Star Force: Internecine (SF55)

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.