Star Force: Fiddlesticks (SF65) Page 4

  The cost of such shipping was enormous, meaning like any prudent planner would know, you had to build from a local base of resources if any massive project was slated.

  Heema checked on the status of their mining sites, finding four that were in the initial stages of setup. None were operational as of yet, but one was already burrowing down into the crust to set up the first of the catacombs that would house the primary mining habitats and processing centers, all of which would be located below ground, with only a spaceport and surface transit line hubs being built on the surface.

  The rail lines were also under construction, stretching out from the growing city and about halfway to the nearest mining site. Once completed they’d be running cars back and forth on four different tracks that ran parallel to each other with a few hundred meters gap separating them. The first load of cars was in a jumpship half a day behind Heema’s, so it looked like they were going to be arriving prior to the completion of the tracks, which was proper. They didn’t want any delay in ore shipments once they began coming up from below ground, for the simple reason that they had nowhere to store them on site.

  The main resource center was going to be located in its own region of the city, with a massive yard filled with bins and warehouses to contain it all as it arrived via train, then the ring of factories surrounding the yard would begin processing the already sorted and crushed materials into whatever basic building blocks the Reen needed. Structural ribs, wall segments, adhesives, wires, lighting…there was a long list of compounds the mining operations had to find and produce in order for the factories to do their job, and Heema knew that list wasn’t going to be fulfilled overnight.

  To expedite matters there was already a pair of recycling stations up and running. They were connected to the city via a dirt road with thousands of Reen vehicles crisscrossing the countryside and cycling back and forth from those mobile stations, which were moving around periodically to hunt down the piles of lizard debris that Star Force was letting them salvage from. The Human-led empire was taking most of it for themselves, which was only right given that they’d reclaimed the planet, but they were as interested as the Reen in seeing the planetary colonization spur get underway.

  What exactly it would gain Star Force Heema wasn’t sure, but he knew there was always an angle to whatever they did…it just wasn’t always a greedy one. He still hadn’t, after all these years, fully figured out the motivations behind their decisions, but their actions were very predictable. Those who behaved themselves and showed merit were courted and rewarded. Those who caused trouble or showed themselves to be inept were contained and dismissed as irrelevant.

  He had no doubt that the Reen were here now because of their past actions, and that those long term efforts were now paying dividends. Heema was convinced that giving them this system back was another test, leading up to what he couldn’t guess, but he’d noticed that when Star Force gave someone as much leeway and free assistance as they were giving the Reen now, they were interesting in seeing how they used it.

  And Heema was adamant that they not waste a moment of this opportunity.

  After getting situated with the new staff and the familiar few that he’d brought with him, he immediately headed out into the city to start making contacts with the newcomers and getting them put to work immediately, for there was a bit of uncertainty spreading amongst the incoming population as to what to do next, with most seeming to think they’d have time to relax and linger as if this was a holiday before the hard work started.

  Heema quickly put such notions to rest, culminating with a speech to the highest ranking 300 or so Reen on the planet in which he outlined his suspicions that Star Force was testing them here and that they could not let an ounce of laziness or indecision creep into the colony. They had to be focused on clear goals and working to achieve them round the clock. Lack of coordination or visible purpose would send the wrong message, and even while the civilian population began to arrive and figure out what part they wanted to play here, the leadership core group could not afford any such wanderings.

  Plans had been made previously, and Heema reiterated them again, giving clarifications where needed, then the group broke up and returned to their respective duties with a much quicker pace. Most of them had thought of this as their chance for some breathing room away from Star Force’s oversight, but grumblings as to that once again being present confirmed the other Reen’s acceptance of what Heema had said. They viewed it as partially a negative, whereas he truly saw it as an opportunity, as well as a goad.

  Were the Reen competent or not?

  Wanting to prove that they were, Heema set himself on a tireless schedule, personally checking in and sometimes overseeing every new startup operation as it came online, as well as making personal contacts with the populace and it continued to grow. He had help from a few of his colleagues that arrived later, but the larger the population would grow the harder it would be to keep everything moving at lightspeed. Some lagging would take place somewhere, and Heema was insistent on hunting it down and rooting it out, replacing the personnel if need be.

  This colony had to be full speed ahead round the clock. Anything else was unacceptable.

  The growth of the Axius colony on the moon above happened slower, not because of Star Force’s construction crews being inferior to the Reen, but because they devoted only a small number of them to the task at hand. This was not going to be a large startup, and it took more than two years before the first transfers were allowed, with nearly all of the inbound Axius colonists being Reen.

  A few others that qualified for the ‘large’ Axius colony, due to their bodily size, came with the hexpeds, but that was more out of a sense of adventure in going somewhere new than any connection with the planet below. The Reen in Axius were interesting in seeing how their race fared, as well as in establishing personal and business relations with them. In the beginning there were only a few hundred thousand Axius colonists, and when they took up residence the construction crews left to move on to other startup projects.

  That left local construction crews with the responsibility of expanding the city as needed, and such expansion was deliberately kept at a slow pace. The majority of the resources collected from the nearby moon mining sites was directed into the shipyard in orbit, starting with a single small slip and expanding the infrastructure out into a progressively larger facility that would be able to service the war fleets operating on the nearby front lines.

  Having a safe haven where they could refuel, rearm, or undergo repairs was invaluable, for otherwise the transit times would be long and lengthy having to run back to the ADZ for such things. The moon colony wasn’t building any drones or cargo ships, but it was focusing on building up a stockpile of spare parts and ammunition production so that they would be able to service a growing number of vessels coming back from a wide number of ongoing battles and the raiding fleets continuing to probe deeper into lizard territory ahead of the reclamation invasions.

  The Axius colony therefore focused its efforts on the service function rather than pushing to grow their population. A trickle of additional infrastructure continued, as did a small amount of immigration that was strictly controlled. They’d offer up a few slots now and then, as most Axius colonies did, with people swapping residences for a number of reasons. After the shipyard was established a fair number of non-Reen Axius came in to work them, as well as the mines and factories that fed them materials, but the bulk of the civilian population remained Reen and was gaining about a third of its growth from planetary individuals seeking to join Axius.

  Several annual slots were reserved for them as well, but the numbers were minuscule given the size of the colony. They had to contend with maturia growth estimates and not overflood the moon with population, always wanting to keep residential occupation at no more than 90% capacity, allowing for quarters swapping and advancement. They did not want to tell an individual who had earned an upgrade that there were no units avai
lable, so they had to make sure habitat construction always ran ahead of population numbers.

  So Brobdingnag would remain a mere spec of Star Force civilization within the star system while the Reen infrastructure grew by leaps and bounds. Within a decade of their arrival their population had grown to half a billion, with many more ready to make the move once additional facilities were built underneath a halo of Sentinels. No one seemed overly concerned about the threat of the lizards, Heema included, for Star Force never would have built a shipyard here if they felt it was a vulnerable location, and as the years passed more warships would be seen in orbit guarding that station, with an occasional and very welcome shipment of new Sentinel segments coming in to assemble yet another massive piece of anti-lizard deterrent.

  Then one day many years later a huge Star Force fleet of warships and Ma’kri entered the system and began offloading damaged drones that the shipyard hurriedly began to repair, filling all its slips and yet having more waiting in line. Two of the Ma’kri had even suffered significant damage and were moved into the larger berth, one at a time, with a small army of Axius workers supplementing the onboard techs as they began to rebuild the ships with the crews still onboard.

  The Ma’kri-sized slip was exposed to space, for this wasn’t a super-sized shipyard, but it was surrounded with an always running energy shield to protect it against attack or rogue debris. Inside that shield there was no atmosphere, which made the repair efforts tricky, but it wasn’t something new to the crews, nor above their expertise.

  What was new was the type of damage they were seeing, for it wasn’t plasma in nature. It was the result of more of a cutting beam-type weapon, and since all the traffic they got here was from conflicts with the lizards, who almost exclusively used plasma weapons, the damage to this fleet was a bit of a shock, not to mention the scale to which these ships had been damaged, for some of the drones were barely able to fly from jumpship to repair slip under their own power.

  Scuttlebutt gradually worked its way around from the Ma’kri crew to the shipyard workers, with word being that the lizards had developed a new weapon and a fleet full of the augmented ships had come to the relief of one of their planets that was under invasion. The Star Force fleet now sitting in orbit had fought and defeated them, protecting the ground troops and allowing them to continue battling on the surface without naval interference, but they’d gotten beat up in the process.

  None of the jumpships had been damaged, for the weapon upgrades weren’t anything that was going to get through those shields without considerable, repetitive banging, but the smaller vessels were not so fortunate, especially given that they didn’t have the option of retreat when they had to protect the troops on the ground.

  Fortunately no one had died from the damage to the two Ma’kri, but their hulls were still a mess and a lot of the junked weapons couldn’t be replaced with the stores the moon had. They were going to repair the hull and armor damage, but to replace the more sensitive components fully they’d have to travel to some place with larger stores.

  The commander of the fleet, a trailblazer no less, wasn’t going to wait that long. She wanted this fleet back in as much working order as possible, then they were heading back into the fight, intent on hunting down these newly equipped lizards that were roaming around and knocking them out before they could jump planetary defenses. The new weapon was more powerful than plasma, but worse yet it had range, meaning the lizards could easily engage the Star Force drones outside their mauler and talon cannon kill zones.

  That changed the game considerably, taking the short range lizard fleet and upgrading it to a significant mid range threat with what the crew had already dubbed as ‘phasers,’ which turned out to be either a long burning beam or shorter flare of more intensity. The lizard fleet had operated with both weapon varieties, though it was said they were comprised of the same destructive energy.

  The lizards had been making small upgrades to their tech ever since Star Force had first encountered them in Epsilon Eridani, but now it seemed they had hit upon a major breakthrough…and everyone knew it was only a matter of time before all of the lizard worlds began producing ships of the same make and model.

  5

  December 31, 2754

  Rotunna System (Beta Region)

  Ida

  Kara-317 flew through the skies of Ida, passing out over the city’s edge and buzzing the jungle’s treetops following one of many surface trails. She’d arrived insystem less than two hours ago enroute to a bit of a summit gathering on Sashneo. It would take weeks to get there, coming from the clandestine missions she’d been pulling outside of the Achkor Region, and she wanted to pick up a couple of Archons to take with her. Currently they were out running a workout together on the trails, and she didn’t feel like waiting around until they finished up and returned to the city.

  Her armor’s sensors penetrated the treetops and gave her body heat indicators from all the lifeforms in the jungle, but only for a set distance. No Human signatures were within her current radius, but she was familiar with the set of trails, having spent a month here previously on another layover. They didn’t appear to have changed much in the past century, and if she knew Prick and Pram they’d be taking the longest of the trails, so Kara followed it expecting to pick up on them eventually.

  She moved quickly, knowing that the invasion date wasn’t going to change if she arrived late and she was cutting it close as it was. Kara hadn’t realized it was even going down yet until she’d gotten back on the grid and caught up with current events and postings. Her mission had seen her behind enemy lines for the past 2 years, with her going all the way out through lizard coreward territory to try and find their current border of conflict with the Skarrons.

  She’d had to go really far to find it, for the lizards were taking it to the super huge empire far harder than they’d ever come after Star Force…and it was paying dividends for them, for they were acquiring an enormous mass of territory. How well they’d colonized it yet was still uncertain, for there was only so much scouting Kara could do with her single jumpship, but knowing the lizards they’d suck up every system that was to their liking within the regions they dominated and begin using them to spew out more conquering fleets and armies.

  By now Kara was assuming that the lizards controlled a region coreward of Star Force that was at least equal to everything they had around their own core systems…which was freaking huge. Too huge, for it meant the lizards were growing by leaps and bounds with literally no one around to stop them. Add in the new phasers they were slowly implementing to their fleets, and even their handheld weapons, and their threat level was literally shooting through the roof.

  Star Force did not have a full map of their territory, and very little was known past the no-go line aside from what the Hycre were snooping around to find, and Kara’s travels were adding to that, but only in a small way. She had found the new Skarron border, but it looked like it was still in flux. Several systems were falling to the lizards when she got there, literally being overrun, while a handful of others were holding firm and seeing insanely huge fleets battling it out.

  Those she watched from afar, and conceded that the Skarrons were still every bit as deadly as they’d once been. How the lizards were beating them was a question mark, but they were doing it, evidenced by the long trail of conquered systems on the ‘green’ side of the border.

  At least that’s how Kara thought of it, and had her ship’s maps labeled. Most lizard tech was yellow/tan, but their bodies were green and she’d always mentally associated that color with them. On the reverse she saw the Skarrons as white, because that’s what their walkers were colored.

  The green on the map was eating into the white at an alarming pace, based on the distance from the ADZ that it had now stretched, but Kara knew the white stretched across an entire galactic arm and into the next, which was why she was surprised the lizards were still doing so well. No matter how many systems they took, the Skarro
ns should still have been able to bring in a fleet, or 100 fleets from elsewhere and hammer them back. That wasn’t happening, yet, but it definitely wasn’t because the Skarrons weren’t trying.

  She’d given the Skarrons a little push of her own, racking up 6 lizard warship kills while she was out scouting solo. Her armor had so many uses it was crazy, and she’d gotten in the habit of sneaking onboard enemy ships and destroying them from the inside. Every ship the lizards didn’t have to throw against Star Force was an improvement, but she was kind of pulling for the Skarrons in this fight, despite the fact that they were the larger threat. Kara didn’t know why for certain, but it just seemed like the lizards were the cocky upstarts that needs to get the wind knocked out of them and that hadn’t happened yet.

  Star Force was working up to that, and were already doing so in small scale around the ADZ, but the first big counterattack was about to happen and she wanted to be a part of it, for the lizards really had this one coming their way.

  As for the pair of Archons she wanted to bring with her, it wasn’t for her sake, for she usually fought better solo, but they’d been kind of ostracized, mostly by their own doing, from the rest of the Archons and Star Force, and had been holed up here training on their own for the past 6 years after completing some fairly successful counter-ops into lizard territory. They also liked to work alone more than with others, and Kara was probably their only true friend…which she found to be sad, hence the slight detour coming here to pick them up for a mission that they really needed to be a part of, not only for the skills they brought to bear, but for their own sakes.

  She spotted several individuals ahead on the trail, but there were 5 of them and Kara knew that the pair she was after would be alone so she didn’t bother dropping down through the trees to identify them or use her Ikrid to get a mental fingerprint. Flying on, she passed by several other groups and singular individuals, finding only one pair amongst them, but when she dropped down underneath the jungle canopy she discovered it was the wrong duo…and not even Archons at that, just a very fit couple of commandos.