Star Force: Marauders (SF63) (5 page)

Incorporating it into his standard training was his
next big challenge, for it literally changed everything as far as what he was
capable of doing, but he’d have time for that later. Right now
Sashneo
needed his oversight, and he’d have plenty of
breaks to train in over the coming weeks. While his fleet was fully capable of
handling this invasion without him, he knew that him being linked into the
system and making little tweaks here and there could have a cumulative effect
going forward.

And with billions of lizards down there that needed
killing, there were lots of opportunities for tweaks to be made and deviousness
to be uprooted before it could kill his people. That was the biggest need for
him and other Archons with the fleets across lizard territory…sniffing out
traps and figuring out how best to hit the lizards when they were dug in underground.
This planet wasn’t the biggest one he’d been involved in hitting to date, but
it was the most populated, offering up a little bit more of a challenge.

At this point though, for a trailblazer, this was easy
peasy
. It was vitally important, but not a real
stretch of Tom’s skills. From an outside perspective, what was taking place on
Sashneo
was
armageddon
.
The operation was so huge it left any civilian awestruck, but after so many
battles his troops had become seasoned fighting the lizards and didn’t hesitate
when given a target of this size. There was an awful lot of work to do here,
but they knew they could handle it, one piece at a time, with Tom handing out
assignments as they moved forward.

Back in the day, when Tom had passed his test for the
A7 program, he never could have comprehended doing something like this, let
alone how routine it had become.

Then again, he’d never expected to be 700 years old
either. That longevity of growth had to have an effect on people, Archon or
not, but back on Earth when he was a kid such things were out of the societal
viewpoint, deemed nothing more than myth, so it was understandable that he had
no clue a person could rise to this level. Now he was focused on taking care of
business and continuing to climb the improvement ladder, for he and the others
knew the V’kit’no’sat were still well ahead of them.

Back in his basic days he thought he’d comprehended
the threat they posed. Now he realized he hadn’t a clue what they were capable
of, data files or no. And what was even scarier was the fact that while Tom was
a couple centuries away from catching Yoda, there were V’kit’no’sat hundreds of
thousands of years old…and more.

With his mind still linked in to the battlemap he
looked down on the huge lizard civilization he was set to destroy, realizing
that compared to the level of the V’kit’no’sat, this was still just child’s
play.

5

May 4, 2735

Noop
System (beyond
Gamma Region)

Tieor

The Mandoshan freighter made its braking maneuver into
the commerce system on an odd jumpline, but odder still was the fact that the
ship’s deceleration track ran to a normal orbital depth, though with a much
higher rate of transition. That indicated gravity drives far superior than what
the Mandoshan built into their ships, but no one noticed, or had the technology
to, for unlike the more impressive star systems, this one had no stellar
tracking grid.

The freighter in question redirected to the only habitable
world in the system without incident, making the microjump at a speed expected
from such a lethargic craft. Hundreds of others of different makes and origins
were transitioning to and from the star every minute, with this freighter just
mixing in with the flow until it reached the planetary monitoring grid and was
picked up by the local traffic control staff.

It was queried as to its destination, then given a
route to take to get down to the atmosphere without bumping into anything else
in the cluttered orbital space. Thousands of habitats orbited the planet, along
with just as many parked ships offloading cargo or personnel into the various
public terminals. The Mandoshan freighter wasn’t headed for any of those, but
had a destination point marked on the planet’s surface in one of the less
respectable spaceports.

It was one of 189 on the planet registered for regular
traffic and saw a fair amount of lower level commerce, so when the freighter in
question dropped into hover mode over the cityscape it had to wait for the
choke point to clear as a pair of
Gordin
freighters,
twice the
Mandoshan’s
size, came up out of the half
mile wide opening and made for the clouds overhead.

When given the go ahead from bay control the Mandoshan
freighter eased its more or less circular bulk down through the ‘tight’ opening
and into the enclosed airspace below that stretched out in a radius of several
miles. The covering was little more than a sturdy tent, with no armor or
defensive value other than to keep the weather out, but visually at least it
separated the bay landing pads from the rest of the city.

The freighter eased to the west and came down on the
landing pad assign to it next to four other craft, parking next to a
Vrax
freighter of similar size, but when the Mandoshan ship
set down it didn’t offload any cargo, just a group of passengers that walked to
a nearby exit where they were met by a single individual that then led them out
of the spaceport and through the city via less than savory routes.

All eight individuals wore grey robes with large hoods
that covered most of their faces, keeping them out of sight as they meandered
through the scattered crowds made up of numerous races. Tieor had no native
population, and had begun as an entertainment resort complex for the wealthy
travelers on an uninhabited world. Over time those operations expanded, and
were still present in one small corner of the planet, but ancillary development
had started up around servicing those high end customers, and now, thousands of
years later, it was the lower end that dominated the planet with their economic
presence dwarfing that of the privileged elite.

Tieor functioned as a way station for some 80 star
systems in the local region and even had connections further out, with it being
on one of the major trade routes connecting the three major powers in the
expanded region, those being the
Hershat
,
Zocktrel
, and
Worar
. That fact
alone attracted a lot of varied races, but the ones beneath these hoods had
never been seen in this part of the galaxy before and preferred to keep it that
way.

The guide was one of
Tieor’s
natives, a
Donklap
, who looked halfway between Ewok
and monkey. He stood shoulder height to most of the robed individuals, but
walked in a very peculiar way, with his arms lunging side to side rather than
swinging front and back like most others. Even that didn’t stand out in the
crowd, for there were other
Donklap
around, along
with many other races that clashed so much that they all seemed to blend
together into a mix-matched harmony.

The
Donklap
led the eight
robed individuals to a location not far from the spaceport, bringing them
inside a commercial district and into an alley between establishments. On the
far end of it was a locked loading door for cargo arrivals, which the
Donklap
had a key for. He slid the two-pronged ‘C’ into the
holes and rotated the mechanism around, popping the door locks and allowing it
to slide into the wall to reveal the interior hall. All eight passengers
slipped inside, then the
Donklap
shut and locked the
door from the inside before ushering them on into the facility.

They passed several sealed doors, for these had been
welded shut to keep anyone from the stores from accidently stumbling into the
portions of the shared complex that didn’t belong to them. After passing
through several ‘dead’ rooms they came to another locked door, which the
Donklap
knocked on three times, then stared up at the
security camera above it. He reached a hand up and split his fingers apart in
the secret sign, with the door opening a moment later.

A Protovic stood behind it with weapon in hand,
stepping to the side to let them enter, but making sure no one else slipped
through before he had a chance to shut the door again.

When he did the eight individuals pulled back their hoods
and slipped off their robes, revealing themselves to be a mix of ADZ races. One
was
Critel
, another two Protovic, a fourth was
Bonpar
, and the other four were Human…all ex-Star Force
military, coming from Axius to the mainline branch and everything in between.

“Lieutenant,” the Protovic greeted one of the Humans,
recognizing him but not the others. That wasn’t uncommon, for Brayden’s
Marauders had over 12,000 regulars, with that number growing each decade.

“Le’han’trel,” the Human replied, knowing every one of
the men under his command personally, not counting the affiliates like the
Donklap
, who were local hires. “Is the client here?”

“Not here as in the base, but he’s in a hotel nearby.
I can arrange for you to meet with him whenever, wherever.”

“Arrange it,” Mason
Harkor
said, tossing his cloak bundle onto a nearby table with the others. “Somewhere
private, but not here.”

The Protovic nodded then gestured to one of the six
locals in the room, which doubled as their lounge/
comms
center, then rattled off instruction in a language that the Lieutenant couldn’t
identify. A spindly creature that looked to be little more than bone with skin
draped over responded and got on the
comm
, sending
out a text transmission and nothing that would give anyone information as to
the details or location of their outpost.

It was a legitimate business acquisition, for the
Marauders were renting the facility, but as far as the landlords knew it was
just a warehousing slot allotment, and as long as the
demaks
,
their local currency, kept flowing in they never bothered to check up on the
tenants. Similar arrangements were common on this part of the planet, and it
gave the Marauders the anonymity they needed, for while mercenaries weren’t
uncommon on Tieor they were something best kept out of sight.

Especially high level
mercs
that had better equipment than the local defense force.

“Alright guys, settle in. We’re going to be here at
least a few days.”

“Left, then two rights,” Le’han’trel said, gesturing
to a side door that led into other areas of the fairly large facility that
housed and equipped a force of more than 200 on a regular basis, though at
present less than 50 were currently on site. “Quartermaster is a Kiritak called
Gargi
, she’ll set you up.”

“What do we have in the mail bag?” Mason asked when
the other 7 in his strike team had left the room and he had appropriated a
nearby stool to sit on.

Le’han’trel grabbed a datapad off a shelf and tapped
it on, pulling up an inventory list of all the requests coming in to the
mercs
for work, most of which they would have to turn down.
The Marauders only did defensive work, and didn’t take any contracts that would
conflict with Star Force standards. While they weren’t officially affiliated with
them, the unit had been created by Brayden Yen, a high ranking commando in Clan
Caitlyn that had ‘retired’ to civilian life.

Upon leaving the military he spent the next 60 years
acquiring the credits he needed through a variety of work, all non-military,
then recruited a handful of other former Star Force commandos to create the
first of what would come to be called the Marauders. Mason was one of those
originals, and spent the next few decades working security assignments in the
undesirable sections of the ADZ where Star Force security had no presence and
where businessmen were willing to pay for personal security.

Over time Brayden collected more exiting Star Force
personnel, citing that he wanted to establish a unit that could go where Star
Force couldn’t, into the darkest corners of the galaxy and root out the
nastiness there, essentially doing the same sort of thing they’d always done,
but doing so on their own volition and own orders. They would be free to act as
they chose, but at the same time wouldn’t have any backup, for they weren’t
part of Star Force anymore.

That changeup on an old priority appealed to a decent
fraction of the retired personnel that Brayden solicited, coupled with the idea
of getting paid for the fighting they did. They’d be serving Star Force
indirectly, but getting rich at the same time. That alone was reason enough for
many who got the invite to join up, and for the others it was Brayden’s future
plans for the unit.

The former commando didn’t want to just hunt down
trash in the dark corners of the ADZ, but he intended to go outside Star Force
territory to the truly wild regions of the galaxy and bring a little
civilization to the chaos. Nothing grandiose, just a mission here or there to
get rid of some scumbag. Star Force had a huge territory, but the galaxy was
far bigger, so after the Marauders were firmly established and making enough
credits in the ADZ to support themselves, and then some, Brayden began pushing
operations beyond the ever moving borders, staying a step or two ahead of Star
Force’s creeping territorial lines…which were now surging head over heels
outward.

The Marauders were still ahead of the curve, for the
Noop
System was
way
beyond the ADZ, but not so far that some of the races here hadn’t established
diplomatic contact with Star Force. It was in that gray zone between known and
unknown that they chose to work, banking on Star Force’s reputation to give
them leverage and credibility while still operating outside their sphere of
influence. This system and others weren’t too unimportant for them to care
about, they simply couldn’t protect everyone, and it was those places that were
beyond Star Force’s help that the Marauders chose to operate within.

“We’ve got four requests for assassinations,”
Le’han’trel began to read off. “Two hijackings of freighters, sixteen requests
for permanent defensive deployments ranging from a personal security guard to
an entire moon, and an assortment of transport missions along with a few odds
and ends. Mostly trash stuff that we’ve told people time and again that we
won’t do, but they still ask anyway.”

“What about the moon?” Mason asked, raising an
eyebrow.

“Not something we’d want. It’s a vice
den
and they want us to set up to keep any other
merc
units or law enforcement out.”

“Anything worthwhile?”

“Some small stuff, wouldn’t take more than a squad of
three or four. Fuel costs in getting there would eat up most of the profit
though, because none are local.”

“By local you mean on Tieor?”

“Yes.”

Mason waved his fingers in a ‘give me’ gesture and the
Protovic tossed him the datapad. “Still haven’t got these guys up to speed on
English yet?”

“Passable, but anything complex is better handled in
Klixet
. Between them all they know 19 other languages, so
I’m not pressing too hard. The earpiece translators we’ve gotten configured to
Klixet
pretty well, so as long as they can translate into
that we can manage with our clients…mostly. For a few we’ve had races that
barely spoke
Klixet
, and didn’t know any of the
others. This planet is a mess linguistically.”

“What isn’t out here?” Mason asked as he flagged three
requests that he’d be willing to assign the Marauders to. One would make for a
decent payday, the others would offer a slim profit margin. Normally they would
be booked constantly, but at the moment they had a bit of flexibility and he
intended to handle one of the small ones himself after he was done here.

“Log these,” he said, tossing the datapad back to the
base chief, which the Marauders referred to as a ‘handler,’ for he handled all
the local assignments and reported directly to the Lieutenant in charge of this
Marauder sector, which was Mason.

“How are things back home?” Le’han’trel asked as he
moved over to one of the suitcase-like computer stations.

“Seems like Star Force is taking a planet a day from
the lizards,” Mason exaggerated. “They’re steamrolling them now, on multiple
fronts.”