Star Force: Reclamation (SF91) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  The Bsidd nodded, a Human expression that they’d picked up long ago. “Do you want the crates emptied or left intact?”

  “Open them and arrange for baskets so the H’kar know what it is they’re carrying. When you don’t see it, it’s easy to imagine it’s anything other than someone’s body parts, cooked and prepped however they may be.”

  “I don’t understand how that is possible.”

  “Fortunately you never lived in a civilization that ate meat. I did. You’re trained and tricked into thinking it’s food, and often berated if you ask any questions to the contrary. I know how to handle this situation, trust me.”

  “We always trust our Archon.”

  Flynn affectionately tapped the Bsidd on one of its many mandibles. “We’ll get these guys broken in, but we don’t compromise in order to do it. They’re joining us, not the other way around. They do it 100% our way. If you or the others get any grief over that, let me know. I’ve developed a talent for skull bashing that leaves the target alive but wiser in the aftermath.”

  The Bsidd laughed, a single huff as he moved on to get to work carrying out his orders. Meanwhile Flynn accessed the comm system via his helmet and put a call into his Clan Cybertron fleet in orbit.

  “Captain Menti, I need you to run a message for me to the H’kar relay line at Winma.”

  2

  December 2, 3402

  Solar System

  Earth

  “Oh god,” Lara-379 said, dropping to the training mat with her hand on her head.

  “What?” Aaron asked. “I didn’t think I hit you that hard.”

  “No…” she said, grinding her teeth as Aaron finally felt around what little of her mind was accessible beyond the Ikrid blocks and caught the telltale instability of an ascension prompt.

  “How many tier 2s do you have?” he asked suspiciously.

  “26,” she said, looking up at him with worry in her eyes, “and I’m not letting this one go.”

  Aaron closed his for a moment, then blinked and looked at her again. “Regenerator is on the way. I’ll help you all I can,” he said, holding up his hand in front of her.

  Lara grabbed it and slapped his palm against her shoulder before dropping to all fours on the ground and looking down at the mat in the advanced training group’s private facility. She and the others had been working towards this for centuries. To date only one tier 2 psionic still evaded them, Mebvat, and she figured this was it…or a much more powerful tier 3. They were still stuck at 4 of 8 there, so either way whatever this was it was going to be a breakthrough.

  Cascade effect was a huge concern for everyone in the advanced training group and Lara was going to stretch out this ascension as long as she could, but she wasn’t going to release it. That was a very bad idea but if there was a regenerator on the way she could choose to suffer whatever pain would ensue in order to give the Archons access to this new psionic. They could be patient then, but she was going to get this one now…and she knew she was going to regret that decision, but she stubbornly pushed ahead anyway.

  With Aaron’s physical touch bypassing her Ikrid blocks, his presence in her mind provided a stabilizing rod that she centered herself on and kept the instability spinning around it at a more or less controlled rate. She lost herself in the moment and ended up spending hours on the mat without realizing the time or sensing the others gathering around her. All she could see was the soft padding beneath her when she bothered to open her eyes, and Aaron was the only person whose presence she could sense as the hurricane of adjustments her mind/body was trying to make before the flash growth clouded out everything else.

  And this was exactly why ascensions had to be voluntary. If this happened in the field she’d be incapacitated, so the ability to shut it down was vitally needed. If she was prudent she’d shut it down here and now when her control began to slip, then wait for the ascension to randomly return in the coming days, weeks, or perhaps years…but Lara wasn’t having any of that. She’d get herself as prepped as possible now, with Aaron’s help holding her focus far longer than she could have done otherwise, but when the choice was forced upon her she was going to go for it.

  Aaron knew that too, so he did everything he could to help center her without squashing the instability altogether. It kept changing as the minutes passed, but eventually it started to wither and he felt Lara begin stoking it. Her efforts stalled a bit longer but he sensed it was about to shut down on its own unless she went all in…which is exactly what she did when the second gen thought she couldn’t hold it any longer.

  Aaron let go and stepped back, then a moment later Lara fell all the way down on the mat and began convulsing in pain so obvious he didn’t even need to feel the waves of it coming off her. She screamed multiple times out loud in addition to the torrent of telepathic pain flowing off her. Aaron blocked it out of his mind for the most part and just waited, unable to do anything to help her as she thrashed around on the mat for a long two minutes before finally passing out and lying still.

  He knelt down beside her and grabbed her bare arm, connecting to her and finding that her heartrate was barely registering. A quick look at her status told him that she’d gone too far, and had it not been for the Uzti healing upgrade she already possessed it might very well have killed her. Right now he could see massive damage throughout her body as bone fragments had been sent out like shrapnel into the surrounding tissues, and he knew on instinct that wasn’t supposed to have happened. The files in the pyramid hadn’t mentioned this possible side effect and he knew something had gone terribly wrong.

  Her brain was also damaged, for her skull had imploded with tiny slivers of bone. They hadn’t gone too deep, but Aaron could tell that she’d received permanent damage even as the new bones that had been formed in the process gleamed like gold from his mental perspective, but their price of acquisition had been too high…and for some reason Aaron doubted that delaying the ascension would have helped to prevent this.

  “Now,” Aaron said to the medtech that was standing by.

  He didn’t hesitate, slapping the shiny regenerator onto her neck and seeing it melt into action instantly. From Aaron’s point of view he saw the tiny tendrils expanding out into her body, sensing and repairing the damage done, and with each one that contacted a piece of shrapnel he saw the bone just melt away as it was disassembled and the mass applied elsewhere in her body as needed.

  Bit by bit the shards were removed and the surrounding tissues repaired, then the device flowed back into its normal shape and dropped off Lara’s neck, though she was still unconscious.

  “Med bay,” Aaron said, picking her up and carrying her in his arms. “I need full scans and documentation.”

  “They screwed up,” Vortison said regretfully as he studied a wall full of very small data entries in his lab as Lara slept elsewhere. “There’s no way around it. This is clearly a cascade malfunction and no amount of prep work is going to fix it.”

  “Meaning it’ll happen to us if we share?” Aaron asked.

  “Most definitely. A padawan might avoid it if it’s one of the first psionics attained, but all of you have far too much tissue where it’s not supposed to be. The Jumat nodules within her bones are primarily responsible for the fracturing, but even if you reverse the order I’m positive that there are going to be other consequences that the Zak’de’ron did not take into account.”

  “How will the Jumat develop if the Mebvat comes first?”

  “I would hope that is something they foresaw given that a tier 2 is expected to come before a tier 3, but my biggest concern with that is the new Jumat tissue acting like a pressure wedge and splitting the bones. It’s a small possibility, but after seeing this I’m not counting on the Zak’de’ron’s wisdom any longer.”

  “Could time be an issue?”

  “Because you’re attaining them faster? No. This is straight up bad planning. Maybe they never tested it in a subject or were going to wait and monitor as Zen’zat adv
anced and make modifications when problems occur, but this genetic package has flaws in it. There’s no denying that now.”

  “Damn it,” Aaron said, rubbing his chin as he paced around the lab. After all this time he and the other trailblazers had come to trust in the scientific wizardry of the V’kit’no’sat and especially the Zak’de’ron, but it seemed they weren’t deserving of it any more…which was probably due to Star Force becoming a peer and beginning to peel back the perceptual curtain of invincibility.

  “Or maybe they did,” Aaron added as a thought occurred to him. “With their own Zen’zat.”

  Vortison raised an eyebrow. “Leaving the standard V’kit’no’sat versions with the original code and no updates? That’s conceivable, but I don’t think they’re going to be interested in sharing with us.”

  “No, we’re on our own. Can you fix this?”

  “Given time,” Vortison said carefully, “yes, I think I can. I’m close to being able to trigger the remaining tier 3s manually, Lara just beat me to the remaining tier 2.”

  “Oh?” Aaron said, with that being news to him.

  “I don’t want to make mistakes, so I’m being careful and patient, but I am getting close. Fixing this current problem is another matter entirely. I’m going to have to write new code.”

  Aaron knew what that meant, and it wasn’t good for the short term.

  5 weeks later…

  Lara jumped up over a 4 meter high wall using a combination of her Kex and Yetu, just sliding her body over the top with nothing touching save for a guiding hand as she flipped over and landed in a crouch on the far side. She stumbled a bit, but managed to get into a run fairly quick and dove into a chute that led into a slide that took her down two levels before dumping her out into pool that she had to swim across, half of which was underground with no air available above, forcing her to hold her breath.

  She came out dripping wet but burst back into a run and began working her way through moving obstacles that forced her to use her agility and quick reflexes. Lara messed up once and got punched backward two meters, but she recovered and got back at it as if nothing had occurred. Aaron was waiting for her at the finish line of the obstacle course and as soon as she slapped her hand down on the finish pedestal her calm demeanor vanished as she summoned up a Jumat blast on her right arm and threw it against the sidewall with an audible ‘whack’ that cracked the material ever so slightly.

  “Aaron, fuck this! It’s gone, not suppressed, gone!”

  “I know,” he said calmly, which only seemed to elicit a backlash from her as she pitted him with a hateful stare.

  “And the worst part is, apparently I didn’t do it to myself. If Vortison is right, I was screwed before the ascension even started. I lost 400 years of training, Aaron. 400 years!” she yelled, but he knew her anger wasn’t with him, and soon the rage reversed itself into despair and she collapsed to the ground with tears welling up.

  He walked over and sat down next to her, sliding an arm around her waist and holding her snug against him. “You took the hit for us. We should have got to it first.”

  Lara sniffed. “So a second gen finally beats you…and this is the reward I get.”

  Aaron closed his eyes as he locked down his own emotions. She didn’t need any more bouncing around inside her than her own right now. The damage done to her body had set her back considerably, even after being healed, but it was the damage to her brain had done the worst of it. Tissue could be regrown, but the skills and knowledge in it could not. The parts of her brain that had been torn by the bone shards were now blank and cutting into her skills in random places. She could relearn what she’d lost, but it was going to take time. A lot of time.

  “Next time you see a dragon, feel free to punch him.”

  She welled up more and leaned into his shoulder. “It’s not fair. I can’t even pass the titan trials. I’m mage 478. ViLord 29 to mage 478,” she said with a teary cringe. “And I can’t even blame myself. It was a damn genetic booby trap. That’s not…fair.”

  She wasn’t complaining, Aaron knew. She was just venting what she was feeling and giving her the opportunity was about all he could do for her. Aaron could understand what was going on inside, for it was the same thing that he’d be experiencing had he gotten to Mebvat before her. All that time, all those workouts, all those battlefield missions…if they were a square of experience, for Lara her square was now filled with shotgun holes. Some of her abilities were still ViLord level, but others had fallen so far it had pulled her ranking down all the way to mage, for the Archon levels were comprehensive, not additive.

  Worse still, she didn’t have any unaffected subsets. Each of the main 5 divisions was compromised and a lot of the underlying categories were as well. Even her balance had been affected, which Aaron hoped she’d recover more quickly, but he could tell that wasn’t happening either. Her workout had been glitchy, and she was probably going to remain glitchy for a very long time going forward. Her body and mind were no longer the same, and the path back to her former ViLord form would have to be a different one…and one that none of the others had traveled before.

  Sure, some of them had been seriously injured and lost levels that they had to regain, but nothing like this had ever occurred. They’d been physical weaknesses, not mental gaps. One moment Lara would be operating as a ViLord, then something would change and she’d be back on a lower level. That was probably what was bothering her the most. She had a foot in both worlds and was spanning titan level at the same time, not allowing her to be able to root herself and start climbing again.

  “It could have been worse,” Aaron said, feeling her anger return, but he soothed it away with a brush of her forehead. “Listen to me. You got hit hard, but it could have been a lot worse. The Regenerator could have put you back together if you died, but you could have been all the way back to civie level. Even maturia level. It could have been a lot worse, and I’m glad you’ve held on to as much as you have. You don’t have to be thankful for that, but I am.”

  “No need for you to feel guilty.”

  Aaron shrugged. “We’re supposed to figure everything out and pass it on to you guys.”

  She laughed a sad snort. “So I get fragged and now I’m my own version of trailblazer?”

  “You’re going to have to be to recover from this. There’s no training precedent to pattern off of.”

  “Figures,” she said, hiding her face in his shoulder again.

  “I know it wasn’t your choice, but thank you,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “Thanks for taking the hit and sparing us from it.”

  “It’s not fair…” she muttered and kept randomly repeating as she continued to cry. “It’s not fair.”

  3

  April 3, 3428

  Denichor System (H’kar Region)

  Karrach

  Flynn read the status reports coming in from the Nexus half of H’kar territory detailing the problems in the region. He had Archons there overseeing the slow conversion of those worlds and the training programs they’d begun to set up to prep volunteers before they were transferred back here, and from what they were telling him there was something major going on in The Nexus. Support patrols had been pulled back from the region entirely…though that wasn’t unexpected…but the lawlessness that had sprung up in the interim was rather shocking.

  Flynn had sent a mixed H’kar/Bsidd fleet out to begin reestablishing the patrols and putting some order to the chaos, but there was too much territory for them to cover. They’d secure the areas around H’kar systems but the greater region was lost, and not just to one faction, but hundreds of them working with various agendas that The Nexus had suppressed to some extent, with only now Flynn realizing just how much they’d been holding together, whether through real strength or sheer intimidation.

  Whatever the cause, once they’d officially withdrawn from the area now that the H’kar were no longer members, a stretch of some 800 lightyears long and 400 wide was compl
etely out of control. Piracy was rampant and several local wars had broken out. Flynn knew that something needed to be done but he didn’t have the resources to do it. The bulk of the H’kar fleet was still fighting lizards along the inside border and reclaiming worlds, and should he redirect them to secure the surrounding territories he’d only be extending one problem in exchange for suppressing another.

  In order to deal with this anarchy Star Force would have to come in and start annexing systems or negotiating/leveraging deals. Davis had warned him something like this could be coming and told him to focus on solidifying the H’kar’s position, but it was the news leaking into the H’kar territory through previous Nexus contacts that had him the most worried.

  One of the Nexus member races had lost a major battle resulting in a chunk of 40 or so star systems going into open rebellion. The Meintre had formerly owned one of those systems but it had fallen in a very bloody battle to the Verrma, one of the races that existed within The Nexus’s domain without being part of that alliance or under their rule. For whatever reason they’d decided to strike and had done so effectively, taking out the primary control rod in that region and sweeping up the rest with little effort.

  Worst of all was the effect on the surrounding region, for it was beginning to fall into chaos like what was happening near the H’kar, telling Flynn that the locals didn’t think The Nexus would be coming back to oust the Verrma. That, or if they did they’d be so busy with them not to notice or care about anyone else.

  The reports continued on to mention instability scattered across other parts of The Nexus. Nothing so large as to take it down, but disturbing news none the less and an incessant reminder as to why he needed to solidify the H’kar into a Star Force stabilizing rod for the immediate region and to send the firm message that they were not going to be as tolerant as The Nexus when it came to bad behavior on the part of their neighbors.