different means of making as many Nomen their own as possible.
The faction known as The Nyrotsi, the largest of them all, was well known for its military might, strict policies, and vast expansion. They would send their elite military forces, the Nightfang, along with colonists to establish colonies on their claimed Nomen. This strategy worked well on planets that had hostile wildlife but did not succeed on planets that had harsh conditions, like extreme heat or a lack of atmosphere. Their forces did not fare well on EX-120030-444 “Kylupsa,” as it is hard to battle airborne invasive fungus with guns.
The Coalition of Freed Planets, which was recognized for their diplomacy and trade relations, covered a large area with prefabricated structures by firing them from orbit into the ground. Then, they would put up large electro-web nets around their colonies while they terraformed the planet to suitable living standards with gas emitters. Unlike the Nyrotsi strategy, this worked well on planets that had hostile conditions, but was not as effective on planets with hostile wildlife. Their forces did not bode well on GY-104503-001 “Tryndall,” an electro-web net did little to protect their people against the miniature killsquito swarms that were attracted to their terraforming gases.
The last major faction was the Mason’s Guild which was the smallest and most exclusive. The Masons were known for their advanced technologies, industrial superiority, and economic power. They would send mercenaries to scout and, if necessary, clear a planet, thus not putting any of their own precious citizens at risk. This strategy turned out to be a smart one: if their mercenaries or scouts reported back negatively—or more commonly, didn’t come back to report at all—the Guild would forget about the planet and move on to a better one.
That’s where Karr Mun’tyre came into the picture. Karr was a Shadowri from the planet Shadowri’tira. Shadowri’tira was classified as an ice planet due to the massive polar caps at both poles. It ranked among the harshest planets in the entire galaxy. But around the equator was a volcanic belt, and those volcanoes were surrounded by lush forests filled with terrifying creatures. Tira, as it was called by the Shadowri, (meaning mother in their language) was considered uninhabitable by most but held vast quantities of a very valuable fuel resource, Tirium.
As a result of surviving and thriving on Tira, and their tremendous efforts in war, the Shadowri gained a reputation as the strongest beings in the entire galaxy. Tira has been invaded by nearly every major faction that has been in power since the original Exodus from Earth over one thousand years ago, but each invasion was fended off by the Shadowri. The Shadowri were always defenders—never conquerors. They never set off to seize any other planet in the history of their founding.
The Shadowri have an isolationist clan culture based around a loose caste system. When a Shadowri is born, they are raised by their parents and their clan. At the age of seven they begin their training, and three years later, they begin their trials. The trials last anywhere from one to six years and at the end those who have completed their trials are awarded with their armor and their caste—Noble, Guardian, or Commando. Nobles are the leaders and scholars of their clans and the planet. Guardians are known as the defenders and peace keepers of the planet. Commandos are considered, for lack of a better term, the working class; the majority are miners and drillers. Each caste has its own creed it lives by. The Noble creed preaches ‘strength through knowledge.’ The Guardian creed declares ‘strength through courage’ and the Commando creed proclaims ‘strength through valor.’ No class was considered lesser than the other, just different. One would not expect the Grand Fyre Falcon to swim or the Mountain Rhino to fly, for those are not their talents, but neither animal is lesser than the other. In the past, the Shadowri were a proud warrior race who defended the innocent and stood for universal justice. But in the current year of 1090 AE (After Exodus), the Shadowri, as a whole, are known across the galaxy for two things: their Kesbar powered battle armor and their disdain for the rest of humanity. Kesbar is a super tough metal invented by Shadowri metallurgists. While the Shadowri were once well respected, and sometimes even feared, their glory days have passed.
Karr is a Shadowri Commando mercenary from the Clan Mun. At only twenty-four years old, he had already fought in the Zebra Nebula War and the Outer Belt War. Both of Karr’s parents were Guardians and thus never left the planet. His older step-brother is a Noble and an upcoming Clan Mun leader. His older sister is a Noble engineer who designed and built orbital artillery batteries. Once the rift opened up, there was suddenly plenty of land to go around and the fighting stopped for the time being, at least between the factions. But if it was one thing Karr could always count on, it was a fight—between someone somewhere. His sister joked that it provided Karr with some sense of job security. Between wars, Karr had taken up a scouting job for the Mason’s Guild; he figured he’d get to take a look at all of the Nomen popping up.
But Karr was alone on Scorpion. His favorite knife had been left on the ship and all the intelligence he was given about the planet was from a Guild Intelligence Officer, a stout dark-haired girl named Darla, on th
e flight in. He remembered when she told him, “There are faint life signatures detected, but it’s hard to get a solid read through the atmospheric disturbance. You’ll have to find out the old-fashioned way.”
The Mason’s Guild had technology that could map an entire solar system in a week, but they couldn’t give him a map of this planet because of some ionic clouds? Karr wondered.
The trees were a glossy black color, similar to that of an insectoid exoskeleton. They all came to an abrupt point at the top, like a scorpion’s stinger. Karr now knew where the planet got its name. He checked the oxygen and pressure levels in his armor suit, as well as the power charge and ammo level on his MAGE rifle and LT sidearm pistol. Darla had told him that the air was safe to breathe, but he wanted a full reading from his armor before he trusted the report. He then tossed three small cartographer probes into the air, affectionately called carties. They would follow him at a rough radius of twenty-five meters while scanning and mapping the terrain. They would then upload their findings directly to his helmet’s HUD, or Heads Up Display. Once each carty established a positive feed with his helmet, he trudged off into the black jungle.
The trees grew closer together and taller the deeper he went into the jungle. There was no real foliage aside from the scorpion trees and curious fungi-like bushes that were no more than a few centimeters off the ground and never touched any tree. The twin suns of the Lance system appeared green in the sky due to the ionic atmosphere.
The mini-map in his helmet updated as he walked. There was a large canyon to the north, where he was headed. To the west was a sloping elevation, potentially a high point; it was hard to tell through the dense trees. He elected to head west. The carties adjusted to his position change—one even happily chirped as elevation increased because it knew it would get to map more from a better vantage point.
The land continued to rise upward for a few kilometers until the jungle came to an end at a ridge. As Karr made it over the ridge, he saw a small mountain. The chirping from the carties intensified as they asked to climb the mountain. He began his trek up the small mountain as the suns dipped below the horizon. Karr took a moment to watch the aquamarine sunset; it was like nothing he had ever seen before. He made sure his helmet cam recorded it.
Once the suns had fully set and the sky was dark, the stars shined brightly with an eerie green hue. The sky reminded him of the sky on Tira near the northern pole where he took his trials. The carties chirped at him to keep walking so they could continue mapping. He continued on up the mountain with the infrared filter active in his HUD. The infrared was an older technology, but he preferred it to the DayBright filter, which artificially made the view through the helmet appear as though it were still Earth-Standard daylight outside. Karr found that the DayBright had a semi-second lag when the user was moving quickly, a lag that could make one miss something important in combat; so, he preferred the real-time of infrared. It also made him feel like an ancient warrior, like the fabled American Special Forces.
He figured he would get to the top of the mountain and set up camp; he’d get two hours of sleep, which was all he needed, then set off again. While he slept the carties got their fill of mapping the area from the high vantage point. Karr made it to the peak and soaked in the view. He was never really into sightseeing, so he set the carties wander range up to one hundred meters and dozed off. The little probes would alert him if anything approached, but his armor would protect him from almost anything anyway.
He woke up exactly two hours later, thanks to a Shadowri subconscious technique he had been perfecting since childhood. The Shadowri believe the potential of the human subconscious is a vast bank of power that they have only just tapped into.
The carties were sitting in power-save mode at his feet. They must have updated the map as much as they could have from this location. Karr turned his attention to the mini-map—the little probes had certainly been busy.
Kilometers all around had been filled out. The most interesting point on the map was what looked like a settlement to the northwest. He thought he had been the first person on this Nomen. He stood up, setting off the carties proximity alerts. They chirped to life and floated up into the air. He switched their follow range back to twenty-five meters and set off for the settlement. His armor had given him a full reading of the air as he slept; he examined the results as he walked. He read the levels of nitrogen, oxygen and traces of other gasses—perfect goldilocks conditions. The air here was probably healthier for humans than most inner ring worlds, due to all the pollution.
It was still dark as he trudged through the sparse jungle. Lights were visible over the nearby ridgeline. He switched off his infrared, and while he allowed his eyes to naturally adjust to the darkness, he recalled the carties, they latched onto the back of his belt. He made it to the top of the ridge and dropped to a prone position; he didn’t want to be silhouetted against the sky.
The settlement was 0.82 kilometers away according to his helmet’s integrated rangefinder. He increased the magnification in his HUD and began to recon. The settlement consisted of approximately fifteen structures of various sizes and had a glowing yellow electro-web net encompassing it, the tell-tale sign of a colony of the Coalition of Freed Planets.
A cloud of dust kicked up on the outskirts of the settlement, catching Karr’s eye. He switched his attention to it and zoomed in further, then switched back on the infrared filter. Inside the cloud were large figures running toward the settlement, some on two legs and others mounted on large creatures that had six massive legs and two serpentine heads. They wielded crude spears that looked like they were made from the tops of the scorpion trees. Karr assumed they were Scorpion natives coming to defend their planet and fend off the invaders.
An alarm klaxon began to sound from one, then two, and soon all of the Coalition buildings. A few Coalition Defenders ran out and took up defensive positions behind the webbing. The first natives ran into the webbing and were disintegrated instantly. The rest stopped short after seeing the fate of their brethren. A couple tossed spears at the webbing. The crude weapons fell to the ground. Karr didn’t think anything could survive direct contact with that webbing, the six-legged beasts reared up on their hind legs and began to spit a stream of fluid at the glowing fence. The liquid began melting down the webbing—it was like nothing Karr had ever seen before. How could any liquid melt energy webbing? Steam erupted into the sky as a hole grew in the fencing.
Once the hole was large enough, the infantry natives began storming into the encampment. The charged las-rounds from the Defender’s rifles dropped the first few natives through the breach. But there were not enough Defenders to fend off the horde that climbed through like an infestation of wild animals. The scorpion spears flying through the air began to find their targets, as they pierced the Defender’s armor like warm knives through butter. Karr checked his MAGE rifle and sidearm another time out of habit. Coalition Defenders were little more than police officers; their armor and weapons served to keep the peace among law-abiding citizens, not fend off invading forces.
The Defenders began to fall back when the six-legged monsters made it into the perimeter and began smashing and melting buildings. Faction treaties declared that Karr had no obligation to aid these people at all—if anything, the Guild would be happy to hear about another failed Coalition colony. One of the serpent heads snagged a young girl who was trapped in a building and ate her whole. Karr watched as she struggled in its throat.
The reason he had nearly been exiled from Tira awoke within the young Commando yet again.
In an instant, he was sliding down the hillside and sprinting toward the settlement with the powered aid from his armor. Karr had seen enough and decided to intervene. He never considered himself a part of any of the factions, anyway. Karr was his own man, not defined by the guidelines set on others.
At a speed of nearly sixty-five kilometers per hour, Karr tore across the open terrain. A group of the natives who hadn’t made it
past the netting yet saw the armored figure approaching and turned to intercept him. They began screeching and howling, as spears began to fly at the Commando. Karr dodged and weaved between them with trained proficiency while continuing to close the gap. He opened fire with a barrage of las-rounds and a few natives dropped dead. He reached the hole in the webbing and was blocked by one of the tall natives. He hit the creature with a sixty-five kilometer per hour armored punch and broke its entire face. It slumped over, dying shortly after.
He turned his attention toward the serpent beasts that were ravaging the tiny settlement. He pumped a few rounds into one. While the rounds hurt it, they didn’t kill it. One of the serpent heads turned its attention to him. It reared its head up and unleashed a torrent of fluid, which he dodged, and it melted a native behind him down to the bone, but the scorpion tree spear remained intact.
Karr ran closer to the serpent head, firing rounds at it. The rounds hit, but they didn’t have the desired effect of killing the creature. He jumped, and while he was in the air he pulled his Tirium katana off his back. The blade glowed a dim silver as it activated. He slashed both heads off the beast and it finally fell. Karr watched as the creature’s heads writhed about on the ground for a moment before they too ceased their terror.
Upon seeing their armored savior tip the scales, the few Coalition Defenders that remained began to push forward. Karr zipped about the camp with his katana in one hand and his LT sidearm in the other, slashing and firing at the screeching creatures. One was clawing a man to pieces when Karr kicked it into the webbing, disintegrating it immediately. It was too late for the man though. The native’s numbers dwindled to two or three creatures and one beast. Karr jumped onto the back of the beast, slamming the Tirium powered blade down as he landed. He then dragged the blade up and down the beast’s innards until it hissed in pain and fell still in death. He expected the last beasts to retreat having been clearly defeated, but they did not seem to have the ‘flight’ portion of the fight-or-flight instinct. He dropped the last two creatures with two precise shots from the LT to their foreheads.
