Star Force: Internecine (SF55) Read online

  Jason rolled out of bed, feeling every fiber of his body complaining loudly and with needles, and looked at the clock.

  Two hours and 18 minutes…that was better than nothing, but not nearly the sleep he needed. Deciding to take what progress had hopefully been made and put it to use he stood up and walked over to the nearby mirror and stared at his short blonde hair and ran his fingers through it, undoing a smashed section from his pillow. His gaze dropped down to his own eyes and he stared at his reflection, reminding himself that the pain was worth it as the twinkling grey of his irises attested to his recent ascension to tier 3…and not just tier 3, but one of the abilities that the V’kit’no’sat Zen’zat had never discovered…at least not by the point when the pyramid lost contact with their data network.

  Kex was an ability that the V’kit’no’sat knew of, one of the mysterious 5 that the Zen’zat had never achieved and as such there was no data on it in the pyramid, leaving only Kara’s dragon knowledge for him to work off of. The full body modification made sense, but aside from a little hopping around Jason hadn’t been able to do anything other than fight the pain. He’d got the ability on the first try, which was probably why he was in such agony. Like when Bo got Sav, this was Jason’s third day of transition and the process was neither fast nor pleasant.

  But those eyes attested to significant power, and even as his body complained it now held an impressive new strength. Not the processing power that Bo possessed, nor the concussive energy that Morgan wielded, but an entire revamping of his musculature and connective tissue, including an alteration to his skeleton that essentially gave him the Spartan treatment from Halo…only with far more impressive results.

  According to Kara the strength was merely a byproduct of the process, which was designed as an agility upgrade. Jason hadn’t been able to test it yet and wasn’t going to today either, but he was able to jump insanely high. His vertical had at least tripled, and that was him only half trying. He now had a Jedi jump, at least, and was interested in finding out what else he could do, but right now he was just going to try for a short, slow run to get his body into some semblance of rhythm.

  He pulled on some shorts and running shoes and headed for the track, aching with each step as he walked through the restricted training section of Atlantis where he and his team had been at it for the past 7 years…with ample results. He was now Padawan level 34 and top Archon, two levels ahead of Aaron, and they’d isolated some 7 ascension triggers outside of battlemeld. Vermaire was a bigger beast than ever, with him still able to beat the crap out of any Archon one on one and hold his own against 2, but when he threw in his own developing psionics he was truly a problem for others to try and deal with.

  Jason’s psionics let him own him, however, so most of their duels were non-psionic, but put him up against 100 veteran commandos and he’d tear through them with ease. Vermaire was literally a juggernaut and still the standard bearer for the Knights, which Jason hoped could at least attain half of what the Black Knight had accomplished.

  He was also very glad that he was here in the training group, because he gave the Archons the challenge they needed by beating the crap out of them time and again, just like in the old days, and they responded to that challenge in a myriad of ways, occasionally finding a way to take him down, then he would adapt and counter it with the end result being them both improving at a remarkable rate. His size, however, was becoming a huge asset.

  Jason and the others had always known that was the case, which was why they’d created the Knights with the intent of using the V’kit’no’sat physical enhancements to beef them up to the 7 foot tall range, with a myriad of other upgrades along with it. What he hadn’t realized was how much a larger brain helped boost the psionics. In theory was one thing, but having the Black Knight Fornax and generate a field larger and more potent than any Jason had ever seen before was chilling.

  And it was chilling because Jason had had the ability far longer than Vermaire had, yet he had already surpassed him in raw strength…not duration or accuracy, but in terms of raw power he had more because he had more brain tissue generating it, essentially a bigger emitter than Jason would ever have. The trailblazers got stronger with time, but he would never have as much tissue as a Knight did…and the Zen’zat were all Knight size.

  Above and beyond that, the V’kit’no’sat were larger still and had so much brain tissue due to their size that their psionics were going to be difficult to combat. He knew there were ways to go about doing it, especially the battlemeld techniques that allowed two or more individuals to essentially share their tissue and amplify their abilities, but Jason was realizing that their psionics were really only crowd control for low level or small enemies and not a true threat to the big guys.

  Which was why there was tier 3, with the change in eyes to match. Bigger size had its disadvantages too, and number one of those was agility. Vermaire was fast, mainly due to his endless training, but his higher mass required more power to redirect because of his momentum and the same was true of larger opponents…which was why the Archons had decided not to use the physical enhancements that the Knights did. They wanted their original small size and created the Knights so Star Force would have the best of both worlds.

  Now, go up against an Era’tran and you were in trouble, but as far as small movements go the Archon would have the advantage. Boost that advantage high enough and you could theoretically evade them forever…though takedown power would still be lacking.

  Jumat was that takedown power, and Kex was the agility. Throw in Sav as an upgrade to both and you’d be at another level entirely, not to mention the other tier 3s.

  But without any data on Kex or the other undiscovered psionics it was still a question mark as to what exactly Jason could do with it…and it was quite a surprise when he finally got to the track and painfully started to jog that he found his stride to be completely messed up. It was like his body had been switched out for a new one and his timing was completely off.

  But it was a fast off…with him covering ground awkwardly, but quickly.

  He hadn’t started the timer, so when he finished a couple of laps he stopped and painfully stretched out a bit, with his body still adamant that moving was a bad idea. He stepped back up to the start line and triggered a holographic pacing icon with his normal workout speed and hit the start button, with it shooting out ahead of him at speed while it took him a moment to accelerate.

  He was tired…very, very tired, but he kept pace with it easily for a mile before he stopped. The lack of sleep was really grinding on him now, on top of everything else, but his excitement overrode that all and he readjusted his holographic tracker to match his personal record for the mile, which was a 2:24 on the track. The turns slowed him down a bit as compared to a straight line run outdoors or on some of the linear tracks, but this was the one he had access to in their training area and he was going to make the most of it. He set the program and started it, taking off at race speed and waiting for the pain explosion…which didn’t disappoint.

  And his stride was so floppy there should have been no way he was going to hold a lap at pace, but somehow he came around with the marker and stayed with it up till the halfway point. Then he ignored the pain and pushed harder, with his stride seeming to smooth out a bit and him pulling away from the marker on the third lap.

  The fourth one was where he ran out of gas, with the ascension and lack of sleep getting to him, but he swam through to the finish and managed to stay ahead of the hologram, recording a 2:21 pr as he crossed the finish and dropped to the track, curling up in a ball as the pain began to get worse as the numbing stress wore off and he got the full sensory load.

  Totally worth it, he told himself. He was a physical mess right now and had just ran faster than ever before. The thought of how fast he might be once he recovered made him smile in spite of the pain, with him knowing that Paul was going to be soooo jealous of him now…on top of the fact that he was top Archon.
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br />   When the eventual update made its way through the relay network to Plenx Paul wasn’t onboard ship to see it. He’d gotten the naval situation stable enough that he’d left command in the hands of Admiral Caster, the most junior of all the Admirals within the fleet. Given Paul’s own naval skills having an experienced Admiral on the same ship was deemed a waste of personnel, so Paul always took the ‘rookie’ under his wing and sent the others out to where they could have more of an impact as he passed along some of his knowledge to the newbs…which were usually at least 200 years old by the time they got to him.

  Caster had a been a long time Captain of a Warship-class jumpship, recently promoted up to Admiral with the same type of duties only multiplied exponentially given the size of the command ship and the fleet that came along with it. He was competent and had spent a few years with Paul, enough for the trailblazer to trust in his skills to handle the situation now that the orbital conflict wasn’t at risk of going south barring any stupid mistakes that he knew Caster wouldn’t make.

  That left the ground war on Rvitx as the trouble spot, and as usual Paul threw himself right into it, assigning himself to commando duty and going down in his heavy armor to help make up for their lack of troops. Rather than fighting with a Star Force or Dvapp unit he went solo, dropping from high altitude down into infantry-only theatres and fighting his way out of them to a nearby outpost or Dvapp city…and racking up a significant kill count on the way.

  Paul preferred the heavy armor, which had about 30% more plating than the standard version and 50% stronger shields, because it gave him additional battle longevity as opposed to the regular or agile armor, both of which weren’t necessary given the opponents the faced. He wouldn’t have wanted to go up against a Zen’zat in this armor, because he would have needed the extra speed, but like all Star Force armor it wasn’t actually bulky and was still designed to move with his body like a thick second skin.

  To Paul it felt like wearing two layers of clothing as opposed to one, preserving most of his agility and giving him plenty of speed while allowing him to just plow into Hobbit units without worrying about racking up too much shield damage. Those few extra seconds were enough to essentially make him an invulnerable tank in small scale engagements…and that he took to the bank, killing far more enemies in the same amount of time as he could have in the other two armor variants.

  Slowly, region by region, they were pulling the Skarrons back, with them not being able to mount the infantry attacks on secondary areas…and Paul handing a lot of those when they did. Without the ability to simply flood the planet with infantry the fighting was being constricted down to fewer and fewer areas, with those containing their walkers and other anti-air capability. That gave Star Force and the Dvapp air superiority everywhere else and took the pressure off a lot of the remaining Dvapp cities…those that hadn’t been taken or destroyed previously.

  Paul stayed on the ground for the next three months, personally leading one of the major assaults on a Skarron-captured city and taking down several of their walkers himself using his Ikrid. The fighting was heavy and the enemy dug in hard, without Star Force or the Dvapp able to call in additional troops, but being the strategic mastermind that he was Paul found a way and ground it out until they finally broke the walker support and were able to bring in their air cover…after which that particular city fell within 2 days.

  Paul stuck around another day to help clean up lingering infantry then finally returned up to the Excalibur for a few days of badly needed training and to catch up on naval matters before heading back down again for the next heavy assault…with the Skarrons having seen how they’d taken down the other city and no doubt preparing a few surprises for them when they tried to do so again.

  It took him a while before he got around to catching up on the training logs from the other trailblazers across the ADZ, as well as filing his own embarrassing numbers. Fighting the enemy mattered, but he hated when it took him away from his training…and his first workout had been total crap, having been away from it for so long. He’d lost both strength and speed, but knew he could get it back. Trouble was he wouldn’t be here for long, needing to go back down to the planet for the next assault.

  That frustration blossomed when he got to Jason’s logs and personal messages. Not only was he eating through Archon levels like they were a bag of Doritos, he’d somehow managed to join the tier 3 group that only Morgan and Bo had attained to date…but he’d even one-upped them by attaining a psionic that even the Zen’zat hadn’t achieved. That was insane, and Paul wanted to be back training with them so much he nearly punched the keyboard in front of him.

  But he didn’t, for he knew Jason felt the same way about being on the front. Both of them were where Star Force needed them to be and doing what was necessary to secure the future, both against the current threats and the big one looming on the horizon. Attaining a psionic that the Zen’zat hadn’t was HUGE, and Paul made sure to remind Jason of that when he sent back a reply…and to remind him that as soon as the found the trigger for it he was going to be the first one Jason shared it with.

  When Paul was going through the training logs of some of the other trailblazers posted to various regions within the ADZ a news warning icon manifested itself with a recent update. Paul paused what he was doing and pulled it up, with a notice that a Protovic system had just been evacuated due to insufficient ground troops to hold the two inhabited planets there. What few civilians remained had been successfully pulled out, but despite there being two Sentinels in orbit and an adequate defense fleet comprised of two Star Force Warship-class jumpships in support of 254 Protovic line warships, they’d completed lost control of the surface.

  Unable to prevent some troop and cargo drops from occurring, the Skarrons were reinforcing their ground gains and littering the landscape with missile turrets. They didn’t have the ships to even scratch the Sentinels, but other than dropping them down near the atmosphere and bombarding the planet, which the notes suggested the Kip was already doing, there was nothing they could do.

  Paul knew that his fellow Archon would kill as many of them as he could, but the planet was now theirs and all they had to do was build underground where sensors couldn’t see them and they’d have a safe haven from the cleansing beams, which could drill down into the crust to a decent depth, but without knowing where to shoot and having ground troops to follow up, the Skarrons could establish strongholds out of Star Force’s reach.

  His mood soured by the news of the loss, he mentally cursed the stupid Scionate and went back to reviewing workout logs before heading two bed. After a couple of days of intense training and some long sleep sessions Paul would return to the surface and lose himself in battle, his planet and campaign heading in the right direction, at least, due in no small part to his personal presence there.

  3

  June 3, 2553

  Sului System (Scionate Territory)

  Favrrcor

  “Jack, you better get up here.”

  The ranger paused mid swing at the punching bag in Balboa Lane as the voice broke through over the chamber’s speakers. He glanced at the wall panel that held the comm unit and telekinetically flicked a few switches.

  “What is it?” he asked, knowing that only something serious would warrant interfering with his training.

  “Looks like the war has finally showed up on our doorstep.”

  “Who?”

  “Lacvamat.”

  “Damn. On my way,” Jack-81118 said, logging out of the training sequence he was in and resetting the chamber to normal with all the various objects retreating back into the walls as he exited enroute to the command center in the outpost.

  Favrrcor was a primary Scionate planet, the only one in the system but one of their major habitation centers. Star Force had no presence in the system aside from a tiny outpost on the surface that held some 5,400 personnel who were due to evacuate soon. They weren’t a colony or civilian center, but a military outpost with on
e purpose…controlling the single Sentinel in orbit.

  It was scheduled to be removed, as were they, but they weren’t first on the list and the jump cradles needed to move the big sections of the station were hard to come by. Jack’s assignment to this post was really a dead-end one, but there had to be a senior Archon in charge of such a massive piece of weaponry, not so much to operate it, but to make decisions about who to shoot given that there were no other Humans within the system.

  They’d been deployed here as a courtesy along with the Sentinel, as well as to make sure no one, including the Scionate, messed with the control station. Most of the people he had in the outpost were defense troops whose purpose was to safeguard the outpost, with the balance being a few techs and other support personnel. The Sentinel itself was completely remote controlled and sat in geosync orbit above them, a tiny dull star amongst the others in what was currently the planet’s night cycle.

  It was a necessary deployment, but a boring one. Jack and the others focused on training exclusively, with several commandos and Knights having requested such an assignment strictly for that reason. A few had seen combat on the lizard front and needed a breather, while the bulk of the others were rookies getting some time outside of Sol. Jack’s time was split between his personal training and drilling the others, of which only four were Archons.

  But today his assignment here was going to come heavily into play.

  By the time he reached the small control center the Lacvamat fleet had already jumped into orbit in numbers that stunned even Jack. There were no troop ships or other transports…it was a massive fleet of warships that were already pouring down into low orbit and literally hunting the Scionate defense fleet. It had been reduced by about 30% to send relief to the other worlds under attack, but even had it been at full strength he doubted they could have handled the Lacvamat fleet he still couldn’t believe he was seeing. They outnumbered the Scionate ships 12 to 1.