Star Force: Internecine (SF55) (2 page)

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, coupled 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.

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.

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.