Star Force: Internecine (SF55) Read online

  1

  April 2, 2553

  Ezreal System (Zeta Region)

  Karmath

  Leote crept around the alleyway, shrouded in a dull brown cloak that hid his combat armor from view…not that there were that many people around to see. It was night and a few hours before the traffic flows would start manifesting themselves for the coming day. Better sections of the city had day-round traffic but the slum the Kiritas was currently in had a much more lazy routine, though there were always a handful of people milling about in some various stages of depravity.

  He blended in well enough, though there were no other Kiritas or Kiritak on the planet. At least not in this regional zone belonging to the Mesoni. They operated a fairly loose society with a large number of other races intermingling with their populations and making up about 55% of the inhabitants, so Leote’s small form wouldn’t attract too much attention so long as he kept his head hidden. Kiritas were well known in the ADZ for their connection to Star Force, mainly due to the Kiritak that were deployed across dozens of star systems doing all kinds of work directly for Star Force as opposed to the Kiritas who were a semi-independent member nation within the overall empire.

  Leote and the Kiritas kept to themselves for the most part, with the Archons not wanting them to play a role in the fighting on either war front due to the fact that their technology wasn’t up to par with the other races. It wasn’t for lack of trying, and Star Force had given them many upgrades…but through lessons rather than gifts, forcing them to advance on their own rather than simply be handed tech they didn’t understand. When it had been heard that Star Force had given the Hycre and Protovic advanced weapons tech some of the Kiritas had openly complained, though most loyal ones like Leote knew there was always a reason behind what their patron Humans did.

  The truth was the Kiritas weren’t ready, and independence did have its drawbacks. Kiritak were already fighting in some small theatres because they’d been born and raised as Kiritak as opposed to being born Kiritas and transitioning over to Star Force service. Still, those Kiritak fighting were doing so in defensive rolls, for as far as Leote knew they had no line combat units with Kiritak in them.

  Both the Kiritas and Kiritak were support players within Star Force and the ADZ, but for those like Leote that didn’t mean no combat…just not the full scale invasion scenarios others were having to deal with. Leote had seen more than 120 years of clandestine missions and small scale combat, having first been part of the Kiritas military then transferred to their special ops units that, unlike their line troops, actually went offworld and did something.

  And they’d been doing a lot in recent years as the ADZ population continued to blossom…for with that growth there were always shady characters taking advantage of others and someone had to stop them. With the Archons and Star Force’s line troops busy fighting the big wars, units like Leote’s got to pick up the slack and fight the small ones in their stead. That was no small task and Leote was grateful for it. The more the Kiritas got to fight the better it would be for his people…despite the fact that most of them weren’t up to his level of skill.

  This wasn’t the first alley he’d staked out, but it was the first time he’d worked directly with an Archon and that put an added emphasis on not screwing up. Right now the others were inside the building complex he was creeping around the outside of, covering a possible escape route for those inside if they bolted when the Archons went in. The other 7 members of his unit were likewise spaced around the perimeter at places the Archons expected the Compact might flee from and he was here to make sure that they didn’t get away again.

  They’d been on their trail for months ever since they’d interrogated their first captive and began the chase. A shipping invoice trail had led them to a courier who had placed the order and was part of a quasi-military organization that had numerous divisions, mostly legit and commercial, but with a not so public presence in the shady regions of the ADZ…and a much larger one that Star Force had realized existed. Leote’s team had hit two previous facilities, both with some of their people managing to get away.

  Enough had been caught, or computer records found, that the chase was able to continue across multiple star systems leading them here to what they suspected was a major hub of their illicit activities. The Archons and the Knight were going in, with the Kiritas being deployed as a safety net to catch some or all of the potential fleers if they managed to somehow avoid the heavy hitters.

  Leote had been on station for more than three hours, getting his cover established and becoming part of the scenery as he alternated between sitting and standing against a wall, making himself look like the others that had nowhere else to go. It was sad, given everything that Star Force had done for the Mesoni and other races, that they would run such a poorly organized society. The freedom that many sought here was the freedom to misbehave, and with that came the class of rundown, trodden upon ‘support’ that the rest of the society stood upon.

  This never would have happened on a Star Force world, and at least the nearby outposts along the border strips gave these people a possible escape, but once again it was made clear to Leote that life in Star Force was not the norm in the galaxy. Many of the Kiritas took for granted the lives they had and didn’t realize how messed up everyone else was, which was why Leote and others like him were eager to do everything they could to help Star Force fight its wars, on any front, so when the Archons called he and the others had eagerly responded.

  And tonight it looked like he was going to make himself useful, for one of the side entrances about 50 meters down the alley suddenly opened and a Rama came out, turning to the left and plodding down the opposite direction. The big, beefy biped was literally all chest and arm muscle, with short, tree trunk-like legs that Leote knew wouldn’t let him outrun the Kiritas so he watched for a pair of seconds to see if anyone else was following him out. When there wasn’t he threw off his cloak and sprinted after him, his armor making small dull clicks on the dry, grimy ground as he scurried down the alley, tail swinging side to side behind him in stride, and caught up to the big guy about 10 meters shy of him getting to the main street.

  Before he could get within physical contact range the Rama turned around and swung a huge four-fingered fist at him, but Leote lithely hopped over it, kicking off the giant’s shoulder and falling behind his back. As he dropped the Kiritas reached out and stuck a small, hockey puck-sized object onto his back, then rolled across the ground and sprinted away from the next fist to fly, getting a couple of meters of distance before triggering the handheld remote for the stun mine.

  With the trigger press the stun energy surged out through the physical contact, soaking through the Rama’s clothing like a stinger would, and tipping the hulking mass over as he fell unconscious to the ground.

  Leote hopped back over to him and nudged his head with his armored foot, making sure the mine had delivered enough stun, for on a race of his size all that bulk had a way of eating up and negating the energy. The Rama didn’t move, but the Kiritas jabbed him with a tiny stun stick anyway, making sure he was going to be out a while, then took up guard position until one of the Archons could eventually get to him, for there was no way Leote was going to be able to drag this one off without an anti-grav lifter.

  Galia dragged the Rama by the arm back inside the building to the private lounge where the other prisoners were gathered, not even bothering to try and pick the big guy up and put him on her shoulders. She knew she could, for he wasn’t that heavy, but it would leave her vulnerable and she didn’t feel like trusting the local denizens that much. After she got him inside the Knight deposited him next to the last four individuals she’d claimed from the
Kiritas, then headed back out to get the 5th of what was 12 reported captures…with a few having slipped their grip again.

  This time, though, they had some 40+ captives and hopefully that was going to be enough to get the answers they needed.

  As Galia walked out Donn knelt next to a Drepwen with his exposed fingertip on his forehead, probing deeply into the unconscious mind as he had been doing the others. There was only so much information he could get when they were asleep, but he was using it to sift through the lot and figure out who would need a thorough interrogation later. Right now they were in the middle of a raid on a world that they hadn’t announced their presence to, and while technically Archons could go anywhere within the ADZ, slums like this didn’t take well to following rules, meaning that this wasn’t a safe place to stay and chitchat.

  And even the governments of a lot of member races didn’t hold to that policy, though they’d initially agreed to it upon being given territorial slots as they fled the lizards and others, giving rise to a number of previous conflicts when Archons had gone in to investigate or put the smack down on someone who deserved it. Star Force wasn’t about to back down under public pressure, and routinely asserted the agreed upon rules despite the pushback. Donn wasn’t too sure how this particular region worked, but he knew the Scionate and Lacvamat had gotten extremely territorial given that they held systems with no Star Force presence.

  The Archons usually asked permission, just to be nice, but if they refused they’d go in anyway…and Donn had had a great deal of experience doing just that with Crimson Team, though most of their ops were not public knowledge and had them going in and getting out before any of the locals even knew they were there, much like this mission. Any forewarning to the local authorities might have tipped off the Compact that they were coming, so Donn had expected to have some local security troops showing up on the doorstep to deal with the ‘interlopers’ in response to an alarm.

  That hadn’t happened yet and the Kiritas would give him a heads up before anyone else could get inside, though the complex was quite large and the 8 of them couldn’t cover all the entrances, just the main ones. Donn figured he had a few minutes at least to do some probing and he wasn’t going to waste a second of it. He needed answers, badly, for the Scionate and Lacvamat were already fighting a civil war within the ADZ over this attack with several others on the edge of getting involved, though Star Force and the Protovic had bullied them into staying out of it…for the moment, but there were numerous secretive treaties between the varied races within the ADZ, not all of which Star Force knew of, with a lot of plot lines going down now that the real fighting had started and it was obvious that the major powers were too tied up on the fronts to do much about it.

  Like Davis had said, he needed the truth to work the situation with, and Donn knew that assignment was up to him and him alone given how shorthanded they’d gotten trying to reinforce the Skarron front. Reserve units kept in Epsilon Eridani and Sol had been called up, taking a gamble that those two systems wouldn’t get hit anytime soon, and sent to plug some of the holes along with the Clans doing the same and stripping off a lot of their homeguard units, as many as they dared anyway, and sending them out to the front.

  In theory the Core should be out of danger, but Donn and the others knew better than to leave their backdoor open just in case someone was bold enough to hit it. Right now though it looked like they couldn’t play cautious and still hold the front so they were going to leave it slightly ajar and hope no one noticed.

  When Donn accessed the Rama’s mind he got a mess of thoughts he didn’t understand, for their race was one that didn’t originate in the ADZ. They were native to a region below Protovic territory, with only a scattering of their individuals migrating up to a number of worlds. He’d never encountered one before, aside in passing, and as a result had to spend extra time trying to make a mental connection, focusing on the trade language that they both spoke.

  Getting lost in the process he didn’t notice Brad approach, with the Archon startling him as he put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Got something over here,” he said as Donn flinched.

  “Oh?”

  “Check the hotty,” Brad said, referencing the one Human in the lot.

  Donn walked over to the brunette, who was casually attractive, and pressed his fingers against her forehead, not to increase efficiency but in order to create a link given the latent Ikrid blocks that she didn’t even know she possessed. It didn’t take long for Donn to find what Brad had referenced…a link to a command structure, in which this woman was a handler, so to speak, for the orders coming into this facility from their superiors.

  “Take her,” Donn said, heading back to the Rama. “I’ll get back to you on the others.”

  Brad picked up the woman over his shoulder, took her out of the room and through the facility, eventually coming to a roof access corridor that he climbed, making mental contact with the Kiritas up top who was waiting for him when he emerged on the roof. The Human dropped his treasonous kin on the ground and headed back down, leaving Jorfi to deal with her.

  The Kiritas pulled the squishy Human over his shoulders and carried her across the grimy building top to where they had a mantis stashed between two higher sections that hid its silhouette from view against the semi-lit cityscape. He took her inside and gave her an extra tap from his stun stick to make sure she wouldn’t wake before binding her wrists and ankles and leaving her there, the first of what would be four snares on the night.

  The rest of the captives were quickly interrogated for what little they knew then left behind as the Archons, Knight, and Kiritas eventually all came up and boarded the mantis with Donn flying them out and across the Mesoni airspace until they hit one of the neutral Star Force strips of land that gridded the planet. There they came to a ‘clean’ city, leaving the depravity behind and landing in a well-organized and friendly spaceport, shifting their captives over to Star Force security for safekeeping.

  Then Donn dismissed the others to free time and went with the captives, intent on doing the full interrogations himself and needing at least a few days to do it. Meanwhile the other Archons would be following up the data traces they’d pulled from the computers in the complex. Until they had their next breadcrumb to follow they’d be staying put, with the emphasis now on Donn and his mental interrogation skills.

  So far the Compact had operated with decent security, keeping only certain individuals aware of what they needed to know and offering no possibility of breaches…but what this organization did not know was that the Archons had the ability to pull up memories, including faces and other obscure facts that the individual who observed them might not even had known of. It was often from these innocuous tidbits that they’d be able to pull traces in the local databases and at least narrow down what they were looking for, but in this case that wasn’t going to be necessary.

  The Compact had never expected anyone would be able to be traced this far back, and between the Human and the Critel he was able to break open their quarry. Both Compact members had been in contact with a medtech that had been in the same facility and overseeing the creation of the contaminated gel in a small test set. The full creation had happened in another facility that Donn and his team had found earlier, but it was here that they’d been given the tools and instructions necessary in order to complete production in a ‘safe’ external site.

  That medtech was a Gnar, and given the memories Donn was reviewing it had also been the bacteria’s creator…or at least involved in the creation and not just a handler, given the snippets of verbal chitchat he was recovering. Not all of it was there to be found and Donn knew he wasn’t getting a full picture because of his limited skills, but because he had two minds to search through who had overseen the same instructions he was able to gleam a lot more detail with the binary pull than otherwise, giving him information about the Gnar that hopefully would be able to lead them to him.

  That information, coup
led with security footage recovered from the area surrounding the complex and local city eventually gave the Star Force analysts a potential identity, which they sent over to Donn’s team a couple of weeks later after an extensive electronic hunt.

  The Gnar’s name was Yeveni Sammish Veen, and she was not only a medtech but one of the senior experts on the ADZ’s ‘Expeditionary Medical Team’ or EMTs, which was not a Star Force-led organization, but one put together by a number of other races to track down and combat various diseases and conditions resulting from the abnormally high mixing of the races that was having the downside of transferring one race’s ‘germs’ to the others and often with unpredictable results, some of which were lethal.

  The EMTs sought out such cases and developed countermeasures, essentially being a good will effort that Star Force approved of without any interaction, and one which contained some of the most experienced medical professionals outside of Star Force.

  Donn didn’t know what that meant in terms of the big picture, but to have someone so noteworthy involved in this sent up a warning flag in his mind, along with the feeling that they were about to get to the bottom of this…so long as he could get to Veen before she had a chance to disappear.

  2

  April 19, 2553

  Solar System

  Earth

  Jason woke up…and immediately wished he hadn’t. His head as pounding but it was the rest of his body that was on fire. He’d had Bo stun him so he could get some rest, but now that he’d come out of it the pain hadn’t subsided and for a moment it seemed worse…but that was just because he wasn’t mentally fighting it. As soon as he fully woke up everything got back in line and his internal defenses reestablished, with him weathering the pain like a champ…and it was that internal clenching up that he had been trying to circumvent with the stun, for while it was active he couldn’t sleep…at all.