Blood on the Stars

by Aer-ki Jyr

  “Not good enough,” Wilson said, pointing a finger at the taller man as an idea hit him. “We need an enemy and a black knight. Something they can actually tear up, so we make an army of drones that periodically try to destroy their colony and capture them, similar to the little surprise party Davis arranged for you guys a while back.”

  “I remember vividly,” Kent said, referencing the sucker punch they all got at the beginning. “We make them beat it to graduate. That’s one hell of a different type of maturia.”

  “It’s not a maturia, it’s a praxium. That’s why they hated it so much. They need a praxium, and need to chart their own course to achieve it. Not be given one. I should have seen this earlier.”

  “You didn’t realize that’s how we were trained, because all the Archons that followed were products of maturias.”

  “And that means if the second gen reach Furyan level, it might be a very different offshoot of the race…or maybe a completely different one. The Neofan have different bloodlines, and this could be the reason why.”

  “So we need to build a giant game to teach them inside of. Good thing we chose Itaru.”

  “I’ll get Hamob started on it. He thinks like a V’kit’no’sat, after all. Best to have the enemy as close to yours as possible. But we need to see success with your group before we try another. A lot of success.”

  “As long as I’m here that won’t be an issue. But I will need to give them assignments on their own eventually. Right now they’re still very needy and calibrating off me. Something we didn’t have.”

  “That might be wise to retain, in some small form for all classes. After all, these are not Archon material individuals. They may need that first push to get going.”

  “A lot to explore and experiment with.”

  “And a lot of pitfalls,” Wilson warned, “but this is starting to make sense to me. They’re equipped for tasks Humans are not, and that basic ability will yearn to be used.”

  “Leave Davis out of the loop on this one…for a while at least. I want to give him more than a bunch of unanswered questions.”

  “I’ll let you explain it to him when you’re ready. But I need Hamob involved now so we can start building.”

  “You’ll be ready before they are. They’re constantly going off course, and I have to bring them back into alignment, but I’m seeing uptake in spurts. I think a gelling is coming. Until that happens we can’t implement the ‘throw them in and learn to swim on your own’ teaching method.”

  “You weren’t there the first four years, Kent.”

  “But they’re not us then, they’re us now put back then. We’re going to have to write this from scratch.”

  “Provide as many scratchings as you can. I think I know where to start, at least as far as basic challenge courses go. Something in the multiple day variety.”

  “Good. They’re already starting to need field trips. The sooner you can get those set up, the better.”

  “If you want to modify an existing one we can have it up within a month.”

  “No. We need a lot, because once I start them on it, they’re not going to want to go back without another on the horizon.”

  “Point,” Wilson admitted. “I think I have an idea…”

  Two years later…

  004 ran up to one of the target balloons suspended above the floor a good two meters…which was twice his height…and aimed up at it. His rifle was heavy and hard to move, but he got it tilted up enough to fire the stun bolt.

  The balloon slightly changed color, meaning he had to shoot it some more. He got off three more shots before his arms grew too tired and he had to drop the gun…which hung off his body due to the shoulder strap he had on.

  “I got it,” 029 said, plodding up beside him and firing two more shots, after which the balloon turned a glowing blue along with an audible ‘ping’ meaning it was finished.

  “Thanks,” 004 said. “Next one.”

  Together they jogged/walked forward carrying their heavy weapons and worked on the next balloon together as the other 8 classmates in this challenge were working on more balloons, too many for them to get done in time, but how many they got determined their score.

  004 got through three more balloons with his friend, then his little arms got so tired the gun tipped to the side while aiming up and he accidentally fired into 029’s face.

  The little guy dropped hard, smacking into the softly padded floor, and 004 shouted “No!”

  He knelt down next to his unconscious brother, who had the same face as him. They all did, except the girls, who had their own face. “I’m sorry,” he said, beginning to cry as a drone flew over them both.

  “Invalid target,” it said, then 004 was picked up in a force field and flown over the tops of the balloons to the penalty box. He twisted his head around as much as he could, looking back at his friend as another drone came to get him. He’d wake up, but no penalty box.

  004 was dropped inside a closed room, with the ceiling opening and shutting after he was set inside. It was lit with red light strips and had no visible door. Just a wheel with a hologram of a tiny woman appearing to tell him what to do.

  “You messed up,” Cortana said, “but mistakes are to be learned from. You’re now in the penalty box to give you some time to think about how you messed up so you can figure out how to not do it again. Turn the wheel and the meter on the wall will rise. Get it to the ceiling and you will be let out. If you need to sit and think, that’s fine. You determine when you get out, Spartan.”

  The hologram went away, and 004 sat down on the bench inside and put his head in his hands. He hated the penalty box. He hadn’t meant to shoot 029. His arms were just too tired. And now he had to use them to turn the wheel.

  He sat and cried for a couple minutes, then remembered the last time he was in here. Crying didn’t get him out. Turning the wheel did. And he didn’t want to stay in here any longer than he had to.

  004 stood up and went over to the wheel, turning it in short bursts until his arms burned, then he sat back down again to let them recharge.

  An hour and a half later, he successfully got the meter to the top and let himself out…

  Davis read the brief but thorough report from Wilson as he sat in his office atop Atlantis. Project Terra was yielding better initial results than hoped for. The splicing of genetics from various donors had succeeded in eliminating a lot of the anarchy of youth. The Terran younglings were energetic and focused on their training, as well as having a camaraderie that surpassed normal Humans. They were already a year ahead of where a normal maturia would be, and their learning rate was higher than most races in Star Force. But most of all, they were stable…giving allowances for them being only 5 years old.

  Wilson was recommending they proceed with additional classes on a regular basis and set up permanent maturias to handle them as he troubleshooted this class’s progress going forward and tuning their training as necessary as he wrote the protocols the Terran maturias would use indefinitely. All he needed was Davis to sign off on it.

  “Qapla,” the Director said, using the Klingon word for ‘victory’ as he confirmed the request. He knew there was a lot of work to do on their higher forms later, but this base form was the foundation for it all, and he knew Wilson was not the type to exaggerate good news.

  “Now we have a fighting chance,” he said, looking at his hologram of a galaxy floating near his desk. He expanded it out until 18 galaxies were showing, knowing that was premature, but where they would eventually have to go.

  “Tah pagh tahbe.”

  9

  January 23, 154980

  Nequi System (Grogu Kingdom)

  Masstina

  “What’s wrong?”

  Jax-064 turned around, having been distracted enough with the message from Kent-076 that he didn’t sense Elena-309221 walk in.

  “Your ninja skills are improving,” he said as his apprentice walked up beside him as the holographic text hung in t
he air before them just in front of the bank of observation windows…real ones, for they were on planet and not in space.

  “Something I’m not supposed to see?”

  “Too late now,” he said with a smirk. “Keep it a secret.”

  “Scouts honor,” she said with a quick two fingered salute to her temple just below her short purple hair line. “But there is something wrong. Your aura screams it.”

  “Why can I never keep my telepathy in check around you?”

  “Too many battlemelds, I’d guess. We started sharing a little automatically whenever we’re together. Heard it happen to others. Now what’s wrong?”

  “We have kids.”

  Elena frowned. “Who does?”

  “The trailblazers, or if you want to be specific, Kerrie and Rio.”

  “She actually got pregnant?”

  “No. No mating either. A maturia class of 100, using our Furyan genetics in an attempt to create a superior race to act as a spine for our too fast growing empire. That’s where Kent went, and why he left us with twice the work to do.”

  “I’m not complaining.”

  “You never do. The younglings wouldn’t behave at all, and Wilson was personally teaching them. They sent for Kent, and ever since he got there they’ve been different. Better. And he’s been keeping me up on progress. This time a lot of it.”

  “Wow. How is that bad?”

  “The project was a failure. If one of us has to personally teach them, there can never be enough of them for what we need. Davis and Wilson then went to Plan B, and it’s been more of a success than expected. They’re only 8 years old, and pretty much Human, but their temperament and tendencies reflect their hosts well. They’re called Terrans, but we refer to them as Clones. They all have the same genetic template, same face, except there’s also a female version.”

  “The Grand Army of the Republic?” Elena scoffed.

  Kent swiped a finger across the holograms a few times and brought up still photos of several of them, each with different haircuts and tattoos giving them a bit of individuality, but every one had the same chiseled face that was too familiar.

  Elena’s jaw dropped. “Boba?”

  “If we were going to do Clones, we had to do them right.”

  “But…who’s the donor?”

  “A mix of people. Vermaire, Davis, a Canderian named Esna, a Commando called Iceman, a Pilot named Jinam, and the legendary Ironnsey. The Select Six they’re called.”

  “None of you?”

  “Too potent for now. The Clones have layered genetics, the first time we’ve tried it. Meaning they have a transformation awaiting them if they achieve the ascension trigger. There’s only one programmed in now, but there will be more added later, all the way up to Furyan. Our genetics will be added then, once we have people who can handle the power.”

  “And your ‘kids’ can’t?”

  “Not without a lot of training wheels and hand holding. Kent thinks he can make something of them, but never in the numbers we need.”

  “I don’t get that. Why do we need a special race when things are working fine now?”

  “Davis…working ahead as always. He’s trusting in us to win this war, and he’s planning for the next one?”

  “We already got one booked?”

  “Seems so. Kent just filled me in on it. Seems they expect this galaxy to fall the way our territory did to the V’kit’no’sat, unless we preemptively strike.”

  “Who?”

  “Not who…what. The theory is this galaxy will be the target, and will get hit from multiple angles at the same time or will be a succession of targeted attacks to wear us down over time. The Others are only a piece of the puzzle. And we have sources of information I haven’t told you about, so don’t ask. We know there’s more going on on a larger scale than the Hadarak. And Davis thinks we got one shot to survive.”

  “Proton torpedo?”

  “I wish it was that simple. He says we have to go out to the other galaxies and take the fight against the darkside there. We conquer or we die. And if we travel beyond the Milky Way we can’t take very many people with us. We’ll have to use the local races we find.”

  “So no Human colonies?”

  “Too much baggage. And too few Archons and Mavericks.”

  “So the Director went and created a better race out of our top non-Archons? And why Ironnsey?”

  “To give us a refinement that only lot of training can produce. The Clones’ genetics will be locked for reproduction, so when they get laid and have kids, they come out exactly the same. No updates, no downgrades. They will be born the same everywhere, in all the galaxies. They will be the common link.”

  “Ambitious,” Elena said hesitantly. “So why are you bummed?”

  “Who said I was bummed? You asked what was wrong.”

  “Same thing, and you still haven’t answered.”

  “We protect a lot of people, Elena. And more keep flooding to us,” he said, pointing out the windows before them where far down below the tower they were in were a variety of ships landing on a huge pad so wide you couldn’t see the end of it all the way to the horizon, and each of those ships were from races that Jax and Elena now oversaw from other galaxies, with this planet being the capitol for the offshoot factions they were grooming. “We put ourselves between them and the danger, but there are too many to shield if we get overwhelmed. Do you have any idea what the carnage would be like?”

  “If what?”

  “If we’re all busy fighting and other enemies slip in and these people have to fight for themselves? Imagine if we’re all fighting the Hadarak and the Neofan decide to invade, more than just House Atriark. What if all of them decided to hit us while the best of us are tied up elsewhere. How would our worlds do?”

  “Far better than they would if we had never trained them.”

  “Don’t dodge. What would happen?”

  “They’d win against low to medium enemies…but get beat by the higher end ones.”

  “The more population we gain the more we have to defend, and even our highly administered worlds are packed with population.”

  “With limits built in.”

  “But still far too much to evacuate.”

  “You told me you went through this before, when the Vargemma wrecked Earth.”

  “And I feel it worse now that Davis is predicting it. He doesn’t exaggerate to make a point.”

  “Too many enemies to fight, not enough time?”

  “Why are you always so chipper?”

  Elena shrugged. “No fun being a downer, so if things are going to go bad, might as well not be brought down with it.”

  “He knows we can’t protect them anymore. Not from a group attack against us. And the biggest help we can be is by leading from a place like this,” Jax said, gesturing to the room. “The days when we could turn the tide in single combat are long gone. It’s almost a joke. All these powers we have. And they’re useless for the war we’re going to have to fight. It’s going to depend on the masses, not the Archons, taking action.”

  “But that frees us up to do the special stuff that nobody else can do.”

  “But that stuff won’t stop a stampede.”

  “What kind of threats are you expecting to come from another galaxy? Won’t they be limited in what they can bring here?”

  “Are the Apocalypse Monsters limited? Now imagine a dozen worse than them, all lining up to take us on. We’ve grown so big we can’t put ourselves at the front of all the fights, and now Davis is saying our only hope is to grow bigger.”

  “I don’t see that as a problem. More of a blessing.”

  Jax squinted at her. “How?”

  “By taking some of the responsibility off our shoulders. You want a few Spartans holding a pass against an army by themselves, where you can employ your single combat skills, or battlemeld. If the V’kit’no’sat beatdown we took is going to happen again, you’re not going to be able to stop it from startin
g by standing up front and blocking it. But once the chaos erupts everywhere, we will be able to go to a planet and single handedly turn the tide of battle while the rest of the galaxy doesn’t even know what’s happening. If comms go down, everything becomes local and small again. And in those dark times, Archons will shine the greatest.”

  “But it’s our responsibility to stop those dark times from happening.”

  “Have you ever been able to?” Elena countered.

  Jax gulped hard. “Against some threats, yes.”

  “And the big ones?”

  “Why do I suddenly feel like I’m the apprentice?”

  “Because your sour ass needed a lecture. Lucky I was here,” she said, raising her chin and turning her attention to the windows and away from him.

  “Easy, snips,” he said, drawing a grin from her, for she’d always seen Ahsoka Tano as her personal hero. “You’re right that we’re at our best when things are at their worst. But our job is to prevent that from happening, if possible.”

  “But you crave it. You want to be needed again, as the Master Chief on Halo or Neo in the Matrix. Reclaimer work has its charm, but there’s nothing as fulfilling as cutting up droids with a lightsaber, right?”

  “We all want that. But our duty is to go where we’re needed the most.”

  “Temporarily.”

  “Doesn’t feel like temporarily. We’re fighting against enemies that can’t be conquered or captured, only killed. That’s not our way, and we’re being forced to fight it. And then what? An even bigger war before we can catch our breath? Eliminating the Hadarak from this galaxy will take a very, very long time.”

  “Ok, someone really needs a vacation,” Elena declared.

  Jax crossed his arms over his chest. “Kent’s fault for bailing.”

  “Yeah, let’s blame Kent,” she said sarcastically.

  “Fine, then where am I going wrong?” he said, turning to look at her directly, with her abandoning her gaze out the window to match his eye line.