Star Force: Zealot (SF87) (Star Force Origin Series)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  With that final check, Paul disconnected and fell to the ground, cradling his head in his hands and trying to put himself into a regenerative mode with a combination of Sesspik and Haemra. The latter wasn’t all that effective on oneself when you couldn’t concentrate, but he was desperate now that the numbness of the effort was wearing off and the damage was asserting itself. This was beyond brain fried, and he had to trust in his crews, captains, and Archons to deal with the recovery effort and any defensive requirements going forward, because even if he wanted to reconnect he didn’t think he could, with thoughts of this being serious damage whispering in his mind as he pulled inside himself and went as inert as possible, hoping for his healing abilities to start eating into this nuking and pull him back into a semblance of order.

  Riley rode a dropship over to one of the dead jumpships holding his damaged ship in place, all the while seeing out through the gaps at what looked like an asteroid field made up of destroyed ships. He couldn’t see stars through them, and the battlemap links were in and out given the line of sight restrictions. That said, he could see the three massive pieces that the jumpship ahead of him had been reduced to, each of which was held onto the others by the barest of structural linkages.

  The dropship took him and a pair of Commandos up to the edge of what had used to be a hangar bay and nestled against the inner door. The entire hangar was gone, blown off the ship, so the three of them stepped off the ramp onto bits of floor that remained and floated to the inner hatch, finding a bit of gravity there that sucked them down to the deck.

  The three of them worked to get a makeshift shield in place before Riley forced the door, only to find vacuum on the other side. They raced through, searching for the nearest contained area, and having to travel some 60 meters inward through four more closed doors before finding it. With additional atmosphere seals on them and hallway intersections, fresh air was pumped in and connected a pocket of living ship to what had once been the hangar.

  From there it didn’t take long before Riley got to the minds he was sensing. They were in groups in different locations, the first of which were in a storage compartment working on opening up portable habitat modules. When Riley got to them he called them off the project and directed them to the waiting dropship as he continued to search the rest of this piece of the ship.

  He found another group in an internal bunker, cut off from the living sections due to an atmospheric breach. Four more were in similar difficulties while a handful of others had survived in the areas that still had atmosphere and emergency power. Once he got them all off onto dropships he moved over to the other two pieces of ship and did likewise, evacuating about a third of the crew that had been onboard. The rest had died during or shortly after the fighting.

  The survivors were brought back to the Zeus, wrecked as it was, but it was the most intact ship still in the fleet. Even the Excalibur was showing more damage, and the hull breaches in Riley’s command ship had atmospheric seals over top of them thanks to the Trinx, which he had replaced by his own techs with proper patches as one of the first orders of business…and there were many to follow. The battlefield was a disaster with surviving crews on both sides needing to be picked up and Star Force deliberately ignoring the Trinx vessels until all of their own and their allies were searched.

  They weren’t going to let some of their own die in order to save those bastards.

  That said, Riley had to talk down several of the other races vessels that were going around and toasting what remained of the Trinx. Some were doing so to eliminate lingering threats, for not all of their weaponry was knocked out, but others were just trying to kill their remaining crews or blast apart their ships out of vengeance when they should have been helping in the rescue efforts. Riley quickly got them back into line, for Star Force dominated the count in the survivor category, as well as being the ones who still controlled the Uriti.

  And Riley was the only one left, aside from Paul, of the fleet representatives that had been conducting business with one another. All the others had been killed in combat, leaving him with lower ranking ship captains to deal with that badly needed guidance with their chain of command having been eliminated. Most immediately rallied around the Humans, for they were whom they were indebted to protect, with the others falling in line once Riley got what was left of the fleets actively hunting for survivors before any more of them died as their life support systems failed or their injuries bled them out.

  Only the Yisv fleet hadn’t been touched, for it hadn’t been in the convoy due to the proximity with the Uriti. Where it was now Riley didn’t know, but they weren’t around to ask for help and the trailblazer needed every jumpship here to use as lifeboats for the survivors, unable to send a messenger out for assistance. Instead he dispatched a drone with a message, sending it on a slow journey from star to star to the nearest invasion zone.

  Meanwhile he and the others waited, recovering crews and searching for more survivors while making what repairs they could. There were so many ships out there to search that they didn’t have a moment to spare, all the while knowing that the Trinx might return with more ships given that their worlds were far closer than any of the other 7 races, so sending one of their ships back for help made no sense whatsoever and the small number of ships left guarding Bahamut weren’t worth sending for in exchange for a badly needed recovery ship now.

  When Riley slept he did so on a dropship. Eating there as well, while not returning to the Zeus for weeks straight as he searched the remains of the destroyed ships for survivors using his psionics, all of which he brought back to the Zeus or the nearest jumpship, or occasionally one of the largest Jonstar vessels that was partially intact. All the Humans went to Star Force ships, but the other surviving crews were mixed up considerably as people were sent to the nearest safe haven possible while the search teams went back out collecting what they hoped would be more living souls…while having to leave the bodies where they lay.

  Riley lost track of the days as they passed, moving from one search mission to another, until he got a signal from a relief fleet made up of six Star Force jumpships that had been dispatched immediately from the invasion of the Karrach System. Their full load of drones immediately deployed and created a perimeter around the massive debris field as well as assisted with pushing operations to clear lanes for ships to move through and about more easily.

  The jumpships launched flocks of dropships with more search crews and supplies, aiding in the recovery effort while giving Riley a bit of peace of mind concerning the Trinx showing up again. He’d hoped they’d committed everything they had to that assault, but there was no way to know for sure without having accurate numbers on their military, for which Star Force had none whatsoever, even with estimates given to them by The Nine.

  The other major cause for concern was the Uriti, for it was holding position as ordered but no one knew how long it would continue to do so. The transmitter onboard the Zeus had been damaged in the attack, or rather the exterior components, and until they were rebuilt they had no way of contacting it. Leaving it the big wild card in the present situation above and beyond the Trinx.

  And the last thing they needed was for it to head over to the debris field for a look at what happened…or to start eating the ships and their tantalizing corovon components.

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